Rest, Romance, and Recalibrating Rituals: Feng Shui & Digital Wellness
In this article, we will briefly cover the cross section of feng shui and digital wellness to the extent that technology in the home affects sleep and sex, as well as ways to remedy, recalibrate, and build healthy, holistic rituals for rest.
As the number of screens around us increases, it is crucial to consider how they affect our mood and wellness. “Screen-time” is becoming more commonplace, as are feelings of agitation and overstimulation. Our attention and new habits around technology keep us scattered between one distraction to the next.
Lucky, there is a way to re-balance scattered energies. Merging centuries-old Feng Shui wisdom with Digital Wellness allows for wholistic balance in our physical and digital spaces. Together, Digital Wellness and Feng Shui practices, invite our external environments to act as a physical manifestation of personal clarity and calm.
Let us briefly explore a few simple Feng Shui and Digital Wellness ideas about deep rest. Nested Feng Shui Clients note that these changes drastically improve overall balance, ease, and inner peace when implemented.
“Busy” Means “I Need To Rest”
Often in our “busy” twenty-first-century lives we detach ourselves from the patterns that keep us healthy and happy like eating well and sleeping well to keep up with meetings and messages. “Sorry I’m busy” and “I am just too busy” have become a badge of honor, but “busy” is more often than not a warning sign of imbalance. To re-balance, we want to invite a holistic and balanced lifestyle with both action and inaction.
This idea of seeking action and inaction comes from nature. Feng Shui uses nature as a guide for balance, it translates directly to “wind-water” and evolved from masters noting how wind and water shaped the natural world and effected building locations. Feng Shui is the practice of looking to nature (the five-element system usually) to understand how to live in harmony and balance.
Feng Shui with Digital Wellness is expanding balance and harmony into the digital and cyber realms.
Feng Shui teaches dualism, yin/yang, a perfect balance. Western thought and the digital is best summed up by Newton’s Third Law and understanding that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
These two similar perspectives from opposite sides of the globe teach that nature has a way of re-establishing equilibrium. On a personal level, a constant inner re-assessing and re-establishing of equilibrium is true as well.
“Busy,” in the age of technology, is slowly fading out of vouge and becoming more aligned with a realization that rest is needed, but until it is completely gone it is useful to hear ourselves say “busy” and know we mean things like tired, overwhelmed, overworked, strung-out, and exhausted.
More specifically “busy” is a call for rest without distraction; meaning no phone, no laptop, no smart tv. This step away, or unplugging from technology means our minds and bodies can have a break from the digital, space to rest with out interruption, and than wake up ready to be “busy” again.
In short, consider how “I am too busy” is analogous with having too many tasks, too many obligations, and often not enough time to integrate what we are taking in. Please do the simple math of “too much” and take away a few stressors to make space for yourself.
To reach equilibrium (mind-body-spirit), we must reallocate time to include rest. -Nested Feng Shui
The real badge of honor is “balance,” and of “being busy” with one’s inner world in a balanced way to the extent that the balance and joy of that balance radiates into your external world.
How do we rest, deeply, fully, truly in the Digital Age?
To rest fully we need time and space for our systems to recalibrate without technoference.
Technoference is the interference of technology on our natural systems, usually by the pings, rings, and other assorted things that pull our attentions way from the present and into our digital devices. In order to feel balanced, we want to give ourselves time and space to reestablish our bodies natural rhythms. This is achieve most easily through adjusting out sleep system to not including technology.
Consider implementing there feng shui for digital wellness suggestions to exhale more deeply into resting.
For context, Nested Feng Shui works with clients to actively build an the environment that supports their goal. We teach that one can settle into their heart by settling into your home. To note, there is no one size fits all answer in feng shui, instead Nested Feng Shui intends to meet clients where they are at and always recommends a one-on-one consultation for the best results. That said, there are rules of thumb intuitive, approachable, and implementable rules of thumb accessible after reading this today.
A bedroom is for rest and romance
Repeat after me, out loud if possible, “A bedroom is for rest and romance.”
At Nested Feng Shui, we like to be specific about space; that way, there is no confusion about what kind of energy is invited in and cultivated there.
Think about an alter at a Church or the field at a giant football stadium. Those spaces are built with a specific intention and cultivate specific types of energy.
An intention is a powerful tool, intend for your bedroom to be for activities centered around a bed like: rest and romance.
Basic Bedroom Feng Shui Tips
Invite in deep sleep by making sure your bed is comfortable .Ways to do this are adding soft sheet and pillows. Making sure you can turn the light off front bed. Making sure that the light in your room is gentle by having a small lamp with the light cast down or a color changing bulb where you can adjust the brightness and color to match your mood. Clearing the clutter from under your bed. Making sure your head is protected with a wooden or other type of headboard. Invite in romance by adding candles and having a lighter close by. Add matching sets of things in your bedroom like two pillows, two nightstands, two lamps, and so on. Make sure your bed and bedframe are study and ok with some shaky (secure your bed to the wall). These small simple intentional acts will set the space a somewhere safe to settle in and sleep or play.
For those in a studio apartment, dorm, or shared space. Take a moment to imagine your bed and sleep space as separate from everything else. How dose it feel for your bed to be your own private oasis away from the overwhelm? Consider a way to section your sleep space off with a sheet, fabric, or curtain affixed to the celling or a canopy bed or room dividers. This action will help avoid your bed becoming a catch all (sofa, desk, hangout spot, and living space).
More than those feng shui tips about specifying space and setting intention to invite positive energy, is the digital wellness aspect of rest, romance and recalibrating rituals.
Technology Free Bedrooms
Bedrooms with positive feng shui are free of technology. In older versions of feng shui — before everyone had a small supercomputer in their palm of pocket — technology was associated and located in offices or entertaining space. Think of large desktop computers in the early 90’s and cinemas and Disneyland. Ideally, all technology use is/ is developed intentionally with humanity in mind, often thought it is not.
Bedrooms with positive feng shui are free of technology.
Tech can be a tool for work, like computers which store data and often process faster than the human mind, or as a tool for building a community, like with cinemas or entertainment parks. On the flip side of technology being positive and great for humanity technology in a bedroom is negative. A bedroom space is a far from these communal as it gets. Bedrooms are personal, an island away from the rest of the world for restoration before the next day. Honestly, a bedroom needs to feel safe. A bedroom’s job and sole intention is to be a place to drift into dreams, or for the lucky get their freak on uninterrupted.
Please picture a bedroom, maybe your dream bedroom, or your current one. Does this bedroom bring you a sense of ease? Does this bedroom feel safe? Is the bedroom an oasis amidst all the hustle and bustle of life? Regardless of if it the room is 10 out of 10 in your mind, or 0 out of 10 and terrible, it is ok.
Together we can create a space specifically designed for sleep. A bedroom where you falling asleep faster, waking up more efficiently, and feel safe to surrender while making love.
Recalibrating Rest and Romance Step 1: Remove screens that emit blue light
At Nested Feng Shui, we recommend decreasing or eliminating all blue light at night. The reason blue light causes sleep issues is two-fold. First, before technology, our bodies were more synchronized with nature, awake with the sun and asleep without it, trying to sleep with extra light confuses our natural sleep cycle. This brings us to the second reasons; blue light decreases the body’s production of melatonin which helps signal that it is time to sleep.
So the first steps are trying to create a completely dark environment. Often blackout curtains help with this, when those are not an option a sleep mask helps. Once we block out the outside light, it is time look at all the potential blue light in a room.
Blue light is insidious, we often do not notice it, but once we do it is obvious how deeply if effects our physical bodies.
To remedy blue light, first and foremost, TAKE THE PHONE and LAPTOP OUT OF THE BEDROOM! No one every wants to do this initially, but as soon as they do they find it life changing. All of our digital devices emit blue light (without a filter) but few are with us as much as out smart phones.
One top of removing the phone from the bedroom at night, keep your phone at least twenty feet away or turned off while charging at night.
Next, check all of the other devices plugged into the bedroom, routers (unplug them at night), Television (take it out), AC or heating units (tape over with ducktape or cover with fabric to block the blue light), filters (tape over with ducktape or cover with fabric to block the blue light).
The number one way to improve natural sleep patterns is device based choose a time to turn off and step away from phones and computers each night. It may seem hard the first week or two, but decreasing the blue light from screens before bed will help with sleep and deep rest.
Recalibrating Rest and Romance Step 2: Remove as many devices as possible that emit EMF (electromagnetic frequencies) from the bedroom.
Easy, we have already removed the phone, laptop, iPad, and television from the bedroom because they emit blue light.
EMF (electromagnetic frequencies) are newer with the advent of technology and still being researched and debated as far as their effects. What we find at Nested Feng Shui is the more “natural” sleep environment the better, and by removing or at least decreasing EMFS our clients sleep better. Take some time to google EMFS and decided for at what level you want to manage them. A good first step to experiment on your self is observing how you feel when you begin to turn off and unplug devices at night.
Keep phones, computers, laptops, tvs, or any screens and wifi devices out the bedroom to improve health and well-being by encouraging deeper rest and intimacy.
Recalibrating Rest and Romance Step 3: Reframing Bedtime as a Ritual
A ritual is something we willingly engage in with the intention of achieving mastery. A routine is something we “have to” or “must do” everyday to survive. Just like it it time to drop “being busy” for doing things we want and enjoy, it is time to look at rest and romance and opportunities. Specially in the digital age as opportunity to tap into our humanity and step away from technoference.
Both sleep and sex are activities that open our hearts and minds to help us reach deep relaxation. Is is easier to enjoy and sink into those two bliss states without distractions, especially digital distractions. Reframing rest and romance as rituals that we want to partake in makes me enjoyable, almost sacred.
Let us think of something universally sacred, a baby. Think for a moment about an innocent baby.
It is tired and ready for bed and you take it upstairs to now, would you put a baby to bed with an iPad to play with? No, when putting a baby to bed we do everything in our power to ensure the room and space remind the baby, that it is safe, and that the only thing to think about and do is fall asleep and enjoy bed time. The same tender loving care we take to make sure a baby sleeps well like placing them in a quiet room, closing all the blinds and blocking as much light as possible, maybe even turning on a white noise machine, dimming the lights, and gently closing the door, is the same tender loving care we can build into our own bedtime rituals to honor and nurture ourselves.
Consider treating yourself with the same level of care as a baby. As adults we are great at signaling to children that it is time to decompress, but often no were near as good with ourselves. It is up to us to model healthy behavior for everyone around us by building bedtime rituals we love that keep us tech free and sleeping easy.
When you want to keep your phone next to you as an alarm clock consider if you would leave a baby alone with an unlocked iPad or phone and say, “ok go to sleep.” We all know that the screen time is stimulating, that blue light is simulating, and that sleep time is about removing all stimulus to allow the the parasympathetic (rest and digest) to kick in.
Phones, laptops, and televisions ideally are not part of the rest and romance equation. Keep them out of the bedroom. Protect two of the most valuable and vulnerable actions, sleep and sex, by removing technology from the bedroom.
Recalibrating Rest and Romance Step 4: Landing Station
A highly overlooked part of a healthy home that ingrates technology is a set space for placing and charging electronics. Nested Feng Shui clients report often benefit greatly from establishing a space upon entering the house that is their “landing pad.”
This space is home to a phone charger and papers, mail, bags, and what not. The area is like a door mat for tech and outside objects. By placing them down before spending time inside the landing space signals to yourself and others that you are leaving the outside outside and switching into “home mode.” Home mode is like taking your shoes off and switching to slippers. It is more comfortable and safe.
By all means, use your phone and technologies in your house, but also consider how freeing it will feel to have one location where all the outside/online world can be left and plugged into to charge towards the end of the day. You will have more space for you, so you can begin to create a night time routine for you to enjoy and decompress without the hustle and bustle of outside/online life.
In conclusion
Digital Wellness and Feng Shui practices, invite us to explore the routines and rituals in our external environments, especially around tech, to highlight our journey to personal clarity and calm.
Remember, tiny tweaks to a personal space (like a bedroom) can ripple out into positive changes for your entire life.
An easy first step to experiment with the power of feng shui is playing with where your keep your tech in your home and see what happens removed from your sleep space and landed in a new specific location which allows you to be unplugged when needed.
Originally Published on www.nestedfengshui.com
