meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
On Being with Krista Tippett

Christine Runyan — What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems?

On Being with Krista Tippett

On Being Studios

Society, Spirituality, Society & Culture, Sociology, Culture, Science, Religion & Spirituality, Krista Tippett, Social Sciences, On Being, Arts

4.710.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing - yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. We’re at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation - what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Support for on-being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build

0:04.4

the Spiritual Foundation for a loving world.

0:07.6

Fetzer's new study, what does spirituality mean to us?

0:11.4

Reveals how spirituality informs our understanding of ourselves and each other, and inspires us

0:16.5

to take action for the common good.

0:18.8

Explore these findings and more at spiritualitystudy.org.

0:24.0

My conversations with friends and colleagues right now all circle back to the same place.

0:29.4

The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing, yet we feel as exhausted

0:35.4

as at any time in the past year.

0:38.2

Memory problems, short fuses, sudden drops into what feels frighteningly to me like depression,

0:45.4

and fractured productivity that alternately puzzles and shames us.

0:50.2

We're at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again.

0:56.3

So one recent day in yet another hard week, I went searching for someone to shed light

1:01.1

on all of this, the psychic and physiological and spiritual effects of a year of pandemic

1:07.7

and social isolation.

1:10.0

I found the clinical psychologist, Christine Runyon.

1:13.8

She explains how the very first news of the threat of a new virus in the world instantaneously

1:20.7

activated our stress responses, sent our nervous systems into an overdrive from which they've

1:27.1

never retreated.

1:29.0

To use other words, the pandemic has disrupted our mind-body connection, which is always

1:35.2

as sensitive to what is imagined as to what is real.

1:39.5

And that became the shaky foundation on which we have each had to carry all of the other

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from On Being Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of On Being Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.