E028 - The Energetic and Neurological Effects of Social Media

Welcome to this episode, which explores social media from an energetic and neurophysiological point of view. It also looks at the incredible opportunities that social media can open up for (in spite of the downsides).

Read the blog or watch the episode! 

So, welcome. How do you feel about social media? Are you even clear about how you feel about social media? Because I'm going to guess that you're ambivalent at many, many levels, you've got many feelings and on the one side, you might be on it a lot and there might be a feeling of regret in there too, or that something's not quite right.

So join me as we do a deep dive into the energetic and neuro-physiological effects of social media. And also what you can do if you want to go deeper with it because you kind of have to for your business and you know, it's part of your future. So, before we go any further, if you can just subscribe there's a little bell button below that says subscribe for those of you watching on YouTube. And let's take this forward. How do you feel about social media?

So the first aspect of Social media I want to talk about is addiction and compulsion. We all know this at a mental level, we know that Instagram, for example, is completely gamified to give us tiny little hits of dopamine, when we follow the little red sign that tells us there's a message and then, it's gamified to get us to go back. And it plays with our neuroplasticity. In other words, our brain's ability to rewire and create new pathways. And maybe it's 10 years or 12 years since social media really took over planet Earth. But we have rewired completely and it is the new normal, and it is a complete addiction. And we all spend a lot of time there but a lot of it is incredibly passive. And that's not so useful for our energy field. And it's not so useful in fact for our business, if you like, if you're a practitioner of some kind or just want to do something more useful with it or an activist or just want to be a bit more of a contributor. Passive scrolling is not going to help. And you going to have to rewire out of passivity. So one of the things I'm going to recommend is the Freedom app if you don't have it already. It will block you certain times of the day from social media. Because, you know, to be honest we're like children that need to be told how much TV we're allowed, and I include myself in this. The gamification in it, we are like lambs to the slaughter. We are not ready, we don't have the portion control to handle social media all on our lonesome. So developing a program to help yourself be more constructive with it might be a good idea, so check out Freedom.

So next up, I want to talk about the emotional and energetic effects of social media. It's complex, because on the one side, we're compelled not just with the addiction, but the addiction is a huge thing. And I've spent quite a lot of time watching the micro effects of social media on me. And one of the primary ones I'm going to say is dulling. And we could say, if our emotions in an energy field were at this place, which would just be an intermediate, I'm in the middle of my day, I'm just doing stuff, kind of place. You could call this a frequency here, right? I would say going on to social media gradually just erodes our frequency and our amount of presence. Because what we tend to do is we become unconscious. We've hooked into an unconscious dopamine reward part of our nervous system and we barely remember what happens when we go there. We click on things we like things and then and we become less conscious. I'm going to say we become dull. Our presence, our awake awareness, our aliveness disappears, because it's incredibly hard to be present on social media. There's also another powerful component, which is that we begin to dissociate, we lose connection with our body. We're already as a society, deeply in our heads and out of our bodies. So mostly in fear, reactivity and non presence.

Let's take a deep breath and get more present right now. And this is also an invitation to feel your feet wherever they are, or your butt on the seat, really grounding into our bodies. Let's get out of the dissociation mode even though you are watching this on a device. Let's see if we can rewire into more presence. Because if you just flick past this and watch this as more content, you just going to become more dissociated. So we're going to try and wire into presence, wire into the neurophysiology that reminds us that we can be in our body, feeling our body as I speak I'm feeling my body, my feet are on the ground. As you're watching this, let's do the same. Another huge aspect of this is when you are posting and I work with my students a lot around this is your pre and post energetic and emotional states, before and after posting.

So many of you, especially if you've got communication blocks, or self expression blocks, will already have a lot of resistance to posting and have a lot of shame about showing your face. And then there is potentially this avalanche of shame, or regret and shut down after posting. What did they think of me? Are people judging me? and you like all of us, will even picture very specific people in your life who will be judging your post. And that is your wiring around shame or self expression shut down and needing to conform and fit in. So you'll essentially narrow the lens of your communication to conform and just to stay safe. And it's a very dull way of interacting with social media and overcoming that wiring to need to conform and just do very safe pictures of this, I showed you a view of where I am today. Here's my meal from above, and never really put out anything that is more you and more real, because it's just too scary. So within my programs, we go deeply into that.

So let's just take another breath So here's the thing though, expressing yourself online is an incredible opportunity to unblock your throat chakra, unblock your self expression. So if you find yourself, sometimes shut down or insecure with groups of people, or struggling to speak in meetings or whatever your particular block is, expressing yourself online is an incredible place to begin to exercise and meet the shaming and conditioning and shut down with a need to conform. And so there's actually an incredible opportunity in social media. Used wisely, where you can stretch and really meet and feel your vocal blocks and then work on them, de-condition them. I'm going to, if you're resonating with any of this, I would suggest that you get into my VOCAL FREEDOM GUIDE. It's completely gratis—that is fancy Latin for free, I think it's also Afrikaans, gratis. So it's completely free. And it has tools in it, including a tapping sequence which you can use to deal with the shame of when you're posting or the shutdown or the insecurity, that dull insecure feeling like you've done something wrong.

Next up, are you on a mission of some kind? Are you a yogi or a breather or a diet person or an artist who's putting out something that you feel contributes to the world or you want to contribute to the world? The social media is an incredible place to do this. It's one of the major places to do this. Maybe it's the only place to do this in this crazy, COVID-infested reality we're in right now. So that means facing this head on. And I'm going to say that getting stuck into your social media is an incredible thing to do, then be of service, put something out, positively contribute to the world, why not? And what I'm going to say in advance is that for a long time, when you do this, if you put out a message that you do with conviction, it's going to be super unrewarding for a long time. I'm just speaking from personal experience. There is no fanfare or people standing clapping at your posts, no one's going to tell you that you're doing great. If you focus on how many likes you get, it's going to hurt. If you focus on the people who might need your message, or your ideal customer, or the person who's genuinely interested in your work, then it begins to have meaning. If you are speaking to your tjommies, your friends, your mates, or your parents, or they're all in the back of your head, when you're posting, you're kind of like, will they like it at some level, then it's painful. Because you're never going to get enough affirmation that you did great. No one's going to tell you that you're doing great really. And it's only when we drop into the body and do this from maybe from a bit more of a deeper level, you could say a purposeful level, that it begins to feel a little more comfortable. But still, there's nothing in this for the ego. I really mean that: there's nothing in this for the ego. It's not rewarding to the ego. It's vulnerable, putting yourself out there is vulnerable. But if we keep focusing on the people that we are trying to serve or help with support or give back to, then that makes it meaningful in just a little humble way.

So two big keys, I think: consistency is massive. A huge component in my work is, can you be consistent? Can you show up and keep showing up? And that's one of the things that builds a social media presence, I suppose. What do I know? I'm also just working on this and trying it out, and it feels like a purposeful part of showing up in the world, and helping others to show up in the world. But I'm a big learner here, too. So I think if I was to summarize: dropping out of the head, making it not about me, making it about contributing, dropping into the heart. Let it have heart, let it be embodied, somatic, in the body. And let it have a little humor at the bottom of it all. What do we actually really know? I'm not really sure. So a little bit of lightness and unknowing, some heart, something like that.

Let me know how your social media is, drop a mail and just share in the conversation. Exercise those self-expression muscles online, get out of being passive, and contribute with a bit of heart and a bit of levity.