Mindful Monday!
Counseling Services
Mindful Technology
2 tips for Creating a Healthier Relationship with your Phone:
1. When you pick up your gadgets, do it mindfully.
- The beeps and buzzes of our devices can be reminders to take a breath or check in with ourselves.
- Notice the body and the mind’s reactions to each beep and buzz of the phone, the urges and emotions as they arise.
- The objects of attention become our emotional response to the silence (anticipation, relief), our emotional response to the beeps, chirps, songs, and buzzes as they arise (irritation, curiosity, anxiety), and whatever urges arise due to the sounds.
2. Build mindful reminders into your devices.
- Make the background wallpaper some kind of reminder to breathe or check in.
- How many times a day do we type a password into our devices? This too can be a reminder if we make our password breathe or something similar.
- There are also plenty of free websites, apps, and podcasts offer guided meditations and discussions of meditation as well.
- Shut off automatic passive alerts and push notifications, and instead make the active choice to check in with messages and updates.
5 Ways to Organize Your Phone
5 Tips to Reorganize Your Phone
Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google and founder of Time Well Spent, offers these 5 tips for re-organizing your phone to create a less distracting experience:
Turn off notifications from machines.
- Could you turn off almost all notifications on your device? That way, when your device buzzes, you know it’s because a real human wants your attention, not a dating app.
Set up custom notifications for individuals.
- You can set custom vibrations for different people on your contact list.
Only put tools on your home screen.
- Harris refers to the home screen as “the most important real estate in the attention economy.” As an exercise, he suggests wiping apps from your home screen, except for essential tools like maps, calendars, settings, and messages so that you’re not tempted to linger on your phone.
Scramble your apps regularly.
- When you’re in the habit of knowing where to find your apps, you’re going to end up in TikTok purgatory more often. You can interrupt your habit-forming brain by shifting apps around, which forces you to make a more conscious choice before clicking through to the app.
Move all non-tool apps to a folder on your second screen.
- From there, you can use your phone’s search function to access email, for instance.
A Practice to Be Mindful with Your Phone
This practice is about opening up to our experience of how we make use of this piece of powerful technology. Instead of closing down our awareness and letting this device’s screen become a “rabbit hole” that we fall mindlessly into, are we willing to make a habit of seeing the negative states it can draw out of us.
Are we willing to make a mindfulness practice out of the very thing which seems to be pulling us toward dangerous degrees of mindlessness?
Pick up your phone and try the following:
Sit comfortably, in an upright posture
- With your phone in the palm of your hand which you can rest gently on your lap.
- Keep your eyes open for this meditation.
Turn your phone on
- Do not open any particular app.
- Just let your thumb hover over top the screen.
Take in a full, deep breath into the belly
- Let yourself feel the nuances of how the breath enters and leaves the body.
- For at least a couple of minutes or more, practice mindfulness of the sensations of your breathing.
- Simply place your attention (even though you’re looking at your phone) on the feeling of your breath coming in and out.
- If your mind drifts away just gently bring awareness back to the breath.
Is there any impulse?
- Do you notice drawing your thumb of finger to open an app, check email, or some other aspect of your phone?
- Is there a want showing up in you—a sense of being pulled toward something?
- Get curious as to what this want, this desire, actually is in this moment.
- What are its components in your mind and bodily sensations?
- Notice the pull and see if you are willing to just ride the impulse without following it.
- Is this want actually the driving need it seems to be? . . .
Come back to noticing the breath
- Silently ask: Is there something about looking at your phone that stirs frustration, angst or even anger?
- Are you reminded of someone or something that feels worthy of blame?
- Are you feeling frustrated over not immediately opening and using your phone?
- Can you just notice all that’s showing up right now
Come back again to the sensation of the breath and ask:
- Is there anything about looking at your phone that worries you?
- Is there an internal itch—a restless, crawling feeling?
- Label this as “restlessness” and watch the energy as it moves through mind and body.
- Just let it be.
- Does it change or stay the same?
And back to the breath yet again
- As you hold your phone, do you notice any sagging, depleted, or dull feelings?
- Is there a fatigue that sets in as you just sit looking at your phone, trying to keep awareness on the sensations of breathing?
And one last time
- Come back to the sensory details of your breathing.
- Really look at your phone and wonder:
- Does looking at this small object cast any doubt on how you manage your daily life, your attention?
- How does this small, thin rectangle make you feel about yourself, and your sense of control over your life?
- See if you can just stay with these thoughts and the feeling they’re joined to in the body and let them be.
- Can you see them as the mere story, the scripted narrative, that they really are?
Smiling Mind
Available for iOS, Android, and web
The app features hundreds of meditations that are organized into structured programs like Mindful Foundations (35 sessions), Sleep (6 sessions), Digital Detox (8 sessions), and Stress Management (10 sessions).
Most meditations are in the five- to fifteen-minute range, with a few practices up to 45 minutes for advanced meditators. Smiling Mind also offers bite-sized meditations between 2 to 5 minutes for moments when you’re in need of a quick, mindful pause in the day.
Insight Timer
Available for iOS, Android, and web
Insight Timer has a huge library of content: over 80,000 free guided meditations from over 10,000 teachers on topics like stress, relationships, healing, sleep, creativity, and more.
After you finish a meditation, you’ll learn exactly how many people were meditating “with you” during that time—and by setting your location, you can even see meditators nearby and what tracks they’re listening to.
Once you find a teacher you enjoy, you can follow them to make sure you don’t miss any new content. You can also tune in to free talks for life advice and inspiration. You can even sign up to Circle for Teams, which allows you to create circles/groups to meditate in real-time with friends or colleagues.
If you prefer a quieter meditation, however, you can simply set a timer and meditate to intermittent bells, calming ambient noise, or soothing music.
MyLife Medication (StopBreatheThink)
Available for iOS and Android
If other apps expect you to dive right in, MyLife (formerly titled Stop, Think, & Breathe) wants to create a more deliberate, intentional experience.
Each day when you open the app, you’re asked to “Take a Breath” and invited to check in with yourself—to rate your mind and body on a scale of “rough” to “great,” and note up to five emotions you’re feeling from their lists of words.
Then, MyLife recommends guided sessions like Basic Breath, Mindful Walk, and Love Your Body tailored to how you feel.
The app features around 45 free sessions. A progress page keeps track of how your mind and body have been feeling over time, and your most common emotions (before and after meditating, when the app invites you to check in again).
MyLife is helpful if you want to be more aware of your day-to-day well-being and see how meditation is benefitting you.
UCLA Mindful
Available for iOS and Android
Developed by the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the app features about a dozen meditations of different types in English and Spanish.
You can learn to focus on your breath, your body, or sounds; work with difficult emotions; and cultivate loving-kindness in sessions ranging from 3 to 19 minutes long.
If you’re new to mindfulness, you might choose to take advantage of their Getting Started section, which offers information on what mindfulness is, how to choose a meditation, which posture is best for your practice, and what research-backed benefits you might expect from it.
If you’re looking for an app that is heavily grounded in the science of mindfulness, you can put your trust in UCLA Mindful.
Healthy Minds Program
Available for iOS and Android
The framework of the app’s mindfulness and well-being training is organized into four pillars: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose.
Each pillar consists of three to five parts, and each part contains three series and multiple sessions within. You have a choice of either a Sitting or Active type of practice. Practices include guidance for being mindful while you exercise, or during your commute—and you can customize the length of time (five minutes to 30 minutes).
At times the podcast-style app may encourage more thinking compared to typical guided meditations, but for the listener who is seeking guided meditations with the greater goal to increase awareness, cognition, and well-being, Healthy Minds Program app may be just the ticket.
Counseling Services
To inquire about an appointment, or for any questions or concerns, please contact the office by calling 309-341-7492 or sending an email to counseling@knox.edu.
Current Staff:
Megan McGruder – Interim Director, Counselor, Outreach
Vicki Swedlund – Administrative Assistant
Rhonda Nelson – Counselor
Erica Taylor – Counselor
Gia Washington – Counselor
Crystal Williams – Counselor
Email: counseling@knox.edu
Website: https://www.knox.edu/offices/health-and-counseling-center/counseling-services
Location: Furrow Hall 175 West Knox St.
Phone: 309-341-7492
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