This article is another edition of a series on “Why Most People Don't Heal… and How You Can Be One of the Exceptional Few Who Do.

When I first traveled to Boston in 1994, a friend scheduled a radio interview for me, followed by a workshop at a nearby bookstore. As the interview aired, the phone at the Boston College radio station began to ring off the hook. We still didn't have cell phones in those days, so I let people know they could reach me via the home phone of the friend I was staying with. Calls continued for the remainder of the day and the days thereafter. My schedule rapidly filled up, and I found myself with a multitude of people to work with.

I was still living in New Mexico at the time but started traveling to Boston and New York City four times a year. People were far more consistent back then. Many of the same individuals continued to work with me indefinitely, with some scheduling multiple sessions whenever I returned to Boston. In many instances, the presenting issue(s) would have been resolved, yet people continued to work with me because they found they were making considerable progress in their health, relationships, and other areas of their lives.

What I found truly amazing was that people would often schedule appointments months in advance. Whenever I returned to Boston, I called to confirm, and most people kept their appointments at the scheduled time. Each session would initiate a process, moving the individual forward along the next step of their healing journey. The healing process that began with each session often continued for weeks or months and was greatly amplified for those who scheduled two, three, or more sessions in close succession.

What I also found amazing is that, back in the 90s and up until the early 2000s, when people returned for follow-up sessions, they often remembered in vivid detail what had happened during the previous session. They would also describe the transformational process taking place in their emotions, physical bodies, and their lives in the months following their previous session(s). When they came in for follow-up, we would naturally pick up where we had left off, transitioning to the next phase of their healing.

Whenever I flew into Boston, I would already have two to three weeks' worth of appointments scheduled in advance of my arrival. During my stay, I often worked nine or more hours a day for consecutive days. As people called to schedule, any remaining openings quickly filled up. The intense workload often left me feeling utterly exhausted by the time I left town.

I still miss the 90s… because people were so much more focused… and more consistent. The deep emotional wounds and their physical bodies healed; and their lives were transformed. Without all that much effort on my part, the practice largely sustained itself.

Transition Into Our Current Digital Era

The transition into our current digital era was gradual at first, gaining momentum as time went on. It initially began with dial up internet, but it really took off with the increasing availability Wi-Fi, cable and the iPhone. Texting, for many, became the primary mode of communication. Then, we witnessed the emergence of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Instead of in-person meetings, people began searching for love through dating apps such as Match, followed by Bumble and Hinge. Before long, people were hooking up with Tinder, which was modeled on sites used by gay men to find sex partners.

What many fail to grasp is that our smartphones, social media, dating apps and other digital information and entertainment providers operate on the same principle as slot machines, providing intermittent variable rewards that activate our brain's pleasure centers. The addictive nature of our devices and apps compel us to spend increasingly more time online, a trend that has only gotten worse as the technology continues to advance.

The addictive pull of our phones and digital entertainment, exacerbated by the constant scrolling through our social media feeds and swiping through dating app profiles and the relentless onslaught of push notifications alerting us to new text messages, social media posts, and news updates, continually fragments our attention. These technologies are actively reshaping the neurostructure and biochemical makeup of our brains, making it far more challenging for us to maintain the focus necessary for healing and personal growth.

Many are oblivious to the damage being done, and those born after smartphones, social media, and other digital entertainment became so ubiquitous have never known anything else. Yet, many are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain focus, to learn, process their emotional responses, and even to understand what they're feeling. And, even worse, to varying degrees, many are losing touch with their inner selves. This disconnect makes it far more challenging to do the deep internal work necessary to facilitate healing and personal growth. As a result, the digital age, while offering many conveniences, is creating an entirely new set of problems.

It's Like Doggie Treats, Except for Humans

Our smartphones and the social media platforms they connect us to have been meticulously designed to manipulate our brain's dopamine reward circuitry. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward, and when our brains release it in response to a reward – such as receiving a text or Facebook message, seeing someone liking or sharing our post, getting new followers or friend requests, scoring points in a mobile game, or finding positive comments and feedback on a post – it creates a pleasurable sensation, encouraging us to seek out more of that rewarding experience.

Problems arise when this process becomes excessive and unbalanced. The constant notifications, likes, and updates on our smartphones and social media feeds provide a steady stream of small rewards in the form of digital validation. This constant reward-seeking behavior triggers the release of dopamine in our brains, resulting in brief moments of pleasure and satisfaction each time we engage with our devices.

Over time, this continuous exposure to small, frequent rewards can disrupt the delicate balance of neurotransmitters in our brain. It conditions us to constantly seek out the next reward, whether it's a new message or a fresh social media update. This seeking behavior can become habitual and addictive, as we become hooked on the intermittent pleasure provided by our devices, social media, dating apps, and other digital entertainment.

As a consequence, this addiction-like behavior tends to discourage our deeper reflective processes. Instead of engaging in introspection, self-reflection, or in-depth thought, we find ourselves constantly distracted by the allure of our smartphones, social media and other digital content. This constant cycle of seeking out rewards hinders our ability to engage in deeper, more meaningful contemplation and reflection, which are essential for personal growth, problem-solving, and understanding ourselves on a profound level.

In summary, the highly engineered triggers in our devices, social media and other digital content feed our dependency I.e. addiction to surface-level, immediate gratification, making it ever more challenging for us to access the deeper, reflective processes that contribute to our personal development and overall well-being.

Excessive Screen Time

On average, we now spend approximately three to four hours daily on our smartphones alone. This includes activities such as texting, making calls, using social media, staying updated with news, and streaming movies and other digital content. It's not uncommon for individuals to check their smartphones over a hundred times a day. Moreover, it is estimated that many adults in the United States dedicate around 6-8 hours per day to screen time in total. This screen time encompasses usage of smartphones, computers, tablets, televisions, and other digital devices. Additionally, a significant portion of our daily screen time is devoted to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and other social media feeds, with some individuals spending up to two to three hours or more on these platforms. For those whose professions require extensive computer use, daily screen time can exceed eleven hours, potentially impacting their wellbeing significantly. It's worth noting that average screen time can be even higher in countries like South Korea and Japan.

Children and adolescents are typically spending considerably more time on screens, which can have significant implications for their cognitive development and learning capabilities. The prolonged exposure to screens during these crucial developmental stages impedes their ability to focus, learn, and engage effectively in their studies and develop crucial social and other life navigation skills.

Bodies and Minds Saturated with Noise and Static

So many of us are spending multiple hours a day scrolling through our social media feeds, swiping on Tinder and other dating apps, reading a never-ending stream of news updates, and consuming other forms of digital content. In the span of a day, we're sending and receiving inordinate numbers of texts, viewing hundreds, if not thousands, of social media posts, web pages, dating profiles, videos, advertisements, and other content. The enormous volume of sensory input is overwhelming our brain-mind-body processing capacity. What we cannot process turns into noise and static, leaving many of us saturated with a backlog of unprocessed sensory input. This, in turn, makes it considerably more difficult for us to clearly perceive and to process our issues and authentic emotional responses.

When continually exposed to such vast amounts of digital stimuli, we cannot possibly digest it all effectively. What doesn't get processed invariably accumulates as a form of noise and static in our body-mind. So many of us have become so overly saturated with this unprocessed sensory input that it now permeates our entire system, making it incredibly difficult for us to clearly perceive our issues or digest our life experiences and our subsequent emotional responses. That diminishes our capacity for awareness and introspection.

Starving for Human Connection

One of the greatest tragedies of our current digital era is that we're not spending anywhere near as much quality time with one another. People are now more apt to text one another and spend time scrolling through and posting to their social media feeds. And yet many of us are starving for meaningful human connection. Sadly, the more time we spend looking at screens, the less time we're spending interacting in person with others.

Since people have become more inaccessible, we often find ourselves returning to our social feeds, news updates, and other online diversions. And yet it becomes a vicious cycle; the more we turn to the digital world, the further removed we become from meaningful in-person engagement with other people. This makes it more difficult for us to establish interpersonal connections and cultivate strong relationships, which are important for mental health and the health of the community at large.

Breaking the Addictive Cycle

Dopamine creates a biochemical incentive that motivates us to take action, and each time we hear a notification, we check our device. The problem is, these dopamine boosts are temporary and leads to a letdown. Because our brains want more dopamine, we develop the habit of checking our phones and social media feeds constantly throughout the day and we continue to scroll indefinitely.

The good news is that when we take constructive steps to limit our use of phones, social media, and other digital platforms, we can experience life-changing benefits. By intentionally decreasing interruptions—such as disabling notifications and reducing the constant influx of calls, texts, emails, and social media updates—we can significantly lower our stress and anxiety levels. This enables us to become more present in the moment. Our minds, no longer overwhelmed by excessive stimulation, become sharper, enhancing our critical thinking skills and allowing us to tap into an inner flow of insight and creativity.

As Technology Continues to Advance

As technology continues to advance, I've observed the changes occurring within people. It has become increasingly evident over time that much of the population is becoming less self-aware, particularly regarding their own emotions. Many find themselves unable to access and process their emotional responses, which, in turn, hinders their ability to generate workable solutions and resolve issues. It has also become increasingly apparent that many are becoming more disconnected from their inner selves.

The constant exposure to vivid audio and visual stimuli from our screens, such as smartphones, computers, and TVs, overwhelms our senses and inundates our minds with the content of our digital feeds. This continuous input can be so intense that it often drowns out or overshadows our internal thought and feeling processes, our intuition and deeper sense of connection to source, diminishing our capacity for introspection.

To counterbalance this inundation, it's crucial for us to take time for ourselves, which in some instances may involve brief moments, and at other times, hours, or even days largely spent in stillness and silence. These extended periods provide us with a much-needed break from the constant barrage of digital input, allowing our minds to quiet down and reconnect with our inner selves. During these hours, and in some cases, days of stillness and silence, we can reflect, process our life experiences, along with our subsequent cognitive and emotional responses, and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and reconnect with source.

A Counterbalance to Digital Distractions

Most days, I sit for two hours of meditation, but there have been times when I've sat for three, four, or even five hours. As we extend our meditation practice, deeper levels of thought processes and emotions that typically operate from our subconscious start making their way into our conscious waking awareness. This can provide us with crucial insights and solutions needed to address the challenges we're facing. Receiving these insights and tapping into these vital resources is unlikely to happen if we're only doing ten to fifteen-minute meditations, relying on meditation apps, or not meditating at all.

On occasion, people have said to me, ‘Who has time for that?' I often respond with, ‘How many hours a day are you spending scrolling through social media? How much time do you spend watching television or binging on Netflix? If you're wasting so much time on your digital feeds, television and Netflix, you most certainly have time to meditate.

Meditation helps to reset our brains and bodies. We can also counterbalance the harmful effects of digital overwhelm by spending more in-person time with friends and family, engaging with new people, and getting involved in what matters most to us. Being outside, especially in nature and engaging in physical activity, is also critically important.

Commitment and Consistency

We all carry emotional wounds or/and struggle with long-standing health issues that have developed over years, if not decades. The problem now is that the vast majority of people have such an incredibly limited sense of what is humanly possible. And most people at this time in history are way too distracted to ever attain such transformative healing and growth.

I've been incredibly fortunate to have done many years of intensive training with a traditional Native American doctor and a master from China, so I know firsthand what it takes to attain mastery in these ancient disciplines and to realize one's true potential. Indian yogis, who possessed such extraordinary capabilities, typically devoted hours to intensive daily meditation practices. Chinese martial artists who achieved mastery would do four, six, or even more hours of strenuous training daily. Native Americans engaged in practices like vision quests, which entailed fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water.

To heal and transform and realize our true potential, it's crucial for us to maintain similarly high levels of commitment and consistency. In order to do this, we need to minimize our use of the distractive technologies that scatter our focus, diminish our motivation and hinder our progress. By staying dedicated and avoiding excessive use of these technologies, we can better harness our potential for growth.

When YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels and Posts Become Your Therapist

One of the most frustrating aspects of the digital age is how challenging it has become to hold people's attention. Nowadays, it's common for individuals to do only a session or two and then vanish. Instead of having a practice that largely sustains itself, I found myself taking on what amounts to another job, putting in extra hours to reach out to new people due to the ever-shortening attention span.

To adapt, I started offering weekly classes in New York City to continually connect with new individuals. Additionally, I commuted to Boston every other week to offer classes in Somerville. Many other practitioners I've spoken to are facing the same challenge. For example, a movement therapist I met recently mentioned how she used to have clients who worked with her twice a week for years, but now, she considers herself fortunate if she can get people to commit to even five sessions. People's bodies and minds are needing more intervention than ever. Sadly, many have become so numbed and so disconnected that they fail to recognize their basic needs.

Over the past few years, Facebook and Instagram reels, TikToks, and YouTube shorts have gained enormous traction. These brief videos, typically ranging from fifteen seconds up to three minutes but averaging under a minute, are intentionally designed to cater to our desire for instant gratification. They accommodate our ever-diminishing capacity to focus, a symptom often associated with what some call ‘digital ADHD.'

Now, we have all these influencers competing for attention. At this point, I, too, find myself having to jump into this ecosystem. My intention in creating shorts and reels is to get people to view my long-form content. The problem here is that many people's attention span has deteriorated to such an extent that it's commonplace for them to click off of videos after a minute or two.

Our parents and grandparents spent years sitting for hours in front of the television, switching channels with their remotes. Scrolling on social media and consuming shorts, reels, and TikToks has become our modern-day equivalent of channel surfing. Both are forms of passive, habitual content consumption that requires minimal deep engagement.

As a result, our cognitive limitations are being further exacerbated, and our attention span continues to erode. Our minds constantly jump from one digital reality to another, unable to process the overwhelming volume of disparate digital input. This constant exposure effectively disrupts the way our brains function, creating a cycle of addiction.

People's attention and focus are continually drawn outward into their devices and social media feeds, leading them to become more externally focused, less introspective, and increasingly disconnected from their inner core. This disconnection is profound, leaving people feeling hungry and empty. They attempt to fulfill deep, unmet emotional needs through social media feeds, dating apps, and other online activities, which only fuels their addiction. They keep returning to social media, dating apps and other digital input, perpetually scrolling, swiping, tapping and clicking, becoming habituated to this form of engagement.

Many are essentially turning to Instagram posts, reels, and YouTube shorts as a form of therapy. Much of the advice and pop psychology tidbits are inaccurate and misleading. People seek quick, simple solutions, but the underlying issues remain unaddressed, and their problems persist. The reality is that due to our individual and collective ADHD, many now lack the patience and focus necessary for the much-needed healing and transformation process.

Journey of Healing and Transformation

Starting at the age of twenty, I began my training with Horace Daukei, one of the last surviving traditional doctors (medicine man) among the Kiowa Indian tribe. Horace passed on portions of his own healing gifts. He then had me go through the vision quest, a native practice that involves fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water to earn the right to work with these gifts of healing.

Through this profound journey, I've become a conduit for immensely powerful forces or beings, enabling me to facilitate healing and transformation within the body and mind that would be otherwise unattainable.

In the individual healing sessions that I facilitate, it's crucial to understand that true transformation is not a quick fix, it's an intensive process. Many come with unrealistic expectations that a session or two will suffice, but this is just the beginning, barely scratching the surface. Often, people are so numbed and disconnected from themselves due to toxicity, emotional wounding, and overwhelming stress and trauma that they lack awareness and comprehension of the initial changes taking place.

Healing manifests as a journey, especially for those who have become estranged from their own bodies and the profound emotional wounds they carry. Bodies accumulate decades of stress, unprocessed emotions, traumas, and the residues of life's many challenges, including poor diet, medications, alcohol, and other addictive substances, as well as a lack of exercise and rest. In our current age, this burden is further compounded by brains and bodies that have been overwhelmed and altered by excesses of digital media.

As we begin this healing journey, the first few sessions predominantly concentrate on cleansing the body of the backlog of stagnation and other accumulated toxin and awakening its internal organs. By sessions four and five, the body becomes actively engaged in the healing process, addressing deeper emotional wounds and past traumas. Assisted by the presence working through me, you will be literally “digesting” these experiences, transforming them into fuel for your continued growth.

Sessions extending from six through ten, and beyond, take you far deeper, purifying your body and mind on profoundly transformative levels. The physical body becomes considerably more malleable, mending injuries and addressing a wide range of health issues, encompassing digestive and respiratory disorders, heart disease, stroke, and more. Whenever possible, I encourage you to schedule sessions at least once a week. The healing process becomes greatly amplified when multiple sessions are scheduled on two, three, four, five or more consecutive days.

Through this journey, you'll awaken your passions, reconnect with your authentic self, tap into your intuition and instinctual wisdom, while integrating all aspects of your being. The results are astounding – heightened self-awareness, deeper insights into yourself and others. With each session, we're building a much stronger and more stable foundation while simultaneously increasing your “processing capacity.” We'll be activating your brain – mind's problem-solving abilities, developing a solution-focused outlook on life. Your body will become more resilient, slowing down the aging process. As a result, you'll find yourself more focused, present in the moment, gaining a clear sense of purpose and meaning in life. This transformation will enable you to develop the resources and capabilities needed to realize your true potential and fulfill your life's purpose.

©Copyright 2023 Ben Oofana. All Rights Reserved. This content may be copied in full, with copyright, creation and contact information intact, without specific permission.

If you feel inspired by what I'm sharing in this article, don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have. Additionally, we can arrange a session where I can personally guide you through these practices. The most profound results often emerge from in-person sessions, so if you believe I can assist you in your healing journey, please feel free to reach out and schedule a free 30 minute Challenge Resolution Session .