Finding stillness when your world is moving rapidly takes extra effort, but it’s important because stillness helps clarify your actions, alongside its benefits of calming your nervous system. Here are three slowing techniques that I’ve found effective for slowing yourself down to be in stillness amidst major change.
These tips are best done in conjunction with each other because there’s no one way to get to stillness. So let’s start with the basics.
Slowness technique 1: Meditation.
I learned to meditate during a sabbatical I took after leaving my university job, and meditation felt luxurious and easier than I expected. But when my sabbatical ended and I started a new job as a community organizer, finding time to meditate got a lot harder. Very quickly meditation became a nice activity to do in my spare time.
Within a few months of my new job, we began planning a large direct action alongside a youth environmental conference. As my organizer brain clicked into high gear, I started accelerating internally - working longer days, jumping from task-to-task, and filling my internal buzz with more information.
I was only a month into preparations when my right lung completely collapsed. When I left the hospital 2 days later, I was instructed to stay home, rest, and do no work for at least a month. At first I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do.
After a couple days the pain meds wore off, and I was restless. I wanted to do something, but even meditating felt hard. My mind was racing and I couldn’t get back to the internal calm I found during my sabbatical.
Slowing technique 2: Read fiction.
I called a friend to connect across my boredom, and my friend asked what fiction I was reading. I was surprised, no fiction was in my plan. I had a stack of social movement books that I thought could help me during this time, but my friend shot back, “How can you organize for a future if you aren’t reading fiction to fuel your imagination?”
Just thinking about reading fiction brought me to a pause. So I got a couple fiction books from the library around the corner, and dove in. Reading fiction was a gateway to slowing down again. The fiction lets your logical brain take a backseat, then your imagination runs wild until you're tired.
Slowing technique 3: Lay down
When I finished a series of chapters, I would let myself drift off into a nap. Napping felt so rejuvenating, afterward I would be ready to read or talk, but my pace was slowed, so often I would just sit. This was new for me, to sit with no book in hand, no show queued up, and no specific goal in mind, but it unlocked something in my brain from childhood.
We ask children to lay down for a nap, even if they aren’t tired, and they often rest. This same practice can work for adults, if you can’t fall asleep for a nap, you can let your body relax by just laying down.
And after a couple days of being slowed down, meditating felt more available. And since that time, fiction, naps, and meditation have all become part of my toolkit for staying still. This year I even gave myself permission to have 2 naps a day - which has helped me navigate my overwhelm during crisis periods.
Which of these practices might you use to slow down? And comment to share what other practices you use.