Dealing With Lockdown Anxiety

The effect of the Covid-19 lockdown on our mental health and anxiety levels cannot be overstated. In his latest column, Douglas Ballard argues that we are all, in essence, manifestations of energy and finding a way to channel our energy within ourselves is key to seeing a positive future.

A few days ago, I was doing some exercise walking down a country lane, when I saw a hawk hovering over a field maybe eighty to a hundred foot high.  I marvelled at the thought of how a creature so small and so high could have the eyesight to spot something as tiny as a shrew in the ground below.  Even our household pets have staggering perceptual differences to their human owners. 

Dogs, it is said, have the sensory smell array of a sheet of A4 paper compared to ours that would measure a postage stamp. Cats see different wavelengths giving them night vision and bats (yes, not a household pet), like dolphins have in built sonar detection.  It is therefore, no wonder that even amongst the human species, there are some gifted with different perceptual arrays.

What has this to do with anxiety, you may ask?  We are all, in essence, manifestations of energy, physical, chemical, emotional, bioenergetic, magnetic … and many more.  Traditional acupuncture is, in rude terms,  based upon unblocking and balancing our energy meridians (energy pathways); homeopathy is also an energetic treatment as the molecular composition of each remedy is infinitely small.  Chiropractic, and indeed most complimentary practices, work on our energy systems.  If this is not your bag, just consider circadian rhythms, our sleep cycle and patterns, as essential to our health and well being – a distinctive energy cycle.  

As an energy healer, it is my gift to be able to channel energy from all I simply call a ‘higher place’.  It is the natural flow of universal energy that is the fabric of all beings.  We are all part of this energetic existence but as we have become so cerebral (in our minds) and emotional, that part of our life that connects with the Higher Energy, is not open and we need help through healers that have the gift of that connection.  Reconnecting with the Higher Universal Energy has a marvellous restorative effect, balancing the human body, often with remarkable mental, emotional and physical results.

Energy healing is very relevant today to the massive stresses created by the pandemic lockdown. 

It could be said that we live in two ‘worlds’: the world inside our heads, and the world outside and around us.  When travelling across continents peering down from an airplane, finding your way in a new city or perhaps just entering a new workspace, the world outside seems vast and we seem insect-like in perspective.  Other times, as in lockdown, and in confined physical space, the world inside our heads can be vast with never-ending thoughts and scenarios. 

The impact on our internal space i.e. our minds, can be hugely disruptive as we are pumped by hugely negative external media with very little good to say.  After three years of ‘Brexit-neurosis’, we in the UK are now being fed by the hour with more pressure and dark thoughts about the Covid-19 virus.  It could be said that we are now super-stressed.

Movement is a very natural form of energetic expression that helps us process our thoughts and emotions, and whilst we can get out for a daily walk, this is nothing like the panoply of movements that we have in normal daily life, travelling to and from work, meeting people, going to events, seeing friends and relatives. It is probably for this reason that many people have been reporting a huge increase in dreams and nightmares.

Carl Jung, the eminent psychologist, expressed the view that dreams are a safety valve for thoughts and emotions.  However, for many, there is an underlying feeling of being trapped and no end in sight.  The balance of negative thoughts to positive is tipped strongly to the negative by all the seeming contradictions that we hear from the media and with whom we meet.  

It starts with Self-Belief

So how can we best help ourselves?  No one can live looking at the end of their lives and yet it is vital to be able to look forward in our lives.  Even if it is looking forward a few days – like we used to look forward to a weekend –, it is really important to project your life into a good, healthy future where we see fun, holidays, adventure and sunshine. Nothing in the media is giving us anything to look forward to, so we have to do this for ourselves.

Look at it in  in terms of darkness and light within ourselves.  Yes, we always need a ‘healthy-conflict’ in our lives to generate the energy to move forward.  We need the tussle in the morning to get out of a nice, warm comfy bed, to be active in life.  The effort of maintaining fitness to avoid the costs of poor health. The struggle of study and practice to achieve learning and skills. 

Creating self-belief is essential that we can do things, we can set goals, and we can come through this pandemic is essential to our happiness.  But (not a word I often use), things will have changed forever, even in subtle ways.  We see travel and pollution differently now.  Never have we heard so much birdsong.  How many things do we actually really need to do or even want?  How do we spend our money?  The struggle for young people leaving school, college and university. 

This was hard enough anyway, but now jobs and careers may be much more challenging.  Now is a good opportunity to reinvent ourselves and become even more creative when we have the space to do this.  We will all have many years in front of us and life will move on, creating a positive view, a golden vision of your life and then becoming your vision is even more possible in this time of self-reflection.  Believe in yourself.