by Dr. George Savastio, ND
Last week we sent out a message describing the incredible balancing of yin and yang happening around the world in the wake of our great teacher, COVID-19. (Perhaps we can hold a contest to come up with a better and more appropriate name for such a powerful and defining force in our lives. For now, I’m calling it Yangslayer). If you haven’t read the previous article, titled It’s Time to Learn About Yin, you might want to check it out to get some context for this one.
It now looks like the yin period will be enforced until at least the end of April. As the now-ubiquitous Dr. Anthony Fauci has observed, however, the virus itself will decide the hour when it is safe to once again ramp up the energies of the engines of yang. All of a sudden, life has so obviously wiped away our illusion of technological control. It is up to us to adjust.
Many of us are now looking at a month or more of sheltering in place. From what I’ve been hearing, it’s been much easier than anticipated so far for a lot of folks. Yin seems somehow to be in the air. Now our task is to harmonize with yin so that we can continue sheltering peacefully. I’m holding out the possibility that this is a period of incubation, and that some path other than the road we were traveling (which sure seemed to be headed straight toward the edge of a cliff) might be born out of this duress. Perhaps we’ll learn once again that it is wiser to harmonize with nature.
Everything needs a catchy name now, so I’m calling the yin practice of lying on the ground and staring at the sky “Earthing”. I’m sure the name has already been taken for some other technique, but that hardly seems to matter now. As I described in my last article, the practice came spontaneously to me as I was feeling consumed by anxieties about the future, particularly the economic future. One moment I was walking, head down, purposeful strides, noggin full of woes and worries, and the next I was lying on the ground spellbound by the beauty of the moment and feeling my anxieties draining into the bottomless well of the earth. I’ve repeated the practice a few times since, and it never fails me whenever the winds of anxious thought begin to blow. It’s definitely my prescription for the time we find ourselves in.
The point is, life will help us with the adjustment she requires of us. The earth is free and available to all. If we rush back to old ways out of economic anxiety and worries for the future, we will blunder. COVID-19 is a powerful yin teacher, but the earth is the very reservoir of yin strength and stability. As a doctor of naturopathic medicine, she appears to me to be the best remedy for the moment as well. I urge you to give her a try. Increase the dose as weather permits.
