You wake up to your alarm sounding from the table right next to your bed. Before your feet hit the floor, you pick it up to silence the noise. Within seconds, you’re scrolling. In the first minute of your day, your mind is flooded with texts, emails, and headlines that put your nervous system on alert. And it’s not just your phone. It’s the screens, networks, Bluetooth devices, vehicles, and technology that have been integrated into nearly every aspect of life.
Always Connected
Most of us don’t consider how much input our minds and bodies are processing throughout the day. When you finally get home to relax, you don’t feel relaxed. Your body isn’t moving, but your mind is still firing on all cylinders. The near-constant digital connection is impacting the way we feel inside our homes without even realizing it. Working to create a balanced home does not necessarily require rejecting modern life, but it does require making decisions about what you allow in your space.
What's In My Home?
The most important thing when trying to limit exposure to these stressors is to understand what they are. There are the obvious perpetrators: wireless devices like phones, tablets, gaming systems, and laptops. And then there are the ones that fly under the radar: smart appliances, WiFi routers, Bluetooth devices - even alarm clocks. There isn’t a real way to completely remove EMFs and other digital stressors, unless you time-travel back a few decades. However, just knowing what these household items are empowers you to decide what to limit, what to move, and what to remove completely.
A Balanced Environment
As time goes on, we’re learning more and more that excess exposure to technology creates an unbalanced mind and body. The American Psychological Association has linked excessive screen exposure to factors like poorer sleep quality, reduced wellbeing, and increased mental fatigue.
Creating a more balanced home environment begins with reducing unnecessary exposure when it makes sense. One of the easiest places to start is where we spend a lot of our time, our bedrooms. In a study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers found that students slept an average of 24 minutes less per night for every extra hour of screen use. One of the easiest and most helpful choices you can make is to simply place your phone further away from you or, if possible, in another room at night. When you avoid sleeping with devices directly beside your head and limit the amount of technology in sleeping spaces, you can create a more restful environment for both the mind and body.
It is also helpful to pay attention to where devices are placed throughout your home. Oftentimes, you’ll find WiFi routers are placed in or near the areas you spend the most time. It’s convenient to put them in home offices, kitchens, and living rooms, but it isn’t the best choice for you or the other people (or pets!) living with you. Many people choose to keep Wi-Fi routers away from spaces where they spend long periods of time, and some prefer turning routers off entirely while sleeping or when not in use.
There are a multitude of smaller, everyday choices you can make, too. Things like: creating a screen-free space, reducing unnecessary notifications, and using wired headphones can reduce the overwhelming feeling of constant digital input.
Useful Tools
There is a growing community of people who opt to incorporate supportive tools into their home environments as part of a more modern approach to modern technology. Tools like the Q-Link Nimbus or Stratus are designed to work within any environment you choose to place them in. These support tools use a proprietary technology called SRT that reinforces the body’s resonance, returning it to a clearer and more balanced natural state. In turn, users are better able to handle and respond to external stressors, including EMF. Though there is limited research, there are also products such as EMF Curtains and blankets that aim to limit the reach of harmful frequencies.
Balance does not require eliminating modern technology altogether. More-so, it’s about becoming more aware of how and where we interact with it throughout the day.
Keep It Real