The Art of Slowing Down
It’s been some time since I’ve written here, and maybe that’s exactly why this reflection is necessary. Lately—in conversations with clients, in small daily interactions, in how the world is moving—I’ve been sitting with a theme that keeps resurfacing:
The urgency to move. To do. To fix. To go.
We often mistake momentum for progress. The busier we are, the more we feel we’re accomplishing. But if we’re honest, much of that constant motion is not productivity—it’s coping.
Sometimes we rush to avoid stillness. We overextend to escape discomfort. We procrastinate not out of laziness but out of fear. And I won’t define your “difficult thing” for you—you know what it is.
What feeling is it that pushes you to keep going? What sensation are you running from when you can’t sit still?
We tend to view slowing down as weakness or laziness. But here’s the truth: facing what we’re avoiding is not harder than avoiding it—it’s just more honest. The place we run to is not any easier; it simply delays the inevitable.
So I encourage you:
Slow. Down.
Sit with what rises. Name what’s there. Or don’t—just acknowledge it.
You don’t need to fix it.
You don’t need to reframe it.
You simply need to hold it without sprinting away.
This is how we build tolerance. This is how we move from reactive to grounded.
If stillness feels unbearable, meet your body halfway.
When the mind feels stagnant, let the body move. Take a walk. Stretch. Dance in your living room, even if there are tears in your eyes. Movement does not have to be escape—it can be processing. It can be presence.
A book I often recommend for those rebuilding their relationship with presence is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It’s not a quick fix—and that’s the point. It invites you back to your body, back to your breath, back to this exact moment,without demanding that you be anything other than what you are.
So today, choose not to run.
Choose not to perform urgency.
Choose to pause—not because life is easy, but because it’s worth facing.
Slowing down is not stopping.
Slowing down is returning.