The Art of Slowing Down

This lesson from the mat was brought to you by a combination of Egyptian Yoga and Yin Yoga, which is slow, spending time in each posture, just listening. If you already do yoga then you most likely understand what this can be like, but if you are not a yoga practitioner there are different reasons to do yoga. I’m doing yoga to build strength, some do yoga for the inner work, some do yoga for flexibility some of them do it just to free up some space inside of them.

There are so many different reasons why you may take up a yoga practice.

Often times in my yoga practice I will set an intention in the beginning of the practice or, on the other hand, I will flow through the practice and let it speak to me. This particular morning, it was one of those situations where I did not set an intention and just allowed the yoga to flow through me. And what I found was that your outer environment is just a projection of everything that is happening in your inner environment.

A little too spacey, or woo hoo, or out there? Let’s bring it around for a practical application.

On this particular day, I went out to my back deck, put down my yoga mat and immediately got to my practice. As with many practices, I started off with the regular flow, not thinking much about what I was doing, just being mechanical in something I do on my morning to do list. For you this could be a Vinyasa flow, or meditation, or some kind of grounding practice series or sequence of postures. At first I was just going through the motions to loosen up my body as I had just woken up, but as I continue to flow, on its own, my body decided to start slowing down into each posture.

For those of you that are just beginning your yoga practice this may not be something you are aware of but for those that have been practicing for a very long time you may have experienced this: when your body begins to take over the practice, your body has something to say.

So in the slowness, in this stillness, my body was communicating to me something deeper than the routine of the practice needed to be unfolded and I had been up to that point in my practice been moving so fast that I was missing it.

That comes in so many different forms. At this time I was using yoga, this may translate to other things for you. Have you ever been rushing through your schedule and your friends, family, coworkers have all encouraged you to slow down? Have you ever had 80 things on your to do list, did them all, and looked back at them the next day and realize you basically half did all of them? These are all signs that slowness needs to come into your practice or work routine. Perhaps to sew in more to a specific area because there are things inside of you that are urging to be expressed (that deadline, that conversation that needs to be had with someone, etc). Even more practical example: maybe you’re cooking, or have meal prep for the week, and don’t have the time to reheat your food on the stove so you do so in the microwave (which is completely killing the nutrients in it!), or perhaps you have a process where you usually meal prep and lately you’ve been buying a lot of fast food.

“There are so many different signs that can manifest in your life where your body and inner being are whispering

“hey, please slow down.”

In this lesson from the yoga mat, THIS was reflected to me, through the Yin part of my yoga practice. It started off, as I mentioned, as a routine practice, and the pace got slower and slower and slower to the point where my dog comes over while I am in pyramid pose and completely knocks me over because I am moving so slow in my practice (my slow yoga practice was cutting into his morning walk around the neighborhood).

At one particular part in the practice, transitioning from pyramid pose to sphinx pose (or if you practice other types of yoga you may know these as downward dog and the posture right before cobra), you get down in child’s pose, and your elbows are tucked by your sides for arms parallel to one another and the fingers facing forward on the mat and your head looking directly in front of you, very regal, just like the sphinx. In this space, a beautiful sense of peace came over me.

I don’t know if many people have experienced this, whether you’ve experienced it through yoga, whether you’ve experienced it through jitsu, or chess, or boxing, or music, or anything else that is a vehicle towards unfolding and unlocking and bringing out those amazing beautiful gifts that are in you.

But when I was in this pose, I started to get behind the movements.

What does it mean to get behind a yoga pose?

When you wake up in the morning, or when you go to bed, you have a ritual to some degree. May just be waking up, yarning, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, making some coffee (or tea my favorite). But you have this ritual, and sometimes it can be so ingrained that you do feel that you are on auto pilot. You are not even awake yet, and your body is just carrying you through the steps of your morning routine, you are not even thinking about the steps it takes for you to get out of the house and start your day.

Key phrase “you are not thinking about it!”

Granted, being on auto pilot and just going through the motions they not always be healthy depending on the nature of those motions. But in this case, when you can trust your self, your practice, your process enough that you can let go and not over analyze the process, The piece that is already deep inside of you naturally resurfaces. And you are able to go through the motions and to be fully present and fully conscious of the motions without having to engage to a certain degree, that does not activate the monkey mind. That part of your mind that says OK this is the next thing OK this is what I have to be doing now, and I have to do that, and this is next on my to do list, oh I forgot I have to be here, oh I forgot I have to call that person…. You are able to observe and watch the flow as it happens.

In transitioning from the Sphinx pose into other postures, I was observing the flow of the practice rather than being ahead of it mentally, one step ahead in the future like our mind usually wills us to do.

Here is a more grounded example:

For a very long time I was in a space of following to do lists, and my to do list ran my life. Whatever I had written down on my to do list for that day, that was my schedule, that is what had to be performed and even though I had each task structure it out in tight time blocks down to 15 minutes, A planned, packed day of stuff. I remember one specific instance in college where I was almost venting my to do list verbally to some of my peers, listing the amount of anxieties I had piled on to myself for the day with a very intense energy. Then a friend of mine who was also working in that space turn to me and said, “Oh my gosh! Can you please stop listing what you have to do today it is stressing me out! It’s literally giving me anxiety.” Then she stormed angrily out of the room.

Bringing this example full circle, often when we wake up to our rituals, we already have this to do list that hits us like a train with 1 million things on it. Your mind is going 1,000,000 miles an hour, even though you’re just in your bed, laying there, sun shining gently through your window, nothing but stillness surrounding you in your room. Perhaps you don’t even need to be out of the bed for another 30 minutes, but you set your alarm 30 minutes early to start bringing yourself into the waking world, perhaps using this time to meditate, or have a gratitude practice. But instead, your brain starts charging ahead, looping all the scenarios of things you have to do for the day.

Now, a visualization practice for your morning can be absolutely beautiful when it is controlled. When you and your brain are working together to create what the rest of your day will look like. But when you wake up, and your brain is in immediate state of anxiety over the magnitude of your day, thinking of this and that and the dry cleaning and walking the dog and day care and deadlines- this, is “being ahead of the pose.”

This is being ahead of the pose, because none of these things have happened yet. They haven’t manifested yet, they’re in the mind. If you tell someone to go outside and touch the future, there is nothing tangible to reach out and touch. Future is a concept that we have materialized in order to plan, in order to have focus, which, once again, can’t be great and beautiful and extremely helpful. But often times, especially in the western world, we get so far ahead of the present, the practice, the pose, that we don’t allow the present, in its beauty, and grace, and enjoyment, the carry is through the day.

So from my mat, through me, to you, slow down, and listen to today, and see if you can get behind the pose.