Do You Really WANT to Get Rid of Your iPhone?

Cell Phone Yogi Do You Really WANT to Get Rid of Your iPhone? The world is shrinking! And, adventure travelers are feeling the pinch – no longer are the far corners of the world as daunting or as lonely as they once were. Lamentations from adventure travelers were echoed in a post from the BBC, ‘Adventure travel in the age of the online connection‘, as well as in ‘Rethinking adventure travel in the age of technology‘, in the Gadling travel blog.

The question is, do you really WANT to get rid of your gadgets and online connections with the rest of the world? And if you did want to, could you do it?

There’s one way to find out. Try a traditional meditation retreat. Not only can you dispense with your phone (if you wish), but you can also dispense with the many other activities that keep us connected to who we ‘think we are’: fine dining, sight-seeing, socializing, hanging out, reading, traveling, trekking, showering, and so on. See what it’s like to be totally without, if just for a day or two; or try it for more. See our Yoga and Meditation retreats (student programs) and Mindfulness Retreat (adult) programs.

Note that dispensing with your cell phone is not the goal of meditation reatreat! However, the goals of meditation is to cultivate a more stable and more joyful mind, and cell phones and other distractions don’t generally help. See the related post: The Wandering Mind is Not a Happy Mind.

PS. FOR THE RECORD, all Himalayan Connections staff are required to carry cell phones, and students are encourage to carry them as well. In fact, you will find that it’s the one possession, besides a watch, that nearly every Buddhist monk carries too – a cell phone!

Photo credit: http://www.whoaorno.com/