Three and a half billion people (43% of the world’s population), quarantined due to the coronavirus pandemic, immobilised and socially separated, are now observing the rapid changes that are occurring in all areas of life through digital means of communication from their homes. Video chat window, that is the main means of communication in the pandemic era, granted us an opportunity to see ourselves from the outside among our conversation partners, colleagues and friends, to confirm our constant presence with endless home live streams, to narcissistically observe in the mirror not only others, but also ourselves.

When in the 1970s Nam June Paik created his famous TV Buddha sculptures series, where Buddha statuettes contemplated their own image, that was broadcasted on the TV screen in real-time, live streams as a practice did not exist. Still, even then, the work was as a clear illustration of Marshall McLuhan: “It is this continuous embrace of our own technology in daily use that puts us in the Narcissus role of subliminal awareness and numbness in relation to these images of ourselves. By continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions.”

The main thing that mankind must cope with in a situation of disengagement and alienation is to maintain mental health, overcome anxiety and calm down. For this, one can organize a concert or performance on own balcony or follow the advice of contemporary artists and online services offering new formats for solo and collective meditative practices, that can be tried right in from of the screens.

The David Lynch Foundation, a well-known advocate for transcendental meditation to help to deal with PTSD, burnout, depression and anxiety, has launched Heal the Healers Now, a free Transcendental Meditation course for healthcare professionals struggling with the coronavirus pandemic. “They say that this is like a war, the enemy is the virus. The doctors and nurses are on the front line … they are under a lot of stress and some of them, when the war is over, they will be like soldiers coming back from war,” the director says. In meditation classes, individual mentors will work with doctors, that comes together with group meetings that will take place online. Lynch believes that a pandemic is a sign for all of humanity: “I have a feeling … that Mother Nature is running the show on this, and said, ‘Let’s just hold on and stop this crazy world for a while so that people can reflect and think about what we are doing as human beings on this planet.“

It is not only the doctors who have gotten the access to online-meditation: to prevent loss of connection with the real world in a state of mutual alienation of mankind, online meditation services decided to help and offered free access to their resources. Calm Meditation Service made a special selection with free meditations to help deal with anxiety, and Simple Habit announced a free premium membership “to all people who are financially impacted by this difficult time and can no longer afford to pay.”

Now, it is possible to meditate to the sounds of the Tibetan prayers from any part of the world. The Rubin New York Museum of Art that has one of the most impressive collections of Himalayan and Tibetan art in the United States has provided access to a two-hour film of Buddhist traditional singing, shot in the Tibetan Buddhist shrine room. It is one of the museum’s most visited installations that incorporates elements of traditional Tibetan architecture, the colour schemes of Tibetan houses, scroll paintings known as thangkas, ritual bells, vajras, drums, pipes, bowls, jugs, mandalas, musical instruments and other items of the collection, related with the Kagyu tradition.

Another opportunity for collective online mass meditation taking place in ZOOM, that anyone from any part of the world can join, having previously registered on the site, was offered by the online music festival MUSIC on the REBOUND, designed to bring people together through virtual concerts and sound sessions and help performers affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The festival offers to join meditation under the regularly repeated online broadcast of the 1971 group vocal improvisation “Tuning Meditation” by Pauline Oliveros, the legendary composer-innovator and pioneer of electronic music, ambient and minimalism. It seems that the legacy of Oliveros, who passed away in November 2016 at the age of 84, during this period of great turmoil is more relevant than ever. Almost 30 years ago, in 1991, Oliveros coined the term Deep Listening, giving the name to the Deep Listening program, that is taught at the Deep Listening Institute. Its curriculum includes educational and certification programs and annual retreats in Europe and the United States (in the state of New Mexico and in the suburbs in the north of New York). These are dedicated to discovering creative abilities through active listening of environmental sounds and meditative music written by instructors of the Institute.

Due to quarantine all over the world, online yoga became extremely popular. For beginners, it is unlikely that doing online yoga at home can replace classes in the studio with an instructor since it is essential that an experienced instructor corrects wrong positions, helps building a difficult asana, or adapt one of the exercises. If one already has enough experience and understanding of the yoga basics, online classes can help add variety to the practice.

Tabita Rezaire, living in Cayenne, represented by Goodman Gallery, as a support for the artists engaged in a dialogue with African and postcolonial context, works with topics of post-cyberfeminism, techno-shamanism and actualization of ancient sacred healing practices, with which help the artist is trying to cope with the harmful effects of modern technology and progress. In her new project AMAKABA, Rezaire presents her vision of a camp in the Amazonian forests of French Guiana, created for collective therapeutic practices on the border of science, art, spiritual practices of Latin Americans and traditional healing. An active program — from lectures and agricultural practices to astronomy courses — will help distract from information over-consumption. Meanwhile, weekly online Kundalini yoga classes, specially designed to strengthen the immune system during turbulence and general anxiety and held temporarily online, according to the artist, strengthen vitality and help overcome the crisis.

You can sign up for a power Hatha yoga class online, for example, with an artist Sofya Skidan, graduate of the Rodchenko Art School and professional yoga instructor. In her performative practice, she resorts to the reconstruction of asanas and the philosophy of Buddhism and Hinduism. Skidan works with a specific range of materials, techniques and subjects, creating relationships between Eastern spiritual practices and modern critical theory, reflecting complex problems of postmodernity, raises questions about new perceptions of identity in the context of anthropogenic culture, the crisis of nature and approaching point of no return of environmental instability of the Anthropocene. At the same time, along with the artistic practice, Skidan professionally teaches yoga, having formed a personal method based on classical Hatha yoga, Yoga23 and Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga. Sofya prefers to give an open level practise, with a gradation of simplifications and complications, while maintaining an intensive mode of operation both through statics and dynamics.

Having got bored from online meditation, it is always possible to turn to traditional Zen Buddhism practices. Counting rice grains while transferring them from a full glass to an empty one is one of the most famous Zen practices to train patience and relieve stress. To feel its effect, it is necessary to repeat it regularly, at least once a week. After transferring rice from a full glass to an empty one, the number of grains should be the same. If the numbers are different, the exercise must be repeated. The “Counting the Rice” practice exists in a well-known interpretation by Marina Abramović, who has been conducting workshops called “Cleaning the House” with students from all over the world since 1979. Designed to prepare an artist for the creative process, a series of workshops consists of several exercises that examine endurance, concentration, mental and physical limits, perception, self-control and willpower of the participants. Some of these practices are the basis for the “Abramović Method,” designed to help those wishing to develop skills for perceiving long-durational performances. “Counting the Rice” is one of these workshops and goes through the following instructions:

“Separate a pound of rice from a pound of lentils.

Write down a number for each group of grains on a piece of paper.

Duration: six hours.”

As Abramović said, “If you can’t count the rice for three hours, you can’t do anything good in life.”