The news is all shit right now. Sure, there are more artful, creative, and writerly ways to say that, but time is precious and writing something like that would prove nothing more than ownership of a thesaurus.
If you're like me and millions of others, you are absorbing all this and wondering, "What can I do?" You can subscribe to journalism—which you probably already do! Yay!—donate money, volunteer, show up for your family, friends, and neighbors, and then what? That's the thing about the battle for a real democracy: It is not won in flashy Hollywood fight scenes, though those do make for excellent inspirational images for sharing amid said battle for democracy. It's won in federal workers showing up to do their jobs. It's won in reporters showing up to do their jobs. It's won in a lot of us, in our own ways, showing up, doing our jobs, and not being assholes, even to the person who irritates you—and they are so, so annoying—but dammit, we'll deal with that after we make sure there's still a republic.
Except after all that showing up, there's still a lot of time left for the mind to spiral. It can be easy to forget that our brains, for much of human history, did not take in this much news every day. Not even 100 years ago, most people got their news from a newspaper or magazine. They read it and went about their day, unless they listened to a radio broadcast. Then came television, then cable, then 24-hour news, then smartphones, then apps with push notifications, then social media and its endless firehouse of likes and lives. If we do not know how to log off it is because, in part, for most of human history, nobody had to. You could read to the end of the newspaper or reach the end of the newscast; you cannot ever scroll to the end of Instagram or TikTok. The endlessness is the point. We sacrificed true boredom to the gods of engagement.
So here's my advice: Stretch your hips. Yes, even if you aren't naturally stretchy, which I am not, and even if you can't touch your toes, a feat I can barely accomplish myself. Those of you who have followed my work for a while probably will be unsurprised to know that I completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2018. I didn't become a yoga teacher afterward, but it did deepen my practice and gave me more tools for stress management. Mostly, it taught me that one secret to leading a good yoga class is setting aside time for a hip stretch. Everyone gets so excited for a hip stretch, almost as much as savasana, and everyone feels really good afterward.
For my money, the best hip stretch is deer pose. You won't run into it in a ton of classes; I find the defaults tend to be pigeon pose or figure four. But figure four doesn't provide me much relief, and my hips are too inflexible to pull off a proper pigeon pose without bolsters and time to settle in. But deer pose? It requires less flexibility, no props, and provides a nice hip stretch.
In lieu of giving you an entire explanation of how it works, here's a good video to walk you through the pose because, c'mon, you were just gonna skip to this part anyway. Though if you want to read more about the pose, you can do that here. Also, remember you gotta do both sides!
To be clear, I'm not saying occasional hip stretches will stop fascism; I'm saying they help you stay level while you're trying to survive the fascism. Tomorrow you will wake up, grab your phone, and scroll through what will feel like an endless stream of bad news and horrors. But then what? Maybe you go on a walk. Maybe you actually touch grass. Or maybe you take a few minutes to do deer pose.
