Day 7: Notice How You Feel When Immersed in Digital Media
“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.”
— Jon Kabat Zinn
Today’s invitation is another opportunity to bring our awareness and attention to the behaviors that create barriers to the nourishment that is all around and within us at any given moment. Through embodied mindfulness we invite you to bring your attention to yourself as you are using your electronic devices; creating an important space between you and the endless, shiny – and in truth, harmful – promises these devices provide. With just a little mindful awareness, we begin to see that our devices have a great power to repattern our nervous systems to expect immediate and disembodied experiences disguised as belonging but that, in fact, are merely immediate, and fleeting, gratification.
Humans are complex, highly relational, miraculously designed creatures. Our autonomic nervous systems are designed to preference intricate, non-linear, ever-unfolding social cooperation and connection with everyone and everything in our midst. We are endowed with chemical reward mechanisms and pleasure pathways that have evolved over millennia, to help guide us toward critical nourishment and away from danger. But the marketing and consumer arms of Western Industrial Culture have take advantage of these mechanisms with quick-delivery, high-octane experiences like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we become disembodied participants in a dopamine reward loop of ever-increasing expectations. Expectations that bring with them ever-decreasing relational rewards.
Before we get too despairing about this, there is a remedy that is, simply, the power of our embodied attention to bring present-moment awareness to our experience. Over time, this simple (but sometimes not easy!) practice has the power to re-pattern us, supporting us to remember that the endless and relentless momentary 'high' to reach for our phones, or to check facebook or instagram, is fleeting. As we support ourselves to preference presence and connection, we will begin to notice all the moments, relationships and behaviors in our daily lives that deliver diminishing rewards, empty calories and emotional and chemical addictions.
Each time you find yourself on your phone or computer today, whether you’re experiencing the chemical ‘high’ that is the intended addictive byproduct of these technologies, or you’re experiencing a sense of numbness, or anything in between...simply take one minute — a full 60 seconds — to pause. Take a deep and full-belly breath. And notice how your physical body and your emotional body feel.
There is no expectation that you feel any particular way. This invitation is to feel your whole self (or more of yourself) here. Bring your awareness of yourself back into the picture. Notice how your back feels (we often slouch when we’re on our devices). Notice if your breathing is shallow or deep. Notice how your forehead is...is it scowling or open? Notice the shape of your mouth and the intensity level of your gaze. Notice your emotional state. Notice if you feel excitement, anxiety, sadness or nothing at all. Feeling ‘nothing’ is a feeling too.
Again, this isn’t an invitation to change anything about your present moment, but rather to simply come to the present moment with a gentle inventory of your physical and emotional state, in real time. From there, continue doing whatever you were doing, but from a slightly – or perhaps profoundly – more embodied, present-moment awareness. In doing this you will build resilience and you will also build a greater fundamental expectation of connection with yourself and others, including the devices that promise so much, yet deliver with diminishing returns.
