Untangling Yourself | Digital Detox
Read this article for the exercise to detox digital residue experienced on a cognitive level after spending a lot of time scrolling mindlessly on social media.
There are moments when you feel distracted, fragmented, divided, conflicted, twisted & tangled.., and all sorts of feelings like that. You might be going to bed or wanting to get on that task & meaning to commit your attention fully to it. But you don't quite feel at home, you're too mentally occupied to be absorbed and doing your thing. And for strange reasons, you can't put a finger on exactly what it is but something is certainly gripping your mind. So much so that it keeps you from fully focusing at that moment with a feeling of stillness in your mind & restfulness in your body.
On paying close attention you'll discover that this unknown & uncomfortable feeling is often accompanied by scrolling mindlessly on social media or watching Netflix for hours. Sometimes, this lingering feeling is a result of unprocessed & unresolved emotions in your subconscious also. You might not exactly hear it out aloud but there's some story running in the background or foreground in the most disruptive way.
It's powerfully interrupting strangely to make you feel uneasy and sometimes even frustrated without a supposed reason you might not be interested to know. More often than not, this uncomfortable feeling is a product of attentional residue that continues to dwell in your subconscious even long after the activity you've done. Because you were distracted, like most of us are most of the time, you or to put it precisely- your conscious mind- missed it out altogether to register it clearly & vividly in your waking hours.
Much to your discomfort, it continues to haunt you like hiders in a game of hide & seek that you used to play in your childhood days. So, unless you consciously decide to look out for it, it will persist & bother you like a bee in the bonnet but without revealing itself. It feels like you're in the game who are not equipped with the tricks of the game to actively look out to spot your friends hiding in their corners.
And since they could see you are disinterested in playing the game in the true spirit, they want to keep the game going & save the fun from dying from it. Therefore, they have begun teasing you from the corners to challenge you to stand up & search for them. It's that: like true friends, they want you to come for them & learn to find them so you eventually get better at the game. As it'll be even more & more fun to play together when each of you brings more thrill & adds challenges to the game.
So, until you get up & come for them, they'll keep bantering you with all sorts of pranks, i.e. a feeling of restlessness in your state of mind & body. So much so that you find it difficult to sit & focus. Now, should you stand up, go out, and look out for them? The answer is more obvious than you normally want to resort to on an average & normal day. Instead of fruitlessly trying hard to sleep or go on with the activity you're doing, take a moment to sit back & tune into yourself.
Here We Go:
-You could choose to close your eyes if you'd like to or just keep them simply open. There's no right way or wrong way to carry out this search on a mental level. Do it in the manner it comes to you naturally/easily.
-Unlike in the game of hide & seek, where you need to stay alert & active like a seeker who's on the hunt full of eagerness and ransacking corners. Rather shift into the role of the observer/viewer/witnesser/beholder who's curious but not eager, and would smoothly scan through but not ransack corners.
-With a cultivated attitude of nonjudgemental curiosity & welcoming openness, dig down with calm and ease to facilitate bringing up what's embedded beneath and trying to come up to the surface.
On a sensory level, it might feel like turning inwards & zeroing in on yourself. But on a mental level, it takes you to widen the horizon of your mind. It makes up space for the embedded contents to emerge in the vast open sky. You'd notice that after a - few seconds or minutes or so- into it, you'll begin to unearth & access the hidden contents of your mind at a speed you keep up with.
-Allow this process of dredging up on its own WITHOUT identifying yourself or holding on to any of the contents like thoughts, feelings, and emotions. You don't have to make anything out of them during this process of mental AERATION. Wherein you’re supplying an air of sigh to your mind reeling under unregistered & unprocessed cognitive load collected from digital platforms all day long.
-After a thorough inspection within yourself, you find nothing useful to keep and build on it. It was lingering energy calling for your attention to be untrapped, rescued, and exhausted. You’d observe that by the end of this exercise, you begin to feel unwound, uncoiled, and untangled. Rest in the feeling of unearthed calmness and stillness as you move on to resign to sleep or your next task.
NOTE: It might be possible that after a first or few tries of this exercise, you may learn to process inputs and connect the dots, and build on them further. You could find yourself molding them into some form of art like write-ups, set-ups, plays, paintings, etc. The idea here is to learn to use (exhaust) this lingering and restless energy rather than get exhausted by it.
P.S.: Your digital well-being is at the heart of your overall well-being now. And yoga & meditation are effective ways to ensure & improve it. For more tips & techniques, book a session with me at Calendly