Digital detox: Australians seek out nature properties to overcome technology burnout

[proverbialwisdom]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-19/australians-seek-out-nature-retreats-for-digital-detox/7041902

Digital detox: Australians seek out nature properties to overcome technology burnout

By national technology reporter Jake Sturmer and Tahlia Roy
Posted yesterday at 1:53pm

Holiday home rental companies say they have seen a spike in the number of customers seeking digital detoxes, allowing savvy homeowners to offer their houses to families and professionals seeking to disconnect.

Anton Stanish from holiday home website Stayz.com.au said his company had seen a 10 per cent rise in owners offering nature properties.

"We've got some fantastic properties all up and down the coast, like Mollymook, where phone coverage is not actually that great and it's marketed as a positive rather than a negative," he said.

Psychologists estimate the average person consumes 174 newspapers' worth of information a day, and while it has positives in bringing people closer together, it can result in distraction and difficulty focusing.

Psychologist Jocelyn Brewer said when people overuse technology and are constantly connected it can create a fear of missing out (FOMO).

"There's all of these fantastic things happening that we can't do a million things at once and it can just basically create a bit of burnout within our brain," she said.

Sydney scriptwriting consultant Karel Segers is going offline at a meditation retreat in the New South Wales Blue Mountains this summer, to escape the professional demands of being digitally connected.

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[DavidDvorkin]

1. Do they go to the rental homes on foot?

For that matter, houses are a form of technology.

This is an example of people feeling oppressed by a new technology but not by the older technologies that they grew up with.

[proverbialwisdom]

2. That's your takeaway, really? Hey now, check this out.

http://sites.uci.edu/mindfulhs/2015/02/25/skeptical-of-mindfulness/



Skeptical of Mindfulness?
Are you skeptical about what mindfulness can do for you? If so, you’re not alone.

A recent CBS 60 Minutes story (see below) featured correspondent Anderson Cooper seeking to understand what all the hype is about. He registered for a weekend-long mindfulness retreat, and was initially dismayed to learn that he needed to surrender his cell phone.

Cooper spent the retreat with many other professionals (neuroscientists, business leaders, Silicon Valley executives), although participants had minimal interaction with one another. Their focus was on experiencing mindfulness practices facilitated by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is largely credited with bringing mindfulness into mainstream, Western culture.

Walking, eating, breathing . . . while attempting to engage in each of these activities with full attention, people notice that their minds wander. Often they ruminate about the past or worry about the future, creating constant narratives in their heads that actually create stress. During mindfulness practice, participants are instructed to notice this occurrence, then gently refocus on the present moment.

Through brain imagery, neuroscientists are demonstrating functional and structural changes that occur as people develop their capacity to be mindful. Following his retreat, Anderson Cooper paid a visit to one of these researchers, Dr. Judson Brewer at University of Massachusetts. Using an electroencephalography (EEG) machine to measure the brain’s electric potentials, Brewer asked Cooper to initially think of an anxiety-producing memory (which activated the stress center of the brain), followed by a period of mindfulness (which quickly quieted the activity down).

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MORE: http://sites.uci.edu/mindfulhs/