- Published on
Engaging Physical Sensations
- Authors
- Name
- Teddy Xinyuan Chen
https://gallery.teddysc.me/books/
There are a lot of paper books in my home, my dad buys new books regularly and he read a lot. I also used to read a lot of paper books, novels, collection of short novels, sci-fi, fun books, picture books, you name it.
Since the discovery of the Internet, Z-Library and friends, I don't buy books or read physical books anymore. If something can be done online, I think I preferred to get it done online.
But spending too much time in front of a screen is not healthy, and subconciously my brain thinks I'm doing the same thing all day, even if I switched task so many times during the day.
It's time for changes. Touch things in nature or things made from nature, the wood balcony, the books. Get closer and see if you can smell the flowers, touch the loblolly pine.
I started borrowing books from libraries. A fun fact about Hunt Lib is that there's no physicall bookshelves you can touch anymore (they store books in a wearhouse and use something called bookBot to fetch books), and no one ever noticed anything strange when they walk into the library, since no one come to libraries to read the books there anymore.
I spent some time researching what books to borrow, and decided on Shakespeare. Following Redditor's advice, I got the Romeo and Juliet book, because I'm not going to finish more than that. I already read the translated version in Mandarin, and I wonder what the original content looks like.
R&J Book from Hunt Lib | More photos
Another reason I got physical books was that I read about how reading them before going to sleep can be a good pre-sleep routine, and I wanted to try that.
R told me that yoga, meditation etc are all ways to get into how the body's feeling, and by focusing on that we can feel more at-the-present and more peaceful. Yeah that makes sense.
I found that just holding the book and reading a few pages as a break from electronic devices is a good way to take my mind off things, and when I do that, my brain knows I'm not "working" anymore and it feels happy and relaxed.