Easy mindfulness tricks to make your summer holiday feel longer

Do you like to be beside the seaside, or is it the likes on the ’gram you’re after? While your holiday is #NoFilter, your brain is struggling to relax if you can’t tear yourself away from screen time.

“So many of my clients complain that their holidays feel too short,” says Hilda Burke, a psychotherapist, couples counsellor and author of The Phone Addiction Workbook.

“If we’re still connected to our phones, keeping an eye on what’s happening at home or at the office, it’s likely that our holiday time will feel like it’s flying as we’re not taking in the new experience, our new environment fully.”

So, what to do? Neuropsychologist David Eagleman, who studies time perception, calls time “a rubbery thing” that changes based upon where we are and our mental engagement with our experience. Eagleman asserts that the more engaged we are with what we’re doing, the more immersed we are in it — so switch off from your phone, and switch on to what you’re doing if you want the holiday to feel like it’s lasting a lifetime.

For one, don’t pack your Kindle. “Reading a paper or hardback book has two key benefits over a screen”, Burke argues. “Having good spatial mental representation of the physical layout of the text has been shown to lead to better memorisation and comprehension. When scrolling down a screen, we don’t get any sense of where the text lies ‘on the page.’”

Also, “the opportunities for multitasking are increased if we’re reading our book via the same device we use for messaging, shopping, and browsing. If we are reading a physical book and wish to do those things then it takes a much more conscious effort to put that book down, root out our phone, and switch it on.

Hilda Burke

Gelong Thubten, author of A Monk’s Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st Century, agrees that a “digital detox” is beneficial. “If we really feel the need, maybe we could set aside an hour a day to go online, but then switch off again,” he says. “The world won’t stop turning without us checking it all the time. Often when we take a holiday, we don’t truly get away — we spend time checking our phones or thinking about work. Our minds don’t seem to slow down. We’ve taken our bodies thousands of miles from home, but did we manage to bring our minds with us too?”

He advises practising “mindful moments” as you stand in the queue at check-in or security, or while you’re waiting for the train. “Simply feel the ground under your feet, relax your shoulders, be aware of the moment by using your body as the focus. You can do this in short bursts, or ‘micro-moments’.”

Okay, most of us need our phones to inform us of upcoming travel delays — but instead of going looking for bad news, Thubten suggests we use such moments of frustration to meditate for 10 or 15 minutes. “You’re training in non-distraction, being present, and you’re learning to be less controlled by your thoughts. You’re also reprogramming your habitual reaction to stress.”

Put the phone down, and take yourself away from all this.