Page 196 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

“To Do No Harm” Spiritual Care and Ethnomedical Competence 165

such as: “We cannot stop our acute rescue operations for anything mental
health right now.” Regarding VT/SC education, I was prepared for: “We
cannot see the priority of taking care of unaffected rescue workers when
so many affected people need aid.” However, after two NGOs heard my
description, they stated that they recognized the VT phenomenon in their
midst. They had a sense of urgency for which I was unprepared, saying,
“We cannot afford not to have such training” and “We have college stu-
dent volunteers working who have never encountered such tragedy, and
they have pained eyes as they work.”
On December 30, four days after the tsunami, I arrived in Chennai.
Through interviews with fieldwork supervisors, I made an assessment of
first responder work exhaustion and current self-care protocols. In one
organization, Association for India’s Development (AID), college students
had arrived by busloads to help clear dead bodies and clean debris. One
supervisor was visibly worried that many of the fieldworkers were work-
ing without breaks and close to exhaustion because “the devastation was
so great and there was too much to do.” From what I could gather, aside
from AID workers being told that they should rest, there were no formal
self-care protocols.
On December 31, I conducted a half-day training for AID fieldwork
supervisors and upper management in its Chennai headquarters. The
training covered the following:

1. VT/SC education (Bride, 2004; Jayawickrama, 2007; Pearlman & Caringi,
(2008); Rothschild, 2006; Shah, 2007b; Young, Ford, & Wilson, 2008)
2. Reviewing individuals’ currently used relaxation and expressive tech-
niques; inquiring what other techniques would be culturally compatible
3. Simple mind–body relaxation techniques and leading practice sessions
on systematic relaxation (e.g., breathing techniques)
4. Discussion on initiating/maintaining simple SC practices in the field
(e.g., buddy system, reminders to breathe for relaxation)

Early in our training, one manager shared with the group how daily
morning yoga, even during these days of crisis, was a factor in her resil-
ience. From my point of view, this was an important revelation because it
reinforced a link between disaster resilience and a common, nonforeign
self-care practice. We explored what it would be like to do yoga postures
with the explicit intention of preventing VT. I led a segment in which we
practiced Nadi Shuddhi (a yoga practice of alternate nostril breathing)
as a method for detoxifying especially emotional moments. Similarly, I