A Research Paper By Shruti Garyali, Transformational Coach, INDIA
Slowness Used to Be the Norm Thousands of Years Ago
Let’s slow down. By one breath. – Coach Shruti
“Slow down!” We shout at children when they are running fast, high on life, or maybe just sugar.
“Hurry up!” We shout at them when they are going at their leisurely pace, gazing after that shiny blue bird that just flew in front of them or that black ant that seems to be going slower than usual.
And then the children grow up. And somehow, the world feels upside down to them. They can’t seem to find the right pace for themselves and since everyone seems to be going fast, they believe that’s the only way to move forward. And gradually, they begin to feel lost, confused, disillusioned, or sad. It’s the conflict between the inner values that they had as a child and the values that they picked up from their environment.
We know the world only through the window of our mind. When our mind is noisy, the world is as well. And when our mind is peaceful, the world is, too. Knowing our minds is just as important as trying to change the world. ― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World.
Slowness was the natural way of being thousands of years ago. While the mind chatter might still have existed, there were enough opportunities to be still and be present in the moment. Today, apart from the mind chatter, there is an abundance of external noise and then there is the constant friction between the internal and external worlds. Busyness is glorified, appreciated, and encouraged. Multi-tasking is considered a default skill requirement. The fuller the meetings calendar, the more important and valued one feels. The more one travels for work, the more successful one feels. But there’s always a price to pay when one is out of rhythm with their inner self. That’s when one discovers and turns to mindfulness, meditation, relaxation, yoga, breathing techniques, and many other techniques that have become popular over the past three decades (although much of this wisdom has existed for thousands of years, waiting for the seekers to seek them out).
Busyness is overrated. It’s also a blinder, a method of denial, of not wanting to face our inner conflicts or interpersonal issues. It can get you only that far, but beyond that, there is the looming possibility of burnout, broken relationships, regrets, or a life not lived fully. Unfortunately, it was the normal way of life for up to two years.
And then, the Covid pandemic happened.
Everything came to a complete stop. Unimaginable lockdowns, restrictions, and complete change in the way we were living. Everyone sat up for the first time, possibly in decades, and attempted to understand this really slowed down the pace of life. And then the questions came, the reflections poured in and there was no place to run away anymore. We were physically forced to stay put and face our inner conflicts. There are innumerable stories of transformation as a result of this forced slow down. As things have picked up speed again in the past few months, some people have slipped back into the busy life while some have decided that they want to continue living their lives at this slower, more mindful pace.
So, What Is Slowness?
Slowness is the forgotten dimension to time. Unlike chronological time, it is non-linear, time here and now, time that works for you, extraordinary time. So why be fast when you can be slow? Slowness is also about balance, so if you must hurry, then hurry slowly. — Geir Berthelsen, founder of The World Institute of Slowness.
What else does Slowness mean? Unfortunately, the dictionary definition of slowness does not do it any justice. Slowness needs to be looked at from a broader lens of life, way of living, and spirituality. Slowness is a way of reconnecting with yourself and the world that you live in. It is about finding a balance in the mad rush of the day or finding peace in the mad chatter of our minds. When you slow down, you are bound to become slightly more aware of yourself and your surroundings – and that awareness provides the chance to be reflective – about deeper things and even the mundane ones.
- What am I doing right now?
- Do I want to do this?
- How am I feeling right now?
- Why does my head feel so heavy?
- What’s this nervousness in my stomach?
- Why am I breathing so fast?
- Why does my neck hurt so much?
- Why is my back stiff?
- What’s bothering me right now?
- Wow, these flowers look really lovely!
- Why doesn’t this room have a window?
- Did this table always have a crooked corner?
- That painting looks interesting.
- Why does he always pick up the phone when I sit next to him?
And with these questions and reflections, something expands in the space beyond our physical body. We become aware.
Slowness Is About Pausing
Slowness Is About Taking a Pause. You don’t need to commit to something big. Start with small pauses. Savor them. Take a one-breath pause when you feel overwhelmed. If you have more time after that, go for a 3-breath pause. Then, have a 1-minute pause in the washroom and really look at yourself in the mirror. Then, have lunch with your mobile phone on silent. Then, have a do-nothing weekend. Then, have that no agenda day. Then, have that holiday that’s not packed with a checklist of must-see places.
Slowness opens up the space for you to hear yourself, to hear your thoughts & your emotions, to hear your dreams trying to make their way up through all the noise, and to hear your heart. And when you begin to hear, you become aware. To be aware is to see clearly, in the present moment, the way everything is, without meaning or judgment. Our mind doesn’t like being ‘aware’ because that requires us to be wholly in the present moment, watching our thoughts fly by constantly. And our mind is attuned to being either in the past or in the future. It works hard to pull us out of the state of being aware into the state of being busy, anxious, stressed, or any other similar state that makes it feel important. It’s just doing its job. The problem is that it has been doing this job without anyone to oversee it till now. That’s where awareness comes in. You are able to see (without judgment or criticism) which thoughts are hurting you and which ones are serving you.
Slowness was brought to the foreground notably by Carlo Petrini and a group of activists in Italy when they rose against the presence of McDonald’s in Rome in 1986. It has now spread as the Slow Food movement across the world. While the idea was specific to slow food, the underlying premise was true for all parts of life. Other structures came up around it, namely, The World Institute of Slowness started by Geir Berthelsen in 1999.
A myth about Slowing down – it doesn’t mean that we slow down everything in our lives. Instead, we need to start doing things at the pace that is right for them. Ticking off our checklist by distractedly reading one-minute bedtime stories to our kids, while our mind is busy reminding us about all the housework and office emails that need attending to, is not going to fulfill us and it definitely will not satisfy our children’s needs – Carl Honoré would agree, as he speaks about this in his book ‘In Praise of Slowness’. Even though the book was published in 2004, before Twitter and Instagram ruled social media, the essence of the book stays true even now. The premise of the book is that
our lives are maddeningly fast, and we are rushed, hurried, and burnt out as a result. And it has been that way for a long time. Even back in 1982, Larry Dossey, an American physician, coined the term “time-sickness” to describe the obsessive belief that “time is getting away, that there isn’t enough of it, and that you must pedal faster and faster to keep up.
And so, Carl Honoré mentions in his book:
…the Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word: balance. Be fast when it makes sense to be fast, and be slow when slowness is called for. Seek to live at what musicians call the tempo guisto — the right speed.
Being Slow means that you control the rhythms of your own life. You decide how fast you have to go in any given context. If today I want to go fast, I go fast: if tomorrow I want to go slow, I go slow.
There’s an interesting parallel to this philosophy in the book ‘Thinking, fast and slow’ by renowned psychologist and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Daniel Kahneman. He talks about two modes of thinking that he names System 1 and System 2. The former operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. The latter allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations…associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.
He expands on this with a simple example of leisurely strolling
It is normally easy and pleasant to walk and think at the same time, but at the extremes these activities appear to compete for the limited resources of System 2. While walking comfortably with a friend, ask him to compute 23 x 78 in his head, and to do so immediately. He will almost certainly stop in his tracks… I can think while strolling but cannot engage in mental work that imposes a heavy load on short-term memory. Accelerating beyond my strolling speed completely changes the experience of walking, because the transition to a faster walk brings about a sharp deterioration in my ability to think coherently. As I speed up, my attention is drawn with increasing frequency to the experience of walking and to the deliberate maintenance of the faster pace. My ability to bring a train of thought to a conclusion is impaired accordingly.
Translating the above to the fast speed at which people move in their lives, presents the following scenarios for such people:
- running out of energy: mental, emotional, physical
- poor quality of decision making
- not taking the time to slow down for the things that need to be done at a slower and more deliberate pace: creating frustrations, disconnect, conflicts, imbalance
- not bringing intentionality to their behaviors and actions: working on auto mode for the most part of the day
- completely missing the beauty around them or the moments that are memorable
Slowness: So, What Does This All Mean for Us?
Listen to your body – it almost always tells us exactly when we have gone off track or lost balance. And then, take a pause. Check in with yourself. Feel the discomfort, if any – that’s the way your inner wisdom talks to you. In life, there is no race, there is no finish line except for the one that we set for ourselves. Take a moment to gaze at the clouds that float by softly, picking up pace only when the circumstances require them to. And then, calmly, look at the mad rush of your day and decide when you need to go fast and when you want to go slow. Set your own pace.
References
In Praise of Slowness: by Carl Honoré
Thinking, fast and slow: by Daniel Kahneman
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World: by Haemin Sunim
Quiet, by Susan Cain
Geir Berthelsen, Founder - The World Institute of Slowness
https://baos.pub/book-notes-in-praise-of-slowness-challenging-the-cult-of-speed-caa4bf4c4822
https://www.sloww.co/in-praise-of-slowness-carl-honore/
https://www.sloww.co/slow-living-201/
Osho’s teachings