Somatic Therapy Benefits: How a Digital Detox Can Reduce Stress and Improve Mental Well-being
Understanding Somatic therapy
They say this is an era of metal doom, the world is suffering from a variety of mental illness. There are over 280 million people who are depressed. The number of people suffering anxiety disorders is over 301 million. Of those many are those who are undiagnosed and can’t afford therapy.
There have been several healing activities that consist of both medical and holistic approaches, like. Somatic therapy is one of them.
The theory behind somatic therapy is that it believes that stress and trauma get tucked up in the body, and our body embodies it.
By understanding how our body behaves like tight muscles and a change in heart beat or breathing related problems, we can understand these sentons and encounter this stress by releasing these feelings and ultimately feeling better.
Thus, Somatic therapy is not like the typical talk-based therapy, but it focuses on the connection of body and mind. Somatic therapy pays deep attention to the sensation as well. Somatic therapy involves breathing techniques, touch therapy, gentle movements, and body exercises, it consists of techniques of grounding yourself, it also consists of imagery that enhances the grounding techniques.
What is a digital detox?
Whenever you open your smartphone to check the notification, you get a sense of pleasure. Be a notification of a text, a like, or anything else. This process triggers dopamine in our body. But the problem is, dopamine being the happy hormone is meant to be released when our body is in extreme euphoria or it achieves something. For example, getting a new job, scoring good marks, or witnessing a new experience. This is the same hormone that motivates us to do something. But by hyper release of it, our dopamine levels are saturated and we become stuck in a constant abyss of sadness. In simple words, we have achieved our happiness levels and we can’t be any happier. This happens due to doom scrolling, smart, and not the regulatory use of the phone.
To overcome this, there is only one significant method, and that is a digital detox. Digital detox is all about flushing the extra unnecessary information from our minds. This is done by controlling the overuse of the smartphone and anything related to social media or entertainment.
The link between digital overload and stress
Increased anxiety and irritability:
Excessive use of smart phones and other digital devices can cause difficulties. The internet is not filtered like the regular television, it contains information floating around, and all types of people exist there. Some content or remarks can make us uneasy and put us in an uncomfortable position. The social media has created a virtual world that has become a hub for unrealistic comparison, and thus this increases the overall stress and anxiety of the consumer.
Disturbed Sleep patterns:
Continuous use of a phone can cause irregular functioning of the sleep patterns in our body. This is due to the malfunctioning of the melatonin due to excessive emission of the blue light by the digital devices. This can alter sleep patterns and ultimately also cause sleep disorders.
Reduced focus and mindfulness:
It is not a fact that excessive use of smartphones and social media can reduce the attention span of the user to a great extent. The new format of content that is mostly about engagement for the first 10 seconds has made us lose focus. This also increased the chances of ADHD in today’s generation.
How to Incorporate a Digital Detox with Somatic Therapy?
Setting boundaries:
Suddenly cutting off the screen time is highly impractical and also difficult. Thus, starting a digital detox shall always begin with graduation. This could be done by setting screen times, and limits for the devices. All devices come with the features that enable the user to control the access given to the apps, this access could be slotted to specific times. This way we can easily manage how much time we spend on our smartphones.
Practice Daily Grounding:
After managing the screen time, we can allot the timings for our daily practices. Instead of checking the smartphone for any upcoming notification, one can engage in a somatic activity like deep belly breathing, imagery, manifestation, etc. Daily grounding practices make one habitual of this, and we break the habit of smartphone addiction.
Engage in Offline Activities:
There are many offline activities that we have forgotten in the digital age, activities like walking, running. for entertainment and information, one can switch to reading books of one’s favorite genre. We can also do other activities like cooking, gardening, etc. Thus, a simple somatic exercise can not only help in maintaining the digital detox but can help people cure from chronic mental health-related problems. Somatic exercises are simple and can be undertaken by anyone.
