Loving in a Violent World
“That’s the thing I struggle with. How do you love in a world that is so violent? That is a challenge and that will always be a challenge. It’s hard. But you elect to love anyway. It’s an act of attention, and an act of concentration, and it’s a decision always.”
Margaret Renkle, author Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
I am not a Middle East nor a military expert. My expertise is in guiding people to their wholeness through yoga, reiki, craniosacral and lymphatic drainage.
I apologize for not writing sooner; I needed to work through my stuff.
I am intimately connected with Israel and am a Jewish person. Because I always share my feelings with you, I have 1 sentence to say. The unprovoked barbaric attack on Israeli adults and children on October 7th, the retaliatory relentless bombardment of adults and children in Gaza, and the swift and intense rise of world -wide antisemitism, have rattled me to my core.
What practices can help us when it’s hard to choose love in a violent world?
Humans are creative, compassionate, super productive, and violent. A brief and very incomplete history of human violence:
What do yoga and neuroscience say about violence?
Ahimsa – First tenet of yoga
Ahimsa is Sanskrit for non-violence in thought, word and actions. It’s the first tenet because everything rests on this premise. Why is this first? Because when we harm, we pollute, we are violent, to our own being. Isabel Wilkerson and James Baldwin, both write that white supremacy poisons the soul of the white supremast, because in order to act in such hateful ways, one needs to harm one’s own soul. And the yogis agreed. Yoga is the Sanskrit word for union -oneness with soul, body, mind and all that is. I cannot be in Yoga, if I have polluted my own soul in order to harm others.
Even when I have been harmed. The yogis teach, ahimsa is the response for individuals, families, groups, communities, corporations, nations. Think of Gandhi and India’s independence from Britain. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”.
The below is summarized from “What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing” by Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey. (THIS IS SUPER SIMPLIFIED)
A bit of background - Patterns of stress
Hunger, thirst, cold, working out, promotion at work are all forms of stress; stress is an essential element of learning new skills and building resiliency. The differential in whether stress is positive or destructive is the pattern of stress.
Stress that is moderate, controllable and predictable results in increasing our tolerance and thus builds resiliency. Stress that is prolonged, extreme and unpredictable results in increasing our sensitization and thus we become more vulnerable, more fragile.
Lucienne Vidah, Iyengar yoga teacher, refers to these concepts in yoga practice. When we are being pressed by ourselves and/ or the teacher to move beyond our physical comfort zone, there is the option of two outcomes. If the stressor is moderate, at an acceptable level of challenge, we can physically expand, grow, in our practice. If the stressor is extreme, moves too far or too quickly into an unsafe zone, we can shut down, become stuck and shrink in our practice. Feelings of being overwhelmed flood our being.
Stress is individualistic; what is moderate stress for you, may be extreme stress for me. What is real and true for me, may not be real and true for you. Assuming we know how another feels negates their physical and emotional experience.
How does the brain react to stress?
Our brains are constantly receiving information – from inside our body (interoception) and from outside our body (five senses). This information enters through the brain stem, at the base of the skull. The information eventually makes it up to the cortex, located higher than the brain stem. Imagine an inverted triangle. The narrow base is the brain stem and the wider top is the cortex.
The brain stem is the site of temperature, respiratory and cardiac regulation. The cortex is the site of creativity, thinking, language, values, time and hope.
When information enters the brain it takes a bit of time to move from the brain stem – where regulation occurs- to the cortex – assessing the incoming information and what the response will be, based on reasonable thought processes.
Intolerable levels of stressors such as violence and fear can put us in a dysregulated state, like accelerated heart rate, difficulty breathing, sweating. We get stuck at the brainstem level. Until we become regulated, we simply cannot engage in logical reasoning.
Intolerable levels of stressors over long periods of time, can result in long term dysregulation.
Remember the spring of 2020, early days of covid? I think we were all collectively (and validly) living in our brain stems. Living in the brain stem results in impulsive, reflexive behavior – rational thought is gone. Ongoing violence thrives on impulsive, reflexive behavior.
What practices can help us when it’s hard to choose love in a violent world?
The answer is what Margaret Renkle says above, “You elect to love anyway. It’s an act of attention, and an act of concentration, and it’s a decision always.”
Dr. Perry outlines three steps.
Step 1 is Regulation. These are tools you all know already – meditation, music, yoga, cooking, gardening, hobbies, being in nature, physical outlets… Brain Stem
Step 2 is Relational. Community. Valuable work. Family time. Bonding. Intimacy. Worship. Volunteering. The brain reads positive human interactions/ connectedness as pleasure or reward. Moving upwards in brain.
Step 3 is Reason. Employing creativity, thinking, language, values, time and hope. Cortex
Why do humans, families, communities, groups, corporations, countries partake in violence? This is one of the mysteries of life. I have no answers for you. How can I return to my own center, in a violent world? The 3 Steps make sense to me, and when I have put them in practice, they have helped me.
Long term entrenched violence requires regulation, relational bonding and reasoning. It requires acts of attention, concentration, and commitment by all parties.
May we all be filled with lovingkindness
May we all be joyful and healthy
May we all be safe and free from fear
May we all think, speak and act from our highest selves
May we all know peace
Wishing you and your families a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Warmly,
Kim
Resources:
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkle
Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Studio Spine - Lucienne Vidah
What Happened to You? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey