COVISD-19 – Expectation and Reality – DMT in the inpatient units 3 and 2 Wednesday morning
Unit 3 is going through renovations and the room where the groups took place is under construction. I decided to maintain the group and change groups’ location to the basketball court outside. It is springtime, and the weather is comfortable. The group is made up of a mix of young and adult patients ages ranging from 18-65 with mixed diagnoses. I have my mask on; it is not easy to breath and move. We get together in a circle, music in the middle, a person (patient from another unit) looks at us. Others lie down on the grass, stating that they are tired from the morning medication, while others want to go back to the unit as they feel weak. How do I start? Three patients are with me in the warmup and slowly others join yet soon they all want to just lay down on the grass. I guide the group to pay attention to the sounds around them the touch in their hands, the smell in their nose, and taste in their mouth all so they could feel their bodies in a different way, not with their thoughts but rather with their senses. The idea here was to practice breathing and relaxation, and so I guided them to breath in and out, inhale and exhale while the attention was on the rhythm of the breathing, like the body playing music that they are aware of how no music is being played. The breath was like waves that can move away; thoughts were not ignored but rather put aside and breathed away. This was primarily accomplished by engaging with breathing and letting go of the thoughts. In fact, we skipped from stage one of the model to the last stage and engaged in a breathing exercise. The reactions were good; they did not manage to verbalize their experience, yet their body seemed less restless, they all stayed together, breathing, looking up to the sky to the trees above, quietly loosening up.
