Category Archives: breathing

Screen Apnea: Our Bodies on Personal Technologies

Linda Stone spoke with NPR’s Manoush Zomorodi on a recent episode of Zomorodi’s podcast, Body Electric. Stone coined the terms, “Screen Apnea” and “Email Apnea” in 2008, after noticing she was holding her breath or shallow breathing while working on personal technologies. She looked around, and noticed most people were doing what she was doing:Continue reading “Screen Apnea: Our Bodies on Personal Technologies”

NPR’s The Body Electric Investigates How Personal Technologies Impact Our Bodies

In one of the best series yet on technology and how our bodies and minds are taxed by our current habits, Manoush Zomorodi, interviews a variety of experts. Manoush kicks off the series with a challenge to NPR listeners to join a Columbia University/NPR study. Participants are tasked with getting up and moving for fiveContinue reading “NPR’s The Body Electric Investigates How Personal Technologies Impact Our Bodies”

Conscious Computing

Our focus has been on technologies as prosthetics for the mind, and human-as-machine style productivity. This has led to burn-out, poor health, poor sleep, and what I call email apnea or screen apnea. We wonder where our attention has gone. Turns out, it’s right where we left it — with our ability to breathe fully. What if technology became a prosthetic for our beings?

A Badass Musician & a Sixth Degree Aikido Black Belt Advise on Email Apnea

Watching Cameron Carpenter play the organ is a transcendant experience. It’s as if he’s “lit.” The organ just sits there, and Carpenter’s body exudes a powerful energy. Most of us, when we interact with digital technologies, “merge” our energies with the device, exhausting ourselves. Experienced musicians don’t do this. In the evolution of our relationship with digital devices, we have a lot to learn from experienced musicians.

Conscious Computing

Personal technologies today are prosthetics for our minds. Our opportunity is to create personal technologies that are prosthetics for our beings. Conscious computing is post-productivity, post-communication era computing. Personal technologies that enhance our lives. Personal technologies that are prosthetics of our full human potential.

Kids, Video Games, Posture & Breathing

One of my favorite 8 year olds can’t get enough of his Wii.  I enjoy this child and hung out with him recently while he played his favorite video game.  He was hunched over on the sofa and I promise you, his breathing was undetectable.  With some coaxing, he moved to a wooden chair.  ForContinue reading “Kids, Video Games, Posture & Breathing”

Diagnosis: Email Apnea

In early 2007, at the suggestion of my M.D., I took a course in Buteyko breathing and incorporated it into my morning routine.  I would get up, take a walk, do twenty minutes of Buteyko, then, sit down at my computer to work. Day one:  Within the first few minutes of sitting down at myContinue reading “Diagnosis: Email Apnea”