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Slow Down
Hi. I'm Hal. This is the “Living in a Body” podcast. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. Today is episode 85. Can you believe it? You better go back and listen to the first 84 of ‘em before you listen to this one. (lol) Anyway, 85. It's called “Slow Down.” And it goes something like this…
You didn't ask for my advice. But I'm gonna give it to you anyway.
You can thank me later.
Slow down. Slow the heck down. Join me in finding areas in our lives where we can turn the speed down a couple notches. Slow down, sister. Slow down, my brother. What's the big hurry? Slow your walking down. Slow your talking down. Slow your breathing down. Slow your eating down. Slow down as you're going up and down the stairs. There’s no hurry. Slow down your love making. Slow your thinking down. Slow your heartbeat down. Slow down. What's all the urgency? What's the big rush? It's gonna be okay.
I have a feeling that someone here that’s listening to this goes too fast. And it might be me. Yep, I tend to go too fast. I think too fast. I breathe too fast. And I tend to do too much. And the thing I'm learning… the main thing I'm learning living with a severe version of ME/CFS is to slow down.
I’ve become convinced that the key to being satisfied, the key to being content and happy and at peace, the key to being present, the key to being in relationship and the key to surviving in this crazy sped up world is to slow down. As a species, on a cellular level, we gotta slow the heck down. Put the phone down. Put all the devices away. Slow down. And be. Be with yourself. Be with nature. Be with your family. Be with your friends and thank me later.
Slow down, you’re movin’ too fast.
You got to make the morning last, you’re just
Kickin’ down the cobblestones
Lookin’ for fun and feeling groovy.
But it's not gonna be easy. I make it sound like you just push a button and it's the slow down button. I warn you it's probably gonna be hard. It might be painful. Depending on how fast you’re going, it may take a while. Every part of yourself is gonna resist. Cause we live in a sped up world and if you’re anything like me, that world’s rubbed off on you. You’ve probably been runnin’ at this speed for a long time and you may not see any reason for slowing down. Well, this illness has taught me something that I never would have learned without getting sick. Slowing down is a good thing. Look at the trees, look at the snails. Look how happy they are.
Now, I'm not an expert in this area. But it’s my main practice these days. Today, I was moving around the kitchen preparing some food and I was zipping from the fridge to the table to the sink on my wheelchair. Zip zip zip… I kept running into the stove and running into the cupboards. I’m living in a body with a nervous system that's constantly on edge, constantly on fire. When I’m downstairs, I feel some urgency to get back to my safe place which is belly down in the bed, so everything's got to go fast. And then I pulled up my wheelchair to the back door and I opened the sliding glass door and I looked out at the earth and she was movin’ real slow and I remembered. Slow down. Slow down, Hal. Look at the trees move. Feel the breeze on your face. Look at the sky, how it moves. Even better than slow down, just stop. Stop. Just stop for a few minutes. And listen. And watch.
Many years ago, I went on a vision quest. My friends, Michael and Judy of “Shared Vision” took a group of us down to southern Ohio to the woods and did this vision quest. It was four days and four nights in a 10 foot circle by myself in the woods with nothing but four gallons of water and a tarp. No food. Just a tarp. Just four gallons of water. It was a beautiful ceremony. The night before we had a sweat lodge. We did prayers. And we had protectors. Protectors that would check in on us. Every morning I would walk down to the trail and I would stack a little rock letting my protectors know that I was okay. I had survived the night. And I sat in that 10 foot circle. And the main thing I remember was how slow the Earth moves. How slow the sun moves across the sky. There were no clocks, no cell phone, no devices, just me and the earth. And the Earth moves painfully slow.
After four long days and nights, we came back down to the main camp. They welcomed us with broth and miso soup and really easy foods to break the fast. And as we were leaving, there was this huge circle of like 20 or 30 turkey vultures that came and started circling the camp. It was very meaningful. And I somehow remember then a downpour… a very cleansing downpour. When I got home from the vision quest, I wrote this song called “The Beauty Before Me.”
May I be complete within my open circle.
May I be willing to see some hope in a broken world.
May I be like this tree standing in the center of my circle.
I am solid on the ground and I know I’m not alone.
May the beauty before me open my eyes to see…
On the drive home from the vision quest, the main thing I remember was a stop at a rest area along the way. I had this very clean feeling in my mind and in my body. Four days of nothing but water and I was clean and pure. But at the rest area, I couldn’t resist one of those cookies that the volunteers were giving away. So I ate a cookie. And right away my head clogged up. My nose and my ears and my head — everything clogged up. And I lost that slow peace, that slow, clear peace. And the cookie set off the speed of the world. Yeah, that sugar. It’s a powerful drug. Sugar is a big part of this society. I know it adds to the speed.
I haven't eaten any sugar in almost 10 years. Well, that's not true. Let's say two years because I sort of played around with some protein shakes that had sugar in it a couple years ago. “Kachava.” After not eating sugar for six years, I was introduced to chocolate Kachava in my illness and it was heavenly. But for the last two years, I've had no sugar and for many years now I’ve consumed no caffeine and it’s definitely helped with the slowing down. I haven't looked at porn for about 10 years. That helps with the slowing down. I'm off social media. It's been several months now and that helps with the slowing down. Although I do go on Tik Tok every day to watch my daughter, Hallie Walker. (@ hallielooyaa) She's doing some amazing work on Tik Tok.
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Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that in that vision quest, we got slow. And I was face to face with the slowness of the way the sun moves across the sky. And it was painful. And that's got to be a symbol! It's got to be a sign! That's got to be our teacher!
I’ve been noticing that it's lawn mower season now. Whereas up ‘till now, my room has been very quiet, but now every day I'm hearing the lawn mowers and the chain saws. These are all fast moving things, things that get the job done fast. Whatever happened to the cross cut saw? Wouldn't you love to hear your neighbor doing some cross cut sawing? Wouldn’t you love to watch your neighbor out there with one of those old fashioned rotary lawn mowers and a rake? Yeah, I'm advocating the slow life to save the world.
And I need to learn it myself, ‘cause I tend to move fast. You know, give me something to think about and my brain starts thinking… fast. Even the way I approach this podcast. When I get an idea, it’s hard for me to take a break ‘till I get it just right. I’ve learned that it’s right action that leads to right thinking, so I think I’ll take a nice little break right now till after lunch — slow my brain down. I’ll see you on the other side.
Slow down.
I’m back. I did it. I took a break.
So the key to my survival lately has been to slow down. Feel the feelings. That's the thing. When I slow down, then I have to feel the feelings. And somehow by feeling those feelings, getting through to the other side of the feelings, I find out what it is to be human. As opposed to constantly running, constantly spinning ten plates in the air. You know, running from my house over to the church at the last minute having all the papers printed out for the folk orchestra then running back and forth between the printer and the folk orchestra and making last minute changes and it had to be perfect and then Sunday morning showing up, last minute changes pulling it off. Some people did not like that side of me. I created beautiful tornadoes wherever I went. But lately, I’ve been forced to learn to pause. I'm learning to wait. Slow down, Hal. Smile and slow down. Breathe more slowly. Talk more slowly. Go on my wheelchair more slowly, so I'm not constantly running into the doorway. (lol) I've had several pretty major wrecks in this wheelchair just on the second floor of my house because I'm zipping around too fast.
I hope this helps. Tell me what your experience is. Do it for one day. Do it for one hour. Slow down radically. Ride a bike instead of driving. Walk instead of riding a bike. Make a phone call rather than sending a text. Even better, write a letter rather than sending an email. Yeah, walk instead of riding a bike. And if you go on that walk say, “Thank you God that I can walk.” Because the thing I want to do more than anything is go on a walk. I want to spend my life walking. That's all I want to do. I want to be one of those people that you see every day walking. And then meeting people along the way and saying, “Hey, I know you. I ran into you yesterday when I was walking.” And if you go on that walk, stop by my house. Knock on the door, walk right in and come right upstairs. You're all welcome. Come right in and stay for ten minutes of quiet time. Stay for ten minutes of slowing down and thank me later.
All right. Maybe I've said too much. I love you. I care about you. That's why I'm giving you this advice. Even though you didn't ask for it. I care that you're moving too fast. I care about your health. I care about the Earth. That's why I'm telling you this. Okay. I think that's it. That was what I wanted to tell you. Slow down.
Let me read this page from the 24 hours a day book. Just one sec… The goal of slowing down is calm. We want calm. We want serenity and peace and contentment so we can be available for others. What I'm venturing to say here is the slow life brings quiet and brings peace to the whole world. Here's the 24 hours a day book from April 15 — meditation for the day.
I must keep calm and unmoved in the vicissitudes of life. (Look up that word vicissitudes.) I must go back into the silence of communion with my higher power to recover this calm when it's lost even for one moment. I'll accomplish more by this calmness than by all the activities of a long day. At all cost, I will keep calm. I can solve nothing when I'm agitated. I should keep away from things that are upsetting emotionally. I should run on an even keel and not get tipped over by emotional upsets. I should seek for things that are calm and good and true. And stick to those things.
And what I find is slowing down promotes calmness. And in this wildly overactive nervous system of mine, living with ME/CFS, what I'm seeking more than anything else is calm.
All right, I care about you. Slow down. Help me slow down too. We can slow down together and change the whole world. Imagine that — a slow moving society. Imagine how much love there could be in the world if we all moved a little slower. Alright, let’s keep the dream alive, you and me, one slow step at a time. Okay, I’m signing off. bye bye. ❤️
Slow Down