Devon Hornby LMT
We live in a culture that has made speed into a virtue.
Faster is better. Faster communication. Faster food. Faster transportation. Faster work. Faster decisions. Faster results. We speak of saving time as though time were something that could be accumulated, stored, or won.
And yet, somewhere along the way, we have begun to confuse speed with aliveness.
We hurry through meals, conversations, work, exercise, relationships, and even our own thoughts. We move from one thing to the next before we have fully arrived at the thing we are doing. We answer before we have listened. We react before we have felt. We decide before we have perceived what is actually happening.
The consequence is subtle.
The faster we move, the less contact we have with the world through which we are moving.
We begin to live slightly outside of our own lives.
Speed separates us
Imagine walking through a forest very quickly.
You will see the forest, but you will experience very little of it.
You may notice the large trees, the path, perhaps a bird flying across your field of vision. But you will miss the subtle changes in temperature. You will not notice the particular quality of the air beneath one tree and in the clearing beyond it. You may not hear the small movements taking place beneath the larger sounds. You will miss the smell of damp earth, the texture of bark, the gradual transition of light.
The forest has not become less alive.
We have simply become less available to it.
The same thing happens in our relationships.
When we are moving too quickly, we don’t really encounter another person. We encounter our idea of them. We listen just enough to formulate our response. We anticipate what they are going to say. We try to solve their problem. We defend ourselves before we have actually heard what has been said.
Speed creates distance.
And when we are sufficiently disconnected from our surroundings, from other people, and eventually from our own bodies, something very human happens:
We look for stimulation.
We look for something to fill the gap.
Sometimes that stimulation takes the obvious forms: alcohol, drugs, compulsive sexuality, gambling, shopping, or other addictive behaviors.
But addiction does not always look like addiction.
We can become addicted to work.
We can become addicted to productivity, achievement, exercise, news, social media, entertainment, television, or the constant stream of information arriving through our phones.
Some of these things are socially rewarded. Some are even called virtues.
But underneath them there can be the same movement: an inability to remain present with the unfilled space of our own experience.
We reach for something because we have forgotten how to simply be here.
Slowness creates contact
Slowness offers another possibility.
To slow down is not merely to do everything at half speed.
It is to allow ourselves enough time to perceive.
This is the distinction that matters.
When we slow down, we begin to notice.
We notice the body.
We notice our surroundings.
We notice other people.
We notice the subtle movement of our own minds.
And eventually we begin to notice something even more fundamental: life is already moving.
We do not have to make it move.
The heart beats. The lungs breathe. Digestion occurs. The seasons change. Plants grow. Wounds heal. Children develop. Relationships evolve. Thoughts arise and disappear.
Life is profoundly dynamic without being hurried.
This is one of the central insights of a biodynamic way of living.
Biodynamics does not mean doing nothing.
It means learning to participate in movement rather than constantly imposing movement.
There is a profound difference.
Living as if convalescing
There is an image from the Mahamudra tradition that has stayed with me: the instruction to move through life as though one were convalescing.
The image is extraordinarily practical.
When we are recovering from an illness or an injury, we understand something that our ordinary lives tend to make us forget.
We don’t rush.
We become careful.
We pay attention to how much energy something requires. We rest when we are tired. We eat deliberately. We move gently. We notice what helps and what doesn’t. We allow the body time to recover.
We become intimate with our own condition.
Wangchuk Dorje, the Ninth Karmapa and one of the great masters of the Mahamudra tradition, gives us a particularly beautiful touchstone for this kind of practice in The Ocean of Definitive Meaning. The text is concerned with recognizing mind’s nature, but the spirit of the instruction points beyond the meditation cushion: practice is not something we do by force. We learn to relax our habitual grasping and recognize what is already present.
The image of convalescence gives this principle a body.
What if we moved through ordinary life with some of the tenderness and attentiveness of someone recovering?
What if we didn’t assume that everything needed to be accomplished immediately?
What if we allowed ourselves to recover our sensitivity?
What if we treated our attention as something precious?
This does not mean becoming fragile or passive.
It means becoming responsive.
Slow food
Consider cooking.
There is a profound difference between food that has been assembled quickly and food that has been allowed to develop.
A broth simmering for hours.
Bread slowly fermenting.
Vegetables growing in healthy soil.
Beans soaking overnight.
Sauerkraut fermenting over weeks.
These processes cannot be bullied into completion.
They have their own timing.
Slow cooking teaches something that is easy to forget in a culture of immediacy:
development requires time.
The same is true of us.
We cannot hurry ourselves into wholeness.
Slow farming
The same principle appears in agriculture.
Healthy soil is not manufactured overnight.
A field becomes fertile through relationships between microorganisms, roots, minerals, water, fungi, insects, animals, sunlight, and time.
Good farming is fundamentally relational.
The farmer does not simply impose an outcome upon the land. The farmer learns to observe, respond, cultivate, protect, and cooperate.
There is intelligence in the system that exceeds the intelligence of any individual participant.
This is very close to the meaning of biodynamic living.
We are not separate from the systems in which we participate.
We are expressions of them.
Slow eating
Try eating slowly enough that eating becomes an experience rather than an interruption between other activities.
Taste the food.
Notice texture.
Notice temperature.
Notice the impulse to take the next bite.
Notice when enough becomes enough.
Notice the people sitting across from you.
Notice the conversation.
A meal can become a practice of relationship.
And this is important because embodiment is not simply an experience of being inside one’s own body.
Embodiment reconnects us with the world.
The body is where relationship happens.
Slow walking
Walking slowly changes walking.
The foot touches the earth.
Weight shifts.
The pelvis responds.
The spine organizes itself.
The breath changes.
The visual field expands.
We begin to feel gravity rather than merely moving through space.
This is one reason slow movement appears again and again in contemplative and martial traditions.
Slowness reveals information that speed hides.
Slow speaking
Speaking slowly can be even more revealing.
Before speaking, there is often a moment when something is not yet a word.
There is a felt sense.
An impulse.
A movement.
Perhaps the beginning of an emotion.
If we speak immediately, we may never encounter it.
We translate experience into language before we have actually experienced it.
Slowness gives that moment room.
It allows speech to arise from experience rather than replacing experience.
And sometimes, when we slow down enough, we discover that we don’t need to say anything at all.
Slow breathing
Breathing is perhaps the most intimate place to encounter this principle.
We cannot force the breath into becoming biodynamic.
We can interfere with it.
We can manipulate it.
But eventually the body teaches us something simpler.
There is an inhale.
There is an exhale.
There is a pause.
There is movement.
There is stillness.
And beneath all of this, there is a living intelligence organizing the whole process.
When we slow down and listen, breathing becomes less something we do and more something we participate in.
Slow reacting
Perhaps the most important practice is learning to slow our reactions.
Someone says something we don’t like.
We feel the contraction.
The body prepares to defend.
The mind begins constructing an argument.
And there is a tiny space.
Usually we rush through it.
We react.
But what happens if we don’t?
What happens if we feel the contraction?
What happens if we take one breath?
What happens if we allow the other person to finish?
What happens if we discover what is actually happening before deciding what it means?
This is not repression.
It is not passivity.
It is not avoiding conflict.
It is developing enough space to respond rather than simply react.
That space is one of the great gifts of slowness.
The paradox of Tai Chi
There is a wonderful paradox in Taiji.
The movements are slow.
And yet the practitioner can develop extraordinary power.
To someone unfamiliar with the art, this can seem almost contradictory. How could moving slowly create speed and power?
But the slow movement reveals what speed conceals.
At slow speed, the practitioner can feel every unnecessary contraction.
Every imbalance.
Every interruption.
Every place where force is being generated locally instead of being transmitted through the whole body.
The practitioner learns to relax without collapsing, to root without becoming rigid, and to coordinate the whole body as a single continuous movement.
Slowness develops sensitivity.
Sensitivity develops coordination.
Coordination develops efficiency.
And efficiency can become power.
This is not merely a metaphor. Contemporary scholarship on Asian martial-arts pedagogy has described slowness as a means of developing kinesthetic sensitivity and movement efficiency, distinguishing ordinary slowed-down movement from a deeper quality of slowness in which action becomes guided by immediate perception.
Taiji offers us a beautiful lesson:
Power does not necessarily come from doing more.
Sometimes power comes from removing everything unnecessary.
Slowness and biodynamic living
This is why slowness belongs at the beginning of Biodynamic Living.
The purpose is not to create a lifestyle in which everything takes longer.
The purpose is to recover our capacity for relationship.
When we slow down, we become more available to the intelligence already moving through our lives.
We can feel when something is ripe.
We can sense when something needs attention.
We can recognize when to move and when to wait.
We can hear what another person is actually saying.
We can feel our own body’s yes and no.
We can notice the subtle changes in an environment.
We can sense the difference between an impulse that comes from fear and one that comes from genuine vitality.
Slowness gives us access to the space in which discernment becomes possible.
And this is why slowness is not an escape from life.
It is an entrance into life.
We begin to discover that the world is much more alive than we had imagined.
The food tastes different.
Walking feels different.
Conversation feels different.
The body feels different.
Other people feel different.
Even silence feels different.
The world has not changed.
Our relationship with it has.
Perhaps this is what it means to begin living biodynamically:
not to impose ourselves upon life,
but to become quiet enough,
slow enough,
and present enough
to participate in the life that is already happening.