Detox and Mental Health: How Clearing the Noise With a Mental Detox Might Make Space for a More Meaningful Life
Do you often catch your mind wandering? Maybe you’re staring off blankly trying to formulate a clear thought. We’re all constantly bombarded with information, technology, and obligations, leaving our minds cluttered and restless.
Just like a physical detox helps purge toxins from the body, a mental detox is about clearing the clutter from our minds. It’s about stepping away from the constant stimulation and noise and giving ourselves the space to look inward.
Read on to explore the meaning of mental detox, the benefits it may offer, as well as tips and techniques to help you carve a path toward a more meaningful life.
Table of Contents
- What Is the Definition of a Mental Detox?
- What Are the Benefits of a Mental Detox?
- How Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat Can Assist With Your Mental Detox
- 7 Ways You Can Detox for Mental Clarity at Home
- Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat Is Invested in Your Personal Development
What Is the Definition of Mental Detox?
A mental detox, or cleanse, is an exercise in clearing your mind to help you find better focus and balance in your life.
It’s about taking a break from the day-to-day stressors, anxieties, and distractions and can include activities like deep breathing, stretching exercises, and taking a break from electronic devices.
Did you know that between 2005 and 2019, the prevalence of social media use amongst U.S. adults rose from 5% to over 70%?
There are different ways to do a mental detox, which we’ll go into in more detail later on.
What Are the Benefits of a Mental Detox?
These days, there’s so much information and noise circulating, and — whether we realize it or not — we’re constantly absorbing information through our senses. This constant buzz contributes to why we can sometimes feel foggy or dizzy and not really know why.
Doing a mental detox is a great way to begin with a new blank slate and is a great choice for people who feel overwhelmed, experience a foggy brain, absorb too much information, or have constant racing thoughts.
Potential benefits of a mental detox may include:
- Reduced stress and anxiety
- Sharpened focus and creativity
- Improved sleep
- Enhanced self-awareness
- Boosted mood and emotional well-being
How Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat Can Assist With Your Mental Detox
We have the pleasure of experiencing life through a unique lens. When this lens becomes clouded, discolored, or marred, we lose the ability to properly connect with the world around us — and ourselves.
Our Revitalizing Detox Retreat program is an intimate and supportive group program with a maximum of 15 people.
During your stay at our 173-acre campus — surrounded by the healing Red Rocks of Sedona, multiple pristine energy vortexes, a meditation lake, outdoor pool, and herbal and healing gardens — you will be immersed in a complete sanctuary to love yourself and the earth by revitalizing your body, mind, and soul.
Over the course of six days, you’ll release built-up toxins in your body, increase your nutrient intake, learn which foods your body needs for metabolic renewal, plus understand the impact stress has on your digestion and absorption of foods.
Our goal is that you’ll leave with a clearer mind, renewed cellular memory, and more focused energy.
Take time to realign your emotional well-being to reconnect yourself and your energy to its natural state of being. We welcome you to realign with us at the Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat.
Information Fasting
At Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat, we practice information fasting — this unplugging aims to stop sensory overload from happening so we can clear and reset our brains. One way to do this is to go out into nature and not be on social media.
By connecting to ourselves and eliminating or decreasing outside stimulation of the senses, we can better lean into our inner dialogue.
As with any kind of addiction, we feel withdrawal symptoms. For some people, when they don’t have their phone close by or with them at all times, they might feel anxious and not know what to do with themselves.
To help work through these feelings, Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat attendees practice mindfulness exercises to help strengthen the mind-body connection by teaching you how to be present and fill that time. The goal being that instead of focusing on external things, we learn to rechannel the energy to look inward.
Our programs dedicate full days to focusing inward. In the time you might normally be distracted and split your focus, you’ll be guided to use that energy and look inside yourself, learning how to silence the distractions of the outside world.
Looking for a mental detox and need guidance? Don’t know how to fill your time or feel fidgety and lost without your phone? Explore the full programs at Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat and learn how clearing the noise with a mental detox might make space for a more meaningful life.
Get Back to Nature
Ecopsychology is the practice of using nature as a tool for stress relief.
You don’t need to spend most of your time in nature to receive its benefits. Studies have shown that spending time outdoors can:
- Lower blood pressure
- Lower hormones associated with stress
- Reduce nervous system arousal
- Enhance immune system function
- Increase self-esteem
- Reduce anxiety
Even five minutes of physical exercise can stimulate anti-anxiety effects.
At Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat, we ask our participants to join us in nature and partake in a journey of self-exploration and connection. We want to teach you how to equip yourself with and use ancient energy practices and principles to regain your position as the conscious creator of your life.
7 Suggestions for an At-Home Detox for Mental Clarity
#1: Clean and Organize Your Space
Studies have shown significant links between cleaning and mental health, which makes cleaning a great activity to start with during a mental detox. When you clean your physical space, it helps your internal space, too.
After all, the space you surround yourself with will affect your energy. Messy environments can lead to cluttered thoughts, and vice versa. Tidying your physical environment might help you tend to and tidy your internal environment, too.
#2: Get Physical
Getting outside and exercising without consuming any kind of media (i.e. no music, podcasts, etc.) could clear your mind.
Instead of using media, try focusing on your surroundings, taking in the different sights, smells, and sounds around you.
You might also try practicing yoga, heading out for a walk or bike ride, or taking some time to stretch your body.
#3: Meditate
Performing breathing exercises and practicing meditation are great ways to mentally detox.
Try breathing deeply — inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth — while focusing on the movement of your stomach rising and falling.
Focusing on your breath can help slow your heart rate down and work wonders for calming a racing mind.
Take a few minutes to start the day or during your lunchtime to stop for some breaths, or take a longer stretch before bed to wind down and help your mind and body relax.
Regular meditation or prayer might also help you find ways to stay calm and centered during the business of daily life.
#4: Journal and Make Lists
Do you find yourself constantly running through your mental to-do list? What about your calendar for the next week; always tweaking it to keep everything in order?
Free your mind by writing out your worries and thoughts. Try to make note of each thought, action, or event that bothers you and review it at the end of each day.
A dedicated notebook can help keep everything together and give you a sense of release from those ruminating thoughts.
#5: Do a Digital Declutter
Digital detoxification is the term widely adopted in popular culture as a method to address perceived overuse of the internet.
A recent study published in Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking and conducted by researchers at the University of Bath found that a week-long social media break not only plays a significant role in alleviating an individual’s mental health condition but also frees up a lot of time in their schedule.
If you do choose to spend time online, consider these steps to make it productive and positive:
- Get your email inbox to zero, and actively work to keep it there.
- Unsubscribe from any unread emails or promotional reminders.
- Clean out your phone of any phone numbers of people you don’t talk to.
- Regularly audit who you’re following on social media platforms, and ask yourself if the accounts you subscribe to are actually adding something to your life.
#6: Be Intentional
It’s easy to get caught up in the routine and schedule you have for your life and lose your “why”.
A mental detox can help add awareness to your every decision and action, adding intention to your choices.
Setting your intentions can serve as a steady reminder of what your goals are and help keep your thoughts organized.
#7: Be Grateful
Taking everyday inventory of the positives and blessings you have in your life may help ground you amidst a busy life.
When you find yourself getting stressed or wound up, take a moment to reflect on what aspects of your life you’re especially thankful for.
Additional Tips for a Successful Mental Detox
Starting a mental detox is a brave and rewarding task. To help you keep motivated, we’ve compiled a list of tips to help you successfully complete your mental detox:
- Think of movements and mindful activities that facilitate looking inward. This could be yoga, meditation, going for a walk or bike ride, or just moving your body.
- Complete quiet time to listen to yourself. If you need music to destress, you can work up to that, but to really teach ourselves to tune out the outside world, we need to be alone with our thoughts.
- Just like any detox, you can do a mental detox as often as you’d like. Once a year, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily — there’s no perfect framework. Check-in with yourself and know your speed.
- Try starting a mental detox with an accountability partner. Connect with a friend and commit to bettering yourselves together.
- You might try mini-steps at home. On a non-working day like a Sunday, turn off your phone for an hour to start. If that feels okay, keep increasing it and work up to a point where you can leave it off all day. If there are important people who may need to contact you, let them know ahead of time you’ll be unplugging for a day. It will be difficult at first, but if you have the determination to feel the benefits, sticking through your mental detox without breaks can give your brain space to breathe.
Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat Is Invested in Your Personal Development
Sedona Mago’s Revitalizing Detox Retreat program is designed for multi-hyphenate individuals leading hyperactive lifestyles with little downtime.
Whether you’re running a business, managing a household, or anything in between, everyone deserves to operate at their optimum peak. Our detox program helps each attendee achieve a level of balance to do that and more.
Explore our full calendar of wellness programs, including personal development retreats, core program retreats, self-mastery programs, and more.
We invite you to join us at the Sedona Mago Center for Well-Being and Retreat and learn how to lead a more mindful life.
