Secret sauce

In the times of CoVid 19, reflection

Shanghai

March 11, 2020

I often wonder how we survived these seven weeks, spent mostly sequestered in our homes turned into modern day bunkers.

Reflecting on it now, as we are coming out of the grip of this crisis, one realises that what we have lived through is close to a modern day siege, minus the enemy battering down the city gates. Here the enemy was sneaky, treacherous and without a concrete physical form. A truly novel form which no one knew how to disarm, which is rather unprecedented given our 21st century knowhow. So we were back to primitive techniques of quarantine, isolation and social distancing.

When I look back on those two weeks of February, I remember reports pouring in from all fronts of rising infection counts, panic buying and a run on masks and sanitisers. Those days we were stuck at home all day long and it was easy to get caught up in the anxiety surrounding us. People were panicking and leaving the city in droves, and those of us who had opted to stay back were second-guessing our choices. Schools and offices had pushed back their opening dates by a fortnight; we were all waiting to get back to normal after that. When the news came that they would push back again for a second time, that was when mood and morale plummeted to their lowest. It felt like we were stuck in a tunnel without any light on the other side. This was a time when we needed our friends around us, to give each other comfort and encouragement. Only a precious few were left in town. But many residential complexes (including ours) had closed their gates to non-residents, and visits were not possible anymore.

So how did we get through these depressing times with our sanity intact? It was one small thing which carried us through without loss of morale: a habit of daily exercise. This was something that we as a family had decided on, right at the onset of this crisis, to build exercise into our daily schedule for each one of us. It was not particularly hard to implement because we like to workout (read ex-marathon runners and presently vertical runners/ climbers). The hard part was that we’d have to workout indoors, since going outside was impossible, and the gym and pool were closed. Thus started my serendipitous encounter with yoga.

I was not new to yoga, we had learnt the basics at school and I’d dabbled in it intermittently. Now, I started it as a daily habit. A nudge from my fitness group helped: a friend had started the initiative to make exercise a daily habit and I’d joined in to support him, the idea was to pull each other along and the group would keep us accountable. (If you have such friends too, I’d advise caution). Without quite realising it I started doing longer yoga sessions. At the end of each session, I came away feeling calm and centred. This hooked me in even more. This feeling was very different from the endorphin-high that you get after running or intense cardio. The stretching and sweating were great but the calm and light feeling were the real takeaway. As if I’d taken a load off which I didn’t even know I carried. It hit just the right notes at the right time, given the high stress we were under. And I wasn’t the only one who benefitted, my family liked the post-yoga me too…they started to ensure that no one disturbed mom while she was getting her “zen fix” as they like to call it, I was a much nicer person post-yoga and it made their lives easier too.

That got me thinking, why does yoga have this specific effect? We know that exercise produces endorphins, which make us feel happy and thats the feeling after a long run or a sweaty spin class. But the post-yoga feeling is different, it is more like a calm gentle high, a slowing down of your breath and the clarity that comes with it. As if you have decided to allow yourself to take up time and space as you wish, to tune out noises and focus inward. A most selfish and rewarding exercise (forgive the pun). This slowing down of breath and deep diaphragmatic breathing or Ujjayi breathing is the key to the yoga effect, when we consciously control our breath and engage our breathing capacity. It is said to slow down our brain and allows parts of it to rest, which produces the calm we experience.

Another reason behind yogi calm seems to be the brain’s production of the happiness hormones- endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine. Of these, serotonin is the one which produces a feeling of wellness and reduced anxiety, and allows us to feel relaxed. The feeling is similar to when you’ve had rice for lunch, we Asians know the feeling of fullness and satiety after a rice meal, again the same hormone is responsible as rice also causes the production of serotonin.

My kids joke that I’m on a high after my yoga session, they dont know how close to the truth that actually is… mom has had her cocktail of happiness hormones! So if you’re going to be stuck at home, which is not unlikely given the CoVid 19 pandemic, you now know my secret sauce to staying calm: get on that mat and let the down dogs and chaturangas be your friend.

Namaste.