I enjoy slowing down. It amplifies my pleasure, enjoyment and gratitude. I often find myself reminding myself and others to do so. When I am in cities, I feel like everyone around me is moving at the speed of light and I’m barely crawling. It’s quite lonely and frustrating. When I saw the workshop “How Slow Can We Go?”, I thought to myself: “It would be great to slow down with other people!”
At the beginning, I was totally in my head; judging, bored, comparing, fidgeting and my mind was everywhere EXCEPT the present moment. First order of business: turn off my phone! That took away the biggest source of distraction. Now I have more bandwidth for people and experiences around me. As we progressed with embodiment practices, I felt like coming home, to my body; feeling, touching, loving. The more I slowed down, the more I felt at home, the more I was able to connect and ground myself in the present moment.
Observing myself and others on this journey from head to heart was quite enlightening. The longest journey that covers the shortest distance. Every day, every exercise, every interaction, we shed more barriers. Became more authentic, daring, loving, feeling, opening and blossoming.
The most insightful experience happened accidentally when I clued in to the anatomy of control.
I noticed the difference between control from the mind and control from the body. When the facilitator introduced a practice, my mind would ask questions trying to predict what’s going to happen and whether I can relax into following the instructions. Ironically, the more I tried to control the outcome, the farthest I became from reality and therefore from controlling anything. The mind may have given me the illusion of control, when it was just fear mongering. By creating hypothetical “worst case scenarios”, the mind was trapping me in fear. Those fear infused thoughts increase the chances of manifesting them into reality. Whereas when I relax into the body, trust my sensations, speak my truth and own my power, I have a much better chance of reacting favorably to the real stimuli around me; move away from pain and towards pleasure. That’s real control, not an illusion. Just like any animal would do. It’s natural, simple and intuitive.
The less I try to control (with my head), the more control I have. The mind tries to control the future. Illusion. Escape. The body knows how to react in the present moment. REAL control. Freedom. Where trust is born. Where love and pleasure are born. Controlling through the mind is an illusion. Controlling through the body is real. It does mean that I have to feel ALL my feelings; the good, the bad and the ugly. But that’s the portal to real freedom!
I used to believe in the “mind over matter” myth: Let the mind control your body to make it do amazing feats. Then I realized it’s exactly the opposite. It should be “mind out of matter”. When the mind is quiet, sedated or unconscious, the body is capable of unimaginably amazing feats, because the mind doesn’t scare the sh!t out of it or limit its freedom. People whose bodies can do superhuman things have mastered the art of quieting their minds, not activating it. As amazing as our minds are, they think way too much for our own good. Sadly our mainstream culture is heavily skewed towards being in our heads at the expense of ignoring our bodies and their innate wisdom. How can we reclaim our power from this madness gone rogue? Slow the fu¢k down!
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P.S. The last 7 photos were taken by Laura Schneider (I had my phone off the whole time)
Unconditional Love 