“Why would I ever go slow when I can go fast?!”
That has been my mantra for my entire life. I grew up as an insatiably curious child with a lot of energy, throughout my 20’s every spare minute that I wasn’t studying or working was jam packed to the brim with socialising, rock climbing, salsa dancing, running and travelling. The first few years of my 30’s I was working multiple jobs, running my art business on the side, studying interior design, socialising non-stop, running a lot and getting into meditating and working out every day - fuelled on coffee and adrenaline!
It was completely normal for me to wake up at 5am and rush from one thing to another - doing my meditation, getting a coffee at the cafe and working on my art business, commuting in traffic to work, squeezing a workout in in my lunch break, going straight from work to a run with a friend, rushing straight from there to dinner with a different friend, rushing home to squeeze in any last minute errands or interior decoration assignments before collapsing into bed exhausted, but always unable to fall asleep properly. I was habit stacking almost everything so that I could squeeze more in, and any spare second of peace and quiet I had was quickly filled with podcasts or audiobooks. And OF COURSE - walking at TOP SPEED between all of these things, irate at anyone walking slowly in front of me in the supermarket or on the footpath.
I’m sure this probably sounds awfully familiar to a lot of you. And the bizarre thing (in hindsight) is that this was such an enormous part of my identity! I really prided myself on how much I could squeeze into one day, my impatience was one of my key qualities and my relentless pace meant that I could fit so many things into my day to day life.
But then, why was I doing all of these ‘nervous system regulation’ healthy habits and hacks, but still feeling like a tightly coiled spring? How could I have a life so life jam-packed full of wonderful things that were really important to me but not be able to sleep at night? And why on earth would I ever ‘do less’ or ‘walk slowly’ when I could obviously squeeze everything in?
Fast forward a few years from there, and having travelled a lot more and settled in a gorgeous tropical beach town in southern Sri Lanka - and life had slowed down A LOT. But still I walked very, very fast everywhere! From the outside life looked peaceful and nice, but on the inside I was still working to a tight ‘schedule’, and all of my time had to be optimised somehow. My morning routine was very disciplined, waking up before sunrise to meditate, then quickly sweeping my room and doing my live online kalaripayattu class, then getting changed quickly to go for a run quickly so that I could be at my favourite cafe as soon as it opened. Any time spent laying in the sun at the beach was spent reading books on neuroscience and longevity and taking notes. My afternoon walks were always top speed, replying to client voice notes or listening to different business trainings or podcasts, making sure I was home right on time so that I could cook dinner by a certain time so I could be in bed by a certain time to finally enjoy the specific time for ‘relaxing’ and reading whatever fantasy series I was into.
I was still endlessly fascinated with optimising my health and different nervous system regulation tools, and things were improving slowly. My tightly coiled spring was very very slowly uncoiling itself, but still no where near relaxed! And then I met a wonderful friend who told me - SLOW DOWN.
Of course, I immediately brushed this off (hehe whoopsies!). Why would I be slow when I could be fast?!! Why would I walk slowly when I could walk fast?! I actually LIKE being fast! I ENJOY life at a fast pace! Why on earth would I do less when I could do MORE?!!
He told me that there were a lot of incredible things I would unlock in my life and in my Being when I learned to slow down - and this intrigued me deeply. Enough to contemplate the idea of slowing down for a second or two before I had forgotten about it, rushing to the next idea, the next book, the next podcast, the next thing…
Fast forward another few months, and I had packed up my life in Sri Lanka to move onto the next adventure! I was off to a yoga teacher training in Goa to learn some new skills, to explore myself more and to deepen my own yoga practice. I was starting to realise that I had some very old, very deeply ingrained patterns of tension in my body, especially in my pelvis - and I could feel that to progress more in kalari and in ashtanga, I needed to explore and release some of these old tensions.
One morning I was having a coffee and pulling some Kali oracle cards, and the girl on the table next to me asked if she could pull a card too. We ended up chatting for a while, and she recommended me a massage therapist in town (I always love these kind of serendipitous recommendations, they’re always much more transformational than just finding someone on Google!), so I went to see him and explained what I wanted.
He was an incredible practitioner, deeply intuitive and in-tune with reading my body and what it needed. The first massage somehow accidentally went for 3 HOURS - and every other massage was around that long too (I went weekly while I was there), working through very old, spiralling patterns of tension in the fascia, in the joints and in the muscles. And guess what he told me?
ALL OF THIS TENSION IS BECAUSE OF HOW YOU WALK.
It’s all postural patterns of restriction and tension, built up over decades, because of the way you walk. So the first week, I focused on changing how my foot was striking the ground (I was walking A LOT on the beach during the yoga teacher training, so I had a lot of opportunity to practice in bare feet). And when I went back for the next massage I proudly reported how well I had been practicing. And guess what he said?
“Yes, I can see that, I’ve seen you walking on the beach. But you are still walking WAY TOO FAST.” My only ‘homework’ for that week was to walk SLOWLY. VERY SLOWLY. He said I would absolutely hate it for 2-3 days, and then I would understand what he was saying. I agreed to try it, and at the end of the massage habitually rushed out of the massage place and down the street. “SLOW DOWN” - he shouted at me from up the street. I laughed at myself and how ridiculous this felt (and how difficult it was!), and slowed down.
And my only focus any time I was walking on the beach (15,000 - 20,000 steps per day) was to walk SLOWLY. SO SLOW. PAINFULLY SLOW. ABSURDLY SLOW. RIDICULOUSLY, OUTRAGEOUSLY SLOW.
And to my complete shock (and mild horror), I actually started to ENJOY IT. He was right about hating in the first few days, but as I persisted with it, I started to notice very beautiful things! How the sand felt underneath my feet. Swirling patterns in the sand, in the clouds. The texture of the water lapping at my ankles, the temperature of the breeze on my skin, the way the sunlight sparkled on the surface of the water in different colours. Of course, I have always noticed these things, but always just in passing, a cursory nod. But now, I was starting to luxuriate in these details! Spending entire minutes walking hypnotised by the sparkles on the waves, rather than mere seconds.
And as my body slowed down - so did my mind. As my limbs moved more slowly, so did my brain. Instead of being a whirling vortex of ideas and thoughts and concepts and what I needed to do next and what if I listen to another podcast and what time is it and what else did I need to think about and what about my long to-do list, I sank slowly into the delicious feeling of timelessness of moving slowly with nature, surrounded by Her gentle rhythm and finally able to feel it properly inside my Being.
And then one day toward the end of that week of the WALKING VERY SLOW assignment, I ‘rushed’. I was in town at a jewellery shop getting something custom made, I was very tired and hungry after a long day of training and after a long (slow) beach walk, and I needed to make sure I was back in time for dinner. I left the store and in my rush, fell right back into my old pattern, my old walking speed.
And I was SHOCKED. SHAKEN TO MY CORE!! For the first time in my entire adult life, I felt what was actually happening in my body walking at that speed. How could I possibly notice before, when it was just ‘normal’ and I had no context, nothing to compare it to? I was wrenching my hip backward with each stride, pushing an enormous amount of tension through my hamstrings, and a lot of strain through the back of my knee. My upper body was tensed to stabilise against this forceful momentum in the lower half of my body, my lower back was twisting, my pelvis was trying to absorb all of this kinetic tension.
It felt like an enormous diagonal force through my body, shearing my head from off my body and also keeping me in a strange limbo, leaning forward into the next moment but never fully present in this current one. I’d never had the chance to properly feel this before, having nothing to compare it to - but it was such a shocking contrast to the peace I had started to feel in my body during this week of verrrryyyy slow beach walking.
Walking very, very slow took me out of the realm of ‘momentum’ and into the realm of very deliberate, intentional movement. Instead of a shearing diagonal force, I felt suspended on a vertical line, extending upwards into the sky and downwards into the centre of the earth. This feeling of suspension, of floating in the middle of a vertical string felt alien, bizarre, and yet strangely peaceful.
And I had the most striking realisation - this diagonal force WAS impatience. It was me always leaning forward into the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, never fully absorbed or immersed in exactly where I was in this exact moment. Because how could I possibly be fully immersed when half of my body was already forward into the next thing? How could I be fully present when my head was separated from my body by the kinetic force I was creating.
Because that’s the thing - how on earth are all of our ‘nervous system regulation’ tips and tricks supposed to work when our body feels like it is running away from a tiger? When we’re always rushing rushing rushing quickly quickly QUICKLY, our body can’t differentiate between the fact that we’re just being impatient for the next thing (and the next thing and the next one), and the feeling of running away from danger.
No wonder our sympathetic nervous system is on fire all of the time! 30 minutes of meditation in the morning is no competition for an entire day of rushing, multi-tasking, walking at top speed and impatiently leaning forward out of what we are actually doing right now in this exact, beautiful moment.
This vertical line I had discovered through walking slowly created a channel that allowed me to drop out of my head and into my body. It allowed me to feel open to the entire sky and grounded to the entire earth. It allowed me to actually BREATHE, breathe so much more deeply into my belly than I could ever while I was walking at top speed. It allowed me to actually *FEEL* relaxed, not as a mental concept but as a feeling deep inside of my body.
And the most magical treasure? The more my body slowed down, the more my mind slowed down. The deeper my breath, the deeper my appreciation for the spectacular beauty around me. The less tension I was pushing through my joints, the lighter and freer I felt. The more I noticed nature’s rhythms all around me, the more She caressed my face with her sunlight and her gentle breeze and her endless love - and the more I notice these precious gifts, the softer and more open my heart feels.
It feels almost completely absurd that something as ‘simple’ and ‘basic’ as walking slowly could be so life-changing.
It feels tragic that I’ve missed so many beautiful moments in time because I’ve already had one step forward into the next thing!
But it feels like an extraordinary gift to discover the antidote to impatience - because it’s very difficult for your mind to stay impatient and leaning forward when your body is safely suspended in this exact moment.
What’s the rush, anyway?
I invite you to try this, even (ESPECIALLY) if your first instinct to reading this is ‘why on earth would I go more slowly when I could go fast?!’.
Take a deep breath.
Smile at the absurdity of it!
And go slooooowwwwwwllllyyyyyy.
See what magic you find, it’s all right there waiting for you to get slow and soft enough to notice it.
Rae xx
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