85 ~ The Power of Slowing Down

Ready to experience what might be waiting on the other side of being busy?  Take a deep breath and join us on this exploration of presence as a radical act of self-care.

The phrase "slow down" is often repeated in personal development circles, but what does it actually mean to slow down in a world where moving from thing to thing is a normal way of life in the western world. 

Slowing down might sound simple, but for many of us, it feels as unattainable as becoming a billionaire overnight. Brenda and Catherine dive deep into why slowing down feels so impossible and what happens when we finally give ourselves permission to move at a slower pace.

Episode Highlights:
• Slowing down feels impossible when your life is structured around "doing"
• Moving quickly can serve as protection from feeling uncomfortable emotions
• 95% of diseases share stress as a common denominator
• How our inner child wounds show up in daily life
• How conscious breaths can help regulate your nervous system and change your perspective
• Benefits of a meditation practice (even just 3 minutes daily) 
• Anxiety healing practices like lying flat on the floor to ground you 
• Choosing to "do nothing" instead of reaching for constant entertainment 
• How presence changes our lives

We invite you to take a deep breath, slow down, and notice what comes up for you. We'd love to hear your takeaways and even your resistance to slowing down—it's all welcome.

Chapters

• 1:27 The Challenge of Slowing Down
• 6:01 Understanding Our Fast-Paced Lives
• 10:03 Why Slowing Down Matters
• 13:56 Inner Child Healing Through Presence
• 19:31 Practical Ways to Start Slowing Down
• 26:29 Benefits of Moving at Our Own Pace

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Inviting you into our world. I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 2: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire Welcome back family and friends. So recently, brenda and I recorded a podcast on story and one of the things that we definitely touched on in that podcast episode, as well as in many episodes, is we use this phrase slow down, down. It might as well be become a billionaire, because it's definitely a desire and there's no one way, one path to get there and you're going to be forever working at it. I think if I were a billionaire, I'd probably be forever working at saying a billionaire, but that might just be me. And and it dawned on us like, how do we even teach people to slow down? And how did we learn to slow down? How did it happen for us? How do we even know we were going fast?

Speaker 1: 2:19

When I think back, I'm going to ask Brenda in a minute. She's definitely here and smiling at me, joined by her, which is fantastic. I used to have my coaches used to say to me Catherine, you need to go slower, just go slower. And I say, if I go any slower, I would be dead, like I can't slow down anymore. It really felt completely unfathomable. So if I've been telling you, or Brenda has been telling you, or one of your coaches or have been telling you to slow down, and it feels like you cannot possibly go slower, you can go slower. It's so wild that that's the case, but it is Right, brenda.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Oh yeah, this is such a great topic and the idea for this episode came from when I was listening to that story episode the other day. And we're talking about slowing down so you can be with yourself, so you're not in story, and it really hit me that we talk about this a lot. We talk about slowing down, and what does that even mean? Like you said, it might as well be become a billionaire, because if you have a belief, it doesn't even feel like a belief, it just feels true. You've got a lot of shit to do. You know, women, we have a lot of shit to do. We thought that having a washing machine and a dishwasher in the 1950s they advertised that stuff like, oh yeah, get these appliances and you'll have so much more time Well, that's not true. We just created more things to do, and maybe that's our human nature to do things and be productive.

Speaker 2: 3:59

And also we like to do things. I think we have a sense of accomplishment when we get things done and we pursue our passions and our creative projects or even emptying the dishwasher or making dinner but it can get out of control. So how? So? Maybe you don't even realize that you're going fast. I think that most of my life I didn't even realize I was going fast.

Speaker 2: 4:24

I love getting my stuff done, you know, and before I started this spiritual journey, inner work, whatever you want to call it I was teaching full time. I was married, I had a four bedroom house and two kids and animals and a family to take care of, and at one point I was taking care of my grandmother who was dying. I was burning the candle at both ends. What the heck would slow down have even meant for me back then. You know my life, my entire life, was set up to. I had a lot to do and, and a lot of times our jobs or the way we set up our lives.

Speaker 2: 5:11

It's almost like in order to show up for your life, you're required to override yourself. You have to go fast if you want to do all the things, because I think that we think that we're super women. We're like super women or something. So I think we need to really look at can we do everything? Can we do all the things that are actually on our plate? Because I know, when I ask clients what can go, do you have to do this? Is this true to do? When I ask clients what can go, do you have to do this? Is this true to do? You know? Yes, it feels like a yes, like how do you, what do you drop off? When you're, when you have a life that's set up, that you feel like you have to do everything. It feels almost impossible to slow down and just be any thoughts on that. Catherine.

Speaker 1: 6:08

So when you say slow down and just be, that's one reason to slow down for sure it has me think of. It might be a meme or a quote everything is important until there's a health crisis and then nothing's important other than the health crisis and depending on where you are on your personal growth, work, and even if you are in personal growth because if you're not in it, then you're not noticing things then it doesn't matter, it doesn't bother you, it's like you don't know, you're late. If you don't know what time it is right, you just don't know. You don't know. But if it's within your awareness and you see yourself repeating patterns or getting to the same argument or feeling like you're in the twilight zone, you're going through the same circumstance with another individual and it's like the same exact circumstance. But you've gone through the same circumstance with like four or five different people One could have been romantic, one could be familial, the other one's coworker. If you start to say to yourself I want to change this, slowing down is the priority and that health, the health marker of those relationships, the stress marker of the strain of those relationships or the strain of that pattern, becomes the most important thing, while also everything else feels super important. So that's my first thought. The first thought is everything is important until your health goes and then, once your health goes, nothing's important other than your health. Statistically speaking, they say 95% of all disease. What it shares in common is stress, and stress comes from overriding and crossing your own boundaries, not being able to regulate and ground yourself, not being able to take the time and space.

Speaker 1: 8:02

I think, as a society, one of the ways in which we allow ourselves to slow down is to be entertained. Maybe you watch a movie, or you scroll TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, or you connect you text with friends, answer emails, something like that, when, in actuality, what's potentially needed in a high stress body is five breaths. Maybe that could be the first starting point. Maybe 10 minutes of laying flat on the ground staring at the wall, maybe 20 minute meditation session, a one minute meditation session, something to help regulate your cortisol throughout the day so that you're not highly stressed all day long. So when I think about our propensity to want to get things done, that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 8:49

You said it feels great to get things done. Yes, absolutely, and we could get things done our whole life for sure, just like we couldn't have fast food or eat out every day, right, all meals. But only because we can doesn't mean we should. And then the question becomes well, why not, why don't we? We don't eat out every meal, we don't have fast food every meal because we want to have nourishing meals.

Speaker 1: 9:13

One of the reasons why we can't just go, go, go and get things done all the time is because we're pumping our adrenal system. Sometimes it's, by the way we speak, speak really quickly, and you know we're informing our body that we're in a go, go, go state. Sometimes it's we're walking really quickly or moving from task to task really quickly, and that lets our body know hey, we're like in fight, flight, freeze, like let's go, let's make this happen. So we've kind of talked about how does it show up for us moving fast and slowing down can just be just being. But why else is it important? I sort of brought in the. It's an important piece in part to regulate your nervous system to slow down, to regulate your nervous system to slow down.

Speaker 1: 10:07

But one of the most important reasons to slow down, unfortunately, is to feel the feelings that are uncomfortable. That's the reason, because if right now I want to cry, but I'm too busy and nobody got time for that. Well then, I'm not crying because I'm busy One of the things that happens to me the most with clients, new clients, especially when I just expand my nervous system and hold theirs, often they cry and they're like this never happens. Why does this happen to me, oh my God. And they start thinking I'm doing some kind of witchery. And it's not that. It's just that finally we're holding space for them to be able to feel, and now all these emotions are just erupting and showing up as tears.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Right, it could show up like anything, but that happens. That happens to be the way in which it mostly shows up. The easiest way I think it's like the easiest feeling is overwhelmed, crap. I have so much to do, so much to feel, so much to heal. Where the F do I start? And then it's just like tears. You might as well just stop and cry, because what else is there? Where do you even start? So I would say and I'm sure Brenda will agree, but I'm about to ask her One of the most important reasons to slow down is for us to be able to feel, and then part of that same coin is so that then we can be felt.

Speaker 2: 11:26

I'm thinking so many people are like I don't want to feel that they're, like I don't want to feel that. It's so uncomfortable to feel the feelings it really is. But if we don't feel our feelings and we don't give space for that, it really affects everything. It affects our health, it shows up in a manifestation in our body and health issue. It affects our relationships and, like you said before, you know if we're repeating patterns, if we're going through the same thing with in our relationships, at our job, if the same things are coming up for you all the time, if basically everyone's an asshole, then you probably have some pent up feelings inside of you that want to be felt, and a lot of those things are inner child wounds. You know, your inner child maybe got some hurt and so you have an issue that's happening on the surface that needs to be dealt with, that may be difficult, and then underneath is some old hurt that wants to be attended to and that takes time. You know, I just had this myself. I just had this issue.

Speaker 2: 12:49

I'm at an Airbnb in California and the sewer started overflowing and it was a really big issue and my inner child got touched in there and I was having trouble communicating with the Airbnb owner and I really had to look at that. And when I really sat with it, when I really slowed down because it was triggering to me, that was my first sign. My alert was oh, I feel triggered here, something is really bothering me. It wasn't my fault. This has happened before. It's a common thing that happens. And when I really sat with it, I was unable to be present as an adult in this situation because I had an inner child wound and my inner child needed some love. She. What came up for me was I broke something really important. I broke something expensive. I'm going to get in trouble Now. Those things are not what's going to lead as my adult, but I needed to sit with myself and really give myself some love and assure my inner child that she didn't do anything wrong and that she's safe and fine and I've got her. And once I attended to that, I was able to show up and just deal with the issue. Turns out this has happened many times in this particular Airbnb and has nothing to do with me, but I was unable to be present for that situation and show up clean and clear, without feeling what was underneath it and who knew that was underneath it, and my experience with myself and with clients is that this is often the case.

Speaker 2: 14:40

So something happens in your life, you're annoyed at something and there's actually a much deeper thing there.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Everything has a deeper thing, most things have a deeper thing, and it can be uncomfortable to feel that. And if I wanted to move fast and I didn't care, then I could have overridden that and not have that little bit of healing and spaciousness with myself. And that's okay too, because we get to choose if we want to feel something in the moment or not. And guess what? If you don't feel it, that's fine, you don't have to, but it will show up again. So if you really do want to have a different life and have different relationships and have different experiences in your life, then when things come to you, instead of seeing it as a pain in the butt or oh, this thing happened again, they must be an asshole. If you slow down and feel what wants to be felt inside, that's what healing is and that's what becoming a full adult is, so you can live the life of your dreams and be fully expressed and basically just feel happy and joyful because you have some spaciousness inside of your body.

Speaker 1: 16:07

I love the correlation that you brought in when we're talking about slowing down. One of the reasons to slow down to feel ourselves, so that then we can be felt by others, but something even before being felt by others. As we slow down, we're making space to be able to feel what the deeper thing is. And, for good or bad, if we pause to feel something and we can't feel the deeper thing, it's probably just not time, not that it's not there, and you can't really miss it or do it wrong, because it'll just show up in a different way, in a way you know it'll continue to show up until we're ready to see it. And so you're 100% right. Like Brenda's just said, we get to decide if we want to feel something, and we can always move quickly and not feel. That's always one of the options. If, for some reason, it's outside of capacity, we have way too much to do, we're in grief, we're taking care of toddlers, elders, hospice. If our plate is maxed, then maybe that's not the moment. Yes, we get to go on to the next. That's also an option, and what we want to bring in today is to remind ourselves that slowing down to just be is also an option. There's a reward, a potential reward, if we get to feel all the way through and see what's really the rub, that's happening, why we're really activated. We get to feel into and have the opportunity to face something as an adult, to potentially heal parts of our inner child.

Speaker 1: 17:55

And it could just be that we slow down to just be and nothing comes up. And we just took five deep breaths and got to regulate ourselves and give ourselves just like a moment of peace. Because the truth is I'm going to remind us, myself included that uncomfortable feelings pop up. We don't want to feel them and it's literally like we're holding a beach ball underwater all the time. Brenda talked about the real truth that it's trapped in your body, and that's true, but the energetic sensation is like nope, don't come up, nope, don't come up, nope, don't come up, like, don't, don't, don't, like you're holding the dam with your hands, and that dam could be rage or anger, or grief. It could be so many things. So how, brenda, do we now bring back our attention to slowing down? Like, where is a great starting point?

Speaker 2: 18:50

Can you remember yours? It's a really great question For me, the practice of slowing down. There's so many things, but for me it comes down to two things Two practical suggestions that I would offer our listeners right now, and one you touched on, which is breath and breathing, just breathe. I think the most basic example of that is, if you get mad, count to 10. You know, we always say that if you get mad, just count to 10 before you say anything. But the same thing could be if you're having a feeling or somebody's doing something and you're feeling annoyed or pissed off about it. You don't have to react immediately. Take a few breaths, take five to 10 breaths. Getting fresh oxygen in your brain can change your perspective and even in five or 10 breaths, some new thought could come in that would be different than what you would have reacted with. So, at any time, you can breathe. Your breath is life. So that's one. And the second one is meditation.

Speaker 2: 20:01

Having a sitting meditation practice is probably one of the first things that I did in learning to slow down, and you know what's that quote. If you don't have 15 minutes to meditate, great, then meditate for an hour. There's no good way to meditate. You can have a sitting meditation practice where you sit and meditate for three minutes a day. If you don't have three minutes to meditate, that's something to really look at. If you don't have three or five minutes to meditate for yourself in a day, I would be highly concerned and I would start meditating immediately. You start slow, you start where you are Three minutes, five minutes, set a timer and just sit there wherever you are. I used to do this in my classroom before the kids came in in the morning.

Speaker 2: 21:02

I don't buy it that you're at work or you don't have time. I don't buy it. You can always fit that in. So starting a meditation practice just literally teaches your body to slow down. It adds just that little bit of spaciousness in the day. And I want to be clear I do recommend 15 minutes, but if you are like I cannot do 15 minutes, there's just no way. Or if it feels overwhelming, start with three minutes. Start with two minutes if you have to, but just start. It's a great way to slow yourself down. What would you recommend, catherine?

Speaker 1: 21:38

I've been meditating since I'm 19. I don't know if I have tons of experience there. I don't know if that would be the spot that I start people or would recommend. Breath is definitely one. When I've heard people kind of rebuttal or rebuke the meditation piece. I haven't heard so much. I don't have the time I often get. Well, what does that mean? What does that look like? Like what's the right way to do it? And I've done different kinds and I have some meditation audios. Oh, plug, plug. We have a meditation audio for whoever reviews this podcast and sends us a screenshot. That's just a side note, but if you do review the podcast on Apple podcast, please send a screenshot and you can get a meditation healing audio. So that's a possibility.

Speaker 1: 22:33

I would recommend one to 10 minutes of laying flat on the ground staring at the ceiling. I have found that exercise to be extremely grounding. There's nothing to do. You can set a timer if you want, or you have a clock and shot like an eye shot and you know. Okay, I started at 330, at 340, I'm done.

Speaker 1: 22:59

And for all my fast-paced twins out there, the thought is going to be a million thoughts per second about everything you could be doing with 10 minutes and I want you to tell your mind. This is what I'm doing, like I could be doing all of those things, and this is exactly what I'm doing, and I'm doing this because I'm actively working on changing my like task cadence. That's one of the things that I would recommend for sure eyes open, not laying like lay down on the ground. Don't lay down on a bed or on the couch, because you will fall asleep because for doers, we're so tired. I wouldn't say lay down on something soft, because chances are you're going to fall asleep. And I would ask you, I would challenge you and ask you this is so big.

Speaker 1: 24:03

I would challenge you that every time you want to go for entertainment whether it's scrolling on your phone, instagram, facebook, tiktok, snapchat, cnn News, whatever it is that you like to sort of binge and just numb out to Television, movie, comedy, horror, whatever your fast food entertainment is the one that you go to all the time, that you really enjoy. The challenge would be can you not do it and just do nothing instead, so that you can begin to really feel yourself and sort of come back to yourself? I'm not saying it's a forever thing. It could be. You know, I wanted to watch TV for half an hour. I want to scroll for half an hour. Okay, I'm going to do nothing for 15 minutes. The next 15 minutes, I'm going to do that.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Ideally, the practice is just for you to have the experience of what it feels like to do nothing, so that you can counterbalance the sensation of doing many things really quickly, so you can start to feel what it feels like in your body. Ideally, this exercise, little by little, will begin to show you oh, wow, when I move really quickly, like I actually have a low level anxiety in my body, like there's an anxiousness because I'm just wanting to get to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and it reminds me of a generation Xer, like Pac-Man, you just want the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, you just want to chomp on all the bits. And when we're doing nothing, you can feel into all the anxiety that comes up from like doing nothing. Your mind is like I should be doing this, I should be doing that, I should be doing this, I should be doing that. And it provides really great information from both polar opposites where you can walk away and say to yourself oh, this is actually where I'm at.

Speaker 1: 25:57

This is a true read of my pace in my life. This is a true read of how quickly I'm attaining my goals or not attaining my goals. This is a true read of where I am with my health and my money and my relationships. Because in this time when you're doing nothing ideally so that you can become more comfortable in slowing down and doing things slower you're going to have tons of thoughts about yourself. The challenge there is can you not make yourself wrong and adjust them really, really slowly? That's what I'm thinking about.

Speaker 2: 26:41

Those are some beautiful suggestions that you gave. I love the lying down on the ground practice. I know that's a really big one that you do. It really is like a form of a meditation, is what it sounds like to me, and it doesn't even matter what you call any of these things, it's not important. Whatever works for you, just do it, just try it. Maybe you just want to sit in nature or under a tree for a little bit each day. You could slow down by going on a walk. There's so much that you could do. These are just some suggestions that we're offering and I will say that the benefits are really valuable.

Speaker 2: 27:23

Moving fast is a protection for our heart. It's a protection that kind of keeps us tight and closed because, like you said, if we slow down, we're going to feel, but that is the path to more intimacy and feeling ourselves and more love. If you want more love and you want more presence in your relationships and you want to be available for your desires, then slowing down is one path to having those things and I think it's worth it. I find that when I slow down and feel, there's some really beautiful moments that come, and I think that's, those are the things that make life worth living. Those are the things that we remember the beautiful moments that we shared with other people, the stories, the times that we sat in the coffee shop, where that beach day that was just so slow, where we really didn't have anything to do and we didn't have our phones and we just sat around and talked and laughed and ate good sandwiches. Those are the things that we really remember. So slowing down is worth it.

Speaker 2: 28:33

I love how we've just our cadence has even slowed down in this episode, as we've been talking about slowing down. It's such a juicy topic, so we invite you to take a deep breath and slow down, see what comes up for you. We would love to hear what landed for you in this episode, what your takeaways are, what your resistance is to slowing down. It's all welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Until next time. Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 29:15

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.