Slowing down is more productive than you may think.
Slowing down is more productive than you may think. The wise woman knows this. One of the biggest entities that pulls us away from our feminine power is busyness and overwhelm. Even though it may feel counterintuitive, slowing down is one of the most productive things we can often do in this demanding world. Slowing down in itself is empowering. It’s illuminating — especially in the moments when we feel the most pressure not to. The rapid pace that society tries to sweep us up in, is one of the most detrimental forces to our power. Slowing down is an act of resistance.
When we are getting thrashed by waves we can’t breathe, we can’t think, we can’t see or hear, and we are disoriented unable to make any choice beyond surviving the split second we are in. When we are getting thrashed by waves, we are living in defense with no upper ground to make choices that serve us and instead, we are simply reacting to protect ourselves, unable to pave a pathway to thrive, simply hoping we will be spit out to the shore alive.
Our endless list of to-do’s, and the pressure we feel to accomplish, achieve, strive, and become have the potential to put us in a dissociative trance. The amount of responsibilities some of us carry is simply too much to bear on our own — and those responsibilities are not to be compared to anybody else’s. The spell of busyness and overwhelm is a trance that pulls us outside of ourselves. It extracts us from our wisdom. It severs us from our power. When we are only trying to keep up or get ahead, we lose our baseline. We lose the ability to ground and connect to the knowing within us that is our most trustworthy guide.
So much of our feminine power comes from attuning to the unseen world and tapping into our felt sense intelligence. But our felt sense intelligence is just this — it’s felt. It speaks to us somewhat unconsciously and we just know. This is our intuition. But as much as our inner knowing feels ethereal, it’s energetic, somatic, and physiological. And this doesn’t mean it’s not grounded in intellect or logic either. Our heart-centered emotional intelligence and our intellectual understanding both physiologically and energetically affect us. They can both be felt. And this is all not to say that our intuition and felt sense aren’t ethereal as well, it’s just that it's not all just magic. Our intuition is accessed through the sacredness of our bodies. Our bodies are the temples that translate our knowledge into a language we can interpret.
When we are strung out on stress, and overwhelm, it’s very hard to intuit the messages within.
When we are strung out on stress, and overwhelm it’s very hard to find clarity, to know what is true, what we want, what will make us happy, what’s contributing to our unhappiness, and what’s in our heads. It’s very hard to tell what’s being triggered or projected from others or the past, and what feelings purely stem from ourselves and the present. It’s very hard to find our footing and navigate what we actually need, let alone want.
The body is our baseline. It is the foundation, it’s the blank canvas that everything else resides within, upon, or moves through. Being in a deep relationship with our physicality is how we attune to our intuition, and the only way we can do this is by slowing down. And sometimes this is just as much an internal practice as it is externally in relation to doing, and our actions.
This does not mean there isn’t a time and place to push. This does not mean there isn’t a time and a place where it’s necessary, healthy, or wise, to go beyond what feels like our limits. But most of us live in a constant state of unnecessarily pushing ourselves beyond our limits into a fog of melancholy or disorientation, leaving us disconnected from the blaring messages that are coming from within.
Letting go doesn’t mean that we can walk away from all our responsibilities and expect our lives to still function and that our needs will still be met. Letting go doesn’t mean the demands that beckon us should necessarily be ignored — but there is always room to let go of something — at least for a moment, to allow ourselves to acknowledge the magnitude we are facing.
Sometimes life is too big to walk away from what’s happening, but on the inside, we have to learn how to slow down. And when we do, we will eventually see what is happening externally that we can release and walk away from. The changes we need to make start from within. The regulation we are trying to tend through our environments, relationships, goals, and doings, all start from within. It’s a dance back in forth, regulating within, and regulating around.
We all participate in things that we feel obligated to do that we are not unquestionably responsible for — and it's these things that slowing down opens our eyes to.
Slowing down is a practice of trust because when we let go, even though it's in these moments that the visceral waves of knowing usually wash over us, we have to also understand that there are no guarantees, and clarity comes in its own time. It can’t be coerced, forced, or summoned. Clarities medicine is partially understanding that we don’t have control, but that our bodies and our hearts are worthy enough to steer us in the right direction even if they can’t explain themselves to us.
Slowing down is a practice of trust.
Life is a series of choices. It’s putting one foot in front of the other step by step, living with the consequence of each choice, and knowing we can always shift gears, pace, or direction. But if we keep allowing ourselves to be dragged, trying to keep up, unable to think, and unable to breathe — it will catch up with us.
The necessity to stop, pause, and listen is way more often than one would think, and it doesn’t have to be lavish. We don’t have to retreat into an extravagant experience or ceremony, but we do need to create consistency. Momentary consistency is better than erratic and extravagant, grandness.
There is always time to stop, pause, and listen — no matter how impossible it feels.
When you feel like you can’t let go, or you can’t walk away from something, just let yourself imagine what if. Allow your nervous system, and your heart to go there, and see what happens. When you feel like it’s not safe to say no or stop but everything or something doesn’t feel right — give yourself a moment. Allow the alarm system within your body and psyche the space to speak and be felt.
If all you do is place a hand on your heart, and a hand on your lower belly as you lay in bed before falling asleep each night, breathing with the intention of simply listening — that’s enough. It really is. We have to start somewhere and it is as simple as that.
Stress is disorienting, and anxiety, grief, and unhappiness can be confusing. Until we slow down we can’t tap into our rational intellect, or feel beneath the activation in our nervous system to decipher what messages are literal, metaphorical, reactionary, or authentic pulling us wherever we are feeling the tug.
Claiming our feminine power means trusting the warnings and the beckoning of our beings. And until we slow down enough to see through and beyond the messaging and structure society has groomed us to live by, and until we slow down enough to find ourselves ashore catching our breath will we find clear sight.
With Marigold love,
Abby
