30 Days Later

hello, dearest ones.

I’m fresh from my month long hiatus from social media and ready to report some of the data from this experiment. This is the second year I took an intentional break from posting, checking, logging in, looking at Instagram and Facebook. (I am also on Tumblr and Twitter, but I hardly ever look at those, so I don’t really include them in this experiment. There were some auto-posts to my Twitter feed while I was away. I think. I mean, I think… that should tell you about my level of engagement over there.) Last year, my hiatus was necessary: I gave myself an iphone injury from too much engagement with that device. I recall feeling a profound sense of spaciousness and relief as I logged out and deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from my phone in August of 2015. At the close of the month, I reflected on the month away and set a few guidelines for my social media use.

I think they worked, because this year’s hiatus was COMPLETELY different.

Whereas last year’s hiatus was physically necessary and yielded immediate results, this year was more subtle. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me, as that is the way things tend to go, but this year’s social media sabbatical was all about prana for me. And another thing, I was ready for a month away, but I don’t actually think it was a month away from social media that I actually craved (more about that toward the end of this piece). When I logged off on May 31, I felt a little wistful. Like I was going to truly miss checking in with friends around the world for a month and miss seeing the world through their eyes.

But also, excited to see what would happen.

Since my relationship with Facebook and Instagram continues to be quite different, I think it is useful to write about my observations specific to each platform and then more generally. Prior to the great logoff of 2016, my engagement with Instagram was to post about 6 times per day and to check in periodically to respond to comments and to connect with friends. Although last year I set the intention to only respond and write to others using my computer, I was not doing that exclusively since I love emojis so much. Unlike 2015, I was not super hard on myself about responding to comments right away or even making comments on others’ photos. (This was a really hard practice for me in the beginning, since I really want to make sure everyone knows that I see them. I love them. Ultimately, however, this has given me more time and space for some deeper connections.)

For the past year, I have hung out on my personal Facebook page considerably less. I post there less frequently, and when I do, I try to share what my friends are doing and making. Occasionally, I post photos there and even less frequently, I post links to events I’m hosting. There is something about the energy on Facebook (outside of very specific, private groups) that tends to be negative and harsh, even when people are sharing positive news. This is not to say that I’m avoiding reality or the hard things that are actually happening in the world: I just haven’t been engaging with that as much on Facebook.  On my Kelly Sunrose Yoga page, I’ll share a few times a week and try to respond to people who post there within the day.

In addition to Facebook and Instagram, I’m also on flickr, tumblr, twitter and LinkedIn (barely, though. I have no idea what my login information is.), but I don’t hang out on these platforms like I once did; flickr was HUGE for me from 2007 to 2011; tumblr was my jammm 2008-2011; I was an early-adopter on twitter, and peaked there in 2010.) These sites aren’t part of my daily flow for connection with others, so I didn’t include them in the hiatus.

What were the days and weeks like without Facebook and Instagram?

Even though I didn’t feel the huge, life-altering exhale of relief when I logged off of Facebook, I was really happy not to check in there. I didn’t miss it. I didn’t wonder what people were up to on Facebook. I didn’t have to hold myself back from logging in. I did, however, break my hiatus on Facebook for my birthday and to check a few details for my 20th high school reunion. On my birthday, I really wanted to acknowledge that I *feel* and love all of my people. So I just posted that. Then, on June 30, I checked out some details about my reunion, which was on July 2. This actually lead to a more practical or gross realization that people who are not on Facebook at all must miss out on a lot of details. I vowed to make sure I’m sending all pertinent information out in my email newsletters, not just on social media.

I DID MISS INSTAGRAM!! It was harder to be away from that place and my beloved people over there. My camera has become a way of extending my eye… widening and narrowing my vision at the same time, somehow. There were two interesting facets of this observation that opened up this month: 1) looking for its own sake takes more effort than looking for the sake of composing a photo (WOW!); 2) taking photos that are *just for me* is incredibly fortifying and gratifying. I found myself feeling total delight taking candid photos of my beloved friends and self that I knew were *just for me* and not for sharing at all. These are both practices I intend to explore deeper in the coming months.

Realizations

I realized that online, there are so many opportunities to grasp for truth and meaning and order outside of ourselves, and to let our prana leak all over the place by dispersing our concentration, intention and time. These twin byproducts of the social media era are totally entangled with our practice of aparigraha and brahmacharya, and I plan to dive deeper into that during some upcoming filming I’ll be doing for Yoga Anytime. (So stay tuned!)  When we *look* or consume images and words of others compulsively, we consistently seek inspiration, comfort, stabilization, love, self (even) from outside ourselves. When we post to an audience (or potential audience), we give a little bit of our life-force away.

This month invited me to create, to practice, to linger just for me. Not truly just for me, because everything sifts and sorts its way into everything else, but there was a delay between the making, the expression, the sharing and the resulting connection. There is an immediacy (and urgency) to the posting or sharing something and immediately seeing likes and faves and comments come in that stimulates the nervous system in a particular way that I find a little distracting. Like the response pulls me out of the work itself. And although the connection is beautiful, the work itself is what connects. I think.

But my aim is not to completely eschew technology and become a luddite in my cave. The data is just that. And I choose to regard the data as an invitation to go deeper, to try harder, to connect AND still concentrate. This is the work. And I love the work. These practices: Twitter’s character limits, the photo on Instagram, our thoughts about the current state of the world on Facebook, encourage us to slow down, to notice, to record our impressions of our relationship with the present moment. So the work, of course, as it is with most things, is to find that balance of enough, but not too much; effort with ease; practice without attachment; expansion and contraction.

The observations offer perspective to inform the next experiment.

Grateful for the opportunity to grow, to share, to connect, to be even the slightest bit useful.

Thank you for being here.

Practical matters:

I mentioned that this year was a much more mindful year for my technology use. Here are some specifics that helped me:

• Confession: on Facebook, I use a feed blocker. This is an extension for Google Chrome that hides your feed while you use Facebook; when you log on, you see the status update space; your notifications, events and messages; everything that you would ordinarily see on the FB, except no feed. This was huge. I seek out what I want to see on Facebook, and not the other way around. GAME-CHANGER!
• No social media notifications.
• I took email off my phone. (Note: when traveling, I put it back on.)
• I do not use my phone in bed. I plug it in and put it in a drawer far away from me during the evening hours.
• I gave myself permission to respond to comments and social media requests in my own time. This was really hard, but necessary and so good.
• I gave myself permission to only engage on the platform(s) that *feels* correct for me.

Please share your story: where are you on social media now? Have you ever taken a hiatus? What did you notice?

Next steps:

• I’d like to try to step away from work and technology for an entire month. Maybe December. Total reset.
• Looking for its own sake is my new practice, and the delight of taking photos that are just for me.

p.s. Our fall retreat is filling up. JOIN US in Sedona, Arizona. October 13-16. Read all about it here.

{BIG PHOTO: art by philip beasley, photo by sean salmon. CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE.}