The Beginning of the End: Vaccination

As many of you know, one of my main jobs is teaching yoga and music at a therapeutic boarding school for teenage boys in Draper, Utah. I have worked with this amazing health care facility for over a decade and it has been a crucial part of my growth as a yoga instructor. At the beginning of the year I received an email from the school informing me that all employees would be eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccination in a number of days. I had opened the email in the middle of a busy Friday afternoon and it stopped me in my tracks. Here was the beginning of the end.

Last Wednesday I showed up early to work with my vaccination paperwork in order. In the midst of the logistics of organizing the morning there was a jubilant atmosphere amongst us. One of my co-workers I had not seen since the onset of the pandemic. When my name was called I entered an office where two nurses had set up shop for the morning, sat down, answered a few questions and then received the shot. We were all given the Moderna vaccine. It is given in two doses twenty-eight days apart from one another. Two weeks after the second shot there is 94% protection from the virus. I thanked the nurses and went to go teach yoga.

I had read through the provided literature on the shot and knew what side effects to expect. Sure enough several hours later my arm was totally feeling it. I have an afternoon yoga class I teach at another high school with several in-person students (all of us masked and spaced) and several students on Zoom and when I went to go lift my arms overhead into Mountain Pose a wave of pain hit me. It made me smile. I was so grateful for the pain! The soreness in my arm lasted a few days and in those days I also had waves of the chills and body aches.

I know that we still have months to go before we reach national inoculation and even longer for global, that we still do not have a vaccine with 100% effectiveness, that there are new strains popping up throughout the world, and that the rollout of these vaccines will more than likely push the inequalities of our society into an even bigger spotlight, however I have been taking this week to soak in the significance of the shot that I received. I have been ruminating on mankind's ability to unite, over come and push forward. Ultimately I am an optimist and even with all that we have been through, all that we are currently going through and all which is yet to come, I celebrate the roll out of these vaccines as a huge step towards the end of the hold this virus has on us.

I hope it comes soon for all of you and your loved ones! Stay safe, stay positive and keep on keeping on.

All my love,

James