Whole Again: A Fresh Approach Healing, Growth & Resilience After Physical Trauma Through Kintsugi Mindfulness

221 |How Reducing Your Smartphone Scroll Tax Can Boost Resilience, Recovery, and Digital Health

Show Notes:

Could the real key to rebuilding resilience and mindfulness after trauma be hiding in your playlist… or your scrolling habits?

In this energizing episode, Michael explores how music can shift our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing—and why reducing “scroll tax” is crucial to reclaiming joy, mindfulness, and resilience during trauma recovery. Small changes can create big healing ripples.

Takeaways:

  • Discover how music powerfully supports trauma recovery, mindfulness, and emotional resilience
  • Learn why your smartphone habits may be quietly draining your healing energy
  • Find out how to build daily moments of mindful joy beyond the scroll

When ready, take a big breath in and slow breath out to strengthen your healing journey with music, mindfulness, and a bold step toward reclaiming your resilience from digital distraction.

Discover how to scroll less and live more by taking my Free Smartphone Wellness Audit by clicking phone.

Did you know that stickers are wonderful visual cues to help you create healthy habits? You can get one of my free Pause Breathe Reflect sticker by clicking sticker.

To discover more and sign up for My RIPPLE EFFECT newsletter by clicking Ripple Effect.

We can also connect on LinkedIn. or at [email protected]

Subscribe to be sure you don’t miss any of the micro-meditations, wellness tips, and guidance that I publish every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:11 am. 

If you feel you need more mental health support, please contact NAMI. 
With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Healing, Growth & Resilience after Physical Trauma through Kintsugi Mindfulness listeners explore resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome PTSD, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on stress management, mindfulness practices, and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools like breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress relief. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embraces healing as a process of transformation, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and being overwhelmed to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and holistic approaches to self-care, this podcast empowers listeners to cultivate emotional resilience and live with greater balance and intention.

Transcript:

 In this episode, you’ll discover the mindset shift with rhythm. Hey there, it’s Michael. Welcome to Whole again. A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kintsugi on Fridays. I love sharing a microdose of wisdom with you. To help you become whole again and step into the person you’re becoming today, you’ll discover a mindset shift that can help your mental, physical, and social wellness, as well as a very important question around something called the scroll tax.

But first I wanna take a moment to thank you for being here. And thank you for being a fellow survivor. I’m so grateful to be on this journey with you. So thanks for being here.

Alright, let’s talk about music. I’m a big believer that movement can be medicine. Mindfulness can be medicine, as well as music. I was reminded of this from one of my clients who I met with earlier this week. He said, one thing that’s always stayed with me is how you constantly talk about movement, mindfulness and music.

Music has always been a key part of my life and a vital part of my recovery. I like to say that Depeche Mode’s Violator album was the soundtrack of my early phase of recovery. You know this, listening to music, whether you’re creating it, just listening to it or singing, it can change our mood. It can amp us up.

It can calm us down. In fact, there’s a meta-analysis study that looks at the benefit of music, and it showed that music can reduce our stress. In particular, it can bring our heart rate lower and reduce our blood pressure. The link to the study, I’ll put in the show notes so you can review it on your own time.

But when you think about it, music can change our mental health. So as we recognize May and Mental Health Awareness month, it’s an opportunity to reflect on how music shapes our lives, how it impacts our mental health. I’m sure you have your favorite playlist. I have mine. I have my playlist when I want to chill out on a Sunday morning.

I have a playlist when I feel a bit bittersweet. I also have a playlist when I want to amp up my energy, and I’m sure again, you do as well. So what kind of music does it for you? How does it impact your mental and emotional health? And the cool thing about music, it not only impacts our mental health, but it impacts our physical health.

As you know, our mind and body are more than connected. It’s one system. So whatever is happening in the mind, and we experience life through our senses. So we experience life through what we hear. So music really impacts our full body, our mental and physical wellness. And when we experience music together.

Like at a concert or with some friends, there’s something called collective effervescence, which I just love that bubbly sensation. It’s that moment when you’re at a concert and the band doesn’t have to sing, but everyone in the arena knows every word to every song. It’s that moment where you get maybe some goosebumps that changes us.

So this week I’ll encourage you to spend an extra moment. Pausing, breathing and reflecting, if you will, on how music shapes your life. It could just be the mindset shift that you need to help you heal and grow and become more resilient. I’m pretty sure that it will impact in a positive way, your mental, physical, and social wellness.

Now, let’s talk about our digital health, because that impacts all of it. So how much money do you think you pay in scroll tax a year? And you might be wondering what the heck is a scroll tax? Well, we talk a lot about taxes, right? And everyone wants to pay as little tax as possible. But what if I told you there’s a hidden tax that we all pay when we scroll on our phones?

Too much. If you believe that time is money, and it may be the case in many situations, but not all. But if time is money, then all that doom scrolling that we do, well, there’s a cost to that. It’s time that could be better spent with family or friends, taking care of our health, enjoying a hobby, working on a side hustle, or simply.

Which is actually something, it’s called recovery. So when we engage in unproductive scrolling, there’s a cost. We have a calculation here at Whole Again, and pause, breathe, reflect, and if you’re interested in knowing what your scroll tax is and how you can reduce it, you can take the smartphone wellness check that I mentioned at the end of this episode.

But better yet, you can now get our new feature on our app. Our app’s called Pause, breathe, reflect, and in it there’s a new feature to help you block apps that are distracting. Those apps that you always go to, that you waste a lot of time with, that cost you a lot in scroll text. Now, there’s a way to block those apps and we give you the key to unlock them through the power of our pause, breathe, reflect method.

It’s so cool. Our early users have seen a reduction in their screen time by up to 50%, as well as their daily pickups, so they have more time for things that bring them more joy. They’re scrolling less and living more, and I hope you’ll check it out. So this week, think about how much money it’s costing you, what you’re missing out on.

We all have FOMO that sort of drives our phone use. But when we say yes to what’s on our phone and the algorithm, we say no to things that bring us more happiness. So this week take a step to find happiness outside your phone and reduce your scroll tax so you have more time to live fully. Thanks again for being here, and thanks again for being a survivor.

In this episode, you discovered how important music is to our mental, physical, and social health, as well as that nasty scroll tax, that invisible tax that we all pay through unproductive scrolling, and there’s a way. Reduce. So I hope you’ll join us in reducing. Scroll everywhere and again, thanks for being here.

I’m grateful for you

and if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I’ll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes, or you can visit my website, which is Michael O’Brien schiff.com and it’s absolutely free. And it’ll help you scroll less and live more.

And of course, I hope you’ll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience. Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.

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