digital minimalism as an offering of pratyahara:

what happens when we turn down the outside noise and tune into the truth that lies within the self?

Sometime in the thick of the early panini press somewhere around the summer of last year, I learned about the concept of digital minimalism. It was the rad somatic therapist Andrea Gutiérrez-Glik that put it on my radar, who if you don’t follow maybe you want to. Their work of somatic therapy, the polyvagal theory, and more inspire and challenge me in the best ways possible.

At the time, I felt overwhelmed with sensory input by way of social media, the non-stop terrible news, my own thoughts, other people’s opinions...the list goes on. I could tell the effect doomscrolling was having on my nervous system and how often I was using social media as distraction from my own feelings and beingness. 

(And before I go any further, I think distractions can be a really valuable tool in our journey towards embodied healing! We can't always and probably shouldn’t be processing, reflecting, doing the hard stuff and sometimes watching reruns of Vanderpump Rules because sometimes it’s really not about the pasta! iykyk...if you don’t that’s honestly probably for the best so what I mean to say is that sometimes finding a neutral distraction actually gives me space to just be myself moving with whatever it is rather than feeding a negative thought spiral. More on that here from licensed therapist Amanda E. White and here from The Nap Ministry)

But I knew, in my being, that the distraction that social media was offering me was not generative or even neutral most of the time. It in fact made me feel worse about almost everything with tiny tiny glimmers of “whew okay some people are doing decent work in this messy world”. So when Andrea shared the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport with her newsletter, I figured...worth a listen. (And before I go any further again, this book was authored by an old, white guy and reads in many ways as such. And one thing I’ve learned being a student of practices that have been in ways by some and by many commodified and colonized, is that discernment is key in sifting through the written word and fortifies our ability to metabolize valuable information and discard the dominant perspective when toxic.)

In it the author laid out how these social platforms prey on certain neural pathways with every single user interface decision, how this affects our nervous system, the importance of leisure and hobbies and how that time has been filled with scrolling and likes, and also offered ways to make a shift. Sometime last month, a Facebook whistleblower outed the social media megadoomcreators for knowing the immense detriment the platform has on young minds and having no intent to remedy it.

For me recognizing the harm of excessive social media time was easy but putting up the boundaries to make a tangible shift in daily life was….not. If you follow me on social media you've definitelyprobablymaybenot seen my somewhat erratic fits and starts and real time boundary creating, breaking, shifting, fortifying with the platform. I’ve taken a number of weekend, week, and month long breaks from instagram.

What I didn’t know is that by seeding and nourishing digital minimalism into my life was actually preparing me to: 

• hear from my ancestors more and with more clarity

• make even more room to practice pause 

• to be more in tune with the stars and cycles of the moon

• to take my energy back from systems that seek to keep me asleep to my own power

• that in some way or another, it was all in service to greater pratyahara. 

Pratyahara is the fifth limb of the eight limb of yoga as codified by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. It comes after the Yamas (social observances), Niyamas (inner observances), Asana (seat, postures), and Prānayama (engagement and expansion of vital life force, prana). And comes before Dharna (one-pointed concentration), Dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (bliss). 

Pratyahara is the practice of sense withdrawal, of reclaiming the senses from the outside world and guiding them within, and of liberation from the senses.

To me and the way I’ve learned and applied it, this last part doesn’t mean to suggest that total severing of our senses is the goal. In yoga practices on the mat, yes yes yes draw the senses inward! Detach from the external! And in my application of yoga principles to daily life, it is less that we release our senses entirely because that doesn’t make sense as humans who are here to navigate the world and our sensory self helps us do just that. It’s more:

can we train our senses to be dexterous so that senses don’t have such a hold on us that we forget the truth of our nature?

I’m not sure if the ancient yogis would have predicted how overloaded our modern generation would be with constant sensory input and big corporations digging their claws into this attention economy. (Do you think they knew corporations or tik tok would even be a thing?!)

But regardless of what they knew or didn’t, they left us a tool +  strategy, a path to reclaiming our energy + senses and redirecting them: pratyahara.

If this kept your attention or piqued your interest, I’ll be sharing more reflections on how I’ll be preparing for my next “digital detox” soon.