I confess that usually I hear “Lululemon” as part of a cutting social observation of life in Silicon Valley, in a sentence with “Range Rover” and “Scandinavian stroller.” But it turns out that the company has a rather interesting blog, which features a post from earlier this year about yogis talking about their digital practices. Some of the rules people report they follow:
Be mindful of your breathing as you open your inbox and practice deep breathing. Email apnea occurs when your breath shortens before you open your inbox. – Scott Rosenberg, Grist.org Executive Editor
Don’t use your iPhone as your alarm. If you use your iPhone, you immediately go from sleeping to your digital stream of information with no time in between to wake up in the “real world.” – Congressman Tim Ryan
Meditation > Facebook. The feeling of gratification you get through interactions on a Facebook update could also be achieved through meditation. – Kaitlin Quistgaard, Editor-in-Chief of Yoga Journal and panel moderator
Do one minute of yoga and one minute of mindfulness a day. Why? Because everyone has 60 seconds (and you will likely do more than this naturally). – Gopi Kallayil, Google
All are very sensible, but I admit I’m subject to confirmation bias: I open the first chapter of my book with a description of email apnea, while another chapter features some interviews with Buddhist monks about their social media use.
I’m not sure I agree with the second. Personally, I have no trouble not immediately checking my email when I use my iPhone as an alarm, and I like being able to set three alarms 15 minutes apart just in case. Still, maybe Ryan’s observation explains why I’ve been looking at Braun’s new version of its classic alarm clock: sleep and waking are important enough to deserve their own special technologies and small rituals, and shouldn’t just automatically be folded into your everyday material and technical life. Using your smartphone as your alarm clock threatens to just throw you right back into your normal day, if not your digital stream, too quickly.
There’s also a post today, a meditation for email overload.