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There Is an Art to Isolation: Here’s a Guide to Staying Centered
How the Chinese tradition of confinement inspired my shelter-in-place self-care
In Chinese culture, there’s an ancient tradition of postpartum confinement, or 坐月子 (zuo yue zi) in Mandarin. The literal translation is “sitting the month” and refers to how, following childbirth, a new mother will rest at home for one full month while following a strict diet and rituals (like avoiding cold air and not bathing) to help the body heal and recuperate from the arduous labor.
I’m Chinese American and when I was born, my grandmother came from Taiwan to Chicago to help take care of me and nurse my mom through a more relaxed modern adaptation of confinement. My mom didn’t wash her hair for a week and ate lots of chicken soup with sesame oil and pork liver soup with ginger, both nourishing “yang” foods to bring warmth to the body. When I cried at night, it was my grandmother who would rock me back to sleep in her rocking chair, letting my mom rest.
Just a couple days into my self-quarantine at my parents’ suburban home, I joked that this felt like Chinese confinement, only I didn’t even have to give birth to qualify. Because of the social isolation due to Covid-19, I desperately needed to find a silver lining by treating this time as an opportunity for self-care. A much-needed break from my perpetually jet-lagged lifestyle. No alarms, no Google Calendar reminders popping up constantly on my phone, and certainly no baby to worry about, so I could focus squarely on taking care of myself.
I looked inward, inspired by the overarching principles of Chinese postpartum confinement — resting, not going out for a month, and eating superfoods to restore health — to turn my quarantine into a productive time for self-care.
As a full-time digital nomad, I haven’t had an apartment in more than three years and last year spent 350 nights in hotels. By the time shelter-in-place orders came in from Governor Pritzker in Illinois, I’d already had all projects, assignments, and work trips canceled for the foreseeable future, a crushing blow as a…
