47: Unplugging and 5 Reasons Why You Should Do It 243820

 5 Reasons to Unplug  The crimson Costa Rican sun dipped beneath cerulean blue Pacific as I peered out from the yoga studio atop Blue Spirit mindfulness center in Nosara, Costa Rica.  Perched high on a cliff, I flexed by quadricep and stood firm in Warrior Two in this yoga studio that looks like a bird’s next nestled atop a jungle canopy.  Howler monkeys screamed through the air and birds of paradise soared at my eye level -- majestic and graceful in their freedom.  Time seemed to stand still and it felt like an endless summer.  How I came to find myself at Blue Spirit on a yoga retreat is a story for another time, but there I was in a yoga retreat led by Amy Dannheim and Dawn Feinberg: two hardcore and loving yoginis from Miami.  I came to Blue Spirit, not to vacation, but rather to level up my life. The word “vacation” burns my vocal chords. It’s acid for my soul. I don’t believe in vacations. I don’t want to vacate my life. I want to enhance my life.  And unplugging for a week on this endless summer retreat did the trick. I unplugged (mostly...I’ll explain later), and here is what I learned.  5 Reasons to Unplug (at least for a week) Time Slows Down I had just sat down for breakfast after another morning surf session and had a moment where I didn’t know what day it was. After just three days of no tv, no internet, and no phone calls, time felt like it was stuck in molasses.  My days felt longer and each day felt like three: the morning, day, and night.  By the time I went to bed, I felt such a rush of joy as I counted all the things I was grateful for that day.  Writing (on paper), meditation, yoga practice, and meaningful conversations replaced TV and Internet. Never was I a ive observer of my day. I spent every minute intentionally and with awareness.  Time is our most valuable currency. It’s worth far more than money or possessions.  You (re) Connect to Nature It’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race. I need to buy this, I need to complete this task, I need to fulfill this level of responsibility, I need to see this movie, and so on.  Instead of watching my computer screen or the television, I watched the ants crawl up the tree trunk. An iguana who I affectionately named Eddie, meandered through the thick brush outside my nature studio. Hummingbirds hovered over flowers of paradise and drank their nectar. Eddie and I even had a moment. He hobbled over to a small trickle of water and took a slurp then looked at me. So I took a slurp from my water bottle. We nodded to each other and then he went on his merry way. As much as we don’t like to it it, we’re animals. We’re right there on the food chain, catalogued in the animal kingdom with animals like Eddie.  We may have opposable thumbs and the ability to phonetically create a sophisticated language, but at our roots and beyond our smartphones, we need food and water just like Eddie does. Because we shop at massive supermarkets and never pick our fruits and vegetables or slaughter our meat, it’s easy to forget this. We depend on nature to supply our needs just like Eddie does. You Learn to Think on Your Own In a world where a drive to pick up mom to go to a coffee shop takes you by billboards and mass media marketing, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the messaging we received and are inundated with on a regular basis.  Unplugging separates you, at least digitally, from being exposed to the many messages that like to tell us what to believe in, who to vote for, and what pill we should take to be thinner, happier, sexier, or have less pain.  Jean Kilbourne, creator of the documentary series Killing Us Softly which explores the effect of marketing messages on adolescent women, famously shared that she is often told by people that they are not affected by marketing. When Jean looks at them though, they are often wearing something like a Gap t-shirt.  You (re) Learn to Have Deep Conversations   We’re living a beautifully connected world that allows for anyone to connect from the four corners of the world. But as much as we are connected, we’re perhaps even more disconnected than ever before. It’s too easy to not invest in a deep and meaningful conversation. When a conversation gets awkward, it’s far easier to move on to a new tweet, Snapchat, Periscope, Facebook, or Instagram post.  160 characters is a lot less stressful than 30 minutes of eye .  Deep and meaningful conversations help us as humans connect to one another and learn more about the human experience. They go deeper than a Facebook timeline which only posts the happy moments in life. They dive into the soul.  And the human soul is quite a beautiful thing.  By Subtracting, You Add So Much More to Your Life By subtracting the things that don’t matter in your life, you add so much for to your life. But it’s tough to really tell what doesn’t matter in our lives when we’re in the midst of our daily, weekly, and yearly rituals.  There’s always something to do or someone to take care of that makes it difficult to really focus on what you need.  I’m no luddite as I love this beautifully connected world we live in, but just because an ad tells me I need the next new thing, that doesn’t mean that a new gadget will add anything of value to my life. With the time to really sit down and reflect on my own, I was able to answer this question that I now share with you: Are you living or just existing? To live is not to collect things or scroll through Twitter. To live is to engage in experiences and suck out of the marrow in life as Thoreau would have put it.  ---   But this is just my opinion and I’d love to hear yours. You can reach out to me at [email protected] or leave a comment below.  3e2w4z