4 Physical Ways to Slow Down

I talk a lot about cultivating your “tortoise mind”, in fact, one could say it is the raison d’être of this blog. However, really, talking just about the “tortoise mind” is somewhat of a red herring, as our mind and body are intrinsically linked and one affects the other. One of the fastest ways to change your mental state is to make changes with you body.

Below are, after a few years of trial and error,  what I consider the four key steps to using your body to slow down your mind. I have learned these from a variety of sources from Tai Chi, Yoga, The Alexander Technique and The Feldenkrais Method, to name a few.

1. Breathe

One of the most effective ways to control your thoughts and feelings is to control your breath.

Slowing your breathing will slow down your mind; it will stop it from racing around. We rarely pay attention to our breathing, but our breathing is a very powerful tool to control our emotional, mental and physical state.

By focusing on and controlling your breathing, you can calm yourself, focus yourself, and energise yourself. There are lots of different breathing exercises you can learn that can make massive changes to your current state.

The old “stop and take a deep breath” has become a bit of a cliché, but it works!

2. Centre

Finding your centre is essential to being able to breath properly, align your posture, relax and use your biomechanics and energy efficiently. Centring is used in most martial art systems, especially Tai Chi and Aikido (it is sometimes called your Tantien or One-point).

By breathing, moving, and being aware of your centre you will find you will relax more, have more energy and be more in control of your emotions and thoughts.

Your centre is two fingers width below your belly button and about the same inside. So, to find it, take 2 fingers from one hand place them horizontally below your belly button, and with one finger of the other hand, gently press the point directly below your belly button. That is your centre. You will need to be aware of it to breathe, move and stand effectively.

3. Sink

Not collapse, but sinking down into your centre. Sinking is like anchoring yourself, stopping yourself being swept away. The Buddha, when he was still Siddhartha, saw a Brahmin (Indian Holy Man) in a town square and was inspired by the way this person could be “centred in the present moment, without being swept away by it”. This is the power of sinking.

4. Relax

Relaxing, both mentally and physically, correcting your posture so you are utilising only the energy required to do what you need to do. Be gentle, in actions and thoughts.

Learn more about this and much more, by popping over to the “free stuff” page and getting all the juicy and utterly complimentary morsels over there.

Matt

The Deck Chair Diaries Part 2

THIS IS A SLOW BLOG. It is updated when I have something to say, rather than trying to say something just to update the blog. Learn more about Slow Blogging here. Since this is a Slow Blog, may I suggest you subscribe by RSS by clicking here, or subscribe to receive email updates by clicking here (to learn more about RSS click here for an FAQ).

It has been a while hasn’t it?

I am all of a muddle, having had a busy month or so and have been neglecting all my online duties.

Back in the middle of June (the 16th to be exact), my main website, mattcaulfield.com where I promote all my courses, products and coaching keeled over, catastrophically. So catastrophically in fact that I lost my website and had to create a brand new one from scratch. With zero budget.

So, I spent 3 weeks teaching myself WordPress so that I could build the new site and now I have total control over it (huge learning curve, but deeply rewarding).

Because of the rush, I have to be honest, I am still not sure where I am going with it, and some of the site is just a facsimile of the old one (I just cut and pasted the content).

The idea of the new site (as you can hopefully see by the clean design) was to simplify everything, to combine everything that I do into one site and present it all in a clean and fresh (and easy to understand) way.

I have combined my NLP based blog with my “Business Advice” blog (for budding therapists and coaches) and was intending to combine this blog into there as well. But I am not sure. I would love to hear feedback from you, dear readers, to see what you think. At the moment I am leaning towards keeping it separate.

Unfortunately, with the site being “OK for now” I have had to leave it and had other things to do.

I taught my first “Psykologika Esoterika” training a couple of weeks ago, this is where I teach people to be a “mentalist” like Derren Brown or Patrick Jane. You can read a training report here with some pictures and clips of how the delegates got on.

Then I headed straight into an NLP Practitioner training.

As you can see “work” has taken up much of my time since I last wrote. I put “work” in inverted comma’s as it isn’t really work and I am very grateful that I can make a living doing what I love. It is not essential to living a “slow” life to be “self employed” (for want of a better word) and many “slow” people have proper jobs (it is about doing what you love after all, and if what you love involved working for someone else, go for it). However for me Slow is about freedom and to have true freedom you have to escape the 9-5 humdrum.

Speaking of escape, I have recently submitted an article to the New Escapologist magazine, it will appear in issue 4 which is out on the 16th of August. Whilst planning this I have had the pleasure of conversing with Rob Wringham, the founder and editor. He is an incredibly likable, intelligent and motivated (if that is the right word) person with wisdom beyond his years. I am glad to have had the opportunity to get to know him personally. I highly recommend you check out the magazine at www.newescapologist.co.uk

In my last diary entry I talked about staring out of the window a lot. Well staring has turned to action and, in between trainings, I have managed to finish off the garden and now have an outside idyll to relax in.

If we ever have the weather.

It has turned distinctly autumnal here (I am sat writing this wearing 2 jumpers) and I keep needing to remind myself that it is only the start of August and still the middle of summer.

So it is back to staring out of the window…

Which is a shame, I am feeling that summer is slipping by unnoticed for me. And (as I said in my last entry) one of my basic tenants in helping you slow down is to get out amongst nature, not only will the fresh air do you good, but engaging with nature and noticing the signs of the passing of the seasons will help you engage and connect with time again.

Since I last wrote I have finished reading Tom Hodgkinson’s excellent “How To Be Free” and (re)read “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell (Orwell is one on of my favourite authors of all time), it is one of my favourite books, but I probably hadn’t read it for about 15 years and I had forgotten just how profound it was, every page makes some cutting comment or observation about our Society and the way it is heading. I urge you to read it, if you haven’t already.

I am also reading “Chi Kung: Way of Power” by Master Man Kam Chuen, as it was recommended to me as one of the best treatise on Chi Kung. It is. I need it at the moment, after the last months hectic activities my energy is flagging and I need a bit of a boost.  Chi Kung really is an amazing form of gentle yet extremely powerful exercise and Tai Chi is the worlds laziest martial art, gentle, simple, yet extremely powerful after just a little practice. If you are looking for a gentle way to boost your vitality (and defend yourself in a non-violent and non-aggressive way) I really do urge you to give it a go.

I must also get back to meditating. Meditating makes you cool (I need to do more obviously). I notice when I don’t sit for some time I become scattered and anxious. I am currently working on some simple guided mediation mp3 downloads which will be available very soon, in the mean time why not pop over to the “free stuff” page and get a guided relaxation primer and some other goodies?

Be back soon
Matt

The Deckchair Diaries Part 1

THIS IS A SLOW BLOG. It is updated when I have something to say, rather than trying to say something just to update the blog. Learn more about Slow Blogging here. Since this is a Slow Blog, may I suggest you subscribe by RSS by clicking here, or subscribe to receive email updates by clicking here (to learn more about RSS click here for an FAQ).

Originally inspired by Tom Hodgkinson’s Country Diary and the excellent Orwell Diaries, this blog, when it was over at wordpress.com was entitled the “Deckchair Diaries” and was a more personal journal of my journey on the path to slowing down.

Some readers have requested a bit more of a personal touch on this site, with details of what I have been getting up to in my (mostly) slow lifestyle, to show “slow living” in action. So, I thought I would revive the style of a more personal journal as an occasional entry here on Tortoise Knows Best, sharing with you what I have been up to and how I have been implementing (or at least trying to!) the Slow Philosophy.

I have been doing a lot of staring out of the window recently. I have become a terrible “inside of the window” type of gardener, time, inclination and finances have stopped me getting out there and doing some much needed pottering around. I fancy growing some veg, but once again, left it a bit too late…

(Although I stumbled across this from the brilliant Hugh from River Cottage – the River Cottage cookbook is a must for any idlers bookshelf – and contemplating giving it a go – as a bit of cheat and headstart…)

I love this time of year, but nature moves fast, giving me a feeling that we are rushing towards summer. It is hard to take a step back and take it all in and so easy to get caught up in the torrent.

Every day a new plant seems to bloom, blossom, flower or grow leaves (sometimes all at once), it is too easy to miss something and next thing you know it has done its thing. I see plants and flowers and birds and insects, I notice new sounds and sights and smells. This time of year is really is an orgy for your senses if you switch on and stay mindful. I must learn the name of things.

Nature, being involved with nature and learning to flow with it (it’s changing weather and seasons) really is essential to the slow lifestyle.

I spend as much time as I can watching the clouds go by, trying to make shapes in them. Dali called this the paranoiac-critical method, which was his description of how we make shapes and faces in abstract images such as seeing Jesus face in a piece of toast. For more information on cloud spotting (an excellent idle pursuit), I highly recommend the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Although the time I have to give to Idle pursuits has been somewhat cut down recently. Work wise I seem to be working longer and longer hours, which is no way for an idler to behave!

Luckily I enjoy what I do to make money (and as Confucius said “Choose a job you love and you will have to work again”).

Like many self-employed people, the recession has effected my work. Although I have managed to weather the worst of the financial storm I have been forced (like those self employed people that have also survived) to be creative; developing different ways of doing things and alternative income streams. It is a bit like chucking mud at the wall to see what stick a lot of the time. So far I have had the most success (and fun) with teaching people to be “Psychological Entertainers” in the vein of Derren Brown, Banachek, etc as well as teaching the skills of those fictional characters Patrick Jane in the “Mentalist” and Cal Lightman in “Lie to Me” (although these are fictional characters, their abilities are based on real life skills), if you want to learn more about that, please feel free to visit the website www.psykologika-esoterika.com.

I am being philosophical about the whole thing, this recession has made me be much more aware of my financial situation and I have made the effort to live much more frugality (“just in case”). I am enjoying seeing how little money I can get away with spending and it is very illuminating seeing how much money I frittered away.

And things are looking up…

It has been a few weeks since the election here in the UK and I must admit to being optimistic of the result, we have an unprecedented and revolutionary coalition and I wish them all the best (more cynical – and revolutionary – friends of mine have already written them off, but, since this is the system we have right now, I am hoping for the best. Call me daft and optimistic if you want…).

Forgetting political ideology for a moment, I like David Cameron, he seems very “Slow” to me. I first warmed to him because of this chat that he had with President (or Senator, at the time) Obama, about how to govern, then in the run up to the election and in the Conservative manifesto he spoke about “Big Society“, community is a central tenant of the Slow Manifesto (I think the slow movement is essentially anarchic in its political viewpoint), and then when he became PM, the first thing he did was ban cell phones from cabinet meetings!

My right knee has been playing up which has curtailed my idle exercise routine. My daily Tai Chi and Chi Kung practice has been effected (and I have almost got out of the habit of doing anything) I have had to give up running. It has even started to affect my daily mediation practice, evening kneeling using a stool to support myself it really aches. I have been doing the manly thing and ignoring it, but I have noticed how easy it is to use it as an excuse to just sit on the sofa, and how much more twitchy, distracted and lethargic I have become in such a short space of time. So, I have begun a process of rehabilitation. Hopefully with a bit of rest and recuperation, skilful strapping and painkillers I will be back embracing the tiger and repulsing the monkey (as well as being able to sit without the distracting ache in meditation) very soon.

I am currently re-reading “How to be Free” by Tom Hodgkinson, I have to admit to not finishing it first time round, I got distracted by something else. It is a very interesting discussion of the Medieval lifestyle and how we can reintroduce and emulate that in current times to free ourselves from some of the bonds of modern living.

Anyway, I am off to watch the rain out of the window.

See you again soon,
Matt

Vision For Living

Just a quick post to let you know that I am doing a talk entitled “Welcome to the Slow Life” at the Vision For Living Exhibition in Cardiff on the 31st October at 5:00pm. The talk itself is free and the entry to the exhibition is only £4.95 for the day.

You can learn more about Vision for Living here:

www.visionforliving.co.uk

If you are interested in attending it would be great to see you there. Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might also be interested.

I will be hanging around the ACT (Associated Contemporary Therapists) stand for most of the day if you want to come by and say “Hello”.

Matt

It Happens When It Happens

Well, I am sorry for not blogging for over 2 weeks, I have been on holiday and on my return had a lot of little bits to sort out.

I spent a lovely week in Crete, nice food, nice wine, just sunbathing and catching up on a pile of books I wanted to read.

Whilst I was away I found myself thinking about how to continue with this blog. When I started blogging seriously a while ago I did a lot of research into what it takes to make a “successful” blog. I found myself being seduced by all the pro-bloggers out there who say you should blog every day and seem to be incredibly prolific, particularly the excellent and prolific Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. So I tried to write a blog entry every day. Even if I didn’t really want to.

I suddenly realised I had been seduced by speed again!

I was blogging every day because I thought I should, not because I was inspired to. Sometimes I would throw up an entry just to get one up there and I was worrying so much about just getting something up on this blog that I wasn’t taking the time to write some of the more indepth posts about certain subjects that I really wanted to. Blogging was making me stressed! I was starting to resent blogging, I started to dread that time of day or week when I had to sit down and write an entry. My mind would go blank, I would start to sweat and eventually I would just write anything to get it out of the way…

I wasn’t planning any entries because I wasn’t enjoying doing it and I was treating them like a chore I had to get out of the way before I could get on with my “proper work”.

You see, the pro-bloggers I had been trying to emulate just blogged (actually saying “just” sounds like a criticism, which it isn’t, it would be better to say primarily blog), however, even though I blog. Quite a lot. I write 3 other blogs than this one:

www.thepracticebuilderblog.com – where I give advice on how to run a therapy or coaching practice

mattcaulfield.blogspot.com – This was my first ever blog and has been going since 2005. Nowadays I use to write my thoughts about NLP (Neuro linguistic Programming) and related subjects.

thetaichiguy.blogspot.com – A brand new blog talking about my practice of the amazing art of Tai Chi.

I am not primarily a blogger. I would consider myself primarily a coach, consultant and trainer/teacher. I spend most of my time working with people helping them slow down. Blogging is a big part of that, but it is not the biggest part, if that makes sense?

So, by trying to emulate the people who primarily blog, I was finding the quality of my blogging was slipping, some days I would be proud of what I had written, other days I would just slap something up, not planning, not proof reading and not particularly caring. I didn’t feel many of my entries really captured my personality and the passion for the subject that I have.

Something had to be done!

And that is when I made the decision to commit myself fully to the slow blogging ideal. I wrote a couple of entries sometime ago about Slow Blogging (see the posts here and here) and then totally failed to actually start slow blogging!

So, I am now…

Slow bloggers eschew the idea of immediacy in blogging for a more measured and considered post. It is about quality not quantity and lives by the axiom “it happens when it happens”.

So, from now on I am no longer going to rush out entries just for the sake of posting. I am going to think, plan, study, draft and (endeavour) to write longer, better written entries with more depth. Hopefully. I will, of course, post shorter blogs, from time to time with news and interesting tidbits I have to say that don’t require a more detailed entry.

In fact, to move away from the association that blogging has with immediacy, I intend to call this a journal from now on, not a blog.

The aim is to write a well-developed entry once a week, with maybe the occasionally serial spread out over days or weeks. To be honest, I don’t know yet, I am still working it all out.

I will be updating this site over the next week or so to reflect this shift of emphasis and will be adding more information about Slow Blogging, including my own Slow Blog Manifesto.

I hope you stick with me whilst I experiment and find my feet.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to take the dogs for a walk.

Matt

PS, I will also be applying the idea to twitter. Where I intend to “twitter when I twitter” no sooner, no later. I have never really got my tortoise mind around twitter and hopefully this new philosophy will help. Who knows? It’s all very exciting isn’t it?!

A Bit of News…

There are going to be a few changes around here. Number 1 is that I am stopping using “The Slow Coach” title (for a variety of reasons), so you will start to see changes reflecting that. Also, I have a new coaching venue, which will cause me to stop celebrating Saint Monday, which is a shame (but when better to coach people to slow down than on Saint Monday?!), and a few other things.

Unfortunately I am tad hectic over the next few days, there will be a proper blog entry tomorrow though, and all of these changes may take a little time. I hope to continue as (a) normal as possible service through this though.

Speak to you soon

Matt

Idlers Accessories: The Walking Stick

I lament the passing of the days when a gentleman wouldn’t leave the house without a walking stick. You see, I have a bit of a “gammy” knee, nothing too serious, I can still do Tai Chi, squat heavy weights, and walk without a limp, but I can’t run and occasionally when walking down hill, or stairs, my knee gives out and I fall over. Which can be quite embarrassing. So I often walk with a cane, but I don’t limp, so I sometimes feel a bit daft strolling round looking perfectly healthy, but with a stick (how pretentious)!

But, with my experience of using a stick, I think it needs a bit of a resurgence, it is an excellent idlers accessory. It is incredibly useful and can make walking a more leisurely experience. You seem to walk with a better, more casual rhythm when you are walking with a cane, like it is a metronome swinging at you side, counting out a slow beat.

Beyond that it has a host of uses: You can use it balance yourself; lean on it when you are bending over, or staring into space, or sitting on a bench; you can point with it; poke things with it; and (if you use a crook handle cane, which I recommend) you can reach for things. You could even (with a bit of practice), use the walking stick as a very effective form of self-defence, in the unfortunate event that you should ever need to (learn the Tai Chi walking stick form).

I think it is about time the cane had a renaissance!

Looks like rain? Get a hook handle umbrella instead…

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Getting Rid of Want 1: Gratitude

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

- E. F. Schumacher (Economist, founder and exponent of “Buddhist Economics”)

Slowing down is a constant journey of discovery. This blog is as much a record of that journey as it as a place to offer advice, hints and strategies for how you can Slow Down.

The one thing I discovered about myself and the one thing I have been struggling to break is that I was a very “grass is greener” thinker. I was a marketers dream! As soon as I had something I would yearn for something new or something better! I always had the feeling that I was missing out on something and if I had “just one more thing” I would finally be happy.

Of course that never happens and all you do is want more and more. I know I am not alone! In fact that is typical of our high speed hare-brained society (and what our consumerist economy is based on – see my minor rant about toasters!). How far I had been distracted from my Buddhist studies in my early 20’s!!

So, how do you break that cycle of wanting and craving for something bigger, better, newer, faster?

Well first we have to understand why we crave those things:

Habituation

A sneaky trick of our nervous system (that dates back to cave(wo)man days) is something called habituation. Basically, the way this works is that we stop consciously paying attention to, or ‘habituate’ repeated experience – what is around us everyday. But when something new turns up we pay attention to it.

This was a useful and important survival strategy. It allows the limited attention of the conscious mind to be available for spotting difference. And in cave(wo)men days difference could be a threat (or an opportunity to take advantage of).

The Reticular Activating System

Another part of our nervous system is called the “Reticular Activating System” or “RAS” for short. Its job is like the doorman of our conscious mind. It decides, from the billions (or something like that) of stimuli we are bombarded with makes it to our conscious awareness. It decides through a series of criteria, but mainly by what we deem to be “emotionally” important to us.

So, what we focus on we get more of. Ever bought a new piece of clothing or new car and suddenly seen it everywhere, even though you never noticed it before? That is because the RAS now deems it important and makes you consciously aware of it, therefore you notice it more. Make sense?

It is no wonder that consumerism has thrived, it plays on these 2 basic “cave (wo)man” parts of our nervous system! We are bombarded by very cleverly crafted adverts that tap straight into our emotional response, therefore tricking the RAS into making us pay attention to it.

And combined with the process of habituation, it makes us very aware of what we haven’t got. No wonder we crave new things all of the time!!

But the good news is that, once we are aware of them, we can control our RAS and habituation process to reduce or remove our cravings for the “next big thing”.

So how do we get around process and rewire our nervous system to stop (or reduce) habituation and get our RAS working for us and not against us?

Well, a process I discovered was, ironically, from that film “The Secret”, I am sure you know the one, the one that tells you that you can get everything you want just by thinking about it? You have to be very specific with your greed though…

Well, one of the (very few) sensible things they recommend in that film is the idea of the gratitude rock (although you don’t need a rock to do it).

All you need to do is be (consciously) grateful for what you have. Simple huh? How often are you grateful for what you have? How often do you sit down, look around and recognise how good life really is?

To start with, think of the things you take for granted. The things you really don’t think about, like the fact you have a house, you have your health (hopefully), you have food to eat. You have friends and people who care about you. The real basics. Then move onto the more “luxurious” things that you have (these are often the places we have the most craving to replace), you have access to a computer to be reading this. Which means you have access to all the knowledge that the internet has to offer.

Do it now, think of 10 things that you are grateful that you have. It can be as basic or as detailed as you want. I often spend 5 – 10 a day thinking of things I am really glad that I have got! Give it a go for a few weeks and see how much your craving and want reduces over that time.

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Saint Monday

The Slow Coach is celebrating Saint Monday. He will be back tomorrow.

Hare-Brained or Tortoise Minded?

Coming from a Personal Development background (although I have come to hate that phrase, but I don’t think is the remit of this post!) the thing that fascinated me about the Slow Movement (and because of my experience and interest, the first thing that I thought about when I discovered the Slow philosophy) was the psychological side of it: the thoughts, actions, behaviours, processes and beliefs that make us a fast or slow person.

That is why I define “Slow” as a philosophy that leads to a mindset, that creates a lifestyle. I see it in that order and focus on the mindset. To quote Michael Jackson “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself then make a change. Yeah, Na, na, na, na, na, na oh ho…” And all that.

It is something I have been fiddling with for some time and it is still in it’s embryonic stages, so I thought in this post I would list what I see as the difference between the Slow “Tortoise Minded” person and the Fast “Hare-Brained” person and see what your thoughts are, I will carry on with this as I get it all sorted out in my head.

Hare Brained Busy Hurried and flustered Scattered Distracted Impatient Controlling Serious Aggressive Analytical Stressed Superficial Active Quantity THEN Quality Selfish/ self centred

Tortoise Minded Productive Unhurried and unflustered Centred Mindful Patient Co-operative Fun and Humour Calm Intuitive Relaxed Depth and resonance Receptive Quality THEN quantity Making real meaning connections with people

What do you think?

I will explore more about this as my thoughts develop. But the idea is to map the “tortoise mind” of a slower person or idler, so that we can model and mimic that to help everyone slow down!

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