The way our culture and technology have developed it is possible and easy to spend days face to face with our smart machines indoors. While we connect with people digitally, on phone, Facebook, through pictures and video, there is an increasing tendency to move through our days with our headphones on, viewing small, medium, and large screens while avoiding eye contact or communion with the environment or the actual living, breathing human beings around us. Connecting Time, the sixth of the wellness practices we've been exploring, is an antidote to isolation and alienation.
Connecting time allows us to feel that we belong to a larger whole than the body we inhabit. We are more than thoughts emerging from a body. We are whole beings connected to the tribe of humanity and the ecosystem and planet from which it sprung and from which it receives its sustenance. How often are you aware of the people who grow, pack, deliver, unpack, and display your food for purchase? What about the mechanics that keep the subway and highway systems running, the individuals who clean it, the men and women who plan and manage it? How often do you allow yourself to feel the rain? To soak in the warmth of the sunshine or the cooling effect of the breeze? To wonder at the spiders that catch the ants and other smaller insects in their webs to eat? Whether we are aware of it or not we exist in a complex and interconnected web of life, all mutually arising and interdependent. Connecting Time is when we allow ourselves to feel this, to appreciate it, and to act, moved by appreciation.
Our brains are biologically wired to connect. When we choose to be intentional about feeling the connection we are capable of within ourselves and between others and our planet we experience being grounding. This grounding stabilizes our moods by honoring our biological wiring to be connected. We are not alone. We are supported at all times, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. When we are conscious of the connections we are more present, powerful. and purposeful in our ability to make and receive contributions to and from others. Connecting time honors our power, purpose, abilities, and the reality of our existence.
When we honor our connections we experience gratitude for being alive on this beautiful planet of ours. Gratitude gives birth to generosity and engenders a desire to provide and protect that which nourishes us. This desire to provide and protect moves us to give back to that which gives forth, a desire otherwise known as generosity.
Through Connecting time we interact with people in positive ways. We support their happiness, their success, their joy and health. We become selfish in the most positive of ways...we want what is best for others so they can continue to love and support us! This kind of selfishness is a win/win proposition. It is the basis of sustainable contribution to others and to our planet. This is a different and more enlivening way of approaching our world than the usual competitive environment our modern society projects.
When it comes to human interactions, on the simplest level connecting time is giving yourself space to be with those you care about in-person when possible, free of distractions (ex. mobile phones). Being together in person adds dimensions of experience that are absent with digitized communication, like touch, smell, body language, and eye contact. These additional dimensions of in-person communion utilize important brain capabilities which are underutilized and can atrophy when the main form of connection is digital. Whenever possible make a daily practice of connecting in-person with other human beings.
Connecting time with the planet is getting out in nature, whether it is a park, a forest, or beach and feeling the vastness of the sky, the warmth of the sun, the movement of the clouds, the brightness and changing faces of the moon, the trees, plants, insects, birds, fish, and other mammals with which we share the planet. Connecting time with the planet is also caring for it...disposing of litter in appropriate places, finding ways to generate less of it (ex.reusable cups and shopping bags), picking up and disposing of other's litter that either never made it in or somehow made it out of appropriate receptacles, and reducing your carbon footprint by using less wisely.
Connecting time is about taking the idea of "giving and taking" and reworking it to be "giving and receiving". Be aware, know intellectually, and feel emotionally that both receiving and giving are happening. You receive so very much from society and our planet every moment...receive appreciatively and give back generously. You will be creating a sustainable cycle of mutual benefit! Go on, be selfish and give yourself Connecting Time to be and create wellness.
Post by Lisa Brick, CPC, ELI-MP, L.Ac.
Co-Founding Acupuncturist, Professional Life + Divorce Coach
For more information please email Lisa Brick at: lisabrick@powerandpurposecoaching.com