Reflections From Retreat: How to Develop Resiliency in Times of Darkness

Greetings to everyone. Welcome, and it’s been quite a long time since I’ve made a video, so thank you so much for your patience and for joining me here today. I just wanted to make a few comments about some ways that we can work with the stress reduction and a little bit of somatic healing and some tricks that we can have utilized right now during these times that are becoming more painful and more dramatic and more colorful. The other day I was actually researching Trump traumatic stress disorder on the internet, and I joined a group, it was a free group with a woman who was pretty proficient with polyvagal theory and she taught us a lot of techniques that were invaluable. That was a few days after the incident at the White House with Zelensky. Somehow that was so egregious for a lot of us. I think it was the lowest, most base, most embarrassing moment in our nation’s entire history.

And a lot of us are grappling with this new world that we find ourselves living in. It happened so fast that our heads are spinning and our hearts are breaking, and we’re seeing the beginning of what looks like global warfare in these forces taking root. And I have a few things that I wanted to offer to you about what I’m finding in my own life as to how to deal with that and some of the things that my teachers have shared with me over the years. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Dawn Boiani Sandberg. I’m a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner wellness coach, and the person that runs the blog at rockymountainsomatics.com. And so after this had happened in the White House, I found myself really triggered having, I was crying, like sobbing, just thinking about all of the lives lost in Ukraine, thinking about how that Zelensky was bullied, thinking about all of the children and the frightened and scared people in Gaza and in Canada and all of us right now and somewhere inside of me, I have to believe that this is not who we are.

Insight from Retreat

I don’t believe we’re a conscienceless, murderous species that wants to destroy itself. I think there have been some very powerful global forces at play that have been brewing under the scenes for a really long time. And in fact, I wanted to share with you something, if anyone follows my blog, you’ve probably read this, but about two years before Covid Trump had gotten elected, and I started to become this activist mom because I was like, wow, we need to mitigate this damage. And I was here at my retreat house, that’s where I’m right now in Crestone, Colorado. And I was praying to source the lineage, praying for guidance and insight as to how to survive with this chaos and this type of president. And as I was doing, I was doing eight hours a day of meditation practice, really serious practicing, and some kind of teachings from source appeared in my mind and I wanted to share that with you.

The teaching said, Dawn, we have something to tell you. And I’m like, oh God, what? We need to talk. And the teachings came sort of like I imagine a field of Buddhists in front of me and they said, well, within your lifetime, you’re going to experience a tremendous amount of global upheaval and loss of life, and we need to prepare for that. Now, this was two years before Covid, so I don’t know if they were referring to the global pandemic or what’s happening now, but they said that I needed to prepare. And I said, listen, my teacher told me that one person can change the world. What if we all get together now to try to stop this? If we all fight and are activists and put ourselves in the frontline, maybe we can stop the momentum toward this global destruction and the field of merit.

Four Hours a Day Practice!

Buddha said to me, well, they said that the global forces toward this destruction had been forged for many, many years now, and not one person can stop it. We actually just have to kind of almost allow it to unfold. It’s so huge. It’s like trying to stop a landslide that the best thing that they could offer me was to do a lot of self-care and a lot of meditation practice. I happen to right now live in a pretty privileged and free space that might change, but while I have the time, they suggested I do two hours of meditation in the morning, and that meant trying to cut social media, Facebook, Instagram, blue sky, I mean to recommit to my practice in a way that’s more regular. Two hours in the morning they said, make the sacrifice, get off of social media back away and do your practice.

And then they wanted me instead of at night, just wasting time again on social media to do another two hours. So they said, if you practice four hours a day, that will give you the internal resiliency to be able to withstand what you’re going to experience in the future. And you can do that in a more grounded and fearless way. We can’t offer you a solution to these global geopolitical problems and the loss of life, but we can offer you ultimate protection such that you wouldn’t experience any fear, you can stay strong and withstand this. And they basically indicated that what’s happening is kind of it’s our collective karma coming to fruition. Maybe I am not a super geopolitical expert as to what’s happened over the years, but all I know is that a lot of us are really frightened now and we’re heartbroken and we just got through with Covid.

I mean, it’s like, give us a break. I thought we were all starting to heal again and be able to come back to life and now this. So yeah, so it’s time for, as the Buddhist suggested to me is time for doing a lot of practice. And I also think it’s important to act as well because oh, part of that teaching said that if we all work a little bit, we can mitigate some of the worst amount of damage. So it’s this mix of practice, but then a little bit of entering into the world and doing some type of social action. So I’ve been involved with the Democratic party and Indivisible and giving money and doing whatever I can with whatever limited resources I have to volunteer and help to try to be there for people and to try to make change and mitigate these dark predictions and dark time we’re in right now.

AOC-Be Joyous!

So I think also I have a child and I think about the future that we’re leaving to the next generation, and that inspires me to take personal responsibility for getting my hands dirty and doing what I can. And I listened to a recent talk with AOC Alexandra, AOC. She said, well, I grew up in Puerto Rico. My people don’t have a lot of resources. They’re very poor. There’s a lot of hard life there. She said, but my people know how to party. They dance and they sing and they celebrate life even in the midst of poverty and adversity. And she said, even though this is happening in the United States right now, this current fascist like regime, she said, make sure that you still connect to some type of joy and goodness and celebration. Because if we lose that, what are we doing all this for?

From My Teacher

It’s so hard to be alive. It’s always just so much work to sustain our lives and to be here. What are we doing all this for? Unless we can connect to some warmth and family and bliss and friendship and joy. So even in the darkest moments, I feel like I’d like to take her advice and still feel a sense of wellbeing even in the midst of darkness. And I don’t mean to speak from privilege from Colorado and I have this relative good situation right now. I don’t take that for granted. I think that could even change. I don’t think any of us can take our privilege for granted. I wanted to share with you, this is a little bit so trigger warning, a little bit dark, but I studied with a really powerful sort of Yoda, like amazingly compassionate teacher. His name was Tulku Urgyen and he was this yogi that lived in a nunnery up in a mountainside, in a nature reserve in Nepal.

And he’d always start the teachings. I think any of my Dharma friends listening to this that maybe it was almost every teaching, but most all teachings, he would start with everything that you see around you right now is impermanent. Everything is in flux. And he said at some point, even the sun itself will go nova and all life on this planet and nearby, it’s all going to exhaust itself. So he really wanted us to have our first thought be that there’s not a whole lot you can hold onto in this life. Everything is subject to decay and is in the process of decaying. It’s this kind of creation, destruction. I mean the earth itself will not endure forever. I’d like to think that if we all work together, we can have it endure a little bit longer. But it was a very powerful teaching. He also used to say, the reason you guys are here receiving these high teachings right now, we were studying this Tibetan, these powerful teachings.

Impermanence

He said, the reason why you’re receiving these right now is because it’s a little bit like a candle that right before it extinguishes itself, it rises up. So he’d always talk about the candle rising up before it goes out. And he would say that these teachings are about to die in this world realm, so that’s why you’re receiving them now. That’s why they’re flourishing and they’re so ubiquitous because they’re about to cease. So he would start with this kind of downer, bummer teachings where we’d all kind of be sad, but it was important that he said that because just like with what we’re dealing with right now with these geopolitical wars and we have dictators that are saying that they may use nuclear weapons, I mean we have to be prepared at any moment. I mean, everything is subject to disillusion. So I guess why that’s a good teaching is if you are prepared for the worst and you really, really soberly digest the teachings of impermanent, we could conceivably blow ourselves up.

There could be like that movie don’t look up, there could be a meteorite that comes. I could have a heart attack or stroke before the end of this video. And I mean, another story with these teachers is I was with his son Ache, his secretary, her name was Tina. And we were at an airport flying back from Gaia and we got a message at the airport saying, the airplane is not safe for you to go on, so we’re going to be delayed. And we were a couple hours delayed. It’s not that uncommon in India to have delays and things. They have to go out and put some duct tape on the airplane.

It’s always really chaotic over there and you have to be prepared for inconveniences. And Tina was standing in front of me and choking and Mo was on the side and we were supposed to be getting back in line after they repaired the plane. And Tina’s like, I’m scared to get on this plane. And says to her, and I’m standing right there and he goes, you have to be prepared at every moment for death at every moment. And I could see the fear in her eyes and mine too, but I was looking at her and that stayed with me as a teaching of at any moment, anything could happen. So if we prepare for the worst, but then hold out hope and work toward the best, I think that’s a really great balance because we kind of work hard and do what we can to help the world to forge our lives.

Pick Two Things

But at the same time, I think there’s this ultimate protection of knowing that everything’s impermanent and everything can go. So I think our compassion can fuel us to do whatever we can, but it feels overwhelming right now. I don’t think any one of us alone can completely fix this. One of the teachings that AOC said was everyone, if you can pick just two things that you can do to try to help the world with this current geopolitical thing. Today I gave some money to the ACLU. You could try to support politicians that will work against this current regime. And there’s a lot of open seats nationwide. Right now I’m working for the Democratic Party here in Colorado. I also work in the front range too, but we’re creating an emergency resource list because we’re concerned about some seniors and disabled people not having resources and there may not be anybody to call.

They’re shutting down a lot of social security offices. So what happens if the power goes out? What happens if Doge cuts all offices and there are no staff anymore and people aren’t getting their social security or SSDI checks? So we thought it would be good to create a countywide list and send it out to people on paper in case the internet goes down, kind of preparing for the worst and have different resources for them to call. Where are the food banks? Who would you call if you need legal advisor assistance? So those are the two things that I’m working on is giving money to organizations that have lawyers that are working with lawsuits to try to protect our democracy. And then working on grassroots with the Democratic Party and even beyond the Democratic party, just taking care of each other in a personal and real way because I think things could get bad very quickly, like lights out.
What do we do if we don’t have internet access to banks or power? I mean, I have a mountain house here where the power does go out sometimes we have terrible storms and those of us who live in the rural areas, a lot of us are kind of a little bit subversive preppers.

So I always try to keep food and fuel on hand, always prepared for the possibility of something off the grid. So I think emergency preparedness in everyone’s home is invaluable. I would stop. I don’t mean to sound like a prepper, but you never know what’s going to happen. And we buy car insurance, health insurance. I think it’s a good idea that all of us have emergency preparedness now for just some backup food and fuel and cash and know where your neighbors are. It might be good to forge friendships with neighbors now know where each other is, especially anyone that might be infirmed disabled senior alone.

So we may see a time where it’s just more about taking care of each other in a hands-on way. And then I’m lobbying the people in DC State Federal, so then that kind of thing too. So that’s what I’m personally doing right now. But back to the instructions from my teachers when I was on retreat after I had been crying for days with the Zelensky thing, I bet you a lot of you have been feeling that too. It was so heartbreaking and so shocking. And I mean seeing what’s happening in Gaza after the end of the ceasefire, and I mean if you watch this news, which I’m glad I’m watching some of it, I mean, you just cry and cry and cry all day sobbing if you really feel, I mean, I can only take on so much. So I’m trying really hard to mitigate how much news I’m taking.

I’m trying to keep it to 20 minutes a day, but it’s tending to be a little bit more than that. Also, conversations about what’s happening in geopolitics, it makes your nervous system get so scared and you’re living in this post-traumatic thing. I don’t think that’s healthy. I don’t think that we can be strong to take care of seniors in the neighborhood if they need us, if we’re just shaking and anxious and falling apart. So this self-care piece is not just based on privilege. It’s really essential now to do what we can to connect to wellbeing, groundedness, joy, family, do our best, hope for the best, and also to prepare for the worst. So I think for me, that’s just how I’m wrapping my head around all this right now. So I just wanted to show you before we close, just a few exercises that I learned when I went to this traumatic stress disorder workshop the other day.

Box Breathing

So a lot of you probably already know mindfulness meditation. I don’t want to bore you into oblivion with meditation, but we can do some of the box breathing. And as soon as I did these practices, I just instantly felt better. So I just wanted to offer them to you. So box breathing as you remember, what you’re going to do is you’re going to take a deep breath in and you’re going to count to four as you’re inhaling. And then you’re going to hold for four, and then you’re going to exhale for four, count of four, and then wait four seconds again and then do that. So it’s actually kind of makes a square of 4, 4, 4 and four. So we can just go through that together since I think this is one of the most invaluable tools and part of the box breathing is that when we’re scared, we tend to breathe very shallowly.
The bottom of our abdomen gets constricted and we kind of go upward and we have this constricted breath, like that kind of thing. So it’s important. My teachers have told me to breathe way down low into the belly and even allow the belly to come out a bit, even though it’s not very socially acceptable, but it’s actually good to let the belly come out and soften. So my teacher actually came up to me and put his hand on my belly and made sure that I was breathing really, really low down such that the belly expanded outward. So we’ll just do this box breathing and I’ll show you the technique and then you can do it at home. So we’re going to sit for a second.

We’ll do one of the box breathing. So we’re going to breathe in for the count of 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and hold, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then exhale for the count of four through the nose. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then wait, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then again through the nose, 2, 3, 4, hold two. And then exhale one, two through the nose. So each of those breaths of the four stages of the box breathing. Once you do the inhale, you’re going to fill up the lungs and you’re going to breathe very, very low into your abdomen, kind of below your bellies, make sure it really sticks out in Tibetan Buddhist. And we have a name for that, and that’s called the gentle vase. Cca. It’s a type of breathing where you breathe into the lower abdomen and it’s really, really helpful for grounding and clearing and feeling that you’re bringing oxygen into the body. And then when you breathe through the nose rather than the mouth that activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which tells you that the world is safe, so might not be safe. It’s good to tell the body that it’s safe. It’s better to operate as if the world is safe even if it’s not.

So that’s a really good ground. And then a few of the other exercises that the therapist had us do for Trump traumatic distress disorder was to just kind of rub the head. And this feels really good. This is just go ahead and rub your scalp, give yourself a scalp massage. Really just get in there up through your forehead and massage. And that will also help to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. I know in the Ayurvedic tradition they have a particular type of, it’s like a massage that they do. It’s called, I believe it’s called shod Dara. And you’ll lay there and they will pour a warm oil over your head and you lay there and then that’s like some type of RAF that has a little nozzle out there, and they’ll rock it back and forth. So as you’re laying there, you have this warm oil go back and forth on your scalp, and that really, really helps to relax the nervous system.

So the box breathing, and then the head massage, and then this one too. This is like just go ahead and massage your ears. So just go and do it very slow with the tips of your fingers and massage the ears in the inside and go along the rims and give yourself a really good massage. It feels so relaxing. And what’s happening is this is the acupuncture tradition. They call it Accu detox. They have a whole bunch of little pressure points in the ear that map out the whole body. So if you’re massaging the ear and you’re opening up these energy spots, you can actually strengthen open the whole body. So ear massage, and then go ahead and pull, I have earrings on, but go ahead and pull the ears downward. And that even just pull and hold.

And that activates some. That begins to activate your polyvagal, your vagus nerve. So there’s a nerve that goes down through the neck and down into the stomach. It’s a huge nerve in the body. And when that gets gets activated, that can cause a fight or flight response that we’re kind of massaging here. And then go ahead and massage the neck on either side of the ears. So we’re just going to give downward strokes and that feels really good. And then if you happen to see something in the news, this is so heart-wrenching, I would say the Buddhist tradition is like, don’t block the energy. If you need to cry or you feel scared or you feel heartbroken or hopeless, go ahead and feel it, cry it out. If you feel scared, be with yourself and console the fear. This is actually good self hug, self love, self warmth.

Become yourself a beacon of light

Try to make sure there’s not a whole lot of congested energy in the heart center. So you can do just like a heart healing. They do that in the Taos tradition. Imagining a sun inside your heart, be there for yourself. It’s such a hard time right now. We have to cultivate a sense of love and wellbeing in the darkest times. Become yourself a beacon of light in times of darkness. And if we are completely balled over by fear, anxiety, hopelessness, we cannot be strong to be of help to anyone. So the self-care piece now is invaluable. So again, if you need to cry it out, don’t block it, but also don’t chase. I think that it’s like, what is that? We’re unable to look away from a car crash. So it’s like for me, it’s so hard. I have a huge problem with social media addiction, just wanting to be on and being in the fray of everything and commenting on everything and checking on everyone and just oversharing.
So that’s chasing. So don’t block the energy where you feel sad or scared, but also don’t chase. We don’t have to hook and reify everything and just digest toxic thing after toxic thing. It’s like eating bad food. It’s good to be informed. It’s good to know what’s happening. It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. But I don’t think our little tiny one person is supposed to digest the geopolitical karma of the world and all of the anguish and all of these times of crisis right now that is not fair to our nervous system to be constantly ingesting that. So please, please go on a diet right now. You won’t be missing anything. Don’t worry. The news will come to you one way or another. So don’t block, but don’t chase. That’s the kind of instruction that’s always been given to me. And I just come to the aspirations that what we’re seeing right now, this global war bloodshed, treating vulnerable people in a way that they’re disposable.

I don’t believe that’s fundamentally who we are, but maybe there are times, just like in alcoholism, where we have to collectively hit bottom before we wake up. And it’s the waking up part that I’m holding out hope for. I believe that the human heart is strong, wisdom is strong, conscience is strong within us, and I just will hold out the hope that those principles within us are stronger than our capacity to destroy ourselves. So thank you for sharing time with me today. I really appreciate your tuning in and all love and well wishes to everyone. Please stay strong, stay blissful and joyous even in the face of darkness. Pick two things that you can do to try to mitigate the damage right now and know that everything’s impermanent. So there’s some ultimate protection, some deep inner relaxation. And this is our collective karma coming into fruition. We all were part of this. I mean, you’re not a victim. We just have to do the best we can with the time we have. And so thank you so much.

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