Be Gentle

Written by on November 12, 2010

I have been working away a lot recently (the reason for few posts, tweets, etc) and whilst I was away I fell spectacularly off the Slow path and found myself thrashing around the undergrowth. A few things went horribly wrong, I got stressed out, I found myself becoming flustered, tense, short-tempered, lethargic and easily distracted. I started to jump from one task to the next without focusing or finishing anything and become utterly unmindful. I would go places and forget what I was doing there.

Basically I was a mess.

And what was worse, much worse, than all of this was when I realised what I was doing I started to beat myself up about getting flustered and stressed. I treated myself rather badly and shouted at myself on several occasions, telling myself to “pull myself together MAN!”

Which didn’t help at all. In fact it made the whole thing worse.

In Taoism, particularly the Taoist martial arts such as Tai Chi, they talk about interacting with things with just 4 ounces of pressure. This, of course, is not a literal measure of pressure required, (there is no need to carry a hygrometer around with you!),it is a metaphorical idea of only using the bare minimum of effort, to be gentle.

It ties in with the principle of Wu Wei, which translates rather paradoxically as the “action of non-action”. It can be described as “going with the flow”, but it is much more than that. It is about acting intelligently and in harmony with the surrounding environment (and with yourself). It is about recognising when and how to act and when to just wait or yield to external forces.

Shouting at myself and getting all worked up because I was not being “slow” enough, really didn’t help at all. If you find yourself getting flustered, unmindful and speeding up, don’t beat yourself up, just gently take a step back, relax and guide your mind back to acting how you would like to feel. If you cannot manage to slow yourself down, don’t panic, just go with it, you will soon be back on the path.

To develop your tortoise mind, you need to be gentle in thought, speech and action. Never apply more than the metaphorical “4 ounces” of pressure.

Matt

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How to be Slow in a Fast Environment

Written by on November 25, 2008

crowded-train-strange-picturesGood morning,

Well, last week was all very hectic.

The weekend before I had spent in London, we had gone down to see “Monkey: Journey to the West”.

London really is the antithesis a Cittaslow (a Cittaslow is a Slow Town or City), it is all hustle and bustle, rush and non-stop, crowded and selfish. Everyone looks through you.

After about 5 minutes in that place I can find myself getting all agitated! I can see why people act like zombies, it’s defence mechanism, they cannot cope with the speed and the pace of the place.

So, what can you do? Can you be Slow in a fast environment?

Well, remember Slow isn’t actually about being slow, as in crawling around and being dim witted. Slow is a first and foremost a mindset, a philosophy, an attitude.  This then leads to a method of slowing your life down and practical ways to do that (which is often unique to the individual, even though many of the principles are the same…).

So, as long as you have the mindset in place you can be Slow pretty much anywhere. Almost. No one is perfect (I admit to a minor rant whilst driving the day – it’s cathartic alright?!).

The mindset can be defined as being mindful (paying attention), unflustered and unhurried, centred.

I am going to focus, on this post on being centred. As I think it really is the key to managing your “slowness” when all around you in speeding along.

It is something that I have learned through martial arts and meditations. Particularly the Taoist style. Itr is used a lot in Tai Chi (the slowest martial art of them all…!).

It is very easy to do and practice, and will improve your state of mind, focus and posture.

So, what you do is this: You centre. Easy huh? How do you find your centre? It is 2 finger widths below and in from your belly button. Get two fingers of one of your hands and hold them width wise below your belly button, take one finger from your other hand and press gently. That is your centre.

If you focus on it, breath from it (imagine your nose is at that point if it helps – breathing is very important, so I will come back to that in a later post) and move from it, you will find that you will be less flustered by the rush going on outside (and inside your head too – it slows down those anxious “what if?” panicky thoughts…)

For best results. Aim to make all your moves and thoughts from this point. Start simply by focusing on it whenever you can, after a while you will just start to naturally work form there as a starting point. Then, when you find yourself getting flustered you can just gently move your attention there…

Incidentally, the new slowplanet.com is up and is an excellent place to mean other slow-minded people and learn more about Slow in all it’s forms(I have no affiliation!)

SC  

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