Beyond Doomscrolling & Material Entanglement: Why We Need Inner Space, Conscious Breathing & Nature To Heal

As doomscrolling wraps its icy fingers around our brains, and our attention spans grow shorter than ever before, our hands clutch our material possessions more tightly than ever before. Whether it’s our designer handbags or watches, the latest phones or fashion glasses, the degree of material entanglement that we experience today is more than any other past generation. And with everything that’s going on with the world, small wonder that we are nervous wrecks pretending to operate normally like everything is just fine because the sheer sensory overload of world news is overwhelming.

At a time when we have more resources than humanity has ever had access to, we find ourselves increasingly out of pocket thanks to our infinitely long list of demands and growing intolerance for an alternative perspective. The fracture lines run deeper than before, developing into fissures and cracks, which may never heal. And now, more than ever before, we need to create and hold that space within, to centre ourselves and put some distance between the self and the world around us. For every human being who can experience even a minuscule slice of the divine within, humanity has a slightly better chance to survive, and perhaps even thrive.

This shift in perception comes when we are able to take the time to step outside the frame of our daily lives, and disengage that persistent survival mode that we feel compelled to operate from. Let our minds expand, take in the wonder of nature, and let Mother Earth heal us in the way that only she can. For, it’s from her that we emerged and into unto her that we will return. A borrowed existence that we have so deeply identified with, that it tears us apart from our brothers and sisters who are also born of the same mother.

This space can come from something as innocuous as a holiday spent away from the glitz and glamour of city breaks, in the foothills perhaps or by a river. Where the mind can safely retreat to its inner haven and the gravity of materialism doesn’t tempt it back out, and scramble into consumption mode. Something as simple as conscious breathing, or pranayama can alter the rhythm of our bodily vibration and shift our thinking into a paradigm where we see commonalities rather than differences, where it is enough to just be, rather than having to stand out.

Spring is an opportune time for this transformation as the barren dormancy gives way to green shoots, so also we can let those seeds of change take root and prepare to blossom. For once, let’s give ourselves the luxury of doing absolutely nothing, and believe you me, it’s harder than it seems, for our minds have become such sharp tools that they are always looking for the next thing to dissect. Turn that insight inwards, and you may just come face to face with the prevailing silence that you’ve only just heard of, but never experienced. Be as you are, and come undone.