Slow down to feel more.

When a teacher said this in class years ago, it was one of those incredible light bulb moments where suddenly a concept I was previously unable to grasp, just made sense. I’m aware it sounds quite unsexy but honestly hand on heart that phrase revolutionised much of my practice and has been a guiding principle for me as a teacher. 

Why? For one, slowing down offers the one thing we all want more of, the commodity we never seem to have enough of and the thing that once spent we ain't getting back.

Time.

It may seem a little counterintuitive; if one only has an hour to practice, how does slowing down equate to more efficient time use? Surely we want to pack that sucker full of juicy, varied content to keep our brains occupied and ourselves….wait for it…busy.

Through the prevalent hustle culture that holds us in a white knuckle pas de deux, we have come to believe that being busy is a highly glamourous state and to be sought after along with the other markers of ‘success’, money, good looks, youth! How many conversations go, “How are you doing?”, without even thinking about it the reply goes, “Oh, I’m great, thanks, super busy!”.

The corrosive broader narrative hisses over our left shoulder, “Slow down, not a chance mate, not a chance. I’m getting shit done! I’m busy and busy equals valuable and valuable equals sexy and sexy equals the best fucking thing you can be. Slow? That’s for newborn babies and retired folks and snooty heiresses on yachts off the coast of Corsica.” Can you relate?

Perhaps a tad hyperbolic; I know many of us adjusted well to a less busy lifestyle due to Lock Down Culture whilst others suffered the anxiety and guilt of Never Doing Enough. So perhaps the issue lies both in our conscious resistance of slowness and in our struggle with knowing how to slow down in our learnt behaviour patterns. The ones that are hardwired into our neuro-biology and therefore difficult to change as they play out automatically. 

Here’s the bummer to being ‘on’ all the time: Busy also equals strung out and totally unregulated. It equals stressed AF (albeit sometimes under the radar) and unable to switch off or sleep more than 5 hours a night. It results in our systems being off-kilter and if our Nervous System (NS) is out of whack we’re unable to regulate appropriately to the environmental context. As a result, we can find ourselves host to a whole bunch of issues like Insomnia, anxiety, digestive problems, hypertension etcetera.

So what can we do about it?

For one, cultivate rituals and practices that soothe us and bring us back to baseline. We can slow the bleep down when we step onto the Yoga mat. Not necessarily by ditching Vinyasa Flow for Yin - although I do think practising a variety of styles is really useful (both fast and slow!) - but taking a bit more time to move through sequences, by packing less in. Perhaps we keep our attention on breathing slowly and move at the pace of our breath, rather than moving quickly and fighting to breathe at the pace of our postures. Does Chaturanga to Down Dog faster than the Flash after a double espresso and a line of the white stuff sound familiar? Have we forgotten the Sutra ‘Sthiram Sukham Asanam’? 

“The sutra literally states that steady and comfortable is an asana. Often you will read the explanation as ‘steady, comfortable pose is asana.” But here is exactly where the interpretation mistake happens: In the original (literal) translation, there is no mention of ‘pose’ in the definition.” - Arhanta Yoga

So when we practice and postures tare not steady and comfortable we are not actually practicing asana. Damn. If we are not in a state of homeostasis, we are not participating in Yoga aligned with traditional definitions that honour the cultural roots.

When we take our time on the mat, not only can our poor NS get a break and actually down-regulate (hello Rest and Digest) which results in less of the above issues, but we are afforded the space to observe ourselves. We can watch our own mental processes and ask questions of ourselves - am I bored here? Is my mind busy? Am I competing with the others in the room? Am I performing my Asana? Am I pushing myself physically? Do I feel discomfort? How can I feel more peaceful here? 

We can inquire into how the movement feels at the given moment, what angle of the arm serves us best in Side Angle, for example, or where the Dristi serves us best in balances. We can become mindful participants in the dance of Yoga Asana rather than throwing our bodies from A to B in a kind of The-Red-Shoesesque gymnastic hysteria, that leaves us feeling like we are running late for our own lives. When we slow down, we have more time to feel, to simply be as we are, to experience and process the phenomenon of being a living creature, whilst gaining the host of benefits that come with a down-regulated ns and being in a state of homeostasis.