Untracking Myself: How Ditching My Apple Watch Reconnected Me to My Body
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading The Lotus Still Blooms: Sacred Buddhist Teachings for the Western Mind by Joan Gattuso.
In it, she describes a Buddhist formula for discerning whether something in our lives is beneficial or harmful. The practice is simple but disarming: you take one experience, one belief, or one object at a time and move it through five filters, the Five Aggregates, to see what’s actually there.
One of those aggregates is form.
As part of the practice, Gattuso suggests choosing an important object in your home, placing it out of sight for a week, and noticing what arises.
Do you miss it? Does it matter? What stories surface when the object is gone? It’s an exercise in loosening the grip of attachment not to get rid of things, but to see the larger picture of “objects are just objects.”
I chose my wedding rings.
For a week, I tucked them away and paid attention. I missed them, not because they were shiny or sentimental, but because they hold meaning for me. They symbolize commitment, partnership, and identity. They’re not just objects; they’re anchors.
By the end of the week, my rings were back on my hand.
But something else happened that I hadn’t planned for!
I found myself taking off my Oura ring and my Apple Watch instead. And three weeks later, my watch is still sitting on my dresser with no intention of putting it back on.
What Removing My Tracking Devices Taught Me
I didn’t expect this experiment to turn into a meditation on modern life, but it did.
When I took off my “tracking devices”, I realized how much of my inner world I had outsourced to them.
How often I checked a screen to tell me:
whether I slept “well enough”
whether I was stressed
whether I moved “enough”
whether I was recovering “properly”
It hit me one early morning while I was journaling…
I don’t need a device to tell me I’m stressed. I can feel it.
And that realization landed with a kind of holy exasperation! I wanted to laugh at myself but also cry a little.
We’ve become so conditioned to trust data over intuition that we forget intuition is data.
We forget the body is a brilliant instrument.
We forget that our inner knowing IS the compass.
The Middle Path (Because I’m Not Anti-Device as much as I want to be)
Here’s the part I want to be really clear about:
I’m not demonizing tracking devices. I’m not suggesting anyone throw theirs away. I’m not even sure I won’t put mine back on someday.
I even wrote in my journal:
“If you see me wearing it again, please don’t judge. I’m learning too.”
This isn’t about purity or perfection.
It’s about awareness. It’s about noticing what we reach for, and why.
It’s about remembering that objects, even the ones we love, are still just objects.
And sometimes the most meaningful spiritual practice is simply asking:
Does this help me come home to myself, or does it pull me away?
Coming Home to Simple Feelings
What this whole experiment revealed to me wasn’t really about rings or watches or devices. It was about the subtle ways we hand our power away, inch by inch, notification by notification, metric by metric.
It was about remembering that form is just form.
Objects are just objects.
And yet the stories we attach to them can shape how we move through our days.
My wedding rings reminded me of meaning.
My tracking devices reminded me of noise.
And when the noise fell away, I could hear myself again.
Feel disconnected from yourself or your soul? I challenge you to remove your apple watch or oura ring for 1 week. Please tell me the difference you feel!
I could feel my stress without needing a graph to tell me how stressed I was. I could sense my recovery without needing a score. I could trust my body without needing a device to validate it. There was something profoundly human about that.
And maybe that’s the quiet invitation inside this whole practice:
to notice what we cling to, what we reach for, what we believe we “need,” and to gently ask whether it brings us closer to ourselves or further away.
Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply feel our feelings… without outsourcing them, without measuring them, without tracking them.
Just feeling them.
Just being with them.
Just being with ourselves.
About Mallory
Mallory is a holistic practitioner who helps individuals reconnect with their bodies through a mind-body approach to healing. Her work blends body awareness, somatic practices, and intuitive guidance to support those who feel stuck, disconnected, or overwhelmed.
She believes the body holds deep wisdom and that true healing begins when we learn how to listen. Through her work, Mallory gently guides clients back to their own inner knowing, helping them build trust in themselves, regulate their nervous system, and experience a more grounded, connected way of living.
Her approach is not about fixing or forcing change. It’s about creating space to feel, to notice, and to come home to yourself in a way that feels sustainable and real.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected from your body or unsure how to trust what you’re feeling, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Mallory offers one-on-one support to help you reconnect with your body, understand your patterns, and move forward with greater clarity and ease. Reach out to start your journey back to yourself.