How has your week been? I hope your keeping warm and dry. We took advantage of the gorgeous day on Sunday and went to Warrandyte for a wander along the river. We took Mason, our grandson and he had a ball jumping in puddles. Oh to be a two year old! I just love watching kids interact with nature. We didn’t even need to visit the playground, he was happy as anything picking up sticks and rocks, exploring dead tree stumps and watching the ducks.
I remember years ago we took our children on a horse drawn wagon holiday up near Bendigo. I was amazed by how they entertained themselves for hours making mud pies and collecting leaves and making cubby houses etc. No toys, no television, no Playstation, just nature and their imagination.
I read a book when my children were young called “The Plug in Drug.” It was about the addictive nature of TV. It talked about a study done with a number of families who went totally without TV for a period of six months. After an initial withdrawal period every family, including the children, said that life was better without TV. They talked more, were more creative, had more fun, got more exercise and were happier.
The families were followed up 6 months after the study ended and although they had said life was better without TV something like 60% of the families had gone back to watching TV regularly. That’s the nature of addiction, hey? You know it’s not good for you but you do it anyway.
The book also talked about the role of television in potentially contributing to depression. When we watch TV we have a barrage of sounds and a fast moving, ever changing array of images bombarding our senses. We watch a scene from a variety of camera angles and something is always happening. In a TV show you’re not left waiting in a queue at that bank for ten minutes. If that happened you’d quickly get bored change to another channel. In a cooking show you don’t have to wait 30 minutes for the cake to bake, there’s always one they prepared earlier.
Once we become conditioned to the pace of TV shows or movies, real life can seem mundane, tedious and boring. We can get impatient with life and want immediate gratification. I honestly wonder how much this has contributed to our depression epidemic especially among teens.
I also wonder about the impact of our screen addiction on learning disorders. I know many families have the TV on all day whether they’re consciously watching or not. When children grow up with human voices in the background that they don’t need to interact with they learn to not listen. They ignore the people who are speaking and have no need to make sense of the sounds they hear. Is it possible that potentially created the auditory processing problems so many children struggle with these days?
And did you know that in the days before the internet our attention span was about 10 minutes. This was the interval between ads on TV. I read recently that since the internet our average attention span is now about 8 seconds! That’s how long most people will read an article, a Facebook post or browse a website before they move on to something else or choose to refocus on what they are reading. Let’s hope you’re able to concentrate long enough to read this article. I’ll do my best to say something interesting every 8 seconds. By the way, the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds!
Anyway, I didn’t really mean to take about all that today. I actually wanted to talk about intuition and listening because we have a couple of things coming up that may be of interest to you.
Firstly this week at Kindred Spirits our guest speaker is Speaker, Author and Mentor, Phil Schibeci. Phil has been teaching people from all walks of life how to be effective communicators for over 21 years. Since he was 8 years old, Phil has been interested in how we communicate. He’s trained and studied in many world class programs ranging from how the mind works to stand-up comedy.
He’s even stayed in a Buddhist Monastery! Phil has written 3 books, including “The Rut Race” and featured on Channel 7, ABC, and many other media.
According to Phil, a spiritual journey isn’t just about discovering what we need to grow and develop, it’s also about helping others. In fact helping someone else on their journey of self-discovery can be more enlightening than helping ourselves. The best way to help someone get there needs met is to listen with empathy and understanding to get into their world and see things from their perspective.
This week, in a fun and interactive session, Phil will show us a very powerful listening technique that he and many others have used to help them create deep and meaningful connections with others.
Learning to listen deeply and connect with our fellow humans might just be a great antidote to screen addiction.
The other thing I wanted to let you know about is a beautiful opportunity to learn to listen deeply to your inner guidance, wisdom and psychic abilities. We’re just about to start a daytime Intuition and Psychic Development Group from 1.30pm to 3pm on Wednesdays starting on July 15th. Our Wednesday evening group is also open to new members. Take a look HERE for more details and some pretty stunning feedback.
Well I don’t want to stretch your attention span any longer so that’s all for now.
I hope you have a fabulous week and let me know how you go if you decide to unplug the “drug.”
Alison Burton
pioneering the future of healthcareSimply Natural Therapies
41 Tunstall Square
East Doncaster
VIC 3109
03 9842 7033
info@simplynaturaltherapies.com.au
www.simplynaturaltherapies.com.au