Hey! Slow Down Already!

The silver lining of the Covid pandemic is that we’ve all been forced to re-evaluate our pace…and hopefully slow the f**k down!

I was on the treadmill at the gym last week and “Picasso Baby” by JayZ came on my playlist. I hit a jog and got on the beat, running perfectly on pace with the tempo of the song.

“Jeff Koons balloons, I just wanna blow up
Condos in my condos, I wanna row of
Christie’s with my missy, live at the MoMA
Bacons and turkey bacons, smell the aroma…”

Suddenly there was no effort. It was just me, the music and the treadmill perfectly in step, gliding along with effortless ease.

It got me to thinking about the pace of my life. So hurried lately, mind ahead of my body, body out of tune with my pace, rushing ahead in my thoughts , living “a short distance from my body”, as James Joyce describes Mr. Duffy.

Photo : iStockPhoto.com

The revelation of “slow living”

After reading this article last week on “slow living” it got me thinking about the speedometer of my life. I’ve had to reevaluate the pace of my life coming out of our collective Covid hibernation. It’s been “the great reset” and one of the few welcomed side effects of hitting the pause button on life for over a year.

But my treadmill experience and reading that article got me to wondering: what determines the pace of “your one wild and precious life”?

It’s a difficult thing, getting on tempo with the rhythm and pace of my life, and of course determining that pace in the first place.

Everyone and everything I encounter is moving at a different speed — my partner or our children are always moving at different paces. My work changes tempo daily, weekly. Buses move at a certain speed, cars go faster, the birds fly by at varying clips.

And it begs the question, what’s the right pace for me?

How fast or slow should I be going?

Finding the beat and getting on YOUR tempo

I believe, in part, my morning routine is there to simply check in and say to myself, “Ok, what’s my pace today? What are my unconscious patterns and how do I overcome those today and get on my pace?”

We all have baseline beat, an individual pace. There’s an underlying rhythm to which we must attune so we can set the tempo and get into a state of flow.

Photo : iStockPhoto.com

Every song you’ve ever heard has a tempo. The song stays on that tempo for a period of time…and then it might change, but the song remains on tempo. The primary job of the drummer is to keep the song on the right tempo. Drummers talk about the ability to “keep time”. It means they are keeping everyone on the same tempo, the same pace.

Drummers use a small device called a metronome to practice staying on tempo. The metronome is set at a specific tempo and the drummer has to align their body, their being and their playing with that tempo so that everyone else in the band can stay on beat.

Just like a drummer, getting on your own personal tempo takes time and practice.

A LOT of time and practice.

Tuning your body like a musical instrument

I’ve been utilizing a modality called network chiropractic for a number of years now. Network Chiropractic, founded by Donnie Epstein, is a far cry from what you usually envision as chiropractic work. There’s no cracking and twisting and body manipulation. Network Chiropractic uses light touch and the body’s own knowing of how to move, where to breath and where to focus energy to align the body and let it get into its natural rhythm. Network Chiropractors are literally tuning the body, like a musical instrument, to get you into tune. The name for a treatment is an “entrainment” which is a musical term for getting on the same beat, on the same rhythm. If we’re out of tune, we’re out of rhythm in our lives.

Many years ago I practiced yoga with a former music producer who taught class with constant chanting and music, instructing us all the time to get into rhythm with the natural flow of our bodies. He saw the body as a musical instrument that needed to be constantly tuned, as musical instruments do, in order to play this song we call life.

Some suggestions for slowing down

• If you’re moving too fast, stop and look around at nature, go take a nice long walk. Leave your phone at home and get in tune with your natural environment. As David Whyte says, “…nature is not in a hurry. The hummingbird is the hummingbird, the Kingfisher is the Kingfisher…the Kingfisher is not hurrying around trying to be a Crow!”

• Take three deep breaths — four seconds in, hold for four seconds, four seconds exhale, hold for four second

• Read a poem like this one from Ranier Maria Rilke, who so eloquently elucidates the power of slowing down:

“My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you find me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am but one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,

which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over —
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.”

Find your own pace

The goal of life is not to work harder and get ahead of everyone else’s pace.

That’s part of our problem, everyone is trying to outpace each other. With the speed of our lives and technology increasing daily, we’re hurling toward burnout and an inevitable crash.

Hell, we may even be there already…

The goal of life is to find your own natural rhythm and constantly adjust and move with it.

Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free

This has been the central silver lining of the Covid pandemic, we get to reset, and determine again, a healthy pace, the right tempo.

We are out of tune, and we need to reset the metronome and turn down the tempo.

Check your rhythm. What’s your tempo right now?

Are you out of rhythm, is your tempo too fast?

If you’re off, the whole band’s going to be off, so find your pace, reset and find your rhythm.

The music will sound a whole lot better that way.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

***