Tag: Coping

Sep 20, 2021

The Power of Imagery In Our Lives

In Bill Watterson’s comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” Calvin is a 6-year old child whose blithe spirit in the face of overwhelming reality helped many of us cope with our own horrible-terrible-no-good days. Calvin is accompanied by Hobbes, a stuffed animal to the rest of us, but a very alive and sentient bipedal tiger to Calvin. Every time a human enters a scene in the comic, all they see is an animal blankly staring into space. Calvin, however, sees Hobbes as a faithful confidant, a partner in crime, and also a voice of reason, albeit one that’s rarely heeded. Imagination is... Read More

By RADHIKA BAPAT 5 min read · ; ; .
Aug 20, 2021

Self-care Exercises That Help Me Manage Stress and Pain

Virginia Woolf said of pain, “English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache… The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare and Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.”Growing up, I was often told of the mythical story of beloved Karna, the spiritual son of the Hindu sun-God Surya and princess Kunti. In the Mahabharata, it is said he offered his lap as... Read More

By RADHIKA BAPAT 5 min read · ; ; .
Jun 20, 2021

What Olympians Can Teach Us About Resilience and Mental Health Let us not forget the person behind the performer.

Arnold Guttman was thirteen years old when his father drowned in the Danube River. From that time the heartbroken Arnold swore to himself that one day he would become a good swimmer. Five years later, while still a student of architecture in Hungary, he accomplished much more: he won two gold medals in the inaugural 1896 Athens Olympics by swimming in freezing temperatures of 13 degrees Celsius in the Mediterranean Sea with 12 foot waves crashing down on him. Cold water can kill you in less than a minute. All he wanted was to finish the race, to hell with... Read More

By RADHIKA BAPAT 4 min read · ; ; ; .
Apr 20, 2021

Ring Around the Rosie Meaning-making for children in a global pandemic

The British Version Ring-a-ring o’roses, A pocketful of posies, A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down. The Indian version Ringa Ringa roses, pocketful of posies, husha busha ! We all fall downThis popular childrens rhyme dates back to the Black death or bubonic plague of the 1300s. It was popularised during London’s great plague of 1665. Usually, children hold hands and sing the song in a circle and when the last line is sung, they imitate the gesture of falling down. The symbolism of the song while macabre--"we all fall down” indicates collective death--it was used to make meaning of tragedy... Read More

By RADHIKA BAPAT 3 min read · ; ; .