As technology takes over our lives and we are busy recording each moment of our lives and monitoring the lives of others through the internet and social networking sites, we should take a moment to pause and ask, what is this achieving? Do all these status updates, tweets and alerts put us in a state where we are constantly comparing our lives to that of others, what happens when we live vicariously through our Facebook newsfeeds? If we preoccupy ourselves with keeping our profiles up to date or cannot go one hour without checking our smart phones, what does this say about the next generation? We have diluted the importance of having real personal connections that evoke true emotions and keep us grounded in the present moment.
How does this affect the new generation? 40 years ago, the average age person would face a depression was 29, now it is 14. Suicide is the cause of 2% of deaths worldwide every year, this ranks above war and murder. Spending time with others when everyone is plugged into their mobile devices for entertainment instead of communicating with each other causes us to isolate ourselves into a bubble where the end result is loneliness and sorrow. Through yoga, we learn how to become aware again, aware of ourselves, of our thoughts and our surroundings. This awareness helps us interact in the world with sensitivity and compassion. Your personal interactions become much more meaningful and more fulfilling.
Develop Our Kids with Yoga for Children to Grow Them Healthy
If you are a parent it is essential to shower your children with love and tenderness from an early age. This sculpts them into well emotionally balanced and healthy children. Affection during formative years improves cognitive development, helps children cope with stress later in life and interpersonal skills.
Yoga teaches us how to be comfortable with ourselves, how to be confident by ourselves without needing constantly distracted by technology. This develops our sense of self and connectedness to inner peace. It’s only when we are secure in ourselves can we be there for others with an open heart and mind.
If we rely on TV, video games and surfing the net to zone out and ‘relax’, we are actually dulling our mind. Consciously we may have switched off from our troubles but subconsciously our stress is still very much there, we are just not aware it because we block it out. Many of us fall asleep in front of the TV. If we sleep without being in a consciously relaxed state the stress that we hold from the day replays in our mind all through the night as we are asleep. And when the alarm rings, we wake up carrying hours of stress with us, we start our day in a stressful state from the night before- and so the spiral continues. Yoga teaches us how to relax our body and mind by using calming breathing techniques. It is so important that before we sleep we consciously relax and let go of any stress collected from the day to wake up feeling clear headed and light hearted.
