This entry was posted on Jan 21, 2026 by Charlotte Bell.
Slowing the tempo of our lives transforms the mundane into the transcendent. It teaches us how a lot there’s to understand in simplicity.
Years in the past I took a trip to Baja, to go to some mates who had relocated. One morning I made a decision to take a stroll on a abandoned seashore. As my tempo slowed as a result of mushy sand, I started to note issues alongside the way in which that I may not have seen if I’d been dashing alongside at my normal tempo. I seen a wonderfully formed conch, glowing pebbles, multicolored sand crystals. One specific pile of tide particles caught my eye. I finished to look extra carefully.
Right here have been minute shells simply millimeters lengthy, vibrantly coloured, iridescent, unimaginably stunning. The longer I squatted within the sand analyzing the particles, the extra beautiful the scene turned. Even the tiniest shells have been attractive, painted and lacquered with care as if by miniature artisans. I mused that if I squatted there lengthy sufficient I’d be capable of discern the character of every grain of sand within the beautiful pile of particles. I used to be grateful I had nowhere to go, no necessary activity to perform. This jogged my memory of the chic great thing about slowing down.
The Apply of Slowing Down
I initially turned acquainted the apply of slowing down on my first vipassana meditation retreat a few years in the past. That is the place I first realized the formal apply of strolling meditation. As the times glided by, the apply of slowing down started to filter into the whole lot we did—consuming, brushing tooth, washing dishes, showering, consuming a cup of tea, practising yoga asana.
From the skin, we in all probability seemed a bit odd, perhaps a bit sleepy and lackluster. However the interior expertise couldn’t have been extra vibrant. Slowing down and connecting with the myriad micro-movements that make up every motion made me really feel absolutely, consciously alive.
“We’re all sensation junkies,” stated writer and meditation trainer Sylvia Boorstein on a retreat I attended at Spirit Rock Meditation Heart. We’re a tradition that craves stimulation, a tradition of velocity and pleasure. As a individuals we’re drawn to driving quick, being scared out of our minds by movies, watching aggressive sports activities and listening to loud music. These items are thrilling and stimulating to us. Feeding our sensation behavior helps us really feel extra important.
How Speediness Can Obscure the Second
The yoga sutras outline yoga as “the settling of the thoughts into silence.” After we velocity alongside at our recurring tempo, our actions grow to be mechanical. Our minds are anyplace however within the current. However it’s within the current second the place our minds can settle into silence. After we decelerate, we are able to extra simply glimpse the silent thoughts, the infinite sky of consciousness.
In the identical approach the tangled mass of particles on the seashore can rework right into a improbable panorama, the sensations of dwelling in our body-mind could be fairly compelling. However we now have to decelerate to expertise them. From the vantage level of readability, what we see, really feel, hear, contact, odor and style could be a celebration.
By means of quiet yoga and meditation apply I’ve discovered the refined energies shifting via the physique to be fascinating. After we are prepared to decelerate sufficient to look deeply, new worlds confide in us which are profoundly satisfying and enlivening.
Nevertheless, practising slowing down on a meditation retreat, the place it’s a important a part of the apply, is sort of totally different from attempting to calm the velocity of our every day lives. In Twenty first-century Western tradition, having a full schedule is taken into account to be an indication of advantage. Taking time to loosen up is taken into account to be an indication of weak point or sloth.
It’s, in reality, enjoyable to have interaction in actions that stimulate. However dwelling in a state of fixed exercise, with no time to decelerate or cease, is just not a state of steadiness. It’s from the bottom of steadiness—the ever-changing centerpoint between motion and relaxation—that we stay most gracefully on this planet.
Gradual Down, De-Stress
It’s controversial that stress is the plague of our time and tradition. Many people preserve the lightning tempo of our lives through adrenaline. Our adrenal glands and nervous system work additional time to maintain us on monitor. The adrenals are supposed to assist us via occasional demanding conditions, not the regular onslaught of a packed schedule. With out occasional relaxation, they put on down. Once they put on down we grow to be drained and really feel confused.
Gradual motion might alter our physiological steadiness in a approach that’s replenishing to our nervous system. Roger Cole, Ph.D., is a yoga trainer and analysis scientist who specializes within the physiology of rest, sleep and organic rhythms. He research the advantage of gradual actions, equivalent to yoga and tai chi, on the human nervous system.
“They supply regular, light, nice enter to the nervous system from kinesthetic sensors within the physique (muscle spindle stretch receptors, golgi tendon organs, joint place sensors),” he says. “Simply as once we get a therapeutic massage, this might assist induce reflex rest of the muscle mass and make us really feel mentally protected, decreasing the ‘fight-or-flight’ response the mind (and thereby decreasing the degrees of stress hormones circulating within the bloodstream).”
How Slowing Down Would possibly Really Make You Extra Productive
Maybe the physiological advantages of slowing down would possibly even enhance our skill to perform what we have to do. After I take time every day to drop my schedule and do one thing fully unrelated to work or to do nothing in any respect, I come again to my duties with extra readability and equanimity. Some days might enable an hour to decelerate; others might not.
On the extra tightly scheduled days I’d do one thing easy. This might embody:
- taking a leisurely stroll across the block
- practising just a few yoga asanas
- mindfully washing the dishes
- taking part in with my cats
- savoring my dinner
- mindfully consuming a cup of tea
It doesn’t matter what I do to. What issues is that I enable myself to go to the second absolutely, to expertise its richness and wonder. How a lot work I accomplish is much less necessary than the spirit and care I convey to what I do. Slowing the tempo of our lives transforms the mundane into the transcendent. It teaches us how a lot there’s to understand in simplicity.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.
