Unplug That Smartphone From Your Brain For Mindfulness!
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Ever since the 1990s, multiple researches have acknowledged the addictive nature of the Internet. And access to the Internet has only exaggerated the attractiveness of smartphones. It’s now time to establish a smartphone detox to enable you deal with your smartphone and mindfulness.

But, Why a Detox?

Brain studies expose how susceptible we are to the volatility of our smartphones. Our brains are responsible to surge feel-good chemicals, such as dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. The levels of these feel-good chemicals drastically decline with high usage and dependency on smartphones. This induces anxiety and stress due to increase in cortisol and norepinephrine levels. Nevertheless an incessant sequence of dings, beeps and blinking lights provoke us that a potential reward might be waiting.

Smartphones do not affect people directly, but there are reasons to be alarmed. In fact in a recent survey, people confessed to using smartphones while driving. This has also lead to being a cause for sixty percent of car accidents.

Other harmful health concerns linked to extreme smartphone use include depression, high blood pressure and sleep deficit. One survey reveals that many wake up multiple times at night to check their phones. Given the pleasure they bring, reducing reliance on smartphones can appear unworkable.

Another concern is that a phone emits non-ionising radiation that can be captivated by the tissues nearest to where you’re holding the phone such as your brain, if you’re not hands-free. However, further in-depth research is necessary to determine a potential link between mobile phones and life-threatening illnesses.

Coming to conclusion it does not mean you have to throw your smartphone away. Instead, plan on gradual pragmatic steps such as a regular smartphone detox. This will help you deal with your necessary device in a way that it gets handy for your best use and cause least concerns.

Here Are Few Great Device Detox Guidelines!

Firstly, publicise your smartphone detox plan, so that people will not expect instant response from you. Start staying aloof from smartphone with intervals of 15 minutes and increase the minutes over time. At the end of each interval, a minute or two of usage is legitimate. Throughout intervals, leave your silenced phone close by to avoid stress of wondering where it is.

The urge to look at the phone is vigorous during life’s abate, waiting in lines, waiting at traffic signals or waiting for people to return from bathrooms. In such situations pause, concentrate on yourself and mindfully start seeing around. Whilst on the same route, your mindfulness might just get you to notice something that you hadn’t before since you were busy flipping through your phone.

smartphone and mindfulness

Phone cameras have advanced noticeably in recent years. Despite, compact cameras are still far better when used in a variety of situations. Compact cameras have a wider range of preset modes compared to smartphones. Adding to this, plan a scenic photography venture just with your personal camera. You will realise that you are observing and absorbing more of what you are capturing that too without focusing more on posting the picture on your social media accounts.

Whilst using your phone, distance is your chum, because radiation coverage falls off spectacularly the farther away from the brain or the body you use your phone.

A 2009 study at Western Washington University established that smartphone users walked more slowly, intertwined, frequently changed directions and were less liable to recognise other people even though no alcohol was involved. This is where you get the smartphone and mindfulness strategy into action. Always make sure to use your phone when you are in a still position.

A survey reveals that many use their phones in a slouch position. Leaning over any object for an extended period of time can strain muscles and soft tissues of the neck, shoulders and back, leading to pain. Conclusively, when you use your smartphone follow the same position fundamentals as those during a workplace.

mindfulness and smartphone

Moreover, there are many negative impacts of keeping your phone next to or often in your bed. This may help explain why the alarm clock prevails. Henceforth it will be wiser to use an old-style alarm clock for your morning rituals.

These days we usually notice that many (few or even all) people in a gathering are engrossed in texting their peers, scrutinising irrelevant Internet details or relishing the neuro-chemical hit of a Facebook like. Many of us habitually disrupt personal meeting time with loved ones to score the itch of online pastime. American adults check their devices approximately 150 times a day.

As we hover in and out of paying attention, our conversations become light, losing much of their compassionate prospect. Our relationships start slipping into an oxymoron called ‘absent presence’.

digital detox

Henceforth, it’s time to challenge yourself every now and then to these digital detox guidelines. This will help you control your device rather than the other way round.


One Comment

  • Chris Altizer says:

    Amen to “absent presence” – and love the “detox” approach to personal technology! Ideally we can put it away except when we want what it does rather than responding to it when anyone else wants us. It’s also possible to leverage our addiction to these devices by putting them to other uses – waking to music rather than alarms in the morning, practicing yoga nidra before bed with a guided relaxation, listening to background sounds that calm rather than stir during the day. HBR recently wrote up how separating “work/life” is more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t advocate caving in, but let’s let our tools serve us rather than we serve them.

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