The Joy of Slowing it Down

Speed is how I keep the devil inside from catching me, but an injury forced me to cut through space slower and it’s taught me what years of mindfulness couldn’t.

“Why don’t you watch it at .75?” my physiotherapist asks.

I laugh at the absurdity, only lalajis follow an exercise video slowed down, even if it is yoga.

“If you can’t keep up for the moment, you must reduce the speed,” she says followed by a Pfff mouth fart sound that only the French are trained to make which denotes - this conversation is over, cope with it, it is what it is, I don’t know and I don’t care.

Ever since moving to France and being confronted with this one syllable conversation stopper, I’ve tried for years to replicate the sound, but you have to be born and brought up French to get it right.

I’m thankful, I no longer live in Paris and here in this village the French are kind, so she goes on to say, “I know you’re used to doing everything full speed, full power, Koël, but it’s ok to slow it down.”

On the drive home, as if by divine intervention, Benson Boone’s Slow it Down comes on and tears drop onto my steering wheel. Full disclosure - I have a cougar obsession with the popstar and his shiny jumpsuits. But it’s not his voice that’s making me cry: I don’t know how to move slowly. Slow people bug me. The way they move. The way they take time to understand or explain something. I’ve mentally checked out long before most are done processing. Doesn’t mean I’m smarter, just impatient. I’m Ok with missing the fine print or not stopping to smell the roses. Boone is hitting those signature high notes now, I’ve missed my turn home and am late for… nothing. Since I busted my knee my schedule has taken a hit and there’s not many places I need to be. Still, I rush for the rush.

When I twisted my knee at catch-ball practice rupturing both my ACL and MCL, I lay paralysed for a long time on the floor of the court howling. I was not in pain. At least, not in the kind of pain that warranted such cries. The tears were coming from another place. We’d just returned from Christmas holiday and immediately moved into a 130-year-old house outside Paris. Renovation was far from over, and the house was freezing and overrun by half-opened boxes and construction workers.

“My fingers are about to fall off, I can’t feel my toes, why can’t we turn up the heat?” I shout.

“It’s 19° C,” my husband says, holding up the thermostat he’s the king of.

Show me a married couple who agrees on the temperature of a room. I fling a box at him, he dodges out of its way.

“Have you lost your mind?”

Aah! That’s where the Christmas decorations were hiding. If only I’d thrown the box at him a month earlier our tree wouldn’t have looked like an undernourished scarecrow. I step over the tinsel and the baubles, push past him, bumping his shoulder and scream, “I hate you. I hate this house. I want to move back to Paris. Alone.” Then I kick some more boxes open and speed out of the drive way in my red Fiat to join the ladies for our weekly catch-ball session which is a cover for let’s forget we are mums or wives and take all our aggression out on the ball and net. Injuries tend to happen when one is not connected with their body. I haven’t been connected with any part of me for a long time. Genetically averse to idling, speed is the way I keep the devil inside from catching me. Rendering myself immobile meant the devil would eat me for breakfast. And so, I lay on that court, thinking of the mess of boxes only I knew how to clear but wasn’t going to be able to, and wept. The ladies asked no questions. They didn’t need answers.

That was over 2 months ago. There is no such thing as healing fast from a double ligament tear. It takes the time it does. And it’s taught me what years of yoga, meditation, mindfulness and therapy couldn’t – there is joy in slowing down. Every time I default to my natural rhythm my body shouts “NO!”, forcing me to be present with the task at hand. If I get out of my Fiat without thinking about it my knee locks, taunting me, “What’s the hurry? What you going to do with the 5 seconds you gain?” I can no longer keep up with the same yoga videos I used to race through while making mental lists or shouting homework instructions to my daughter or scheduling our social life on speaker phone. Now, if I don’t give my undivided attention to a slow transition from pyramid pose to peaceful warrior my leg crumbles and sends shoots of pain till my focus returns to the movement I’m engaged in. I want to heal (fast, she says in a small voice), so I’ve no choice but to cut through space slower with more awareness of my surroundings and of myself. The by-product of this has been strange. For one, no more morning rush or hurrying my daughter through breakfast or running to catch the school bus because I can’t run or rush. So, we all wake up 10 minutes earlier and it’s an unrecognisable morning routine as we stroll to the bus stop. With age, my Monica-syndrome has become so acute that if inside the cutlery drawer, a spoon is placed in the fork partition it can ruin my family’s day. But when your leg won’t allow you to mount a step ladder to reach shelves, you learn to make peace with the contents of the half-opened boxes spilling all around you. And the yoga video at .75 is a mind-changer. By slowing down my body and mind have caught up with each other and are learning to be and not do.

Questions for You:

Are you defined by being or doing? What gives you worth? Do you struggle with slowing down?