How Slowing Down Can Help You Reconnect

In November 2022, I fractured my foot. I was walking quickly, excitedly talking about a recent trip, and not noticing the uneven ground. Whoompf. I fell. The pain was intense, and an X-ray revealed a fractured small toe.

I took the break as a message from my body to slow down.

Slowing down wasn’t easy for me. I had a full time job, a budding coaching practice and multiple other personal and professional commitments. Everything was important, there were lists of things that needed to get done. Too often, I was in survival mode, not pausing long enough to reflect and notice what worked, what I loved, what I loathed, what I learned.

When I’m constantly rushing to the next thing, I get depleted. Rushing is a mode that pushes and forces and constricts and fights self and other to get things done. A way of being that doesn’t leave room for savoring, for enjoying as much of an experience as possible.

So I’ve coached myself to s-l-o-w down.

And what do I do when I’m slowing down? Breathe. And notice. Look around. Pause. Listen.

To slow down and go within. What is the value of that?

Right now, with Trump’s second presidency win, I know that I feel deeply discouraged. Angry, outraged, betrayed, sad, and afraid. I am wondering, where do we go from here?

I remind myself not to surrender my soul in advance. As Timothy Snyder writes in On Tyranny, “Don’t obey in advance.”

To that, I add: Don’t surrender your aliveness in advance. Don’t let fear and despair overcome you. Search for the internal process that will allow you to strengthen yourself, to be centered, to still have pleasures and even thrive while facing what is, and what is to come.

There is a symbiotic relationship between inner and outer work that is essential for creating the change and shifts we desire to make. We’re in a season where it makes sense to slow down. We’re in winter, the time of short days and longer darkness.

Lean into the dark as a place of power, of wisdom, of rest, of stillness.

Lean into the dark as the place where we all began – the womb as the place of deep growth and incubation. When we fear the dark, without questioning that fear, then we lose the chance to find the power in the dark, the power in ourselves.

Instead of rushing to the next thing, SLOW down and let yourself be like taffy, slow and elastic. Let the time move like thick, syrupy, nurturing time.

Allowing yourself to slow down means you can breathe more, you can enjoy your experiences more. Then you can move forward and respond to what’s happening from a deeper place of awareness.