Robert Common of The Beekeeper shares his thoughts on how to live a positive life post Covid-19.
Languishing is the trending word that describes the stagnant feeling the pandemic has wrought in many peoples’ lives. Described as a ‘blah’ feeling, languishing is marked by a lack of focus or drive to do anything. A lot of it is due to the uncertainty that the pandemic creates, and how it interrupts planning for tomorrow or creating life goals for the future.
So how do we deal with languishing? It can be frustrating to be given tips to improve mental health when the situation that has caused or is worsening your poor mental health – a global pandemic – is beyond your control.
Founder of The Beekeeper, Robert Common stressed that there are ways to manage the feeling and keep from sinking into negative emotions.
“Life is full of uncertainty and that hasn’t changed. Look into your lived reality and focus on the positives. Sometimes it’s not about putting a smile on your face and hoping the issue will be resolved without any effort or denying stressful emotions. Having an awareness of how you’re feeling and what’s going on around you are important. Realistically assess the situation, devise strategies to deal with it and move forward with courage,” he says.
Common also believes living through this pandemic could change our relationship with social media for the better. What began as a hashtag in response to speaking publicly about mental health, #LetsTalkMentalHealthKH created by The Beekeeper is shifting the universal stigma to ‘it’s healthy to talk’. “The seeds of this conversation were planted and we are seeing the beginnings of the movement prioritising mental health in Cambodia,” he says.
For his part, Common is looking to the future with a balance of optimism and realism. He is one of many redefining productivity as a result of the pandemic, keeping himself busy writing a book and producing a global TV series about The Beekeeper as well as setting up a second branch in northern Thailand.
Common acknowledges that looking after your mental health shouldn’t be an afterthought when a problem arises, but rather an important factor in maintaining a positive lifestyle. Providing a calming and healing atmosphere for those battling with mental health issues, The Beekeeper is a safe haven that helps you restore your wellbeing.
The Beekeeper is an independent wellness centre integrating mental healthcare, wellbeing and performance coaching. Combining Western approaches and Eastern philosophies, their multi-lingual and qualified practitioners cover a range of specialties treating everything from depression, anxiety, grief and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) to more specialised situations such as addictions, life transitions, family and marital problems, and the breadth of child & adolescent therapy.
Determining what sort of support (and particularly who) is best suited to one’s needs does, however, seem to remain a source of confusion and worry for some. One of the steps that The Beekeeper has taken is to provide a sensitive initial assessment and ongoing support to ensure that a client always has someone to turn to for answers and information outside the consulting room, ensuring that individuals and parents never have to make an uninformed choice.
“You make up your mind very quickly about someone in 100 milliseconds. 80% of it is the therapeutic alliance, a working relationship between the client and therapist which is an essential aspect of successful therapy,” Common adds.
Opened in 2020, The Beekeeper offers a variety of yoga classes for every level, meditation and sound baths. A sound bath or sound healing is a form of meditation in which a person experiences sound waves generated by gongs or frequently, singing bowls. The healing quality of sound has been recognised for centuries – many of us use music every day to find a sense of calm – Tibetans have used signing bowls for therapeutic efforts for over 2,000 years. Like yoga, there’s evidence to suggest that sound healing can have a wide range of wellness benefits, from reducing stress and anxiety to lifting our moods. The practitioners who are providing the bath try to help an individual work past ‘energy blockages’ and towards physical and mental healing.
“There’s an intensity that comes with the experience which may ignite powerful or unexpected reactions for some; panic, sadness or sorrow. These are typical responses and are buried in the unconscious, and the vibrations from singing bowls are believed to uncover these emotions. I have performed sound healing on big burly, ex-soldiers and they would be in tears within two minutes,” he says.
The upside of trauma, says Common, ‘can be post-traumatic optimism – usually after great periods of stress you feel more resilient and can pick up new skills’. Whether that’s yoga or meditation, brighter days really do lie ahead.
The Beekeeper
197, Preah Ang Yukanthor (Street 19),
Phnom Penh
Tel: 077 221 010
