Time Off to Slow Down
/Centrifugal
feet on the ground, insides still churning.
As 2023 wound down, I found myself tightly wound up. I’d be standing at the sink, hurrying to get the kitchen cleaned up so I could get ready for for bed, so I could get a good sleep, so I could wake up bright-eyed and ready for…, what? I had no deadlines; no blog posts, no classes to plan, no interviews to prepare. I had even made my Christmas list and checked it twice, yet I continued to experience a sense of interior urgency. It was as if I’d stepped off of a year-long roller coaster ride and even though my feet were now on solid ground, my insides continued to churn.
Perhaps I had too long resisted the slower pace that managing Parkinson’s symptoms demands. Maybe I wasn’t facing up to the facts of living in an 82-year-old body. Maybe I was still trying to impress my mother! But listing possible “whys” did nothing to settle my hyperactive nervous system. My startle reflex was on a hair-trigger, as if dropping a fork on the floor were the end of the world. A student’s kind Facebook comment about my “peaceful persona” made me feel like a fraud.
It was time to take time off—no writing, no planning, no commitments. My New Year’s resolution was to “stop hurrying”, but framed so negatively, it likely wouldn’t be an achievable goal. As I wrote in The New Rules of Posture, I couldn’t just stop; I’d need to build a healthy habit that could replace the harmful one.
Stop. Relax. Go.
My friend William teaches yoga classes online. His somatic approach to yoga has nothing to do with perfecting poses but is dedicated to connecting deeply with one’s body. During classes William often invites slow motion transitions. We may take an arm or leg through a broad range of motion, going so slowly that it becomes micro-movement. The process immerses us in subtle sensations that usually evade consciousness. It reintroduces us to our bodies.
We pause to release unnecessary effort..
Sometimes we interrupt even that slow pace, stopping a quarter of the way along the movement path, again at halfway, and at three quarters… each time pausing to relax unnecessary muscle activity. “Stop. Relax. Go,” William says. We repeat the process almost to the point of tedium. But afterwards, as I move through my domestic routine, the repetition pays off. I stop hurrying… several times. It’s a good practice, but not a new leaf turned, not yet.
March comes and goes, and still I can’t find my way back to the work I know I love.
Teleportation
Acceptance of a teaching invitation was a commitment I made prior to swearing off commitments. So, as if spirited there by a Starfleet transporter, I find myself on a patio overlooking a tropical forest on the island of Kaua’i.
Dinner companion
Birds gather to watch me eat. Surf pounds in the near distance. Rain permeates the atmosphere, even when no rain is falling. Each night my sleep is contained in an ambience of rain forest, ocean, breeze and bird song.
One night there is so much rain that a river floods, making it impossible to reach the venue where my workshop is held. The students, all with an adaptable Kaua’i approach to life, are quite comfortable taking that day off and adding one at the end.
When classes are finished, Ann drives me along the northeast coast where breathtaking views overlap, and beauty embraces beauty, everything soft and clean in the ubiquitous presence of water. Our meandering two-lane road comes to a one-lane bridge where cars line up to take turns crossing the river. First a north-going group drives over, then a south-going group. When a car horn cuts through the quiet, it is almost painful—a vicious sound in this place where patience seems to be a cellular process.
The speedometer registers 18 miles an hour. Although Ann’s appointment in town is minutes from now, time stretches, adapting. Eighteen miles an hour is a pace for not getting ahead of oneself. It’s a pace for being here…, and now here…, each nanosecond,…here. What price we pay for always being on time, for getting everything done.
Eighteen Miles Per Hour
Let me internalize this sense of 18 mph, let it become cellular. Let me teach myself to feel it while answering emails or standing at the kitchen sink. Bring me closer to living what I try to teach—closer to knowing myself to be supported by the planet, by gravity. And by the rhythm this special island has revived within me.
© 2024 Mary Bond