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I arrived at the tube platform the other day when a man in front of me animatedly sighed, because the tube was 4 minutes away. “Typical,” he huffed as he kicked the air. Because he had to wait four minutes.

You know we have a problem with rushing as a society when you watch this take place, and a part of you sympathies. I found a voice thinking, “True, those extra four minutes can really put you behind.” And that came from me; I teach people to slow down for a living.

The fact that we can Amazon Prime our way through our week has bred an underlying impatience into the majority of us because we are simply not used to waiting for anything. As our world becomes more dependent on technology, the faster and more efficient we are under pressure to be. The expectancy to always reply, always be there, always be ‘on’ is exhausting.

The problem we face with slowing down is if you only ever operate at one speed, the opposite can feel unusual, confronting. If we fast-track our way through life, we know no different, and our systems are designed to prefer the setting we are calibrated to. Why? Because it feels comfortable; it is what is known. If you only ever put your foot on the accelerator and stop only when run out of fuel, this is your default setting, your normal. It means intentionally slowing down can feel triggering and uncomfortable.

It takes time to teach your body it is safe to slow down, especially if you haven’t tried it before.

If you’re thinking, ‘What do I actually gain from slowing down, though?’ the answer is a lot. You may have heard of the negative impact of continually operating in fight or flight, which is our stress response, known as the sympathetic part of the nervous system (nothing to do with sympathy and everything to do with activation). In excess, this is where anxiety, jitteriness and rage live.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have our parasympathetic branch, known as rest & digest. It is called this because it is only within this state of being that our bodies can,

• Digest our food: inclusive of the chemical processing, absorption, transportation, and elimination of what you eat, &
• Repair on a cellular level: including cellular regeneration, DNA repair, protein synthesis and folding, mitochondrial repair, cellular cleanup, and cell cycle regulation.

What happens to a body that doesn’t repair? In my experience, I felt utterly broken. I had a whole catalogue of hormonal imbalances, fluctuating problems with my mental health, and never ending burnout. What does it mean for you? Do you struggle to wake up in the morning? Do you have difficulty falling asleep? Do you yo-yo between anxious episodes and depressive mood swings? Procrastination?

This integrate balance we are talking about is referring to the tapestry of our Nervous System. Ideally this system will be able to return to base line, to regulation after stressful episodes, meaning we come back into a internal calm and content environment.

To foster a deeper sense of regulation in your own system, I suggest looking into some of the following:

• Movement & Breathwork: Both the charge that movement brings, along with the calm that breathwork can induce, help with the body comfortably changing pace. This combination we explore every Thursday morning online in Somatic Flow. A combination of Somatic practices, yoga sequences and grounding breathwork. In January I am offering two weeks of the Virtual Membership for free. Which is the weekly class along with access to a library of 60+ classes. You can look into that, here.
• Nervous System Reset Mini Retreat: On Saturday 27th of January I am holding an afternoon at 7 Breaths Meditation to delve into the many ways we can bring regulation into our systems and learn what safety feels like in our body. There is going to be full permission to slow down and as a result, heal, as we enter the new year. More info on that, here.
• Private Practice: Everyone has a very unique relationship to their nervous system and with it, different coping strategies and patterns of behaviour that we fall into. Private exploration allows you to look into what is going on for you uniquely and we do this using a blended approach of movement, breathwork and / or sound therapy. Enquire about that here.