I have been thinking a lot about slowing down.
But I am already slowed down so it has taken me a while to write about it.
I thought that slowness & closeness would be some of the lessons Covid would leave with us. Slowness that could counter our habitual glossing-over & rushing-past. Slowness to allow for intimacy with whatever we are near. I hoped we had all slowed to the point of feeling the breath of a place, awareness of our own gut wisdom, & awareness of what is unfolding around us.
I thought all the crafting of sourdough or bone broth or watching birds or keeping pet snails could culminate in a sense of greater connection to our lived environments. These activities slow us down, teach us to pay attention to subtle things, so different from microwaving popcorn or multitasking. I thought that sitting alone in our homes would breed an easy familiarity of place & a respect for quiet rhythms.
But as I continue my endless hiking with Sniggi & friends I witness increasing disassociation masked as athleticism or 'drive'. I have repeatedly found myself in the dust of hiking partners who are in a great hurry (to be out of the woods?).
I wish to stop at each step, absorbing & communing.
When I was a very young adult I remember thinking, after some prolonged communion with a patch of grass, that if humans had true intimacy with the physical world we could not so readily pave over ant hills or spoil waterways with the effluence of our 'affluence'. Each destruction would be correctly painful if those who destroyed had intimacy with the places they defile. But by rushing by we evade this reality. It suits us to not feel connected with our environment & focus instead on the beguiling & new. We did not notice the empty lot (invisibly teeming with life) but we do notice the shiny new high-rise built in its place.
I am not a proponent of self-induced suffering over the dis-orienting reality of our modern world. So I will point out some, hopefully helpful, correlations between how we relate to the world around us culturally & how we relate to our own bodies personally.
Many people who come to me do not know when they are hungry/thirsty/tired & are looking for outside ques to know when to eat, drink, sleep etc. They are filled with facts & figures & diagnoses yet limited self-awareness. And this makes practicing Ayurveda, and most other 'alt' health care practices, hard. Ayurveda is predicated on interoception, the ability to feel what our senses are telling us about the needs of our body. The 'rushing past' pattern of our social-economic system is seen even in our relationship to ourselves.
Possibilities for why don't we hear the messages of our body:
Most of us have a low baseline level of 'closeness' with ourselves, based on the time & interest we have in cultivating this relationship.
We are too busy & don't have the time to pay attention.
Our minds are too loud to hear the quiet subtleties of our body.
We have habitually over-ridden the urges & messages of our body. Imagine allowing yourself to fart or belch anytime the urge arrived...😜
We are the children of people who didn't have a good sense of physical or emotional needs. We never learned to listen to ourselves
We have 'trauma' that freezes us out of our ability to feel what our body is saying,. At some point it was unsafe for us to sense things - so we stopped doing it.
Though it goes against the grain of the modern world, we must slow down in order to learn to respect ourselves. We must slow down to hear to our body’s needs.
Being still & witnessing allows knowledge of what our body is asking for in every moment. We must slow down in order to start to heal.
Sniggi on grass
Go Inside...
Practicing gentle body awareness is a simple & powerful step to increasing our capacities to deal successfully with changes.
In order to get grounded we need to get in touch with where we are. This can mean lots of different things. But a good concrete step that anyone can take at any time is: connect viscerally with the physical world around you.
Here are some healing practices (that are a lot more potent than they look):
Re-introduce yourself to your body's messages by allowing yourself to feel the sensations in your body. This can 'light up' your senses & bring calm & pleasure to moments where your brain is getting the better of you. Try 'listening' to your gut by allowing the sensations there to come to your attention for 15- 30 seconds, a few times a day. Do not judge or critique - just feel & be curious!
Wherever you have one minute of down time: let your eyes go where they want & neutrally notice objects, colors, shapes (keep your cognition out of it!). If your eyes want to close, close them & allow yourself to notice sounds or touch. Allow your senses to receive information.
Read this blog post about how important it is to respect our bodily urges.