Trying not to hurt my beautiful brain- inspired by Ada Limon
Our upcoming retreats are inspired by the poetry of Ada Limon. Last fall I had the opportunity to listen to Ada and Robin Wall Kimmerer onstage in Minneapolis. One thing Ada shared with us is that she tries to stop her scrolling by telling herself, “I don’t want to hurt my beautiful brain.”
I love that! In Patanjali’s eightfold path, the Yamas & Niyamas are the first two components, the building blocks upon which the rest of the practice is built. The Yamas & Niyamas outline yoga’s ethical guide to living. They are often described as ‘moral codes’ or a path to ‘right living’. The first yama is ahimsa, or non-violence.
Reframing the thought from, “why can’t you stop scrolling you stupid idiot?!” to “I want to protect my beautiful brain” seems like a really helpful and non-violent way to think about our relationship with the highly addictive technology in our pockets.
Three years ago, while visiting a friend, I started to notice something odd. Although none of us were on our devices, the conversation kept returning to reels all of us had seen, or in stranger moments, someone would share information from a reel as if it were something they simply knew or discovered in a book.
Once I noticed this phenomenon, I couldn’t look away. I noticed all the times I wanted to bring up something from instagram. I noticed when I ran into people at the grocery store the way they knew things about my life from my online presence, how conversations were increasingly revolving around our shared experiences watching viral 10 second videos online.
I noticed I had lost control of my thoughts. My brain had been hijacked by ideas and themes I’d seen on social media. My ideas were no longer my own. Often I even found myself thinking about what I would post online.
As a writer, I need to be able to hear my own thoughts. I need “cleanliness” in my mind, clarity to recognize and process my own thoughts and emotions without a lot of noisy clutter from others. Saucha, or cleanliness, is another of the recommended observances in Patanjali’s Yamas & Niyamas.
I knew I needed to reclaim control.
My process of backing away from social media has been going on for several years now. First I seldom checked facebook, until the 2024 election finally prompted me to delete facebook altogether.
Sometime last year I stopped using instagram. I maintain a practice of leaving the app off my phone. Then once a week or so, I download the app if something is needed for Boreal Bliss, to see my messages, or when I would like an occasional binge scroll. This has flipped the control back to me, as I get to choose when, and for how long, I look at the app. I am okay with binge scrolling, as long as I’m choosing that activity. (Just like I’m fine vegging and watching Netflix at the times of my choosing.)
There was a very long adjustment period, months and months of wanting to download the app or picking up my phone to see the app only to remember I no longer had it. I am not proud of this, but I also don’t have shame, because this technology is designed to monopolize our attention.
Like an addictive substance, or gambling, social media apps are designed in a way to keep us scrolling until our beautiful brains grow smoother and smoother.
Because of the way the internet has changed our society, any time we spend time materially doing something that cannot be commodified by BIG TECH, any time that technology is not monopolizing our attention and our eyeballs, is an act of resistance.
I still find myself constantly picking up my phone, even with no social media installed. Aparigraha, non-grasping or non-attachment, is another of the recommended observances in the Yamas and Niyamas. I regularly pick up my phone and open the NYT or Garmin app. My process of disentangling myself from my phone is ongoing, and a project I suspect will last a lifetime. These technologies are evolving so rapidly. They are designed to steal my attention and hijack my beautiful brain.
I am going to keep fighting to retain control of my own thoughts.
I hope you will too. There’s a beautiful world out there when you look up.
Disclaimer! As a small business, we have found that maintaining a social media presence is something we have to do. We try to limit our time on the app. Bryana also deletes and redownloads the app to maintain distance and clarity.
Social media can be a fun way to stay engaged with retreaters over the years, but we also welcome you to follow our blog as a way to read about what we’re up to if you do take breaks from social media.
*Caveat to our blog is that sometimes our emails end up in your junk/promotions folders! Drag the emails into your inbox regularly, add us as a contact, filter our emails to your inbox to begin to train your email “hey, I’d like to see this!”
