Bored to Life

Dear Friend,

Happy spring! Time for restarting or refreshing any process that needs to be processed. This time of year usually inspires me to try new things and explore what things are like beyond the periphery of my comfort zone. Along that line, I am very happy to offer some yoga events that fit the spring spirit. Please check them out below and see if anything might resonate. I would love to share these things with you!

This month I would like to share with you some thoughts regarding a very special state of mind that is vital for our wellbeing and I feel is in grave danger of becoming extinct from the world - boredom!

I was raised in an era when sources of distraction were very scarce, during most of my early childhood there was one television set in my house which everyone had to share and to be honest there were very few entertaining shows to watch anyway where I grew up there was really only one TV channel to choose from. I did listen to the radio a lot, particularly to music. At some point we got a VCR player which opened some opportunities for movies that had to be rented from the video store. The lack of distraction options led me to spend many hours a day in one kind of boredom state or another and I had to use my imagination for entertainment, hang our with friends, or figure out new ways to play with old toys if I wanted to escape the discomfort of boredom.

I clearly remember that relieving myself from the feeling of being bored was one of the main sources of motivation of my early life, it was such a common daily experience that I constantly tried to find new ways to combat it. Looking back I realize that it fundamentally led me to developing my imagination and thinking skills and allowed me countless hours of wondering off in my mind to a point where that was a pleasant way of spending time.

You may wonder if I am trying to promote thinking as something worthwhile to work on, after all, yoga is essentially about detaching from the content of thoughts and developing the capacity for introspective awareness. This is true to some extent, but yoga is also about facing reality as is and not imposing some ideals on it. The human mind is a thinking mind by nature, it's our default settings, trying to suppress thoughts or push them away is a lost cause, a lot more beneficial is to channel them in ways that make them more useful and enriching our inner world than causing us misery or suffering. The trick to enjoying good thinking is to avoid identifying with the content of the thoughts to a point where we are trapped in them without being able to give space to other, or even opposite, thoughts. At the same time, we also want to develop the capacity to be fully present, not absent minded, when we choose to be, which we de through the practice of yoga and meditation.

Most of us are not able to live our life in a continuous state of meditative absorption in the present moment, even if we practice meditation regularly, though the benefits of that practice are enormous. We can also benefit a lot from improving the art of thinking well so we can spend our life enjoying ourselves instead of living in internal conflict and distress.

Why do we get bored? What's the purpose of boredom?

Boredom is an evolutionary discomfort, it tells us that whatever we are doing with our time is not bringing us any value or worth. 20,000 years ago when we where hunting for food but no animals were in sight boredom would kick in, which would be an uncomfortable signal telling us to go do something else. During that time when survival was our main purpose, we needed to find something else productive to do in order to enhance our lives and increase our odds of survival. In that specific case it may be looking for other sources of food such as berries or wild potatoes. If we didn't have that uncomfortable cue of boredom we might be sitting in that hill waiting and waiting and eventually starve to death.

Today, when we feel the discomfort of boredom all we have to do is reach for the ultimate stimulation device in our pocket, or jump onto a computer, or turn on the TV, or play a video game, or listen to a podcast. The average person today spends 11-13 hours per day engaged with digital media, when we feel the discomfort of boredom we have an easy escape out of it at the palm of our hand.

Think of the magnitude of that shift in the human experience, for 2.5 million years we had nothing digital in our lives, now this has effectively become our life.

What are the benefits to occasionally lean into the discomfort of boredom?

From a simplified neuroscience perspective we basically have two modes of attention - focused and unfocused mode. Focused mode is at anytime we are focused on information coming in from the outside world, such as reading a book, watching TV or having a conversation. It is something of a work state, like lifting a weight. Unfocused mode, also called the default mode network, occurs when we're not paying attention, it's basically inward mind wondering. It is a state that restores and rebuilds the resources we need in order to work better and more efficiently in the focused state. Spending time in the unfocused mode is actually critical for our productivity, it allows us to tap into creativity, process complicated information and much more.

The attention we are giving to digital media isn't free, it is spent in focused mode when we eliminate boredom by burying our mind in our phone, TV, or computer. We are using a lot of brain bandwidth and wasting lots of our valuable resources. It is like going to the gym and doing one rep of exercise after the other, we eventually get tired and our muscles get weak. Modern life is working the hell out of our brain, we are in a constant state of mental exhaustion.

Research shows clear link between modern excessive stimulation that comes from overuse of digital media to depression, anxiety, ADHD, and many other unhealthy mental or psychological conditions. Many of us these days feel an overall dissatisfaction from life, we tend to be increasingly picky, impatient, distracted, and demanding, and often feel that life goes by too quick. We are missing out on so much beauty that can be experienced in our life when we take our eyes off the screen.

Digital media is obviously not all bad. We can use our phones to call loved ones and deepen our social connections, we can use a banking app to send money to someone in need, or kindle to read a good book, we can even use a meditation app and start a meditation practice. However, smart phones are largely tools that harvest attention, we use them mostly for distraction purposes.

Embracing the discomfort of boredom has many upsides. The main one is that it reduces stress and burn out, likely due to the rest and pause qualities that it gives us, removing us from the hyper stimulating media that tends to keep us on edge. Research going back to the 1950's suggests it can also increase creativity, new research has backed that up. One strange study took a group of people and bored the hell out of them, they came up with much more and better answers on a creativity test then a group of people that messed around on digital devices before they took their test.

A disclaimer here is important, it is not that boredom makes us more creative, it just tells us to do something, when that something is letting the mind search for something interesting or productive rather than flooding it with the exact same intake of media that everyone else is consuming, we begin to think, quite literally, on a different wave length. That's what creativity requires.

A little spring challenge

We all know that we should use our phone less, that's obvious, no one needs or wants to be told to use their phone less. The problem is that when we remove an hour of phone screen time we get bored and then we watch Netflix or surf the internet. And so, instead of thinking less phone it might be better to think more boredom. I recommend to try and intentionally mind wonder every day for 10-20 minutes with the point not being to go off to nowhere land but rather not focusing on anything, to lightly observe where the mind goes, allowing the brain to ruminate, to run free a bit without getting completely lost in thought. Maybe even keep a pad of paper nearby because you might get some interesting ideas :)

If you find yourself curious about these kinds of topics - join a workshop, a retreat, or any other event on offer.

Looking forward to sharing yoga with you in February.

Wishing everyone peace and happiness,

Oren

♡

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