Consciously Digital: Anastasia Dedyukhina helps coaches apply digital well-being concepts in their practice
Hyper-connectivity in the workplace and in life is driving new interest in digital well-being. Anastasia Dedyukhina believes that coaches can help clients build healthy relationships with technology, supporting a more human world.
Wisdom Weaver
Coaches are helping clients develop digital wellness skills in a tech-saturated world
Rapid tech adoption and an always-on culture are reshaping client well-being, yet the coaching industry has been slow to adapt. While general coaching practices can help clients uncover potential pitfalls of digital overload in the workplace, more work can be done to strengthen coach training programs around digital well-being. As an emerging practice, digital wellness coaches combine coaching approaches with expertise in digital well-being to help clients restructure their relationship with technology.
Leading an international network of digital well-being coaches, Wisdom Weaver Dr. Anastasia Dedyukhina believes that coaches are better equipped to support client well-being when they understand the foundations of what it means to be well. Her coach training program starts with building awareness of the relationship between digital habits and physical, emotional, and social health. She believes specialization helps coaches ask deeper questions and provide useful information to guide client growth. Like other coaching approaches in health and wellness, digital wellness coaching involves both information-sharing and non-directive support.
As one of the first digital wellness advocates, Anastasia works extensively in corporate settings, speaking out on the ways that technology overload causes unneeded distractions, drives stress, weakens human creativity, and challenges well-being in the workplace. Beyond the workplace, she notes that despite the promise of constant connection, technology is not solving issues like loneliness or isolation. Anastasia underscores the pivotal role of coaches in reversing these trends by helping people lean into what makes them human.
Consciously Digital marks a first for digital wellness training in the coaching world
Combining research in human behavior, positive psychology, and neuroscience, Anastasia launched the first accredited coach training program in digital well-being through her company Consciously Digital. In addition to the nine-month coach training program, she offers foundational courses to help coaches understand the science behind how technology impacts well-being, unpack myths around digital addiction, and explore coaching approaches to support digital well-being for coach trainees and their clients.
Learn more about the intersection of technology and well-being and what coaches can do to support client well-being through their digital habits:
Anastasia outlines how relationships to technology are shaping the future of well-being
How did you start your journey exploring digital well-being?
“This whole thing started for me as a digital detox experience. In 2015, I was working in a senior role at a digital marketing agency in London, representing a client in the tech industry. During this time, I was not good at managing my own relationship with my devices. I was waking up at night replying to emails, although there was no expectation. I got into this bad habit of constantly scrolling, and my thumb was hurting because of endless swiping between Facebook, social media, news, and work.
So, I thought: ‘I need to take a break and reflect on what I am doing with my life.’ I was getting overwhelmed by not being creative. I took a step back and started training as a coach, then took a conscious unplug by replacing my smartphone with a dumb phone for about a year and a half. Surprisingly, people started asking me: ‘Do you coach others on how to get rid of their smartphones?’ I realized there was a niche here where people wanted to have a better relationship with technology, even when there was no such thing as ‘digital well-being.’
As living without a smartphone became more difficult, I started looking for an alternative to digital detox. Instead of completely giving up technology, I wanted to find balance. How can you actually use technology in a way that does not interfere with or harm who you are as a human? So, we came up with this idea of digital well-being or digital wellness.”
How did your coaching practice expand into a training program?
“After I started working as a digital well-being coach, I was getting too much work and needed somebody to refer this work to. Because this is such a new interdisciplinary area, I could not really find anyone to refer my clients to because this person needed to have coaching skills and understand neuroscience and the mechanisms of people’s motivations. If a person says they have a ‘fear of missing out,’ what is behind it? I ended up writing everything I knew in a book and gathered feedback. This evolved into a coach training program, where 130 people from around the world have graduated. It is a nine-month program and the only one in the world that is certified by two coaching federations: the International Coaching Federation and the US National Board of Health and Wellness Coaching.
Our organization combines coaching tools, positive psychology, and the latest neuroscience research. We look holistically at all the aspects of how technology is changing us, from our brain and attention to changes in the body and our social interactions.“
What does it mean to have a good relationship with technology?
“We define digital well-being as how well you can manage your relationship with your devices and how well you can maintain all your human aspects. Screen time is not necessarily an indicator of that. I like to look at it in terms of three pillars. The first pillar is the ability to stay focused on a task or your work. The second pillar is the ability to unplug and properly rest. The third very important pillar of digital well-being is the ability to support your physical body when using computers.
If we can muster these three aspects — the ability to focus, consciously unplug, and have rest to support our physical bodies — then we can say that we are digitally well. If we cannot, then obviously, that is something for us to look at individually, as a team, and in the greater workplace.”
How will technology shape the future of well-being?
“The more we use technology, the more we disconnect from our bodily needs and sensations. If you ask anyone, ‘When was the last time you paused, did not think of any problems, and allowed yourself ten minutes of silence?’ it would be very difficult to find someone who makes time for these things. Very often, we take a walk and listen to a podcast when we are in nature. We think this is productive. But when we do this, we are disrupting well-being and the natural cycle of attention. It is very human to have many kinds of cycles: rest versus activity, attention versus inattention, social and loneliness, that computers do not have.
We need to apply this same concept of recognizing cycles to consuming versus assimilating information. Constantly consuming information may seem like we are constantly learning, but this is not good for us. The idea of moderation, knowledge of our internal cycles, and respecting all of them is probably a crucial idea that will define well-being.
When it comes to eyesight, the current forecast is that by 2050, more than half of the global population will be myopic or short-sighted because we are constantly staring at the screens. Because we are not outside as often, we do not train our eye muscles to look at a distance. Our sedentary lifestyle also leads to back pain, shoulder pain, and a host of other problems. The World Health Organization says that a sedentary lifestyle is the fourth biggest cause of death in the world.”
What kinds of needs are your students hoping to meet through the Consciously Digital training?
“With health and well-being coaches, these coaches blend digital wellness with other health and wellness tools as a holistic approach. For example, when a client wants to give up smoking, they often need help with nutrition. Similarly, these coaches come to my course because they understand there is a link between good nutrition and good digital habits.”
What misconceptions are you seeing around digital well-being?
“Apart from the false narrative of the screen time. You also have another false usage of the term ‘digital addiction.’ As coaches, we cannot work with addiction, right? We are not trained medical professionals. We can only work with bad habits. This is where coaching can help with digital well-being.”
How can coaches support healthy digital habits?
“Coaching can help with bad habits; like working on where we spend our time and choosing to spend it on different things. Maybe we want to be more focused. Maybe we will want to better support our physical bodies, because we sit with our necks strained for many hours in front of the screen. Obviously, this does have an effect on well-being.
The main problem with coaching is that you have to get the mandate. When you have a client and six sessions, you have an objective, but you also understand that there is a much bigger problem that may need to be addressed on the team or company level. You need to work with leaders; otherwise, you can do only so much. This is a specific skillset that coaches need to develop, which has nothing to do with coaching skills. It is the skill of conveying your message and explaining why an organization needs to subscribe to deeper change. This is especially difficult with people and with companies who are constantly stressed. Everyone is working at crazy paces, whether needed or not, and coaches who are able to build trust will get the invitation from organizations to lead change.”
What role will coaches play in shaping our digital future?
“More aspects of our lives are now digitized: education, finance, health, coaching, and entertainment — and there will be more. We are giving away our time, our privacy, and our sense of self to large tech companies. I would love to see more political regulation around digital safety and for digital well-being to be included in the WHO framework of health and well-being. When that happens, insurance companies will start recognizing the connection between digital habits and well-being.
Every organization should have a Chief Digital Well-being Officer. Every school should teach digital well-being fundamentals. Without digital well-being experts, who will work to understand legislation around privacy? Or the impact of stress on our ability to learn in social interactions? Who would advise on new technologies before they are implemented and monitor and coordinate technological advances as they are rolled out?
And this is why I tell coaches that we need to remain human in a digital world. Nature has done amazing work on training people how to stay well. We have everything inside ourselves, evolved throughout centuries — all the mechanisms are there. Coaches’ work is very simple. It’s about helping the person go back to who they are and just remove all the unnecessary layers.”
