Speaker 1: Us studious. Welcome to the Stillness Journal, Am Maya, and
Speaker 1: to day. I want to talk about something radical in
Speaker 1: our speed obsessed world. Slowing down, not because you're failing,
Speaker 1: not because something is wrong, but because speed has a cost,
Speaker 1: and most of us have been paying it without realizing.
Speaker 1: Settle in, find your position, let your body become still,
Speaker 1: And notice, is there a part of you that feels
Speaker 1: rushed even right now in this quiet moment, a part
Speaker 1: that says, let's get through this quickly so I can
Speaker 1: move on. If so, Notice it without judgment. That sense
Speaker 1: of urgency is familiar. It lives in many of us,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to question whether it's still serving you.
Speaker 1: We move fast, we eat fast, we talk fast, we
Speaker 1: make decisions fast, we scroll fast, swipe fast, respond fast.
Speaker 1: We've become so accustomed to speed that slowness feels wrong,
Speaker 1: like we're falling behind, like we're wasting time, like everyone
Speaker 1: else is moving at the speed of life and we're
Speaker 1: stuck in slow motion. And that feeling, that constant sense
Speaker 1: of being behind, it doesn't come from reality. It comes
Speaker 1: from a world that has taught us that time is
Speaker 1: a resource we must spend wisely, that every moment must
Speaker 1: be optimized that rest is something to be earned after
Speaker 1: we've produced enough. But here's the thing about speed. It
Speaker 1: costs you depth. When you move fast through a conversation,
Speaker 1: you missed the emotion underneath the words. When you eat fast,
Speaker 1: you miss the nourishment. When you think fast, you miss
Speaker 1: the nuance. When you leave fast, you miss your life.
Speaker 1: And I don't say that lightly. I say it as
Speaker 1: someone who spent years moving so quickly through my days
Speaker 1: that I couldn't remember what I'd done on Monday by
Speaker 1: the time Friday arrived. My weeks blurred together, my years
Speaker 1: blurred together, and when people asked me about my life,
Speaker 1: I had to piece it together from my calendar because
Speaker 1: I hadn't been present enough to remember it firsthand. I
Speaker 1: remember one evening years ago when I was rushing through
Speaker 1: dinner so I could finish an email. I was barely
Speaker 1: tasting the food, I was barely present with the person
Speaker 1: sitting across from me, and I looked up and realized
Speaker 1: that the conversation had ended, the food was gone, and
Speaker 1: I had no memory of any of it. The hour
Speaker 1: had passed, but I hadn't lived it. I had just
Speaker 1: survived it, and I remember thinking, is this what my
Speaker 1: life is going to be? A series of hours I
Speaker 1: rushed through so I can get to the next thing.
Speaker 1: When does the next thing actually start? When does the
Speaker 1: leaving begin? The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, all of humanity's
Speaker 1: problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room.
Speaker 1: And I think he was right, not because stillness solves problems,
Speaker 1: but because stillness allows us to see clearly enough to
Speaker 1: know which problems are real and which ones we invented.
Speaker 1: When you slow down enough to actually sit with your thoughts,
Speaker 1: you start to notice something. Many of the things you
Speaker 1: worry about don't matter as much as you thought. The
Speaker 1: email you didn't send it can wait. The argument you
Speaker 1: replayed in your mind. The other person has probably forgotten
Speaker 1: about it. The deadline that felt so urgent. It's just
Speaker 1: a date on a calendar, And when you stop rushing
Speaker 1: toward it, you often find you have more time than
Speaker 1: you thought. I think about my mother sometimes she moved
Speaker 1: slowly through her mornings, deliberately, intentionally. She would sit with
Speaker 1: her tea and watch the light come through the kitchen window.
Speaker 1: She wasn't being lazy, she was being present. She was
Speaker 1: filling herself up before the day asked her for anything.
Speaker 1: And I realize now that what she was teaching me
Speaker 1: without ever saying a word, was that there is a
Speaker 1: kind of richness that only exists in slow It's the
Speaker 1: richness of noticing, the richness of being where you are,
Speaker 1: the richness of not being anywhere else. When you slow down,
Speaker 1: something shifts. The urgent becomes less urgent, the prices becomes
Speaker 1: less catastrophic, The noise quiets, and in that quieter space
Speaker 1: you can hear things you couldn't hear before, the small
Speaker 1: voice of intuition, the quiet truth you've been avoiding, the
Speaker 1: subtle signs that something needs to change. You start to
Speaker 1: hear your own heart, not the one beating in your chest,
Speaker 1: but the one speaking to you about what you need,
Speaker 1: what you want, what matters, and you can't hear it
Speaker 1: when you're running. There's a practice in meditation called choiceless awareness,
Speaker 1: where you simply sit and let whatever rises arise. You
Speaker 1: don't choose a focus, you don't direct your attention. You
Speaker 1: just let your mind be open like a bull, and
Speaker 1: whatever falls into it you hold. And what's remarkable about
Speaker 1: this practice is what happens when you stop trying to
Speaker 1: control the experience. You start to see things you've been
Speaker 1: filtering out. A sound you hadn't noticed, a feeling in
Speaker 1: your body, a thought that's been waiting patiently for you
Speaker 1: to slow down enough to hear it. The world is
Speaker 1: full of quiet truths, but they're only audible to the still.
Speaker 1: And there's something else that happens when you slow down.
Speaker 1: You start to feel again, not the manufactured emotions of
Speaker 1: social media or the adrenaline spikes of dead lines, but
Speaker 1: real feeling. The sadness you've been out running, the longing
Speaker 1: you've been filling with activity, the grief that lives in
Speaker 1: the quiet spaces. When you slow down, you might feel
Speaker 1: these things. And that's not a problem. That's a gift,
Speaker 1: because you can only heal what you feel, and you
Speaker 1: can only feel when you're still to let it in.
Speaker 1: Slowing down isn't just about productivity. It's about coming home
Speaker 1: to your own emotional life. It's about remembering that you
Speaker 1: are not just a body that moves and a mind
Speaker 1: that thinks. You are also a heart that feels, and
Speaker 1: that heart deserves your attention. I used to think slowing
Speaker 1: down meant I was giving up that if I wasn't
Speaker 1: moving fast, I wasn't trying hard enough. But I've come
Speaker 1: to see that the opposite is true. Slowing down takes
Speaker 1: more strength than speeding up, because when you slow down,
Speaker 1: you have to feel everything. You can't outrun the discomfort,
Speaker 1: you can't hide in the blur of activity. You have
Speaker 1: to sit with what's there, the boredom, the fear, the grief,
Speaker 1: the emptiness, and stay anyway. That takes more courage than
Speaker 1: any deadline or achievement. It takes the courage to be
Speaker 1: with yourself honestly, without distraction. Let's practice. We're going to
Speaker 1: take three breadths, but we're going to make them the
Speaker 1: slowest breaths you've taken all day, not deep slow, Let
Speaker 1: it inhale take five full seconds, let the exhale take seven.
Speaker 1: I'll count, and as you breathe, notice what happens in
Speaker 1: your body when you give yourself permission to move slowly.
Speaker 1: Notice the muscles that soften, the tension that releases, the
Speaker 1: shoulders that drop. You might feel a sense of relief
Speaker 1: that surprises you because your body has been waiting for
Speaker 1: you to slow down, and it's grateful for the invitation.
Speaker 1: In hel two three, four five exhial two three four
Speaker 1: five six seven. Again inhale two three four five exhal
Speaker 1: two three four five six seven One more inhale two
Speaker 1: three four five exhale two three four five six seven.
Speaker 1: Notice how different that feels. Not better or worse, just different.
Speaker 1: Your nervous system has shifted, the frantic energy of the
Speaker 1: day has softened. You've given your body permission to slow down,
Speaker 1: and in that permission there's a quiet strength. Let's go
Speaker 1: deeper now. I want you to bring your awareness to
Speaker 1: the spaces between your brecks. Don't try to control them,
Speaker 1: just notice them. There's a tiny pause at the top
Speaker 1: of each inhale before the exhale begins, and there's a
Speaker 1: tiny pause at the bottom of each exhale before the
Speaker 1: inhale returns. These pauses are almost invisible when we're moving fast,
Speaker 1: but when you slow down you start to feel them.
Speaker 1: They're like small pockets of silence between words. They're like
Speaker 1: the rests between notes in a piece of music, and
Speaker 1: they hold a kind of piece that's always been there
Speaker 1: waiting for you to find it. Now, I want you
Speaker 1: to bring your attention to something slow, something in your
Speaker 1: body that's always been moving slowly, without you ever noticing
Speaker 1: your heartbeat. Feel it not raising, not performing, just beating
Speaker 1: one beat, then the next, then the next. It doesn't rush,
Speaker 1: it doesn't try to be faster. It simply does what
Speaker 1: it was made to do at its own pace, and
Speaker 1: that pace is exactly right for you. Your heart doesn't
Speaker 1: need a productivity app. It doesn't need a deadline. It
Speaker 1: just needs to keep beating, and it does slowly, steadily, faithfully.
Speaker 1: What if you could live the way your heart beats.
Speaker 1: What if you could trust that your own pace, the
Speaker 1: one that feels natural, the one that doesn't require constant acceleration,
Speaker 1: is enough. What if the speed you've been running at
Speaker 1: isn't the speed of life, but the speed of fear.
Speaker 1: Think about the things that matter most to you. Your relationships,
Speaker 1: your health, your peace of mind, your creativity. None of
Speaker 1: these things improve with speed. Relationship,