Yoga for loneliness

What a year twenty twenty was. Among conversations about homeschooling, panic buying, working from home, Zooming, career-pivoting madness, there was one thing I found myself talking about frequently with students and friends: loneliness.

Busy modern life had kept this feeling at bay for most of our adult lives. We had all been so distracted by the bright shiny lights of multitasking busyness that there was, quite simply, never any time to be “lonely”. And it wasn’t just those living alone who felt it. Some people were surrounded all the time by partners, flatmates, children, animals — but they hadn’t realised how desperately lonely they were until stuck at home with their crew 24/7. I know from my own experience, some of my loneliest moments have been in the company of others.

But for many people living alone during a year where life has shrunk in many ways, and been forced indoors due to bushfires and pandemics, the isolation and loneliness has been devastating. Young women and men usually at work, or out with friends, found themselves stuck at home, very alone, with a melancholy they had not previously experienced. As hard as single parenting/homeschooling a seven-year-old boy in a tiny apartment was for me, many times I other kids in the park — even if he didn’t play with them. He felt isolated and needed a visual reminder he was not alone during this strange, strange time.