Is Technology Destroying Your Intuition?

I’m going to start this off by stating the obvious: as time marches on, we are spending more time than ever before engaging with technology. Smartphones, social media, screens of all types and the internet in general play an increasingly larger role in our lives.

And I’ve noticed something. As a society we are becoming increasingly cut off from our intuitive core, myself included. And a planet full of people cut off from their intuition and soul is what nightmares are made of.

In this post, I’m going to share my observations on the four main ways that technology messes up our intuition and I’ll give you four delicious ways to counteract it.

You’re going to love it. Trust me.

But let me kick things off by explaining what I mean by “technology” and “intuition”.

My definition of technology

Technology can refer to a lot of things, but for the purpose of this post, I’m mainly referring to screens like cell phones, tablets, laptops, computers, TVs and the stuff that we engage with through those screens like social media, shows, games and the online world in general.

So when I rag on technology, I’m not talking about dishwashers, electric blankets or vibrators – those all get a free pass 😉

My definition of intuition

When I talk about intuition I’m referring to the channel of communication between ourselves and our soul/higher self/universe. It’s our connection to the Big Picture. I also think of intuition as our ability to pick up on energetic information, like being able to feel vibes from someone or something.

Okay, now let’s dive in!

In order to tune into your intuition, it helps to be calm, grounded, relaxed, patient, present, focused and connected to your heart and body.

But guess what happens when you engage with technology? THE EXACT OPPOSITE!

What I’ve noticed is that when I engage with tech – whether I’m randomly visiting websites, scrolling through my social media feeds, watching TV shows or YouTube videos, or messaging someone – it almost always leaves me feeling tense, distracted and as if time is being put on fast forward.

On a bad day, it might even leave me feeling intensely unhappy, irritated, stressed out and disconnected from humanity in general.

It isn’t all bad of course. I love learning things on YouTube and watching silly kitten videos and lately I’ve done some great online courses that have re-ignited my love of arts and crafts. And chatting with friends on Zoom has been an essential part of keeping sane during the last couple years.

BUT…

I’ve noticed that when I’m online and/or watching a screen of some sort, if I stop for a hot minute and check in with my body, I’m almost always in a state of tension (or numbness). My breathing is usually shallow, my chest constricted and the muscles in my face are tense.

Try it today – try it right now! – and see what you notice.

The problem isn’t really that tech time puts us in a tense, non-intuitive, physically disconnected space but that we spend so much time with technology now, more than ever before.

Some of us spend most of the day engaging with technology and I don’t know anyone with a cell phone who isn’t constantly checking in with it. I really fear that this is destroying our ability to connect deeply with our selves and with each other.

Okay, so enough of me whining. Now let’s get to the good stuff…

 

#1 – Technology Keeps You In Your Head

Technology is ungrounding by it’s very nature – it’s meant to lift us up from our caveman existence so that we are not as beholden to nature. For example, washing machines and running water mean we don’t have to spend hours on our hands and knees at the river scrubbing our grimy tunics.

But there’s a price to pay for all this convenience. And the price is being stuck in your head and somewhat disconnected from your body. If you aren’t in your body, in the NOW, doing physical stuff, where are you? You’re probably up in your head, thinking.

There’s nothing wrong with being all up in your head, thinking about shit, but there is something very wrong with doing this all the time.

Next time your engaging in some way with technology, notice where you are – are you in your body? In your heart? Or are you in your head?

In order to tap into your intuition, you need to be grounded and connected to your body and heart space. The more time you spend with technology, the harder this becomes. BUT, I have found an easy and delicious way to re-ground myself. I’ve been doing this daily, especially in the evenings after a long day of messing around on my laptop. And it works!

The Delicious 5 Senses Check-in:

Wherever you are, notice what your five senses are picking up.

Touch – notice temperature, the sensation of the chair connecting with your body, your clothes against your skin, your breath in your nostrils. Reach out and touch something nearby or your clothing and notice how it feels.

Smell – what do you smell? I hope it’s good.

Taste – do you taste anything? Probably not unless your eating something. If you’ve got a drink nearby, take a sip and really taste it.

Sight – look around. Take it all in. The light, the colours, the shapes and textures. Look as if you’re really seeing things for the first time.

Sound – what do you hear? There are usually many layers of sound, even in quiet areas.

At this point, you may even start to notice subtle energy like emotions or just a general energetic feeling in your body like tiredness or aliveness.

Now if all you could hear was traffic and construction noise and all you could smell was stale cooking smells, you might be thinking what is so delicious about this process?

So if you’re up for an extra step, do this: smell something nice, like an essential oil or perfume, touch something nice like your cat or a soft blanket, play some good music and gaze at a flower or plant or beautiful picture and really smell, touch and see these things!

What this does is bring you into your body and into the NOW – exactly where you need to be in order to fully connect with your intuition. It gets you out of your head and into your body. Yes!

I like to do this before I read Tarot, in the evenings before bed, while I’m journalling and after I’ve spent hours working at my laptop. Try it right now and see what happens ♥

#2 – Technology Speeds Things Up & Makes You Impatient

Yesterday I was on a website that was taking more than 2 seconds to load a page. I was all like how dare this site be so slow! I was supremely annoyed.

I used to have patience. I used to be able to wade through boring movies like Sweet November and Hope Floats without my mind wandering to a million other things. That was the 90’s.

Now, if a video doesn’t capture my attention in the first five seconds, I click away. Everything I read online I skim and if I don’t find what I’m looking for right away I move on to another article. I’ve been told Tinder dating is similar (!)

However, to really connect with my intuition, I know I need patience and to slow down. The snippity-clip-clip pace that technology trains us to acclimate to actually puts us in an energetic state that is NOT conducive to hearing the inner voice of the soul.

So what is the antidote to this? Consciously plan for activities that help you slow down. I find that the more I cultivate non-tech hobbies and offline activities, the less frantic and impatient I become.

 

Here’s a few things that helped me slow down lately:

Reading a physical book
Playing and snuggling with my cats
Going for a walk outside
Yoga or weight lifting (exercise of any sort, really)
Gardening & plant care
Having a face to face conversation with someone
Massage, physical touch
Art – drawing, painting, crafts
Journalling & writing in a notebook
Studying Tarot
Making soap
Cooking
Jigsaw puzzles
Cleaning stuff

I don’t actually like all the things on this list (I find cooking and cleaning pretty boring) but they all help me slow and ground my energy.

Now it’s your turn! Make a list of activities that help you slow down. They don’t have to be relaxing, but they should be things that help you get out of your head.

I find that if I spend more time doing these sorts of things, I am less in my head, less impatient and less fearful of boredom and this just naturally puts me on a wavelength more conducive to intuitive connection.

But it’s not easy. The seductive world of The Internets and Netflix call out to me like a siren song, promising distraction….more on that in a bit!

#3 – Technology Creates Tension

Email, social media and cell phones, while supposedly convenient, all seem to create a ton of stress and anxiety.

Whenever I spend time with people, I notice their phones constantly make little dinging and pinging sounds, drawing their attention away from our conversation and onto their device. I’m sure they appreciate the reprieve from my incessant stream of cat stories and sex problems, but I always wonder isn’t that incredibly annoying to be repeatedly interrupted?

Being constantly interrupted ensures that a state of deep relaxation or focus is never achieved. This makes it tricky to ever really scratch the surface of day to day life and venture deeper into your intuitive centre and access the messages and energies that your soul has for you. Or to fully appreciate my cat stories, for that matter!

I’ve also noticed that the more time I spend looking at a screen, the more this feeling of antsy tension builds up in me – it’s like a low level frustration, paired with emotional numbness, that slowly eats away at my soul without me even really being aware of it. As I scroll through my social media feed or flip through shows, I notice that I’m bored, hungry for something and definitely NOT relaxed (low energy is not the same as relaxation).

The Solution: plan time away from tech and make it sacred and pleasure filled!

This is a wonderful way to counteract all the tension that technology brings. Don’t view it as depriving yourself of all the juicy online drama. Instead, cultivate an offline life so spectacular that you aren’t tempted to constantly check in with your phone or jack into your usual streaming shows.

On weekends, I like to have one day where I don’t go online or check messages or anything. And during the week, I try to dedicate most evenings to non-tech related stuff. I find that the longer I spend away from a screen, the more true, deep relaxation I can create.

Consciously Cultivate Pleasure: This is the key to successfully planning non-tech time – make it delicious! Plan activities that allow you to really engage your five senses. Here’s a list of examples of how I do this:

• Go for a neighbourhood walk and smell all the flowers and pet all the cats I meet
• Soak in the bath with essential oils, candles, crystals and didgeridoo music
• Prepare my favourite meal and really take time to set the table nicely, play some great music and savour all the tastes
• Relax in my hammock with a good book
• Start a new painting project or sketch in my notebook while I listen to music

You’re probably more interesting and adventurous than me and so the above list might seem like a total snooze fest, but you get the idea!

#4 – Technology Crowds & Distracts You

Sometimes late at night I get this unsettling feeling deep down in the centre of my being. It threatens to yawn open like a giant void of nothingness and consume me. So I switch on Love Island or do some fake online shopping (this is where I pretend to shop and put things in my cart but don’t actually buy it).

I don’t think I’m alone here. I think most of us use technology to distract us from that unsettling feeling the creeps up from time to time.

But here’s the thing – that void, that emptiness, that discomfort is needed in order to access your intuition. You don’t find your soul by numbing your feelings or distracting yourself. You find it by going into the feelings and sitting in the dark, empty void.

Technology threatens to fill that void in the most unhelpful way – with noisy clutter and sensory brick-a-brac, designed to distract you from yourself. What’s tricky is that initially this feels better than going into that emptiness or that disturbing feeling. But if we want to access our intuition and live a life of meaning, depth and connection, we must resist the siren song of the numerous screens that surround us!

Technology also threatens to devour your time. Have you ever had the experience of going I’ll just check my email and then I’ll go to bed? and then three hours later you find yourself looking at pictures of bulldogs wearing hats on Instagram and think what happened?

Your time is one of the most sacred, valuable resources that you have and technology is hungry for it – it wants to gobble it up like a stoned teenager on a grasshopper pie.

The Solution: Go into the void, daydream & create empty space

Allow yourself to go into the void. When that eerie feeling of discontent arises, resist the urge to look at your phone – go into the feeling, sit with it, see what happens, ask what message it has for you. Sometimes journalling what is coming up can be helpful here.

Whenever I find the courage to do this, I’m pleasantly surprised by what happens. Sometimes I uncover a deep longing I didn’t know I had and sometimes the uncomfortable feeling speaks directly to me and says weird things like learn archery! or start painting again! I write it all down.

Take advantage of the empty spaces that appear in your day, like waiting in line or riding the bus and use this time to daydream or “gap out” instead of looking at your phone. These moments are sacred – it’s an opportunity for your mind to wander and your higher self to feed you ideas, but if you whip out your phone, you deprive yourself of this.

Go on a daydreaming date with yourself! Grab a notebook, pen, blanket and hot cup of tea and find a quiet spot to just gap out and let your mind wander. Sometimes we need to create space for our intuition to show up. And sometimes we need to let our minds play and dream first, before our intuition steps forward and begins communicating.

Let’s recap! Here are the 4 ways to honour your intuition and counteract all the damage that technology does to it:

• Do a 5 senses check in
• Plan activities away from technology, that help you slow down
• Plan time breaks away from technology and consciously cultivate pleasure
• Dive into “the void” and allow yourself to daydream more

Our capacity for intuition profoundly impacts the world around us…

Our relationship to self and intuition creates the world around us. When we are disconnected from ourselves, cut off from our intuition and our greater wisdom, that is reflected in the quality of our relationships and in the outer world in general.

What do you think?

Has your relationship to technology changed over the past few years? Do you find it increasingly challenging to tune into your intuition? What activities help you slow down and get quiet? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below…