Good News Monday: To Refresh Touch Something Besides Your iPad

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Dear Wellness Seekers,

Good News Monday: To Refresh Touch Something Besides Your iPad is an article in the Off Duty Section of this weekends Wall Street Journal offering a welcome perspective on the importance of reaching out for balance in ours lives through touch. Understanding the Power of Touch is is a primary theme in Spanista Philosophy.  Stephen Treffinger reports in ‘Reach Out And Touch…Something Besides Your iPad’ that our American society has become saturated with the proponderance of digital screens which has driven a desire in us to offset it.  The sleek, cool to the touch and responsive glass pads have brought us to the point of digital overload.

Seeking to relieve us from this intense shinny saturated world are artists and designers who are bringing us fresh sensual, tactile and organic Japanese design – a new wave of artisan craftsmanship that brings us what we crave most – a tactile, lush, less than perfect sense of realness born from the past. Things with history and journey that make us feel something more by stimulating our sensory imaginations.

Stephen shares that we see it in architectural trends – where reclaimed wood and salvaged looking eateries have have almost become cliche. “The search for that something, for the next authentic antidote to digital overload, has triggered a renewed appreciation of handmade decor from Japan. After the tsunami in 2011, a government initiated program called Japan Creative began reaching out to Western designers in the US and London to collaborate with Japanese craftsman on a series of contemporary products that would appeal to a broader market while using old world techniques. Hoping not to loose these treasured ways in their deep rooted culture.”

Adam Silverman a ceramic pottery artist, who is featured in the article says, “We are all tech-ed up – and we feel the need for warmer things in our hands.”

Spanista Takeaway: Good News Monday: To Refresh Touch Something Besides Your iPad reveals the yin and yang of life. Because we spend out days touching screens our bodies and minds crave hand made beauty we can touch to really appreciate them to the fullest – Spanista calls it the need for psychic refreshment. This translates to the ultimate need to reinforce our feeling of being alive – that people matter and that creativity is a treasured art of the hands – it reassures us we are humans have high value and purpose that cannot be replaced by technology. Food for the soul.

What do you think?

To Your Self Care Journey to Joy,

Ginny