Nancy Colier is a psychotherapist, Interfaith minister, Meditation teacher, and the Celebrated Author of Books Such as Inviting a Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind.&n

So that means that when my daughter takes July off, I make a lot of effort to have her notice the difference in how that feels, when she's with kids that are not texting, and Snapchatting, and Instagramming while they're with her. How does that feel? How does it feel when you don't have to check your phone every three-and-a-half minutes? Do you feel calmer? So, what frightens me is the day where that sense of agitation, and disconnection, and alienation, and anxiety becomes the norm. I still have her very much conscious that when she comes home from a friend's house where they turned off the technology, she says, "Wow, it really felt like I was with that friend." That's the best that we have right now is to keep them conscious of the difference between what that feels like and it feels like to be [with] a friend who, while you're on the date with them, is on their phone the whole time.

TS: I want to break it down a little bit further, because you mentioned that you have a teenager but also a younger child as well. In the beginning of a child's life, do you think there's a period of time—and up until what age when perhaps, having no access to technology—I don't know if you would include television and the idea that sometimes people use technology as a babysitter; you know, "Watch this YouTube clip, or watch this movie," so what do you think the very beginning of life, and then how much technology as a child ages do you think is reasonable?

NC: Well, the American Pediatric Association has said no technology before two. I would say bump that up to four. I just don't think that they need—television has a different effect on children, it just has a different effect. They can't take it with them everywhere, and it's not that addictive interactive stuff that makes them so wild for it. I would say there's no reason for a child to be on the phone when they're under the age of four; there's just no reason.

What I will say though, however, is that I don't want to judge any parent. You know, sometimes a parent just needs a break, just needs a break. In the past, we would put that child in front of TV—well, so right now we’d hand her the iPad, and you know what? That's fine. That's completely fine. This is not black and white. Sometimes, what the parent needs is really what needs to be honored.

What I would say is, it takes a long-range approach. We need to think about, a child should not have—when your child is starting to do homework, right? The child who turns five or six, maybe the child gets a half an hour of playtime with learning apps for every day—half an hour, twenty minutes, something like that, because we can't keep this from the child. The more we turn it into kind of, again, something that is prohibited, the more wanted it's going to be. So, we're trying to build a kind of normal, healthy relationship with this. What can it teach you? What are the good parts of technology?

As a child goes into their tweens and teens, and they're doing some homework and that kind of thing, the phone has to be removed from them when they're doing anything that requires their focused attention. That's part of the problem. It's not ADD—we're not creating ADD, but we're creating a situation where these kids are multi-tasking at such a level that they're actually not able to do the work that they need to do. So the phone has to be removed when anything is being done like homework, or anything required like that. Turning off the notifications, turning off all the rings and chimes, and just staying with one device, the computer. I would say that is absolutely critical.

The other thing is to really have a family conversation about this. This has to be the family problem, and there has to be a meeting—many, many meetings, as we have done in our family—about how is this impacting us? The fact that we're screaming all the time about this, are we okay with that? In service to family community, in service to the peace of the family, this has to be limited, the time.

Our daughter gets a couple hours at night after the homework is done, and things like this that are reasonable, but they’ve been hard-fought, violently fought for. So, we're no different than any other family. It's just the commitment to a kind of family environment; it has to be rigorous. It just has to be rigorous, there are no easy answers on this one.

TS: Now, in your book, Nancy, The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World, I thought some of the most interesting sections came in the final third of the book where you're really looking at how we can connect to awareness and not be so identified with our thinking mind, and how our increased use of technology actually increases the activity and identification with our thinking mind.

I'm going to read this one quote from the book, because I really liked it. Here's what you write. You write, "In the Buddhist tradition, there's a saying that the mind is like a wild monkey that's locked in a cage, drunk a bottle of wine, and been stung by a bee. If that's what the mind was like before technology, then on technology, the mind is a wild, locked-up monkey that's drunk two bottles of wine chased by a shot of scotch, and been stung by a whole swarm of bees." So, I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about how is it that our use of technology has made our monkey-minds more crazy monkey?

NC: [Laughs.] Well, any of us who use technology know that the feeling when we've used technology is that our mind is amped up, right? It's been fed. The food of the mind is information, entertainment, stuff. Stuff that the mind can fix, and problems the mind can solve, and contents. Contents, not context, contents, and these are the munchies for the mind.

So, technology steps in, and I think this is really one of the biggest problems that we're facing, is that technology enthrones the mind, it makes it master of our universe, which is what it wants. So we give the mind data, we give the mind travel plans, all this stuff to do—the mind likes to do, and technology is all about doing. It's not about being. Being, in a certain sense, is the enemy, it's what's feared. It's the cessation of the doing.

Technology feeds, again, our brand, our identity, who are you? Who are you? Are you the kind of person that—? It's like amphetamine for our identity—not just on social media, but in a generalized sense, we're always announcing who we are, who we are, this small self, this ego self, if you will. So, we're feeding that more and more, and this technology-soaked mind is telling us what we need to live a satisfying, and good, and nourishing life, and it's just the wrong source. It doesn't have the wisdom of the heart, or the gut, or the soul, whatever you call it.

So, part of what I work with people on is, again, finding a way back to the place of stillness inside ourselves, because ultimately we can't have any kind of abiding well-being, or any kind of grounded calm if we're always trying to outrun ourselves—outrun being. Right? Because we're just chasing yet another thing, another thing, another Wikipedia page, another app, another whatever game we've got going on. And the feeling underneath it is, "If I stop, if I just sit in the quiet, or meet myself without supplementation, then I'll cease to exist."

That's what the mind tells us—it tells us, "If it's not me, the mind, you don't exist." When you do practice, part of what you discover, blessedly, is that under all the doing, and under all of the hats that we wear—I'm a "this," I'm a "that," or whatever it is—is this presence that is reliable, that is there. It is there, it will catch you—grace will catch you—but we can't know it if we're just filling it up with more stuff and more data, and more fear that if we stop, we'll die.

TS: Have you made it a practice, and do you suggest that people try things like leaving their smartphone at home when they go for a walk, or things like that? What do you find works for people? Those kinds of suggestions.

NC: Yes. So in the detox, I talk about some of these things that you can do. You don't have to do the detox to do some of these—

TS: This is a section at the end of the book, a digital detox program that you offer. People might not be familiar with that, but at the end, you offer a 30-day detox, but you can share with us what some of the essential practices are, regardless of whether you go through the whole 30 days.

NC: Absolutely. It's absolutely not mandatory to go through the 30 days. One of the things that I suggest is just what you just said, is every day, to do something—wander like a happy dog, go somewhere and don't bring your phone. Remember what it feels like to not have the device in your hand. It's important not just that it be in your bag, not that you're not holding it on the street, but actually do something that is totally separate from that so you re-experience yourself; and maybe some silence.

Another thing that I suggest that people do is, first half hour of the day, they don't use. It's very hard for many people to do this one, so then if it's impossible, try 15 minutes. In that time, [try] to do some kind of anything that connects you with your body—because one of the things, as we become more and more identified with mind, is we become really disembodied, like little heads walking around. Where our attention is, is who we are. If it's in this app, if it's in this game, if it's in whatever it is, we don't feel our bodies all the way down to the ground.

So maybe it's just that you do some stretching in the morning, or maybe you do a body scan, or you do some yoga, or what-have-you, before you bump up into the mind and spend the rest of your day outrunning yourself, basically, into the world of content. Find the place in your body that is just presence, and in that 15 or 30 minutes, whatever you can manage, try and set some kind of intention for what is important to me today—the life that I live today, what do I want it to express? Maybe there's a word: maybe it's kindness, maybe it's excitement, whatever it is, but make it a kind of conscious process of what kind of day do I want to make happen, today?

Similarly, at the end of the day, try and not be on technology the last hour, if it's possible. That's not just powerful for sleep—I mean, there's tons of research about how that impacts sleep, but it's also important about closing the day with some sense of, again, naming what is important to me and what kind of life I want to live, and processing the day, and kind of going through what was important. You don't have to do it the whole hour—just five minutes—but actually not being up in the head the last hour of the day, come back down below the shoulders at the end of the day, as well. Like parenthesis.

Some of these, and some very basic ones: just don't use while you're eating, taste the food. Just do one thing at a time; if you're taking a walk in nature, turn off the phone, turn off the phone all together and put it away. If you are sitting at a meal with a friend, or having a drink with a friend, don't put the phone in-between the two of you; put it out of sight. These sort of little behaviors make such a difference. If you're ordering a coffee from the deli man, don't be texting while you're actually doing that. Little things to start paying attention to what's happening right here, right now.

TS: You know, you mentioned not having the phone out on the table when you're with a friend. In the book, you talk about how there are actual studies related to this about how, just even the appearance of the smartphone on the table, affects people during their conversation over a meal. Can you talk about that? How does that affect us? Because I've noticed that. Yes.

NC: Absolutely, and we've all lived it; we don't have to even go to studies, But the studies show, conclusively, that the level of intimacy that people experience when the phone is on the table, is decreased. How they report the conversation afterward is that it was less close, that they felt less nourished by it. Just by having the phone—it doesn't even have to go off, it doesn't have to ring. So, what I would say is that, you know, again, do we want to be mindful? Do we want to live conscious lives? What are you saying, right there, by putting the phone there?

What you're saying, really, is you're not enough. You're not enough, to that friend sitting right in front of you, you're saying something else might come in. Something maybe better, something more interesting—something about just us is not enough. That message is very, very subtle, but people are very sensitive to that.

It also prevents you from really landing. You know we all know this, something really magical happens when two people really show up and are present with each other, without distractions, and that can't happen. With just the threat of something coming in—just the promise, I guess you could say, of something coming in, we can't really land with each other, really arrive. The mystery in that sort of surprise and spontaneity that is human contact, that happens when two people are really with—and I mean that sort of capital "With" each other—can't happen because it's being controlled by the device promising something else.

You know, I've had friends, I've had conversations with friends—very recently I had a conversation with a friend, who in our conversation, took about five or six texts during it, and it's a dear friend. It's important, I think, to be honest about that. "You know, if we're going to be together, I would really prefer you turn off your phone," because chances are that person also wishes that were the case, so somebody has to voice, "This is not okay with me. This doesn't feel like we're together."

TS: I could imagine that would take a certain kind of bravery, I would imagine, in certain relationships to bring that forward.

NC: Absolutely. And yet, and yet, what we all really crave is the full attention of another human being. It is so primal. The sad thing about all of this is that, while we're pretending it's all fine—because wherever we are, we're mostly having conversations with someone who's not in the room. You go to a party these days of millennials and they're all having conversation, but with no one in the room. [We all pretend] that this is okay, and yet nobody—if you talk to people privately, nobody is really okay with that.

So, what's happened is that it's become a kind of social awkwardness tool, so that when you don't have anyone to talk to, or you don't know what to do with yourself—in the past, we'd have to figure that out, we'd have to do something about that, but now we don't. We just pretend we're swiping.

I have to say, at times, it's incredibly—part of what makes technology so complicated is that it's both. I appreciate—at some of these parents gatherings, I just pretend I'm on the phone, because I also, at times, just don't want to chit-chat, so it serves that purpose of getting us out of here. But what we really crave at the end of the day, is this presence. It's not happening. Just by putting the phone down, we're saying something about this relationship.

What I'm seeing with young people, too, is that—it's very interesting, but in the dating world, they're creating this kind of avatars, these fabulous characters that text and always have something phenomenal to say, and as soon as they're not fabulous, they just drop out of the text. But then when they try and build the relationship that started through these avatars, it's like they're playing emotional catch-up. They're not that person yet, and the relationship has skipped 100 steps.

So we're creating these sort of virtual characters that are in a relationship—texting all this sexy stuff, we're flirting, we're doing that, but the relationship is nowhere near that. Then there's this expectation, right? That the relationship and our relationships should always be fun, should always be fabulous—they don't have any of the awkwardness, they don't have the bumps, and if they do, we're more inclined now to just drop out of them.

TS: You know, you're talking, Nancy, about how a younger generation are creating avatars online, and how that affects their relationships, and you share another really interesting observation in The Power of Off about young people; how you used to ask people, "What is your dream for what you want to be when you grow up?," and you can share what kinds of answers you're getting today that are different. I thought that was a very curious part of the book.

NC: Well, when I used to ask, "What do you see for you life," or that sort of thing, I would often get, "I want to play music," or, "I want to help people as a doctor," or travel, but it was experience-based. It had to do with how we were going to live, essentially. What I hear now is, "I want to be a brand emperor," or, "I want to be famous,"—just plain old, "I want to be famous." Of course, when you ask, "Famous for what?," they really look at you cockeyed, like they don't quite understand what that has to do with it.

What I'm seeing is—again, we were talking about identity a moment ago—that while it used to be that we lived a certain life because we had certain interests or what-have-you, and then as an organic result of that we were known as that kind of person, so it was sort of [from the] inside out.

Now what's happened is, it's flipped; so we decided what do we want to be known as, and then we go about building a life that will create that. So, it's very spooky in that way, that what we're seeing is that who we are seen as seems to be replacing what kind of life we want to live. At the same, we're seeing a profound value change, I think, in our culture, where things like mastery, things like experience, and wisdom, and all of those sort of old-school things, are being replaced by fame. They're really being replaced by who's most popular. That is what we value right now in 2016.

The fact that a kid who's, you know, 15 and can do splits on Vine, or one of these short-video channels—he's idealized, right? This has become what our culture, what it supports. It's a very strange time because all those things like craftsmanship, like really knowing your work or the brilliance that comes out of thousands of hours in the saddle, if you will—you know, these things are not that important, they're not that valued.

So, of course these kids are saying, "I want to be a brand emperor," or, "I want to be Jay-Z," or what-have-you, because that's what we think is important now. Again, our values, they're going to probably take—my sense is, it'll be like this for some time until the emptiness of that sort of switches it again.

TS: Nancy, as we come to a conclusion, do you think it's fair to say that in your view, you feel that we're at a crisis juncture in our relationship with technology? That the reason you're so passionate about this is because we're really in danger, or am I overstating it?

NC: I think we are—I actually feel quite optimistic, is the truth. I have great faith in each person making an individual choice for themselves about whether this is working.

What I think is that we have been on a course towards sleep; we have been going under anesthesia, and that has worked, for a lot of people. That has been what a lot of people want. At the same time, the difficulty that technology is creating in the agitation and the difficulty completing all the tasks, and the overwhelm, it's giving a run for the money for the part of us that's falling asleep.

Like, we'll fall asleep; I do feel human nature will fall asleep, but it's so agitating, and it's so difficult to live the way we're living, that I think people are waking up to, "I don't want to live this way anymore. I don't want to miss my life. I don't want to miss my friends' lives, I don't want to miss my kids' lives, I don't want to have to lock my phone in the car so I don't use it. I don't want to live like an addict."

So, I think we're at this great tipping point where each one of us can make a choice for ourselves, moment to moment. We don't need a collective decision here; moment to moment, as you decided not to use your phone at the red light, there it is, right there. If there are a thousand points of those [red lights] happening, then we're starting to change. I really do feel that the discomfort of this way of living, and the awareness of how emptying it is and how disconnected it makes us feel, and all of that, is making people want to change their behavior.

TS: Then, just one final question for you. This show is called Insights at the Edge, and I'm always curious to know what someone's "edge" is, kind of their growing edge in their life—the challenge that they're currently working with, if you will. I'm curious, in terms of you and technology, and The Power of Off, what would you say is your current edge?

NC: I think the edge that I experience is the edge that I was speaking of a few minutes ago, about really getting comfortable and tolerating the open space without—the unfilled time without filling it in. So, even more than email for me, is—I love to learn, I'm very curious, and in spaces where there is no object of attention, to just hang out there and not do because I can, and not fill it with something interesting, but to get even more comfortable, I would say, with that just pure, spacious awareness of the desire to learn, to fill, to engage in that moment, and not act on it. To be present without an object of my attention. That's what I would say is really where I work.

TS: Very good, very helpful.

I've been speaking with Nancy Colier, she's the author of a new book called The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World. Thank you so much. You've inspired me, and I think you've inspired our listeners to me more on the side of wakefulness in their relationship with technology and their devices. Thank you so much.

NC: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

TS: SoundsTrue.com: many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.

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