Mindful Technology – Positive Mental Health Week

This week, Roedean is observing Positive Mental Health Week with various talks, sporting and skills sessions, and House events. The Roedean Community website will be posting an article a day throughout this week on the subject of positive mental health.

What do you do in order to remain mindful day-to-day?

Yesterday we highlighted the importance of getting outside and connecting with nature. Equally important is remembering to take the time to connect with yourself - whether mind, body or both.

Enter mindfulness: An introspective practice encouraging you to pay more attention to the present moment, your thoughts and feelings, and how these relate to the world around you. In particular, it pushes people to turn off autopilot in order to regularly stop, think and feel.

An exercise incorporated into many spiritual practices for years, it is only recently that mindfulness has become well and truly on-trend. A hot topic across the board, mindfulness has been highlighted in magazine articles, throughout social media and become an important element of many people’s yoga practice. This has inspired the development of many mobile apps, allowing people to develop a mindfulness practice while on the go.

While in many cases our smart phones are blamed for not allowing us to clear our minds, the sheer popularity of apps such as Headspace, Calm or Buddhify demonstrate quite the opposite. Instead, the devices designed to keep us plugged in and busy are actually allowing for opportunities of peace and nothingness whenever we feel like we need it. This brilliant combination of technology and self-care is helping people of all ages with their mental health on a massive scale.

Contrary to the usual complaints of distracted youth, apps such as these demonstrate that we mustn’t take smart phones and tablets for granted as unhelpful devices. Rather, as with most things, the key with such technology is moderation - a self-care practice in itself that deserves a great deal of attention for fostering positive mental health.

You can find out more about the apps mentioned here by reading this technology review article.

Have you used any of these apps?  We would love to hear your thoughts, experiences and recommendations.

Tomorrow’s Positive Mental Health Week activities:
Lunchtime: Peer Listeners’ presentation to Years 11-13
After school: Visit the farm
         Man hunt activity