How to stay positive during the quarantine

Why virtual yoga helped with the anxieties of staying home

As an introvert, I took the quarantine measures in France rather well. I thought that it would be the time to reflect on my life, read, rethink my habits. After all, why should I complain? I am part of the lucky ones. I don’t have symptoms yet, and I’m working from home when hospital personnel, firemen, doctors and many others are dealing with emergencies every day.

But after a few days, stuck in my apartment in Paris, I started to become restless. Much to my surprise, it only took 48 hours for me to become angsty and stressed out. The lack of space, connection, and movement started to get to me.

As the possibility of going outside was restricted, all I wanted to do was to go outside again. As I was in a big city, confined in an apartment; I kept dreaming of nature to the point that I started to pick a nature-based background for all my conference calls (I know — sad). As I didn’t need to see my friends every day before, I found myself talking to every single one of them, even to people I had stopped talking to for months.

Freedom, nature, connection. I am craving all of it now. Apparently missing nature is encrypted in humans: it even helps fight depression in some cases. As for the connexions, I know that we are all missing it with the quarantine, which now leads to some funny new behaviors and rituals in my neighborhood.

Every day at 8 in Paris, we all pay a tribute to nurses and doctors fighting the disease. Some of my neighbors are even banging on their cooking pots to express their support (or their sheer joy to share something with other people — or just to be annoying for 15 minutes straight — we’ll never know).

It’s like my whole neighborhood has become a little theater that I can watch from my balcony. In a Shakespearean fashion, each one is playing their part in this microscope of a world. The screaming lady that shouts at everyone outside, the two girls having a conversation with another building, the guy that just stares at everyone all the time on his little balcony (this one scares me sometimes). We all “get out” every time we hear a loud noise, and we’ve all turned into noisy spies reacting to the slightest unusual perturbation. I sometimes feel like I’m trapped in a Wes Anderson movie — minus the eccentric characters and exquisite architecture — or rather a Hitchcock Rear Window one, relentlessly observing what’s going on in the building in front of me.

In the midst of all of this, I started to ask myself: how can I reconnect with people, except by calling them one by one? Then, one of my yoga teachers informed me that she was starting online courses. I immediately subscribed. The sensation during and after the class was incredible. Finally, I was connecting with a group peacefully, sharing and dealing with my emotions — a feeling I had longed for.

I thought immediately of replicating this to my friends in a less formal manner. Not just to do yoga, (I am just a hardworking student, not a teacher), but really to connect with friends and share a moment. First, I started to write to my yoga-aficionado friends. After the first trial, I reached out to other people. Some colleagues, my family, or just the ones I wanted to see. Each time, the answer was immediately « Yes! » Yes, I want to do this. Even to people who never did yoga or did not care so much for it.

Very quickly, it was 3 people, 6, then 8, from France and Germany, connecting to the « class ». And so every morning at 08.30, we started to organize our little session — a way to start the day by connecting. What’s funny is that many of the people attending never met before — and yet, they are now all connected. In my next sessions, I’m even expecting people from the Central African Republic and a dear friend from South Korea to join us.

For me, this changed everything. Every evening, I started to plan the next morning class. Every morning, I got up full of energy, ready to broadcast and animate the session. It enlightened me to see everyone’s faces. Something as simple as breathing together, stretching, sharing a moment dedicated to ourselves made it all different: it gave me a form of collective alignment. I think I found my «ritual » that makes everything easier.

In a way, by launching these sessions, I believe that I did what every species has done since a change disrupted their environment: adapt. Like a cuttlefish blending into a new background, I tried to channel my frustration into something positive, to replace what was missing.

So, whether your thing is yoga, sports, online gaming, here is my take on how to survive — and thrive during quarantine — let’s call it the « Confinement experiment » :

• Think of an indoor activity you like (stretching, reading, drawing, Netflixing),
• Start a WhatsApp group about it with friends. I’ll promise you it’s worth it — It can be cooking together, stretching together, playing a game.
• Plan some sessions with a conference tool (I use Zoom but there is a ton out there. There is even a Netflix Party app to watch a movie and comment online).
• Animate those long-distance sessions and don’t hesitate to take turns to switch things up (some of my friends animate the yoga sessions now),
• If it works, don’t hesitate to find new activities to do with friends — there’s a lot that we can do long distance, with all the tools at our disposal. All you need is the internet. The only limit is your imagination.

Ultimately, if you’re in the same situation as me, it’s up to you to turn quarantine into self-discovery: because there, you won’t be limited. So, take the chance.