How/Why Do You Reach?

March 1st Prompt: Build Yourself a Riverbank

Yesterday, traveling home on two planes, I reached for a red cotton scarf, peanut butter and green apple, cream cheese (despite not feeling great after eating it), the guaranteed zone-out of playing Solitaire over and over again on Delta’s TV screen, the rough-feel of the zipper of my suitcase, a book called Ceremony, a deck of cards about grief, each of my daughter’s hands, faces, noses, hair, and my own forehead.

Where and how do you reach?

We are social creatures and reaching for a soothing “thing” is a critical way we stay alive—whether we are reaching for a person, food, drink, winter coat or, these days, a smart phone.

My phone: chronically low battery (it’s old) and graced by a hibiscus photo my dear soul friend Hannah took and my wise daughter Eula put as a background

I’m not anti phone. I’m usage-curious. The “how” matters. The culture-making around phones matters. A phone can be a glittery and connecting life-line or a murky swamp of no return or… both at the same time. At this point, even if you have chosen not to have one, they are unavoidable because they have populated our world. I dream of an airport experience where eyes are up and people are saying hello on the plane again. Our only true control is how we engage with this device and with our environment. You don't need me to tell you that we are in an attention crisis. ATTENTION, turns out, is our most valuable modern resource. Even the tech bros who were instrumental in making the crisis are now talking about how to undo it (despite my mixed media feelings about this, I also say Good, and thank you, because everyone in every sector needs to be bringing this reality to light.) When we no longer have agency over our attention, we are easily seduced, lulled, brainwashed, frozen or chronically sympathetically activated/dysregulated and we know where that leads. It’s real and you know it. I am not immune from this; none of us are. You know that groggy come-to after hours down the blackhole of task-switching on a phone: the “Wait, what was I doing? Wait, how did 3 hours go by?”

GOOD NEWS! We can begin to reset our patterns; and, when we regain control, we can use this tool for good and have enough mental space and spiritual space in our days to allow our creative ideas to bloom and our inner whisperings to be heard. Isn’t that what our planet needs? Humans listening and creating art and solutions and social weavings that make the world a place we want to inhabit.

Let’s do it together.

Let’s start in small doses.

Why? Community and titration are the most sustainable ways to integrate a shift in the nervous system.

This exercise might seem overly simple. Don’t be fooled into believing something needs to be complex to have merit.

Prompt: Noticing The Space Before The Reach

Choose a 24-hour period over the next three days.

Your only task is to 1) Notice when you are about to reach for your phone, 2) Pause for two minutes without reaching, 3) Track your sensations and write them down or speak them out loud, then 4) Reach slowly and see if you can sense your hand making contact with the phone and the phone making contact with your hand. Then, go on with your day. No pressure. Remember, this exercise could be fun. Remember, it is intentionally bite size and powerful. For extra credit, note the # of times you reach for your phone in that 24-hour period.

It’s all information. You are a collector gathering information from your most exquisite body. *The outcome will have more punch if you share it with a friend. Bring your findings to our feed here and to each other.

Let me break it down.

The noticing itself is worthy of a party. Please celebrate that you noticed. Many of us have lost the skill of noticing; resuscitating it is gold. When you pause, count slowly to 60 two times and see if you can identify 1-3 sensations happening within you. Not emotions, sensations: pressure, heat, movement. Examples: breath is squeezy, chest feels compressed, face is hot, bubbles coming up legs, sparky happening in neck, expanded belly, warm honey down the arms, dense throat. They might have meaning for you, they might not.

Please leave your perfectionist at the door. If you notice the reach 3 times in a 24-hour period, you will have “done it.” Even once will educate you about yourself.

At the end of the day (or the next morning), ask yourself:

What feeling am I usually reaching for?

I know my answer.

What is your answer?

Discuss with your friends. Bring it alive in your community.

Please share below! I would love to hear what transpired for you.

What is this exercise “doing" for you?

It’s building your tolerance and capacity for The Pause.

It’s reinstating your agency over your attention.

It’s uncoupling the phone and soothing.

Scale It

Want to explore more during the month of March?

*Please note that it is helpful to give yourself a container of time (one week, one month), as opposed to saying, “From this point forward, for the rest of my life, I will always wait 2 minutes before I check my phone.” That’s too grandiose and too big for the nervous system. Such a “goal” could short you out. You need small, achievable goals that then lead naturally to a subterranean shift, one that folds in easily into your life.

You are creating activations. With each of these, you will be sitting longer with your sensations. Be curious. Follow them as long as they are uncomfortable but tolerable. If they become too much, then pivot. You can always choose to stop.

• Play with time increments. Pause for 5-10 minutes.

• Play with distance. Reach for the phone and then don’t make contact. Restrict (ooo that word!) and see how your nervous system and your thoughts respond with that containment, with the pressure of non-contact.

• Narrate your sensations out loud anytime you notice them. That way you develop a top down and bottom up relationship with your nervous system.

• When it becomes clear what you are reaching for, ask yourself if you can reach for something else that might meet that need. Not because the phone is evil but because it has become (for many) the primary reach.

A real river my family knows well. What would this river be without its banks?

My Own Experiences

My example is only one example but can be helpful if you are feeling unclear. I used to reach to numb myself with the scroll when feeling overwhelmed. Leaving social media changed that impulse. Now, I reach to organize or control when I’m scared (deleting emails, checking calendar, making appointments for my kids). I reach to connect with friends when I’m excited or needing human contact. I reach to learn or research but this one is laced with anxiety for me. I don’t love learning through a screen. I am exploring how to shift that in myself (build more capacity and okayness with screen-learning) as my clench around it is now affecting my children. They can sense my lack of breath when they are on a computer too long for my liking.

Two recent experiments:

1. I am setting blocks of time (4x a day) in which I sit down to listen to voice texts from friends and respond, as opposed to checking my phone all day all the time. So, I make tea and sit or stretch and tend to and receive from my friends and it feels pleasurable instead of rushed. Outcome: I enjoy it mostly and sometimes it isn’t realistic or I crave the steady stream of friends because it makes me feel like we are together in real life, which actually mimics more of what our ancestors would have experienced by living, working, cooking, cleaning communally. More biologically aligned despite the screen part. Hmmmm. Jury is out. **Blocks of time really works for news in-take. I don’t get any notifications. I sit down and read the news 1-2x a week in a concentrated period of time when I am ready to receive it and digest it and be responsible to it. Otherwise, I get thrown into panic and override and subsequent avoidance and my whole day tanks.

2. Not responding right away. Asking myself, is this necessary now? Do I need to schedule with the piano teacher when the plane has just landed. Can I be with my kids in this moment instead? I’m generally “good” at this, but I am trying to narrate out loud to my kids, “Now I am going to sit down and schedule all the things.” I have high hopes for this one. We shall see.

   *As I teeter at middle age, I am less enamored by steps or processes. Yet, I bow to the truth that humans and systems work best when both masculine and feminine energies exist in them.

   It’s hard for the river to flow if it has no banks.

   We now live in a tech world with no riverbanks. People are sloshing around in a big watery directionless tech world, often drowning or losing their flow. These phone experiments are one of my attempts at banks. I’m deeply invested in each person building up their riverbanks so their life-force—be it slow or fast—can flow, and grow full of thriving creations that enrich the watershed of humanity.

   PLEASE SHARE BELOW WHAT YOU DISCOVERED ABOUT YOURSELF.

   It’s helpful for you to do so and helpful for everyone to hear it.

Love,