Just Be Mindful

Mindfulness has hit the headlines recently for all the benefits it can offer, no matter how young or old you might be. I’ve been interested in mindfulness for a few years but until recently, I’d never properly tried to incorporate it into my daily life. So the intention of my ‘Just Be’ campaign is to explore, trial and review different aspects of mindfulness whilst taking inspiration from my local community about how to live more mindfully.
As part of this campaign, I’ve been trying out some weekly ‘mindfulness experiments’ (just like science experiments but with far less need for the white coat and goggles). These have been designed to improve my quality of life in a quick and easy way. I kept them simple because adding more tasks to a seemingly already endless ‘to do’ list seemed to defeat my whole mindful agenda!
So far, I’ve experimented with a night-time digital detox, daily meditation, mindful eating and mindful movement and I’m currently trying to deal with my smartphone addiction!
As a starter for ten, here’s a quick summary of how I got on with the night-time digital detox.
Bedtime Blackout
In this (ahem) highly scientific experiment, I banned myself from looking at my phone/tablet or TV at least 30 minutes before I went to bed. I also put my phone out of arm’s reach so that as and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I couldn’t start scrolling through social media. Sounds pretty simple, so why bother?

Apparently the artificial blue light emitted from phones and tablets (any type of digital screen really) increases alertness and suppresses the hormone melatonin by up to 22% which unsurprisingly has a negative impact on sleep (see www.itstimetologoff.com).
I don’t know about you but I’m really bad for looking at my phone just before bed and/or watching something on my tablet. It’s become a bit of an addiction and before I know it I’ve wasted another 30 minutes just scrolling through news sites/mindlessly looking on social media.
So just before going to sleep I’m: a) more alert; and b) often riled or concerned about something I’ve read in the news. I’m also very bad for scrolling through my phone if I wake up and can’t get back to sleep — gone are the days of counting sheep!
So how did I get on?
Pretty well overall! I’ll admit there was one night where my phone addiction was too strong and I was happily scrolling through a news site to update myself on the latest celebrity gossip (a bad habit and not very mindful — shh, don’t tell anyone) before I realised with horror what I was doing! Determined not to jeopardise my experiment, I then stayed up for an extra half an hour to read my book which largely contradicted the aim of getting more sleep…!
Anyway, aside from a celebrity gossip related hiccup, I can honestly say that I generally slept a bit better for ditching the devices and when I did wake up, I managed to go back to sleep relatively easily. This was good news since previously I’d been looking at my phone for up to an hour in the middle of the night, convinced that I couldn’t get back to sleep without some sort of distraction. Ironic eh?
So I definitely think there’s something in the suggestion that the light emitted from the various types of screens and their addictive nature, is a potentially big barrier to waking up feeling rested and refreshed the next morning.
I wouldn’t say I woke up jumping for joy each morning (my son doesn’t seem to have an airplane mode so there was still the non-digital sleep disruption to deal with) but I didn’t feel as bleary-eyed as I have done previously. So that’s a pretty good win in my book!
Does this strike a chord with you? Could you be tempted to banish the digital devices before bedtime? If you’ve tried it, how did it affect your quality of sleep and general wellbeing?
Follow Just Be on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to hear about all things mindful and I’ll keep you posted on my other mindfulness experiments!
