7 Ways to Embodiment During Screen Time

Is cyberspace and quarantine causing disembodiment in you?

Science shows that if there is a screen present, the human eye will draw to it — like it would to a snake. It is an evolutionary measure.

Like snakes, our pixel mills can be deadly lovers. Fortunately, the postural slaughter we sometimes commit during screen time can be hacked. With a few simple steps we can build our dear internet while not only keeping the body intact, but also optimizing it.

There is good possibility for even the paleo ambitioned beast to maintain their muscle and forestial libido despite having to spend hours on end in front of a computer. Here is a different take on how to do so; listed through the lens of modern biohacking, oriental medicines and embodiment philosophy.

1. Squatting

Don’t sit down, sings David Bowie.

The hyper-passive act of partitioning butt on cushion is equalled to being a smoker today.

Like fishermen of old tying nets, one can squat instead. Squatting is still the main geometry of sitting in many third- and second-world countries. It elongates the spine, relaxes the lumbar region, stretches the calves. Most importantly, however, is that it doesn’t weaken your hamstrings and, downstream, your diaphragmatic breathing.

Squatting can get tiring in the beginning. It is okay if you put a pillow under the buttocks at first. Even yet, start off with a mindful crosslegged position. A half lotus will do, or simply one leg tucked with the heel against the perineum. This is enough to stretch the right places in the hip region to be able to move on to the squat.

A third option is the japanese seiza. Remember the solemn tea ceremonies, where people sit piously on top of their heels? It is arguably the least comfortable out of the three, certainly to a westerner who is used to chairs. It is worth practicing, however, because once you have it down, you will sport a downright new skeleton, a better digestion and increased cerebro-spinal flow. This will significantly amp your productivity.

2. Eyeing it Correctly

In a way, it all starts and ends with a person’s two soul windows. In pathology, the eyes present with problems far beyond blurriness or myopia. The eyes are not endemic to the head — they are global to our entire nervous system. Recently, neurologist Dr. Andrew Huberman devised a pretty cool fact: the eyes are de facto the brain, its only part that shows on us.

Chinese Medicine -wise, the frontal eyes, from the cornea to the lens, connect to the liver, which is also responsible for the sinews, ligaments and tendons. That computer neck you feel going all the way down your back? It is actually eye tension zagging down your system. Because the eyes open into the connective tissues, tense eyes always mean a tense body. Relax your gaze into what Dr. Huberman calls panoramic viewing (as much as possible in the context of reading), and feel your whole body do the same via the tendons.

Next, make sure you are running a blue light filter, even during the day, as we are not benefited by staring into a fixed blue wavelength. If the light one subjects the eyes to is of a toxic, blue wavelength (isolated at 430 nm f.e.) there is more stimulation of the retina, causing us to blink less, have dryer eyes, and stiffer eyes and bodies. Which is also why one needs to make sure to have a well-massaged and relaxed neck. Especially the area around the occipital indent needs to be relaxed, or the eyes will stiffen.

Third, if you haven’t already, look into procuring a better quality screen. Preferably should it display 60 frames per second and have a refresh rate of at least 120 hz (with a graphics card that can accommodate said frequency). See, every time a screen refreshes, there is a microscopically quick darkening, and our biology gets the signal to shift from day to night. Seriously, even if we do not perceive it consciously, we are constantly engaging in peek-a-boo against our knowledge. Result? Melatonin disturbances.

A simple way to remedy eye tension instantly is simply by rubbing one’s hands and placing the palms over the eyes for a couple of minutes. Witness how the breath deepens and the tension subsides.

3. Standing

If you aren’t ready to invest in a standing desk, simply raise your computer station with an adjustable desk stand. Or build a standing desk yourself — it is great fun to be a carpenter amidst all this technocamping.

When faced with the pickle of intermittent tiring and wish to sit down, I realized I needed a bar stool to accommodate the height. The result was a chic work station with an allure of industry and woodwork.

The fun only begins here, however. For the paleo beasts out there, a downright treadmill is worth considering. While merely standing provides one with the proverbial thinking on the feet, a treadmill arrives at the kind of clearing of the head only a promenade can otherwise provide. See, the foot reflexology chart is a sea of buttons for activating all sorts of intellectual processes. Everything ranging from discarding ideas to mulling them over and associating them across categories. Awhole lot of foot tapping would be required to accomplish this.

Yet another idea presents itself for the standing desk, and it is the stationary bike. Yes, you rogered right, and before you discard the idea on the basis of feeling like a hamster in a wheel, consider how kinetically able hamsters are.

4. Undoing

After years of neck-bracing forwards and with eyes locked like a foot solider at attention, it’s time to begin working the opposite way. Turning the neck is a start. Fixing the eyes on a point in the distance retrains the retinal net. Roll the eyes. In fact, get yourself one of those apps, like Stretchly, which remind you every fifteen minutes or so to take a screen break. It has preset exercises for the eyes and you can program in your own if you feel creative.

With the rolling, blinking, closing and reverse-fixating, you just might improve your eye-sight altogether. Eye problems tend to stem from poor blood circulation — at least in the initial stages.

If you aren’t into breathing and stretching, consider an eye program like Stretchly. Onwards, qigong and yoga are your friends. With time, you will gain enough body awareness to prevent excess tension from taking place, and you will not be back to your old body again.

5. Eating

The hard yet simple truth is that cheese and bread were invented for the agricultural society. These people worked long, repetitive and incredibly blood mobilizing days, to which modern western society simply presents no equivalent. In other words, they were able to burn through the lymph stagnating qualities of these foods; in fact, they kind of benefited from their long-term energetics and slightly opiate qualities. Plus it was a symbiosis situation too: the cows got safe lands to graze on, the farmers got milk and cheese.

Today, computer workers simply cannot sustain a healthy digestion and blood- and lymph circulation on a diet of bread and cheese. It will down the line cause stasis in the body, no matter the gym attendance or otherwise paleoesque frolicking. A good idea is to make heavy grub into a once-or-twice-a-week thing like some folks do with sugar, or else to days when you hike or actually do farm.

If you drop the heavy grub at least during screen time, you will see how your brain reboots, and how your body feels freer as you digitize away.

This extends into the wider argument that computer workers, in general, need less heavy food and perhaps even less carbohydrates. Ketogenic diets so come to mind. While these can be incredibly effective in terms of energy and health, beware of their potential detriment to the catabolic body types (Google endomorph or vata body type), as it may overtax adrenal glands. After all, you need the fat around your waist to have something to go on. You Paris Hiltons out there should practice caution with keto.

6. Earthing

Although less so in the advent of wireless, computer work stations tend to be ensconced in shrubs of cords. These emit electromagnetic fields which take your precious electrons away from you, and you need those for, at the very least, the work you are performing at the moment. Conducting away excess electricity from the body to a grounded wire has demonstrable health to it. This is beautifully laid out in the documentary The Earthing Movie, wherein a National Geographic correspondent reports on people’s ailments going way after they started touching earth or connecting to the earthing knob in grounded outlets.

The physics of this is simple: the nucleus of a cell holds positive charge, while the cytoplasm outside it holds a negative one. Electromagnetic fields deprive the cytoplasm of free electrons and so lower or downright make positive the charge there. This results in in, at best, excess calcium and inflammation, and at worst, chronic disease.

Writes Oram Miller, BBEC, EMRS, “One important characteristic about the earthing mat that numerous studies have shown to the research team of the Earthing Institute is that when you are earthed, that is, when you are in contact with an earthing mat on your bed or chair, your body becomes what is termed a Faraday Cage. Electrons from the earthing mat align themselves on your skin protecting your cells and internal organs inside the body from adverse effects from outside EMFs. That is explained to be the mechanism by which the earthing mat helps those who use it.”

7. Environment

The tech world is infused with predominantly metal. UsrX people know a good enviroment when they see it. Still, many digitalizers out there don’t realize how their subconscious mind catches the external environment’s colors, smells and shapes, and how this can effect in certain moods and conditions.

Computers are built with metal, chords connect by it, and this evinces a serious futurism to inspire those bold AI dreams. In Feng Shui terms, however, metal can present aggravations we wouldn’t necessarily want in creative work. First off, its associated climate is drought, which directly opposes the muse. Think about it: we say creative juices. Not pop tarts, sands, hay or winds. The latter of which, by the way, can be good for creativity in moderation, as it helps with free association. Wind associates with the liver, which is also the house of creativity.

To counter too much metal, introduce wood to the working environment. Modern rustic, wood leaning- industrial or unequivocal jungle themes are your friends here. Add a little of the fire element to ensure the spark stays alit and perhaps some water, like an indoor fountain, to balance with purling wisdom. Don’t forget plant life, whose soil pertains to earth and communication. At the same time is it a bed for yet more of nature’s expressive qualities — branches, leaves and flowers. Not to mention that they oxygenate your atmosphere. Did you know that all it takes is ten snake plants to oxynegate a small, air-sealed room?

The ways to remain an embodied and libidinal animal in the ever increasing cyber space are many. The most important thing is to be mindful of the body, for at the end of the day, it is thanks to its towering glory that we get the chance to host such efficient intellects.