Mindfulness and Video Games
You will be wondering what on earth these 2 subjects have in common! No doubt video game aficionados would argue that the attention they give to the game is a form of mindfulness. We’ll discuss that later.
Recently I appreciated a stimulating weekend in Melbourne attending the annual College of Chiropractic Paediatric conference. There were several excellent presenters with up to date research on how the human brain develops and what we can do to help children develop to their potential.
Dr Richard Chambers, an Australian expert on mindfulness developed the excellent Smiling Mind app. He describes mindfulness as “attention training”. He reminded us that multitasking is a myth. When we think we are multitasking we are attention switching. It takes on average 64 seconds to recover our train of thought after checking an email. And “alerts” from phones vibrating in people’s pockets resulted in a 28% increase in errors. The solution – when you are wanting to be productive switch your phone to aeroplane mode. He also recommended turning off notifications on all devices and unplugging from ALL electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bed time. If you have trouble falling asleep this screen free time may need to be longer.
Alice Cade presented research on ADHD, reading difficulties and Chiropractic. Effective eye tracking is needed to read with ease. Joints nerves and muscles in the upper neck contribute to eye tracking. Her research showed children’s reading speed increased after a Chiropractic adjustment.
Dr Wayne Warburton gave an informative presentation about the effects of screen time, social media and violent video games on children and teenagers. Did you know that the average teenager spends 6 hours on a screen daily for recreational use? Excessive screen time is associated with multiple health problems including poor posture and neck pain, sleep deprivation, attention deficits and poorer school performance. Look up Dr Wayne’s 10 tips for a healthy media diet Here is the link http://www.igea.net/2015/09/tips-for-healthy-game-play
In another blog, I will share some inspirational information from Dr Robyn Thompson. She shared on techniques for gentle and pain free breast feeding. You can find out more about her techniques at www.breastfeedingconsultant.com
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. I learned a lot of relevant information and it was special to share it with my youngest daughter who is a chiropractic student.