This week is mental health week and we have all had plenty of time to reflect on our mental wellbeing and on our own personal struggles over the past few months. As an authorised meditation instructor, I thought that I would be well prepared and adapted to spending time in isolation and maintaining a sense of calm and relaxation throughout the lockdown. But by the middle of May in London, I was beginning to suffer from ‘cabin fever’: an ever- encroaching sense of claustrophobia and city-phobia. I could see how my mental state was changing from one of positive optimism to a sinking sense of despondency and a kind of ‘dead end’ mentality. Something needed to shift, and when my daughter said ‘why don’t you come to the sea with me?’ I found that the very idea of seeing a wide sky and a vast ocean landscape already helped to lift my spirits.

The challenges of being in lockdown come in all different shapes and sizes: some people are experiencing the loneliness of feeling isolated from friends and family; others are juggling home schooling whilst working from home and trying to keep family life on track; others are facing redundancy or financial worries .... or a combination of several of these issues. Everyone across the world is dealing with the massive uncertainly which the corona virus has brought to all of our lives virtually overnight with no real end-game in sight, plus the accompanying health worries of the epidemic both for oneself and for others, especially the most vulnerable.

The immune response is orchestrated by three distinct groups of cells, the phagocytes, the ‘T’ cells and the ‘B’ cells. These all originate from white blood cells in the bone marrow and serve to protect the body from infection. If this defensive barrier is damaged for some reason, the body becomes more vulnerable to invasion from all sorts of pathogenic organisms. The immune system is supported by and closely related to other body functions including the lymphatic and nervous systems. Recent research tends to suggest that emotional and psychological factors play a vital role in the efficiency of the immune response and this may help to account for the fact that viral infections and suppressed immune systems are becoming an increasing problem today.