What our communities, country and really the world at large asks of us right now is our help in slowing down the Covid 19 Pandemic. By slowing the Pandemic we diminish its damage and tragedy and do our part in eventually eliminating it. We do this in various forms, depending on our role. For those in healthcare, public works, law enforcement, the food industry and deliveries, and other public service, this means taking sometimes grave risks with our own health, but always means taking essential precautions for self protection, self-care and supporting co-workers in doing the same. As we know from the news, with shortages, this is not always possible. For the rest of us, it means staying at home, some working remote, others managing ourselves and families, and for many it means making frightening financial sacrifices. Staying healthy remains the mission because the our health impacts the health of others. This is public health at its most urgent. Public health can be defined as the field of health science that is concerned with safeguarding and improving the physical, mental, and social well-being of the community as a whole. * The CDC website adds "It can be defined as what 'we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy' (Institute of Medicine, 1988)."
All this is to say that taking the time to stop, turn inward, and quiet the mind and emotional nature through meditation, prayer and/or other spiritual practice is an act of public health. It's not that the time of lock down requires you spend your day as if you were in a monastery with rules and ritual requirements. Rather, it is that a time of "stillness" slows down the agitated mind with it's repetitive non-productive chatter, opening us to a well spring of wisdom and intelligence, or perhaps guidance and insight, and yes, creative inspiration that may well move us all forward. (Susan Nettleton)
*(Miller-Keane Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health)