digital minimalism as an offering to pratyahara pt. 2: preparing myself for a “digital detox”
Ok, first let me start with this title:
Offering: One thing yoga has taught me over the years is to make my actions an offering. That when action becomes offering and becomes ritual we place it on the altar that is our embodied experience of our lives. Yoga, specifically my Gitā studies with Kaya Mindlin, has illuminated that we do NOT control the outcomes of our actions. There are expectations we may have, there are natural laws that we assume will be followed, and also we’re not the ones calling all the shots.
Pratyahara: is the 5th component of the 8 limbs of yoga as shared by Pantanjali in the Yoga Sutras and it means “withdrawl of the senses”. And if you don’t have a sense of what pratyahara is and didn’t get a chance to read the last post I did on pratyahara + digital minimalism, you could maybe do that.
“Digital Detox”: I’m fairly adverse to diet culture in any portion of my life but/and also “An offering to pratyahara: preparing myself for another attempt at right sizing my relationship to digital space so that I can find the space closer to medicine than poison” didn’t quite fit in the title line. And tbh, detox does feel applicable here to me. For me there’s an invisible but feelable line where too much social media turns into a burrowing worm hole in my brain filled with toxic goop made of comparison, spiraling, and mainly wasted time.
To prepare for a social media detox, I ask myself a few questions:
Why do you want to go on a break? Is it because you “should”? Do you want a total detox or just to decrease and right size your use of social media?
My favorite question is why? Always has been, always will be. Feel free to ask my momma who will recount stories of endless why? Why? But why? No really….WHY?
And this is one question that I can’t really answer for you so take a few minutes and maybe journal or reflect or draw about why? Why less social media for you? Why now? Take some time to reflect, journal, and be with your why.
At first, I thought decreasing my time on instagram was the move. I have things to promote. I have friends to be friendly with. All true and all kind of excuses to not really deal with my shit. Sometimes, you can’t see the fog that you're in until you’re not. A longer time away offers me more steps away from the fog. After a few rounds of trying and experimenting, I find that a full break for at least 2-3 weeks is what I need to step back to the platforms with discernment.
What value do you get from social media? How do you plan to stay connected?
In this corner of the internet, we’re breaking down the instinct to either/or, black/white, binary thinking about things. Social media has some value, I think. It would probably be moreso if social platforms were owned by people with integrity that cared about the collective good….but i digress….
For some, like some disabled folks or folks physically isolated from like minded kin, social media and online platforms are the only way to have community. And I have met some wonderful folks and catalysed real connection through instagram but it’s good to remember that’s not the only way to be connected at least for me.
Share your phone number or email if that feels comfortable. Sign up for your friends newsletter or blog. And if you’re a person who uses social media to promote your business, start a newsletter! Promoting my classes was definitely one thing that kept me there past window that felt good and valuable. Plus, we all saw “The Great Social Media Crash of Mercury Retrograde in Libra”. These platforms are not promised, start your email list, k?
How much support do you need in staying off the ‘gram?
This seems like an easy one but it goes worth saying. Those little time limits that at least iphones allow you to set up are soooo easy to bypass. cue the little shame cycle of omg I can’t even listen to my own boundaries, may as well give up…
If you’re good at just deleting the app, good for you! [No sarcasm here, maybe a little jealousy but no sarcasm: good for you!] But look, imma be real. That doesn’t work for me all the time and what does work is essentially locking myself out of my account. It feels way better than re-downloadin the app 6 times a day. I have a trusted one change my password so I can’t even get in if I tried forcing myself to take weeks away and from what I knew wasn’t even serving me.
In trying to detox from more than just social media and all around reduce my phone use, I did a couple things to make my phone less appealing and distracting like deleting Gmail from my phone and silencing all other notifications. I used to silence calls and texts but found that actually made me check my phone more, what if I missed something really important?! I didn’t but knowing that I needed to wait for a boop or beep was actually set something at ease in my mind.
At a certain point, I thought I wanted a lightphone, a tech bro device that is basically a phone with only call, text, maps, music/podcast and alarm functions. I’ve been trying to break the habit of needing to buy something to fix a problem so instead when it was time to get a new phone I went smaller, switched to greyscale display, and followed some of the tips in the article about turning an iphone to a temporary lightphone.
How will you fill the space that you offered to social media before?
In the book Digital Minimalism, Newport spends a whole chapter talking about leisure and hobbies! If you know me well, you know I do looove me some leisure. And I actually really like the way Newport framed it. Leisure not just as lounging poolside with bon-bons, (actually that sounds gross because would your bon-bons taste like chlorine?), but leisure as any non-screenbased activity that brings joy, rest, or value. He talked about so many options from carpentry and learning to fix things to chess and gardening. I journaled about gardening, tending to my plants, reading, nesting, painting, photography, committing to more mutual aid. Some questions you can ask yourself around this:
What did you used to do as a kid that you might want to get back into?
What do you say, “if only I had the time” about?
How could more stillness or silence be of value to you and your connection with yourself?
For me filling time referred to yes the big swatches of time but also, and almost more importantly, the very minute little moments. In the early days of a digital detox, I always find myself reaching for my phone to reflexively end up on insta. One of many things yoga has taught me is that we are (often) what we practice, consciously or unconsciously, and that a little + often = a lot. I must have practiced picking up my phone and going to the ‘gram tens of thousands of times shudders
Our phones are literally designed to be appealing so that we spend more time on them. So when I witness that reflexe... reflexing, I delete photos from my phone! Maybe you’re an actual adult, but I have sooo many screenshots and random photos that are ready to go and rather than buying more storage or pretending I know how the cloud works, I delete! It gives a hit of oooooh I’m on phone energy but is way easier to put down. Another redirection I used was taking a moment to ground or take 3 intentional breaths.
Okay so now that you’re off the platform, do that other stuff you said you wanted to do!
Easier said than done I know! Once I stepped away from excessive social media (and especially when I step back in!), I realized how much it affected my embodied experience and the amount of time spent in nervous system states that don’t match my reality. Instagram definitely prolongs states of freeze or fight for me. I really appreciate the work of Andrea Glik, LCSW and especially this blog on polyvagal theory + digital minimalism.
And this is where pratyahara makes a way back in, at least explicitly.
In a “yoga practice” (which I put in quotes because in modern times practice has been conflated with doing yoga postures in a studio for 60 minutes, not knocking ‘em. I still teach ‘em! There’s just so much more) pratyahara might show up as quieter or no music, drawing awareness inward to the breath or internal sensation, guided meditation, or those moments in the end in corpse pose/savasana. And then, we leave the studio and hop right back on our phones.
In the practice of yoga and applying it to daily life, we could see all the little shifts the practice teaches as an offering: pausing before we react, checking in to see if our actions align with our values, practicing the yamas and niyamas off the mat.
By taking time away from social media, I realized how noisy my world and my mind could get.
Yes, a million things in the world are causing suffering but I’m of no service to any of them if I can’t quiet the noise, get clearer, know what fills (or drains) my cup. And by taking step back from overstimulation of my senses through social media, I was able to take a real step forward in reclaiming my own power of clarity, values, role to play in it all, along with my intention, and impact.