Can­dles, Singing Bowls, & Dalgona Cof­fee Oh My….

By : Popoai Tanu­vasa-Lole 

Since the COVID -19 quar­an­tine hit the U.S. thou­sands of peo­ple have been forced to self-iso­late and stay at home. Many of our rou­tines and daily lives are any­thing but nor­mal now. Cop­ing mech­a­nisms seem to be very lim­ited when you are con­fined to the walls of your home. One can only make dalgona cof­fee so many times, al­though it is quite de­li­cious. One can only do the “Don’t rush” and “Sav­age” chal­lenges on tik tok be­fore the mo­not­ony and bore­dom sets in.

Im­age cour­tesy of Face­book

I don’t know about you guys… but I’m strug­gling.  I miss go­ing to classes, go­ing to the movies on the week­end, late night trips to Wal­mart, and sit­ting in Star­bucks with the smell of cof­fee and noise of peo­ple com­ing and go­ing. Not be­ing able to do all of these things has taken a huge toll on my phys­i­cal and men­tal well­be­ing. I feel that now more than ever is the time for self care and men­tal health main­te­nance. 

Not hav­ing a sta­ble rou­tine, not hav­ing my own space to breathe, and be­ing left with my thoughts and crip­pling anx­i­ety got me think­ing. What are some ways you can cope dur­ing this trau­matic time? For those of you who are like me and need a lit­tle bit of ex­tra help ad­just­ing and com­ing up with a good cop­ing mech­a­nism here are two great sug­ges­tions on how to find a lit­tle peace of mind in your day: 

1.Can­dles, Can­dles, and More Can­dles

Ac­cord­ing to Health­line.com Aro­mather­apy is a holis­tic heal­ing treat­ment that uses nat­ural plant ex­tracts to pro­mote health and well-be­ing. Some­times it’s called es­sen­tial oil ther­apy. Aro­mather­apy uses aro­matic es­sen­tial oils med­i­c­i­nally to im­prove the health of the body, mind, and spirit. It en­hances both phys­i­cal and emo­tional health.

Per­son­ally, I feel that light­ing a good can­dle does won­ders for your 5 senses, and re­ally makes a dif­fer­ence in the day when it comes to re­lax­ation. 

2. Med­i­ta­tion/​Singing Bowls

Never heard of them ? Well, Ti­betan singing bowls are a type of bell that vi­brates and pro­duces a rich, deep tone when played. Also known as singing bowls or Hi­malayan bowls, Ti­betan singing bowls are said to pro­mote re­lax­ation and of­fer pow­er­ful heal­ing prop­er­ties. 

If you aren’t fond of deep med­i­ta­tion, play­ing around with some of these bowls can be a cool al­ter­na­tive. I love lis­ten­ing to these singing bowls on­line, how­ever it is a re­ally cool ex­pe­ri­ence to lis­ten to them in per­son and feel those good vi­bra­tions. 

Plus they come in all shapes, sizes, ma­te­ri­als, and sounds. So you can cus­tomize it to fit your needs and de­sires!