In one of her teachings, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen shared about a time when she was doing so much she decided to take contradictory action to create more time. She would find herself thinking, “I don’t have time to do this.” When she thought that, she would lie down and do nothing until a sense of spaciousness around time opened up for her.
Contradictory: “I don’t have time for this” doesn’t usually lead us to stopping purposefully and waiting for the personal internal swirl to dissipate. For myself, that sense usually leads to engaging in mindless and disjointed activities until the time comes that I must do what I must do. That doesn’t feel satisfying or helpful or freeing.
The Slow Tempo Experiment
Back in August of 2021, I experimented with a daily practice of a 15 minute Slow Tempo walk in the grass outside my home. I wondered how this would change my experience of having, creating or allowing space for time. This practice is based on one I learned from Peter Kyle several years ago.
I take steps as slowly as I can for 15 minutes. One step, I notice how tightly I’m holding my arms and release some of that tension. Another step, I notice I am moving faster through the picking up of my right leg and moving it forward. I slow it down. Another step, I feel each blade of grass crumple under my footstep.
Eventually I get impatient and wonder how much longer. I check my timer. I wonder if I will ever make it through an entire 15 minutes without looking at the time.
As I walk, so very slowly, I wonder what to do with my arms. Should I make them move in walking form or continue to hold them still at my sides? I wonder about the speed that I look around me. Should I slow down my eye movement as well? I wonder what to do about sensations that seem like bugs landing on me. Should I shoo them off at normal speed or ignore them? I shoo them away at normal speed. One bug was actually the thin web of a spider touching the skin of my forearm.
After several days of practice I have noticed more warmth in my feet and an increase in their sensory awareness. Muscles in my hips and knees feel like they are getting stronger. During the practice I sometimes hear the space around me differently, shifting to hearing everything at once in a 360° experience.
One morning, I caught a movement in the high grass to my right. Romping towards me was a red fox, hopping, sniffing, approaching at a clueless pace. My slowness had made me an innocuous part of the environment. About 30 feet away, the fox smelled me, stopped and found me. They stared at me for 30 seconds and then turned 180° away and ran back the way they came.
Had I slowed down to nature’s pace for a moment? Become so much a part of presence that I was not noticeable as separate? Most of the time I am a loud presence, pounding through paths in the world. What had this need to explore slowing down as a contradictory practice to “not having time” helped me learn?
The Pace of the Body
In my work with clients there is also a sense of the contradictory path. Most of the people who come to see me want what brought them to be gone now. And yet our practice is one of resting and finding ourselves in the present moment.
And what does that mean? Each place I put my hand is where support lands. Support means nothing to the body if it is not the focus of attention right now. Our minds have raced past our bodies’ questions, requests and needs too often.
In the moments in my office, we slow down and find the pacing of the organs and tissues and structures needing support to make the next possible change. I am with my clients, right now, in whatever THIS is.
This allows people to notice how tired they are. Or how thirsty. Messages from the body that have been overlooked and passed by.
This allows people to notice how they have been moving around with their consciousness a few inches in front of them. As they lie on the table they connect back in and sit up with a new awareness of their form, weight and substance.
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