I've been thinking about a possible connection I haven't seen discussed much. It started from wondering why I seem to tolerate screens better after meditation.
It’s made me realise that my default way of breathing is shallow and from the chest, and that’s probably negative. The way you're told not to breathe in meditation. This shallow fight-or-flight breathing is an alarm signal in our bodies. Apparently most adults unconsciously shift to shallow chest breathing, even though we're all born breathing naturally from the abdomen. It’s estimated that 75% of people have this as their default.
I wonder if many of us have that alarm system running quietly in the background much of the time because of how we're breathing.
If so, perhaps it could be connected to a few things:
Constant tension: It forces the neck and shoulder muscles to do all the work, which might contribute the headaches and eye pain we feel.
Feeling of being on-edge: It keeps our nervous system in a sensitive state, perhaps making us more reactive to irritating stimuli like screen flicker.
Brain fog: This kind of breathing can reduce blood flow to the brain.
It could be a vicious circle - the screen causes stress, the stress leads to chest breathing, and the chest breathing keeps the body in a state of stress that makes us more sensitive to the screen.
It's just a hypothesis, and maybe I'm overthinking it but I’m trying to default to abdominal breathing instead.