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Turning herself upside down, silent and still while balancing on her head, is one of the only ways Deborah Baker feels upright in the thick of an anxiety-ridden election season.
Inside the carriage house-turned-yoga studio tucked behind her home in Denver, Baker can shut out the chatter and the clatter of constant clashes between politicians and political parties. Facing a half-dozen other women coping with their own election jitters, she reminds them all to narrow their focus to the present moment, starting by noticing the rhythm of their breath.
“This election is stressful, so we’re going to find ways to manage stress because the stress is there,” Baker, 62, told her Park Hill Yoga students during a recent restorative yoga class. “I like to pretend it’s not there, and it works for a while. When it comes up and it feels like it’s in charge, I use yoga to pause and say, ‘It’s not in charge at all. What’s been in charge with all this is my mind.’”
Baker, who says her class is tailor-made for fighting election-season stress, is among the many voters in Colorado and the U.S. who have been grasping for ways to quiet their nerves and tune out the ever-present political pandemonium as Election Day creeps closer.
Colorado isn’t considered a competitive state in the presidential election this year. But tens of millions of dollars have still been spent here, resulting in a barrage of political text messages, mailers, TV ads and social media posts that have many in the state on edge.
Those unable or unwilling to assume a downward dog pose are pursuing different coping strategies. Some have found comfort by clinging to their communities and leaning on like-minded voters. Others have drawn on humor or activism to keep their minds from spinning.
And anxiety appears to be spreading across party lines, pooling into a generalized sense of uncertainty, said Iris Mauss, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“On both sides of the divide, people are feeling anxiety,” Mauss said. “I think it’s increasingly so because the outcome (of the presidential election) is so close and it’s so high stakes for many of us, and it’s still so uncertain. And those elements together are sort of picture-book anxiety elicitors.”
A lack of personal control in election outcomes is only further heightening emotions, Mauss added.
Finding reasons to laugh and ways to gather together
Laughter has become one outlet for relief among voters in southern Colorado, where the Millibo Art Theatre lined up a set of short plays poking fun at Election Day and the voting process.
Theater opens up a way for audiences to suspend reality for a moment and offers an alternative to screaming at their TV at home, said Jim Jackson, owner of the Colorado Springs theater.
The shows, written by Colorado artists and pulled off by local directors and actors, wraps up with a matinee performance Sunday, setting up people to start what might be an unnerving week on a lighter note.
Jackson, who is 70, called this year’s election, with its bouts of dishonesty and confusion, “one of the most anxiety-producing elections” in his lifetime.
“It certainly is the most surreal election,” Jackson said.
The performances take a “sideways” approach to the election, he noted. One sketch follows a small town council arguing about what kind of sticker they should create for voters to wear after casting their ballot. Another features an election night speed-dating event where hopefuls show up dressed in costume. One person masquerading as Uncle Sam ends up matching with another posing as Betsy Ross.
The off-the-wall plots give people room to laugh, Jackson said, though it’s not coming from a cruel place.
“It’s more we’re laughing at who we are as people and also who we are at this time in this particular strange event that we’re going through right now,” he said.
Other people stewing in election dread might try to suppress their discomfort by either looking for a silver lining in whatever negative outcome they’re bracing for, or by simply accepting their anxiety, said Mauss, the UC Berkeley professor.
“When we’re anxious, our first instinct is, ‘wow, make that go away,’” Mauss said. “But what we found and what others have found is that when we counteract that instinct and sort of take a pause and not necessarily embrace but at least neutrally accept that these emotions are there, they’re not in and of themselves dangerous. They can just be there.”
It’s equally helpful for communities with “a shared sense of reality and values” to come together, she added.
That’s exactly what a famed little purple house in Denver’s City Park West neighborhood will do Tuesday. While Hamburger Mary’s Denver glitters most nights with live drag performances, the venue will open its doors for an election night watch party. In place of glaring stage lights and blaring soundtracks, it will broadcast election coverage on its TV screens, offering a Taco Tuesday menu with tequila and margaritas.
The turbulent election season has worn on John Skogstad, one of the hot spot’s owners. He worries about the possibility of a future attack on gay marriage after two U.S. Supreme Court justices suggested they would reconsider the court’s rulings that protect access to same-sex matrimonies.
Political decisions and tendencies of the court are shaped by presidential appointments.
“That induces anxiety when you think about people going to a ballot box and potentially pulling a lever for people who have made declarations that they are anti (LGBTQ) or would work to undo the legal status that my marriage has at the moment,” Skogstad said.
On both sides of the divide, people are feeling anxiety.
— Iris Mauss, Psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley
Among the 14 statewide ballot measures before voters this year is one that aims to strike a phrase from the state constitution that defines marriage as being between only a man and a woman. If voters approve it, the right to same-sex marriage in Colorado will be protected — even if the U.S. Supreme Court were to reverse a 2015 decision affirming the right to those marriages across the country.
On Tuesday night — a night Hamburger Mary’s Denver is normally closed — the restaurant will in many ways mirror the space it is during regular business hours: a gathering place to celebrate and support the LGBTQ community.
“We want to create an opportunity for people to be with their community, whether things are going well or not,” Skogstad said. “And that kind of is part of that whole overall approach of, at the end of the day, your families and your communities or your chosen family or where you find your solace or comfort, we want to offer a place that’s safe for people.”
Meanwhile, Republicans from Larimer and Weld counties plan to convene at an election night watch party at The Grainhouse Windsor with a slate of conservative candidates — including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert.
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Leaders from the Larimer County Republican Party and the Weld County Republican Party, which are hosting the event with the Larimer County Republican Women, are optimistic that voters will elect more conservatives to the Colorado state House and Senate. They hope the watch party will strike a celebratory tone.
“We’re here to bring back balance to the state of Colorado and we’re here ready to bring our solutions,” said Hunter Rivera, Weld County Republican Party first vice chair.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers shared a balance of power in Colorado from 2015 to 2018, when Republicans maintained control over the state Senate while Democrats ruled the House and governor’s office.
At stake in this year’s election is a potential legislative supermajority among state Democrats — a feat they would achieve if they win one more state Senate seat and manage to not lose more than two House seats.
Larimer County Republican Party chairman Kristin Grazier is realistic as she heads into Election Day and focuses most intently on state races — even as her office handed out almost 3,000 signs supporting former President Donald Trump.
She acknowledges Republicans will come up short in some seats but remains inspired by her party’s perseverance through significant losses in midterm elections two years ago.
“I was encouraged by the fact that people didn’t just get discouraged, throw their hands up in the air and go home,” she said, citing the need to fight for priorities like limiting government overreach and limiting taxes. “They actually doubled down and said these things are too important. We have to keep fighting for these principles.”
At the same time, Grazier anticipates much of the toughest work — mending the great divide across parties — will fall after races have been called.
“We have a big task that we need to come together on,” Grazier said. “It’s really easy to do things with emotion and vitriol. The hard job and the division that’s going on, nobody’s really happy with that. And so the hard job is to show up with your two ears and your one mouth and get to know your neighbors.”
“The human spirit is more powerful than politics”
Yoga has helped Baker, the Denver yoga teacher, recover from Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple surgeries to remove one of two brain tumors. The same mindful movements and grounding lessons that yoga instilled in her during those life-threatening battles are now sustaining her as she faces what feels like her next challenge: making it through a high-stakes election that has left the country’s sense of unity in tatters.
Baker has studied Iyengar yoga — which she said is about using precise movements and poses to connect the mind and body and develop more awareness — and taught it for more than 30 years.
Her practice equips her with a prescribed set of steps to make herself feel better, free from her endless spiral of thoughts and calm enough to remember a core yoga tenet: Nothing lasts forever.
“It doesn’t mean you’re withdrawing from our fellow human beings or withdrawing from the world,” she said, “but it’s a way to nourish and quiet ourselves so that we can go back out in the world and not be reactive when things are not going well, when things are scary.”
During the restorative yoga class last week — that she will repeat Tuesday evening — Baker took her time helping students fold themselves into positions where they could sit or lie down and notice the tiniest parts of their bodies. The smoothness of their breath. The unclenching of their face muscles. The openness of their chest.
That was the start of students redirecting their attention to the present, a powerful tool that Baker said helped her through the worst parts of cancer treatment and that is now steering her through the highs and lows of elections.
“I do believe that the human spirit is more powerful than politics and that we have to just keep our eyes on all that’s still right in the world,” Baker said. “And when we breathe and we’re quiet and calm. … If we can just bring ourselves back to that part of our humanity, then it’s OK.”
Longtime Park Hill Yoga student Dana Smith has mastered the art of lifting herself into a headstand, legs jutting straight into the air without so much as a quiver for several minutes. She relearned the lost childhood skill during the pandemic.
“It was like practice for staying strong when the world turns you upside down,” Smith, 57, said.
She is well trained for a nail-biting Election Day, when she said she will beeline back to the yoga studio, where she knows she will be insulated from the distractions of the outside world and can put her mind on mute.
“I’m more anxious this time because of how polarized we are as a nation, and we seem to have lost the ability to talk with people who disagree with us,” Smith said. “It’s like we dehumanize people who disagree with us, and it makes me really sad because bad things happen when people are dehumanized, and I think our whole political system stokes that. It stokes that division, and I’m worried about where we’re headed.”
Another anxiety antidote: Taking action on the ground
Election year tremors have propelled some Colorado voters out into the streets — and far out of their comfort zones — to show up on doorsteps and keep the most powerful part of elections in the forefront of voters’ minds: completing and returning their ballots.
Julia Henderson, who lives in Westminster, had never been involved in politics until she heard Julie Duran Mullica — a Democratic candidate running for Adams County commissioner — speak last November. Drawn to Duran Mullica’s commitment to understanding the community and her work helping the former Tri-County Health Department navigate the pandemic, Henderson and her husband changed their voter registration from unaffiliated to Democrat in February and also hosted an event to recruit donors, volunteers and more supporters.
“I said, ‘What can we do to help?’ And in the back of my head very silently I said, ‘except knock on doors,’” Henderson, 61, recalls.
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Nearly nine months later, Henderson estimates she has knocked on 800 doors across Adams County, rallying people to help elect a set of Democratic candidates to office, including incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo in her bid to continue representing Colorado’s highly competitive 8th Congressional District. In her early days of canvassing, Henderson said she had to spend at least an hour building up her courage to approach strangers, steeling herself for outrage.
Apart from a few cranky responses, most of her encounters brightened her outlook, with many people thanking her for volunteering her time racing door to door.
“It was not that frightening experience that I had anticipated,” Henderson said. “It actually left you filled up with hope because there are people who really care and want good things for society, and we don’t hear from them because we hear the loud noises that are just crazy cowbells.
“I think there’s just this big group of people in the middle who want the best for our town, our county, our state, our country,” she said, “but we don’t have ways to connect with them other than doing something like this. It’s really kind of invigorating.”
I think there’s just this big group of people in the middle who want the best for our town, our county, our state, our country.
— Julia Henderson, who estimates she has knocked on 800 doors across Adams County
Christina Soliz, deputy director of the nonprofit political organizing group New Era Colorado, has found similar glimmers of hope in her focus on outcomes in state elections while advocating for Colorado’s constitution to protect both abortion access through Amendment 79 and gay marriage through Amendment J.
Fear still rattles Soliz, a Latina who worries about what her future might look like after a new president takes office. Pouring herself into the things she can control — voting in line with her values, for instance — has washed away some of that fear. And she’s encouraged by how energized young people are in voting for the issues they care about.
“It is just affirming because we know that one candidate at the top of the ticket is not going to save us,” said Soliz, whose organization will bring puppies to Denver’s Auraria Campus on Tuesday afternoon as a playful distraction for voters. “That power is in our hands and being so focused on the actual issues and ballot measures where we have control, it’s something that gives people a sense of relief and a sense of control over what our futures are.”
But not every young person can temper their fear with voting power. As a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, Silvia Entenza is unable to vote. But she refuses to stand on the sidelines, plunging herself into action at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs as a regional organizer for New Era Colorado. She has helped young adults register to vote, informed them about Amendment 79 and Amendment J and escorted them to a campus voting center while answering their election questions.
“My future depends on voting,” said Entenza, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 3. “So I’m here reminding voters that it does matter and it’s for them and their own community.”
Her long days of running around encouraging her peers to vote are buoying her through her waves of anxiety about what might happen on the other side of Election Day, she said.
“Just knowing that I did my part and I put my full effort is what is helping me.”