Yoga may prove of great benefit to many in these exceptional times of isolation and confinement. The asanas (postures) practised once or twice a day will help to keep the body healthy and improve the mood, plus they can easily be practised at home. Lockdowns present an opportunity to turn away from the external world and close down the senses, to turn inwards using the practices of meditation that calm the ‘monkey mind’ and help us to find inner stillness and peace.

We can begin to recognise our attachments to the external world, our cravings that bind us to it and to which, in so many ways, we become often unhappy prisoners. Rather we can find an inner freedom and contentment.

This may also prove a good time to reassess your life, where you are and how you would like to move forward. Additionally, it now seems certain there will be an economic depression, which will mean you may have to face hardships and financial difficulties – be prepared.

As a world it would be good, although unlikely, if we could reassess our global position, should we continue on our present course with the prevailing attitudes to continually seeking more and promoting greed – the human appetites can be insatiable (consumer society exploits this ‘weakness’). Is it time to bring us back from the path of self-destruction we now appear to be treading?

Post WW1 Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers set the course for the creation of the consumer society he wrote: ‘”We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture, People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old has been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.” (Link: Birth of Consumerism)

Rather than wanting more should we start wanting less? We could try to simplify our lives, to live more in harmony with the natural world and our immediate environs and to cultivate the burgeoning spirit of community, co-operation and caring that is currently being expressed.

As Gandhi said: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Love, peace and joy to all.

(As an exercise you could consider is to assess how much you really need, make a list, you will probably find it is less than you have. If you find some of what you have in the life is superfluous why not get rid of it?

Do not let your possessions take possession of you. Beware of how you have been manipulated to consume, how you have been encouraged to form irrational and emotional attachments to products and brands.)