I must have an amazing body…  If I haven’t drunk enough water, I feel dehydrated and head achy.  If I have drunk enough, I feel clear and brighter.  If I haven’t eaten enough, I feel hungry, and if I’ve eaten too much, I feel lazy and over full.  If I had a good night sleep, I wake up feeling refreshed and ready for action, and if I slept badly, I struggle to get out of bed and have a slower start.  AND, if I exercise, I sleep better, feel better, and get fitter.  Isn’t that incredible?  Isn’t that such a spectacular thing?  I should thank my body, clearly it’s a bit of a rarity, since so many people seem to need a Fitbit to tell them all of that amazing information. 

Do you know, in USA, they have a thing called Nature deficit disorder.  They say it’s affecting millions of people, mainly kids.  Some schools actually have bootcamp to fix it – they put a class load of kids on a school bus, remove their Fitbit, smart watches, phones, earphones, laptops, and take them out to the wilderness.  Once there, they have them walk across grass, stand in streams, lie on a sunbaked rock, and actually feel, smell, taste, see and hear.  Listen to the birds.  Feel the rough ground.  Taste the clean water.  Smell the wild flowers.  Look at the view.  I think it’s incredibly sad that kids need to be taught to put their technology down and see what a running river looks like.  And imagine the shock – you can walk across a field without posting on social media how many steps your Fitbit said you took.  Shocking – people walk without recording it.  Imagine that.

And here is another contradiction – your Fitbit tells you to get up and walk, that you’ve been sitting still for too long.  But…  Your smart home Alexa can turn on the lights and the TV without you having to stand up and walk to the light switch, so allowing you to sit still for longer.  Because heaven help those poor people, who have to stand up and walk to the light switch… 

I break technology – many people who know me know that I am a “slider” – things break.  If I wear watches, they stop and run backwards.  Clocks stop working, anything that is charging when I try to use it either turns off or gives shocks.  Laptops and phones don’t last long, and printers – don’t even go there.  And, it’s something I am incredibly grateful for.  Even if I could wear a Fitbit or have an Alexa, I wouldn’t even if you paid me.  I know many people are excited by technology and the developments, but really, I think the more developments there are, the more disconnected humans become and the less we trust our brains, our bodies, our instincts. 

https://www.stufftoblowyourmind.com/podcasts/watch-stoppers.htm

I have a phone, a laptop, a kindle and an ipod.  And that is about it.  And, that is the way it’s staying.

Does this affect the horse industry?  Yes.  With people needing to be told if they had a bad night’s sleep, they are becoming more and more disconnected from their bodies.  You ask some one to feel their body or their horse’s movement and they look blankly at you as if you are asking them to fly to the moon.  And no, they can’t consult their computer about whether or not their horse is moving well.  If you cannot trust yourself to know if you had walked far enough today, how are you going to instinctively know if your horse is active enough?  We need to dump our dependency on the technology, get back to be fully functioning human beings and start using our inbuilt apps – the noticing ones that we were actually born with…