Massage & Bodywork

JULY | AUGUST 2015

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SAVVY SELF-CARE best practices It starts out slowly. You create an account on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media site. You post a picture of yourself, some basic information, and start friending or following people. Time goes by. Your connections grow. Before you know it, there is a parade of people fl owing through your news feed. It's your friend from high school, your aunt, your massage client, some friend of a friend who seems safe enough so you just confi rmed them. Cool, right? I mean, isn't this what technology is for—to make it faster and easier for us to communicate? Doesn't it make you happy to know that a vast web of people are only a click away? Maybe. Maybe not. I am a massage therapist. I consider myself a healer. I am also an introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive person. I feel like all the gifts and traits that make me good at what I do—to touch people, feel their pain, and then apply my body and wisdom to help balance them out again—make social media one of the worst things I can do for my own health. The bottom line is, for me, social media sites are simply too much information. I usually have to feel at least a little bit of everything that comes into my awareness. For that reason, it can be truly exhausting to know what everybody and their cats are doing right now, what they are eating, what their current problem is, and how they feel about politics and sporting events and everything in between. Nor do I benefi t from all the carefully staged photographs or the incessant advertising. Social media is fragmented and one-dimensional. It lacks context. It is diffi cult to tell where people are coming from when they say the things they say. A lot of people over- share and even try to purposefully shock their audience so they might stand out amidst the din. The diversity of information can feel overwhelming. Some of it is really great stuff, but it is mixed in with a cacophony of drivel that seems like more junk I want to fi lter Social Media Does It Confl ict with Your Way of Life? By Jennie Hastings Stancu 36 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k j u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 and start friending or following people. Time goes by. Your connections grow. Before you know it, there is a parade of people fl owing through your news feed. It's your friend from high school, your aunt, your massage client, some friend of a friend who seems safe enough so you just confi rmed them. Cool, right? I mean, isn't this what technology is for—to make it faster and easier for us to communicate? Doesn't it make you happy to know that a vast web of people are only a click away? Maybe. Maybe not. I am a massage therapist. I consider myself a healer. I am also an introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive person. I feel like all the gifts and traits that make me good at what I do—to touch people, feel their pain, and then apply my body and wisdom to help balance them out again—make social media one of the worst things I can do for my own health. The bottom line is, for me, social media sites are simply too much information. I usually have to feel at least a little bit of everything that comes into my awareness. For that reason, it can be truly exhausting to know what everybody and their cats are doing right now, what they are eating, what their current problem is, and how they feel about politics and sporting events and everything in between. Nor do I benefi t from all the carefully staged photographs or the incessant advertising. Social media is fragmented and one-dimensional. It lacks context. It is diffi cult to tell where people are coming from when they say the things they say. A lot of people over- share and even try to purposefully shock their audience so they might stand out amidst the din. The diversity of information can feel overwhelming. Some of it is really great stuff, but it is mixed in with a cacophony of drivel that seems like more junk I want to fi lter 36 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k j u l y / a u g u s t 2 0 1 5

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