Zé Pedro, Portugal
Hello to everyone that will read this small text.
My name is José Pedro, usually, people call me Zé Pedro or JP, and I live in Carcavelos, Portugal.
Covid hit us, officially, by end of March 2020, when the Portuguese authorities implemented the lockdown. However, many people, including us, had already started the confinement, by middle of March.
So, really, how did the Covid affect us?
By end of March, Sadvidya Portugal started Samskrta classes, by Zoom. Never having participated before on any such classes, somehow, I knew I had to join them, right from the beginning.
Sadvidya enabled me to enrich as a person, mental and spiritually. The lectures of Acharya, the teachings, the Samskrta classes helped to create a sense of groupness, with several people from different cultures and geographies. Being a recent joiner of Jivana (Nov 2019), Sadvidya, soon, became an important part of my life.
Simultaneously, with the beginning of the confinement, I was able to support a dear friend of mine, teaching her how to start giving yoga classes on-line, and later, helping to create the website of her Yoga centre.
At home, we had to create a different routine, allocating one room as a working office of my wife, and installing myself in the dining room. Also, tried to support my wife in having a focused working environment, and a balanced work/life approach.
In order to be in touch with our close friends, we started weekly Zoom meetings, called “five o’clock tea” (they took place at 5:00 pm), that soon became an opportunity to get together and find out how each one of us was coping with the lockdown. Each Saturday we had on the video calls between 6 to 10 people. We still do them, the “five o’clock tea”, currently.
In short, although Covid had a significant negative impact on many people, we (our family and friends) must consider ourselves lucky.
Personally, it helped me to grow and develop with the support of my wife, my family, and friends, and Sadvidya.