Page 199 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

168 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

It is a mostly Tamil Hindu enclave with some parts under LTTE
control. When we got to Ampara District, Oxfam-Australia
immediately connected us with a team of locals between the ages
of 18 and 24 that became our crew there. These eight team mem-
bers implemented our ideas, spoke the local language, and had
interpersonal connections; and they were all tsunami-affected
themselves. By the end of our work there, we felt that our team
members were really the people that we ended up giving the most
interventions to. We would debrief together. We would socialize.
So I did more explicitly spiritual work with them rather than the
larger community.
And that was very important because the work happened in
concentric circles. First, the local team was enrolled in what we
wanted to do. Then as they interfaced with the larger community,
they informed us as to the needs, the rhythm of the place, and the
vibration of the local people. And, then they were responsible for
rolling out the interventions.
2. Integrating psychological work into a nonforeign spiritual activity:
I taught people to meditate. I sat in meditation with people who
wanted to do it in community. I would have what you might say
were spiritually therapeutic conversations* in the process.

3. Enlistment in recovery efforts (well-described as a best practice in the
disaster literature) with an additional spiritual frame that supported the
reframing of victim-hood into survivor-hood:
Then it was healing to do Karma Yoga. Right from the beginning
†
it became very clear that my team experienced healing by being
part of our project. Seeing themselves not as victims, but as people
who had something to offer. We were very conscious of that, and
we would talk about it. As a spiritual practice, we would talk about
the psychospiritual dynamics of Karma yoga.

4. Cultural concept (for Hindus, a guest is equal to a deity) retooled for
recovery:

The other major intervention, well if you had to give it a name
you might call it dhrishti. These people coming to the clinics
‡

* Satsang (being together in the presence of truth): The practice of spiritual practitioners discussing
their experiences/struggles/joys with their teacher in a group so that the listeners benefit from the
exchange as well.
† Karma Yoga can be thought of as the practice of serving others without any expectation of ben-
efits for oneself.
‡ Dhristi is a special way of seeing that allows the seer to perceive the divinity in the seen entity.