BEING MINDFUL:
A Poler’s Guide to Surviving Isolation with Kindness and Gratitude
Introduction
I'm Lucy, of LucyPole in Oxfordshire. I moved into the Pole industry in 2008, started my own School in 2012 and moved into our first permanent premises in 2014. My own journey into self-care, wellbeing and all wonderful related things began around 10 years ago, when I was trying to secure a diagnosis for Fibromyalgia and ME. I am definitely not an expert by any means, but I love sharing the things I’ve learned with others, and I'm so happy to be here sharing with you today.
For anyone who came to my Pole World Festival seminar last year (thank you!), we talked a lot about Self Care, and how to put together a Self-Care Toolkit for when times are tough and you need a little extra tenderness. This Seminar is an expansion of that, where we will talk about how lockdown and isolation has affected us, and what we can do to help ourselves and those around us, in this situation and in the future, with as much gratitude and kindness as we can manage.
One thing I’d really like to do is make all of this information accessible for you, and teach you how to make it work for YOU. Many people are put off learning about mindfulness and other self-care techniques because the terminology and words used can sometimes feel really intimidating, and like the subject might be too big to tackle. I want to give you lots of ways to make these words mean something to YOU, and to help grow your self-care kit and personal techniques.
(short guided breathing session - 4 in, 8 out)
Understand what isolation is and how it makes you feel
Isolation:
1. The act of separating someone or something; the state of being separate
2 The state of being alone or lonely
Isolation appears to have split humans into three main groups; those desperate and determined to come out of the lockdown situation more productive, having ‘achieved’ (in whatever capacity) and ‘grown’, those who have barely managed to function on a daily basis, let alone consider any level of productivity or development, where getting out of bed can be considered a ‘win’ day, and what I suspect is the majority group, those somewhere in between - good days and not so good days. I strongly believe that many people have struggled so much with the isolation and separation from friends and family and ‘life’, because so many of us find it incredibly hard to just ‘be’ with ourselves. To be still. To not have any outside input or stimulus. To just BE. And isolation has given us just that. Eons of time to just BE. Which is great, if you like yourself and are totally happy hanging out with their own self. I’m fairly sure it’s not that many of us.
*mention constant stimulation internal and external
I also thought it was interesting to note that out of the very brief Facebook survey that I did (thank you for all your responses), the most commonly mentioned word was unmotivated/demotivated. This surprised me as I was expecting most people to be suffering with something more to do with your emotions (anxiety, loneliness etc.) It seems that for many of us, the major stressor whilst we can’t get to our studios or classes is the lack of motivation to maintain our physique, flexibility, eating plans, and training in general. For so many reasons, many of us need to physically leave our homes and go to another venue to help us get into that ‘zone’ or head space that allows us to be our very best.
To make this a little easier, I’ve tried to narrow all of our feelings and thoughts regarding lockdown, isolation and Covid-19 into four separate sections that we can go through. I’ve chosen four headings that I think most appropriately sum up our collective experience. Obviously, this will mean that the minority and exceptions may not be realistically represented. If you feel you are one of these people, please do get in touch with me after this seminar if you’d like to share anything with me or ask any questions.
Before we go into depth on any of these four chosen topics, I’d like to just reiterate that the MOST important thing to help you with your self-care and development right now is to just notice and acknowledge your feelings. What does this mean? Well, when you have a coffee, or whenever you get a moment when there is not a ton of stimulus (toilet breaks are always a good one as they tend to be the one place we are not distracted!), just stop.
Grouping Together Feelings and Emotions during Lockdown/Isolation
Pole is naturally a very social community with events/competitions/jams/socials.
For many polers, pole is a reason to have a social family. For many students, it’s the one time each week that they get for themselves, out of the house.
Many have no other coping strategy.
Mental health issues seem to be quite high in pole community - Maybe because we are vulnerable in class - semi clothed and physically quite intimate.
Maybe because the care and body positivity brings them to pole.
Our safety net and coping strategy has been ‘taken away’.
* please remember we are taking specifically about our community, but I don’t want to undermine the struggle of so many other people.
We currently have no access to our usual coping strategies - coffee, chats with friends, being able to leave the house.
Loneliness creeps up on you, you can feel that you’re doing okay before an emotional downturn or dip. It has been referred to as the CoronaCoaster.
Can be crippling and affect every aspect of your life
Can trigger bad behaviours:
In a practical sense, not being able to conduct maintenance on hair, brows, nails etc. can then affect the way you are feeling about yourself and seeing yourself in the mirror whilst at home
Can lead to comparison via social media
How Can I Help Myself and Coping Strategies
Coping Strategies and how they relate to mindful, kindness, grateful
What about Mindfulness? Try to remember that all that mindfulness is, is to be present in the moment and try not to focus on things that have passed or things that will come.
Nia Pearce technique -3 gratefuls. Explain process. Puts me in a great place for the day. Makes me more aware of all sorts of things. This also ties into mindfulness because it’s about being aware of things around us. Noticing and acknowledging.
Self-development is an umbrella term that can cover all of these techniques that we are talking about. It’s using techniques like mindfulness to be a better person to yourself, for yourself, and to others.
Gets thrown around a lot, together with personal growth.
How do I self-develop? How can I grow? These are questions that people often start their journey with. They are also questions that prevent many people from starting their journeys, as they are afraid of what these words might mean, or feel they don’t have enough knowledge to really truly understand what these words mean or how to make them apply to daily life.
I think of mindfulness or wellbeing as a doing word - a verb. It’s anything you do - reading, research, conversating, learning; anything you do to get yourself closer to being a whole, healthy human.
Mindfulness, Self-Development, Self Growth - these things to me are all about taking steps to learn to be more compassionate, learning to get in touch with your feelings and emotions (notice and acknowledge), broadening your horizons, being more emotionally intelligent.
Distraction techniques for negative emotions/overwhelming anxiety/panic attack
For: anxiety, panic attacks, negative comments/whinging, need to physically harm/self-harm.
Rubber band
Can practice until a snap of the band can help take you down from crisis level before it gets too bad.
For: anxiety, panic attacks, overwhelm etc, less serious situations
See, hear, smell (54321)
Take out touch and taste for some situations, if you are at home do all of them.
Helps to be mindful. Helps you focus on one thing and be PRESENT.
Same as the breathing technique - this time you are focusing on your senses not your breath
Social Media Cull - relate to self-image
I first got into listening to guided meditations and affirmations after a really bad break up about 10 years ago. I would listen in the morning while I walked the dog, and I found it really helped me to get into a good headspace.
Giving an easy technique today that ANYONE can do
What is it?
Two types - therapy type and physical/electrical type
ELECTRICAL - science
Realigns body’s natural electrical impulses by reconnecting with the earth.
All our cells are made of atoms. Atoms possess unique positive and negative charges that are based on the number of negative electrons or positive protons they carry. Many healthy atoms have a negative charge because they possess more electrons; however, these atoms can have electrons “stolen” from them, leaving them highly reactive and damaging. In this state, they are called free radicals. As damaging free radicals infiltrate cells and tissues, our health declines. The only way to stop this destructive process is by supplying the body with neutralizing antioxidants or a large dose of negative electrons, through grounding.
THERAPY
Useful in PTSD and dissociative types of disorder. Can we look at AFTER the isolation period as PTSD inducing?
HEALTH Benefits:
Helps establish normal cortisol level, particularly at night, aiding sleep - moves you from sympathetic system’s ‘fight or flight’ response to parasympathetic system which is ‘rest and digest’.
Reducing free radicals.
MY interpretation.
Bare feet on bare ground/bare body on the ground - talk about what this feels like, is the ground cold/wet etc (notice that this is also practising mindfulness)
20 minutes is absolutely ideal, but if you can’t manage that, any amount of time is good.
Tie Up and Close
There has been a lot of information today, and that in itself may feel really overwhelming. What I would really recommend is choosing a section or strategy that sounds like something that you could incorporate into your life. Use that technique or strategy for a little while and see how it feels, in exactly the same way that you would buy new shoes, or clothes. You may have to try a few techniques before you find one that fits, you may find that none of the strategies I’ve chosen today work for you. But hopefully you now have some tools to help you go out and research other strategies and ideas.
One thing I’d like to remind you about going forward into your own journey; remember that like pole, stretching, balancing, tricks...this is something you will have to work on and practice, and tweak and train. Self-growth doesn’t just happen while you sit passively. YOU need to be actively involved - it’s why things like yoga and meditation are referred to as ‘a practice’. Try to keep your information and strategies bitesize, which will help them to be incorporated into your life. You can also add and remove pieces as you go along.
During your journey, please feel free to reach out to me, share your thoughts and stories, ask me questions; I’d love to be part of your journey and help with anything that you think I can.
Thank you so much for making time for me today and for being interested in this journey.
LucyPole
<3
A Poler’s Guide to Surviving Isolation with Kindness and Gratitude
Introduction
I'm Lucy, of LucyPole in Oxfordshire. I moved into the Pole industry in 2008, started my own School in 2012 and moved into our first permanent premises in 2014. My own journey into self-care, wellbeing and all wonderful related things began around 10 years ago, when I was trying to secure a diagnosis for Fibromyalgia and ME. I am definitely not an expert by any means, but I love sharing the things I’ve learned with others, and I'm so happy to be here sharing with you today.
For anyone who came to my Pole World Festival seminar last year (thank you!), we talked a lot about Self Care, and how to put together a Self-Care Toolkit for when times are tough and you need a little extra tenderness. This Seminar is an expansion of that, where we will talk about how lockdown and isolation has affected us, and what we can do to help ourselves and those around us, in this situation and in the future, with as much gratitude and kindness as we can manage.
One thing I’d really like to do is make all of this information accessible for you, and teach you how to make it work for YOU. Many people are put off learning about mindfulness and other self-care techniques because the terminology and words used can sometimes feel really intimidating, and like the subject might be too big to tackle. I want to give you lots of ways to make these words mean something to YOU, and to help grow your self-care kit and personal techniques.
(short guided breathing session - 4 in, 8 out)
Understand what isolation is and how it makes you feel
Isolation:
1. The act of separating someone or something; the state of being separate
2 The state of being alone or lonely
Isolation appears to have split humans into three main groups; those desperate and determined to come out of the lockdown situation more productive, having ‘achieved’ (in whatever capacity) and ‘grown’, those who have barely managed to function on a daily basis, let alone consider any level of productivity or development, where getting out of bed can be considered a ‘win’ day, and what I suspect is the majority group, those somewhere in between - good days and not so good days. I strongly believe that many people have struggled so much with the isolation and separation from friends and family and ‘life’, because so many of us find it incredibly hard to just ‘be’ with ourselves. To be still. To not have any outside input or stimulus. To just BE. And isolation has given us just that. Eons of time to just BE. Which is great, if you like yourself and are totally happy hanging out with their own self. I’m fairly sure it’s not that many of us.
*mention constant stimulation internal and external
I also thought it was interesting to note that out of the very brief Facebook survey that I did (thank you for all your responses), the most commonly mentioned word was unmotivated/demotivated. This surprised me as I was expecting most people to be suffering with something more to do with your emotions (anxiety, loneliness etc.) It seems that for many of us, the major stressor whilst we can’t get to our studios or classes is the lack of motivation to maintain our physique, flexibility, eating plans, and training in general. For so many reasons, many of us need to physically leave our homes and go to another venue to help us get into that ‘zone’ or head space that allows us to be our very best.
To make this a little easier, I’ve tried to narrow all of our feelings and thoughts regarding lockdown, isolation and Covid-19 into four separate sections that we can go through. I’ve chosen four headings that I think most appropriately sum up our collective experience. Obviously, this will mean that the minority and exceptions may not be realistically represented. If you feel you are one of these people, please do get in touch with me after this seminar if you’d like to share anything with me or ask any questions.
Before we go into depth on any of these four chosen topics, I’d like to just reiterate that the MOST important thing to help you with your self-care and development right now is to just notice and acknowledge your feelings. What does this mean? Well, when you have a coffee, or whenever you get a moment when there is not a ton of stimulus (toilet breaks are always a good one as they tend to be the one place we are not distracted!), just stop.
- mention how we ALL have time. It will take maybe less than 60 seconds, so EVERYONE has time.
- Difference between emotions and facts, thoughts and feelings
Grouping Together Feelings and Emotions during Lockdown/Isolation
- Isolation and Loneliness
Pole is naturally a very social community with events/competitions/jams/socials.
For many polers, pole is a reason to have a social family. For many students, it’s the one time each week that they get for themselves, out of the house.
Many have no other coping strategy.
Mental health issues seem to be quite high in pole community - Maybe because we are vulnerable in class - semi clothed and physically quite intimate.
Maybe because the care and body positivity brings them to pole.
Our safety net and coping strategy has been ‘taken away’.
* please remember we are taking specifically about our community, but I don’t want to undermine the struggle of so many other people.
We currently have no access to our usual coping strategies - coffee, chats with friends, being able to leave the house.
Loneliness creeps up on you, you can feel that you’re doing okay before an emotional downturn or dip. It has been referred to as the CoronaCoaster.
- Anxiety
- would love to know how many of us have had feelings of anxiety, in lockdown? Regardless of previous anxiety, would be interested to know, if you feel you want to share.
- Whole other seminar in itself, as anyone who has suffered will agree.
Can be crippling and affect every aspect of your life
Can trigger bad behaviours:
- eating habits
- leisure habits (how we exercise, how much etc)
- leading all the way to self-harm
- loved ones
- own life/future
- Can affect immune system and sleep patterns
- financial situation
- the greater world and community
- when things will be ‘normal’ (there can even be anxiety about this, in an ‘institutionalised’ sense following lockdown
- fake news
- scaremongering
- misinformation
- challenging from friends on own opinions - finding out you have diff values
- a need to justify one’s position to others
- Stress/Panic
- Can raise cortisol levels, particularly if stress is persistent and chronic in nature.
- CORTISOL has been linked to systemic inflammation in the body.
- Imagine being in fight or flight all the time - can be really dangerous.
- Can put a strain on ALL relationships.
- Can affect sex drive (also relates to above).
- Studio owners and instructors have added fear of re-opening; losing customers to people who open sooner, levels of risks, extra hours and costs etc.
- Self-Image
In a practical sense, not being able to conduct maintenance on hair, brows, nails etc. can then affect the way you are feeling about yourself and seeing yourself in the mirror whilst at home
Can lead to comparison via social media
- image/looks
- achievements
- productivity
How Can I Help Myself and Coping Strategies
Coping Strategies and how they relate to mindful, kindness, grateful
What about Mindfulness? Try to remember that all that mindfulness is, is to be present in the moment and try not to focus on things that have passed or things that will come.
Nia Pearce technique -3 gratefuls. Explain process. Puts me in a great place for the day. Makes me more aware of all sorts of things. This also ties into mindfulness because it’s about being aware of things around us. Noticing and acknowledging.
Self-development is an umbrella term that can cover all of these techniques that we are talking about. It’s using techniques like mindfulness to be a better person to yourself, for yourself, and to others.
Gets thrown around a lot, together with personal growth.
How do I self-develop? How can I grow? These are questions that people often start their journey with. They are also questions that prevent many people from starting their journeys, as they are afraid of what these words might mean, or feel they don’t have enough knowledge to really truly understand what these words mean or how to make them apply to daily life.
I think of mindfulness or wellbeing as a doing word - a verb. It’s anything you do - reading, research, conversating, learning; anything you do to get yourself closer to being a whole, healthy human.
Mindfulness, Self-Development, Self Growth - these things to me are all about taking steps to learn to be more compassionate, learning to get in touch with your feelings and emotions (notice and acknowledge), broadening your horizons, being more emotionally intelligent.
Distraction techniques for negative emotions/overwhelming anxiety/panic attack
For: anxiety, panic attacks, negative comments/whinging, need to physically harm/self-harm.
Rubber band
Can practice until a snap of the band can help take you down from crisis level before it gets too bad.
For: anxiety, panic attacks, overwhelm etc, less serious situations
See, hear, smell (54321)
Take out touch and taste for some situations, if you are at home do all of them.
Helps to be mindful. Helps you focus on one thing and be PRESENT.
Same as the breathing technique - this time you are focusing on your senses not your breath
Social Media Cull - relate to self-image
- Cull and Curate.
- Doesn’t have to be all at once, just whilst you scroll.
- Doesn’t need to be for good, just while you are feeling under pressure/out of sorts.
- Think about FB algorithms - even seeing negative posts subconsciously can have an effect on you.
- Relate to relationship breakups and how I delete everything - healing time with it out of your vision
- Unfollow don’t unfriend.
- Unfollow and replace :)
- Replace with good, positive, warm things that bring you joy.
- Controversial - even do it with polers that you idolise and follow if they don’t line up with you in terms of values and opinions etc. IF IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD…..
- I diary in time to diary
- Don’t assume that communication ‘just happens’
- All the techniques need practising - so schedule them in so they happen - make them a priority
- Zoom/FT calls with family and friends
- Friends you have lost touch with
- Develop new relationships
- Schedule time with YOURSELF - REPEAT
- Can be as little as 10mins to have a quiet coffee somewhere
- You will be more focussed, you will be more productive, you won’t lose out on anything
- Trust me on this!
I first got into listening to guided meditations and affirmations after a really bad break up about 10 years ago. I would listen in the morning while I walked the dog, and I found it really helped me to get into a good headspace.
- Like music that you dance to, you’ll have to listen to a bunch to find out what you like best.
- See, hear, smell (5, 4, 3, 2, 1).
- Breathwork can lower cortisol and moves you from sympathetic system’s ‘fight or flight’ response to parasympathetic system which is ‘rest and digest’.
Giving an easy technique today that ANYONE can do
What is it?
Two types - therapy type and physical/electrical type
ELECTRICAL - science
Realigns body’s natural electrical impulses by reconnecting with the earth.
All our cells are made of atoms. Atoms possess unique positive and negative charges that are based on the number of negative electrons or positive protons they carry. Many healthy atoms have a negative charge because they possess more electrons; however, these atoms can have electrons “stolen” from them, leaving them highly reactive and damaging. In this state, they are called free radicals. As damaging free radicals infiltrate cells and tissues, our health declines. The only way to stop this destructive process is by supplying the body with neutralizing antioxidants or a large dose of negative electrons, through grounding.
THERAPY
Useful in PTSD and dissociative types of disorder. Can we look at AFTER the isolation period as PTSD inducing?
HEALTH Benefits:
Helps establish normal cortisol level, particularly at night, aiding sleep - moves you from sympathetic system’s ‘fight or flight’ response to parasympathetic system which is ‘rest and digest’.
Reducing free radicals.
MY interpretation.
Bare feet on bare ground/bare body on the ground - talk about what this feels like, is the ground cold/wet etc (notice that this is also practising mindfulness)
20 minutes is absolutely ideal, but if you can’t manage that, any amount of time is good.
Tie Up and Close
There has been a lot of information today, and that in itself may feel really overwhelming. What I would really recommend is choosing a section or strategy that sounds like something that you could incorporate into your life. Use that technique or strategy for a little while and see how it feels, in exactly the same way that you would buy new shoes, or clothes. You may have to try a few techniques before you find one that fits, you may find that none of the strategies I’ve chosen today work for you. But hopefully you now have some tools to help you go out and research other strategies and ideas.
One thing I’d like to remind you about going forward into your own journey; remember that like pole, stretching, balancing, tricks...this is something you will have to work on and practice, and tweak and train. Self-growth doesn’t just happen while you sit passively. YOU need to be actively involved - it’s why things like yoga and meditation are referred to as ‘a practice’. Try to keep your information and strategies bitesize, which will help them to be incorporated into your life. You can also add and remove pieces as you go along.
During your journey, please feel free to reach out to me, share your thoughts and stories, ask me questions; I’d love to be part of your journey and help with anything that you think I can.
Thank you so much for making time for me today and for being interested in this journey.
LucyPole
<3