THE DELIGHT OF BEING OFFLINE
things to do besides the infinite scroll
jumping off the pier on a summer night in chicago. 2001. not a smart phone in sight.
I haven’t had a phone for six months. This isn’t the first time and it hopefully won’t be the last. By the new year, I will have a phone again - which I am grateful for, mostly because running a mostly online business without a phone is actually quite challenging, and it has been hard to connect with friends without one. It will also be important for safety when traveling and other logistical reasons, but I will miss not being so tethered to technology. I’ve hardly been on social media and I know my relationship to the online world will become more tightly wound again once I have the little rectangle in my pocket.
I’ve written about the medicine of not having a phone from years past HERE and HERE but today, I want to talk about what we can do instead.
When the incredibly large sized hole of social media isn’t filled, what wants to flow through? When we aren’t spending hours scrolling on our phones, where else does the brain want to play? When we aren’t constantly externally oriented, what voice inside do we hear calling to us?
One of the most potent pieces of wisdom from this half a year was the absolute vastness of time and space. The magical expansion that happened when I could truly create my days with very little external feedback. The deep breaths that happened when there wasn’t anything to share or do - when I could simply be.
PT. 3: THINGS YOU CAN DO INSTEAD OF SCROLLING ON YOUR PHONE
Find a penpal, either through a website or simply though asking someone online. Go to the store and pick out beautiful stationary. Enjoy the feeling of a special occasion.
Go to the movie theater alone. Bring good snacks or get movie snacks like nachos, popcorn, candy, and soda. Be genuinely interested in the trailers as if you have been waiting to see them for months. Allow yourself to experience your reaction to the movie without any external input.
Choose a book you have always wanted to read and go to a park. Bring a blanket and a beloved beverage. Give yourself the gift of an afternoon reading. Watch people and pets and the world around you. Notice that time moves differently here.
Allow yourself to stare at a wall, no distractions. Feel the vastness of an empty space.
Make a list of everyone you want to make amends to. If you can’t think of a single person, open up more to the fact that we aren’t perfect and yet somehow, we can always try for repair.
Go into your closet and find something you haven’t worn in a year. Wear it and see how it feels. Decide if you still want it and if not, enjoy the feeling of finding it a new home.
Pay off a credit card payment early. Feel the sensation of relief in your chest.
Wash the dishes while listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing “Cry Me a River”
Fill a large basin with water. Find or buy beautiful flowers. Slowly drop then into the water. Wash the feet of your partner, surrendering to the sensation of devotion.
Go to the dog park and watch how joyfully the dogs greet each other. Remember that we are the same way before our hearts are broken and that we can be the same way afterwards too.
Make a pillow fort in your bedroom. Bring in a flashlight and read a good book. Delight in the imagination of a child.
Choose something to start learning that you have always wanted to explore. A new language, baking bread, roller-skating, singing - whatever has been tickling your fancy for a while. Soften into the mind of a beginner.
And so many more, I could go on forever…
I would love to hear your favorite things to do other than scroll on your phone. I am constantly amazed and inspired by what can happen the more we are offline. I make the loving commitment to myself that even with having a phone again in 2025, it will be a year of more offline expansions of love. More boredom, more stillness, and more peace.
AN INVITATION:
Spend an entire day without your phone.
Pay attention and enjoy life outside the screen.
(Oh, and have I told you that if you ever accept an invitation from my newsletter (past invitations are always open!) and write about it (either on social media or your own newsletter), I will gift you a year of a paid subscription to my newsletter?!?) I’m an immersive artist who loves group participation, what can I say.
What I’ve been watching…
Many of you know me through my work in slow, ancestral living. The more off-grid my life gets, the happier I am. It isn’t a surprise that I look to the elders for inspiration and this story of Del Harding is a great one. Del lives in an Irish rainforest and this short film shows many facets of his experience. God bless the hermits.
What I’ve been reading…
Some of you know that I love speculative fiction. At some point, I will write an essay about the power and the medicine of this kind of writing but for now, I will just celebrate a story of a global migration and the dystopian future that arises from it. Is it the best thing I’ve read? No. But it is a gripping story that weaves in sex work, colonialism, climate crisis, and radical possibilities of a new world.
What I’ve been listening to…
I’ve been a Bat for Lashes fan since early 2000s and the recent release of the revisioned album The Dream of Delphi is such a delight. The video above isn’t the harp remix, but it is a beautiful video for one of the Delphi songs. The harp version is below:
Also…
Finding Holly right outside my door, just in time for the solstice. Teaching about Burning Man for HOLY this week - be still my playa heart! Greeting the swans every morning. Hosting a holiday pajama movie night for the elders with popcorn and hot chocolate. MY HEALY - TRULY LIFE CHANGING. Saturn bringing in boundaries so that service is sustainable. Jasmine green tea with boba that is so incredibly chewy and moist and having it remind me of being 17 in San Francisco with a whole life in front of me. Voice messages with my dearest ones, rejoicing in the fact that connection transcends time and space. Me. You. Us.
WILD MEDICINE: An animist pilgrimage with the plants
Communion with the natural world is an essential part of the human experience. We long to be wild, barefoot, ear to the earth. Our health and happiness is woven into the landscape. Our medicine is calling for a return and a remembering of the ancestral ways of herbal wisdom.
WILD MEDICINE is a six month deep dive into the world of herbal medicine. But this is no superficial study - this journey is an exploration of aninimist and etehnobotaniical study and practice. A weaving of ecology, depth psychology, mythology, somatic practice, creative exploration of the plants.
Each month is a pillar of elemental medicine: MOUNTAIN (immune system), OCEAN (psychic system), FOREST (nervous system), RIVER (lymphatic system), FIRE (reproductive system), and SUN (energetic system). Each month we will study and work with two plants - this is how herbal medicine should be learned and practiced - to create deeply intimate relationships with the plants. We will make medicine from the herbs and weave them into our lives. In addition, we will be working with an animal for each month and open ourslves to wilder ways of being.
All experience levels are welcome. Even if you already work with some of these plants, this will be a depth and breadth like no other. No one is communing with herbal medicine in this way, and it is incredibly potent. Through mythology, ritual, ethnobotany, movement, journey, creative expression, and field practice, you will end the pilgrimage with a powerful relationship to these 12 plants and 12 made medicines for your animist apothecary.
And the cherry on top… there is an optional wilderness retreat for the summer solstice! We will be camping on the sacred lands of Mount Shasta - foraging in the forest, swimming in pristine lakes, and making medicine together.
All details are below - we begin January 12th and this is a small hive. I have taught herbalism for more than 20 years, and this is the best part of my plant work.
Hope to commune with you and the plants soon!
A blessing: There is enough to go around and around and around again.
Love, Binyamina Aisha
Adore this, even just reading the list made me feel more grounded. I'd add: flipping through magazines, collaging, cooking (or baking) a recipe from a cookbook, re-arranging furniture, and so many more!
I touch flowers, trees and plants when I'm walking outside.
It grounds me to the present moment and reminds me that I can feel and touch beauty everywhere I go and also to be free like they are about what I feel and who I am.