About Silas Rosenblatt
Silas Rosenblatt, CEC is a coach and educator who works with values driven leaders, creators and entrepreneurs to scale their positive impact at work and in the world.
In 2020 Silas started Awake In Relationship with the desire to highlighting solutions to a growing epidemic of loneliness and disconnection and recenter the importance of intimate relationships in the digital age.
Silas’s career spans decades in both the not for profit sector and public health as a registered acupuncturist and director of an Acu-detox clinic offering low barrier treatments for addictions and chronic pain. Through working with thousands of clients in the wellness space, the powerful and often understated influence of social connectedness on health became clear. The pandemic prompted a change of focus to leadership coaching and educating around social fitness, mindfulness and digital wellness.
Silas is a long time meditator and teaches Buddhist studies in the Mahayana Buddhist and Shambhala traditions. An insatiable curiosity about human nature and potential informs his approach to both podcasting and working with clients.
As an aspiring polymath with beginner’s mind, Silas brings a signature openness and empathy to every conversation, exploring the vulnerable and inspiring edges of change making and relationship building. He is a passionate believer in the entrerprenuerial spirit and the power of authentic leaders to transform the world for the greater good.
Why Awake in Relationship?
For a long time I have been consumed with a sense of pathos regarding the state of civic and social life in the digital age. Having grown up in a simpler time, before the internet, the contrast to today’s polarized society is particularly heightened. The connective tissue of shared values, institutions and relationships we all rely on to make things work has been in decline for decades. Experts are ringing the alarm about an epidemic of loneliness, but the longing many of us feel in our bones touches on something far more essential, even existential.
We didn’t evolve to spend an average of 7 or more hours a day glued to a device. That is a lot of alone time. Humans are herd animals and need face to face relationships as much as physical exercise to be healthy, sane and productive.
The paradox of Connectivity without connection
Modern life is saturated with attention grabbing technology that spikes our dopaminergic system, giving us the feeling of connection, while at the same time isolating us behind a screen. If you have ever felt alone in a busy cafe surrounded by people completely absorbed in their phones, you know what I am talking about. This public behaviour is a gut punch to human sensibility, but we all do it. As the saying goes, you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes smartphones as ‘experience blockers’, especially for kids and young adults. In the blink of an eye we disconnect from the vivid corporeal world of the five senses and start scrolling in search of a more perfect Now. Most of us repeat this pattern without second thought a hundred times a day, roughly once every 12 minutes.
The ‘awake’ part of Awake In Relationship is about recognizing the choice to be fully present in body and mind and turn towards connection, starting with ourselves.
As artificial general intelligence transforms life in every domain we are confronted with big questions on how to live and love as sovereign, free thinking beings in this strange new reality. The power that this immersive technology confers is seductive. It’s tempting to outsource everything, including our own needs for intimacy, to super intellect machines. In a Faustian bargain with Silicon Valley broligarchs we risk losing the plot altogether.
I want to start a conversation about conscious relationships in the digital age because we are the ones we have been waiting for. Human potential and happiness is not found in the cloud or on a screen, it is manifest in the living world, one awake relationship at a time.
AIR’s mission is to help liberate people from screens to spend more time creating conscious relationships and deep impactful work