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The first meditation app I tried told me to count my breaths.  An interview with a popular meditation champion told me to count my breaths.  A book about meditation told me to count my breaths.

And then finally someone told me why you count your breaths.

Do you know?  Because I didn’t.

I thought it was something about the way you were supposed to breathe, though I noticed on one app that you could set a timer to your preferred breathing pattern, accounting for things such as whether you like to pause at the top of the breath or just inhale and exhale back-to-back.  One app told me to intake the air through my nose and out my mouth, while another said under no circumstances should I ever exhale out my mouth.  (Why?)

Everyone kept bringing up breathing but no one was telling me why focusing on breathing was important.

Because it’s happening now.  Or, as Smiling Mind stated it, breathing is an anchor to this moment.  In other words, it’s the one thing every single living person is definitely doing at this moment.  You may be sitting or standing or lying down.  You may have your eyes open or closed.  (Well, I assume they’re open right now if you’re reading this.). But there is only one option when it comes to breathing: You are breathing.  Or you’re dead.  Or you’re temporarily holding your breath, but you’re going to go back to that whole breathing thing in a moment.

So if they need you to focus on something that is happening in the present moment so you stay in the present moment, breathing is a safe bet.

Not only that but because you’re always breathing, unless you had a moment where you couldn’t breathe, you most likely don’t have distracting thoughts from your past about the act of breathing.  The act of not breathing, yes.  The act of breathing… well, I can’t remember how I breathed yesterday or last week or last year.  And you don’t have any strong feelings about breathing in the future beyond the fact that you’d like to keep doing it.  So you can focus on your breath without your breath becoming a distraction because it’s reminding you of other things.  I came up with this last point on my own, but I’m going to guess that it’s true, too.

So now you know.  (Unless you already knew, in which you’ve been using different meditation apps and books.)

I’m going to stop thinking that it’s optional and focus on the breath.

Last week was Infertility Awareness Shabbat.  I didn’t know until after it happened, so I’m not sure if my shul did anything.  We were in Philadelphia, having a different sort of religious experience at the Leonard Bernstein exhibit followed by a performance of Swan Lake.

It’s a wonderful idea in any case, and one that can be repeated at any time, in any congregation, in any religion:

We are asking synagogues to partner with Yesh Tikva and share a message or Dvar Torah to increase sensitivity toward all who have not yet been blessed with children or struggle to expand their families.

So many services across religious lines have to do with asking people to be fruitful and multiply, so balancing that with a message of comfort for all the people who haven’t been able to build their family (or build it the way/size they would like) would go a long way in assuaging raw feelings.

I only found out about Infertility Awareness Shabbat because Josh sent me an article from the Forward about a guide being distributed through shuls about infertility and the mikveh.  I’ve written about the mikveh before — it’s a ritual bath that you take a week after your period ends.

I opt not to go once a month, though I did go after one miscarriage.  It is sobering to think about how many tears are in that water; that statistically 12.5% of women entering that pool are doing so with a heavy heart.  So the fact that it is being recognized and that ritual is being created to acknowledge infertility and loss is a step in the right direction.

I really loved this:

We have to recognize that pain as a community, and the booklet is really trying to give a framework for recognizing, mourning, finding closure, and also just to say we’re with you.

That something that could be isolating can be reclaimed through the simple act of acknowledgment.  Of letting people know that they’re not alone; not forgotten.

Did you know that Oprah has an app?  I mean, she has many apps, but that she has a game?  It’s called Bold Moves, and it’s a match-3 AND word game at the same time.  I linked to that tutorial on the Oprah site so you can see that it’s so pretty.  Plus, you get inspirational quotes to boot.  I am in love.

I’ve been trying to make an effort to judge every new app I download and then delete or keep depending on whether it’s making me happy after three days.  Bold Moves stays; it’s making me happy.  Unfortunately, a certain brain training app (starts with an L…) got the boot because it wasn’t doing anything good for my brain or mood.

The Center for Humane Technology did a survey of popular apps to determine the ones that consistently make people happy or unhappy.  Calm wins “happiest app.”  I agree.  I like Calm very much.  I use 9 out of the top 15, and I wholeheartedly agree that many remain on my phone because they bring happy into my life.

But then I went to the other side of the list — the unhappy side — and I was astonished.  Candy Crush makes people unhappy?  I love Candy Crush.  Facebook?  I mean… yeah… I could see Facebook making people unhappy but… MyFitnessPal makes people happy but Facebook makes people unhappy?  MyFitnessPal makes me feel guilty.

The study is really interesting because it breaks down the amount of time you can spend on an app to move from happy to unhappy.  Like people who use Netflix for 40 minutes (about one show) are happy.  People who use Netflix for 80+ minutes (multiple shows) are unhappy.

My happiest apps?  Smiling Mind, Desert Golfing, Solitaire, New York Times mini crossword, and Farm Heroes.  But there are like a dozen others that would make me really unhappy to lose.

What are your happiest apps?

I spent about eight minutes of my life reading a post that promised me that I’m not lazy.  It claimed to be the last motivational blog post I’ll ever need.  I am pretty certain that I AM lazy, but I was willing to suspend disbelief and let someone tell me that I’m not lazy.  I mean, I’m not thrilled with the fact that I’m lazy, so if there’s another reason for why I do what I do, I’m all ears.

In the first part he spends paragraphs… many paragraphs… reiterating this idea: “There’s a reason why there’s literally trillions of words out there on the Internet designed to help you live your very best life possible and yet very few of us are.”

I stayed with him because I literally read an article about how sugar causes inflammation and leads to all these crazy health issues WHILE I ATE A KIT KAT.  I am not a stupid person.  I have read countless books about processed food.  I knew better before I started that sugar article.  But reader, I still ate it.  (That was my best Jane Austen, and it really wasn’t very good.)

So I got through the reiterations of that idea to finally get to his thesis: That we all just need to do it.  Like the Nike slogan.  Whatever “it” is, do that.

And I was pissed.  Because not only was it not helpful, but neither was the rest of the idea that my inaction is due to fear.  No.  Actually, my inaction is due to laziness.  It is easier to grab the Kit Kat than to convince myself that I don’t want the Kit Kat.  (I want the Kit Kat.  I always want the Kit Kat.)  It is easier to surf the web and read blogs than it is to come up with my own words.  It is easier to play match-3 games than it is to crunch numbers.  It is easier to sleep than to do yoga.

Really.  It’s not fear.  It’s laziness.

I’m lazy.  And I shouldn’t keep Kit Kats in the house, knowing that fact.

I am fascinated by the story about the journalist who wrote about his experience unplugging, though he didn’t unplug at all.  It wasn’t a joke — he wasn’t trying to make a point about the untenable nature of unplugging.

He believed that he had unplugged.  He didn’t consider things like tweeting dozens of times per day to be spending time online.  He tweeted his news stories.  He tweeted other people’s news stories.  He got into conversations about the news on Twitter.

In other words, he did exactly what everyone plugged in does, called it being unplugged, and refused to admit that online time is online time.

That is one fierce situation of denial.

*******

I am not unplugging.  I have hours where I’m not online, but I would never describe that time as a digital detox.  I love down time, but I also love social media.

Can we really unplug?  I don’t know anyone who has a job where they can fully unplug for months at a time with zero consequences to their career.  I can choose not to use certain sites, and I can certainly set boundaries and limits with my time.  But that’s not really “unplugging.”  I’m not going to reap major health benefits from turning off Facebook for 24 hours.

I can’t see any employer being cool with me saying, “Hey, I’m not going to go online for the next four weeks.  You won’t be able to reach me via email or connect with me on social media.  In fact, if we don’t meet up for coffee, you’re not going to be able to speak with me at all.”  Or, I mean, I could say that, but I wouldn’t have a job.

Which would be a reasonable reaction.  Unplugging means cutting yourself off from communication tools.

So… is it time for us to stop talking about unplugging?  To admit that it’s not possible; not in the true sense of the word?  That the age of smart phones took that option away?