Slow down your daily pace in order to live more fully
Do you pay attention to how fast you are expected to move through your daily life?
Depending on what is happening in your life right now, you are faced with demands to get more done in your day, every day. This means you're expected to move faster, never slow down or stop moving, and produce produce produce.
You are the one making some of those demands on yourself, and it could be that you're used to doing things this way. It is a positive thing to get a lot of stuff done, and some days it's the right answer.
But if this is your life all day every day, a good question to ask yourself might be, how many of those expectations on you are conscious ones, vs. how many are not? Are you the horse pulling your wagon, and are you also the driver with the whip trying to force yourself to move faster? Is this just the way it's done?
Are you in agreement with this way of doing business?
We are often expected to move so fast that we don't have time to pay attention to how fast we are moving.
Sometimes we prefer it that way. It's too hard to change, and too painful to see what we are stuck in, and it looks nearly impossible to change the whole thing anyway. So we keep moving fast, carrot in front of the nose, stick at our backsides threatening to smack us if we don't move fast enough.
Where does that demand come from? And where does the guilt come from that says it's not okay to move at one's own pace? This demand to constantly do is why some of us have only taken a break from ceaseless activity by becoming sick, or creating a crisis that forces us to slow down and stop.
If you've done this, don't get mad at your body. Your body isn't wrong here, and it's also not a race car, or rocketship, or whatever else you've tried to get it to be to keep up with that unconscious demand that you move faster. Your body needs you to slow down.
You handle constant demands on your body's energy, and how you direct it.
These demands are often unconscious, but nevertheless they influence you in powerful ways. It's interesting to pay attention to the demands you feel in any given day to 'hurry up' or 'move out of the way', or 'stay busy'. When you don't take the time to consciously examine whether these demands on your energy are true for you or not, you are controlled by them.
Consciousness means that you choose for yourself whether or not an energy that shows up in your space is true for you. Give yourself the time it takes to know yourself and your truth, and you will change the way you run your body. Practicing sitting still is a great place to begin.
Sitting still means Not Doing.
Sitting still means being and observing, beginning with yourself and your body. It could also mean ceasing all activity, just so you can take a break from constantly having to Do Something. Sitting still means you are now able to be in touch with yourself, with your feelings, and know what it is you feel, right now.
That demand to constantly Do puts you in effort, so that it becomes harder to listen to your spirit. Your spirit is the magical part of you that can inform you of who you really are, and help you have more fun ideas, inspiration, healing, and joy. The really fun thing about being in a body on earth is being in that body. Non-stop movement and activity that is automatic, sends you out of your body.
Because you have a body, you get to align your body's rhythm to the earth. The earth's energy and pace is slower and deeper than the demands coming in from your over active mind. Your body is made of the same elements as the earth. Your body is not designed to run constantly, and if you push it too far beyond what it can do, it will find a way to make you slow down.
If, on the other hand, you choose to work with your body and listen to its needs as well as to those demands coming in, you can change your entire life, for the better. Why not begin with having your awareness about how fast you're moving through your day?
Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Ba da-da da-da da-da, feeling groovyHello lamppost, what'cha knowing
I've come to watch your flowers growin'
Ain't you got no rhymes for me?
Doo-ait-n-doo-doo, feeling groovy
Ba da-da da-da da-da, feeling groovyI got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy©Paul Simon
©Kris Cahill
Photo @Unsplash
