April 9, 2025 • 29 mins
Ready to experience what might be waiting on the other side of being busy? Take a deep breath and join us on this exploration of presence as a radical act of self-care.
The phrase "slow down" is often repeated in personal development circles, but what does it actually mean to slow down in a world where moving from thing to thing is a normal way of life in the western world.
Slowing down might sound simple, but for many of us, it feels as unattainable as becoming a billionaire overnight. Brenda and Catherine dive deep into why slowing down feels so impossible and what happens when we finally give ourselves permission to move at a slower pace.
Episode Highlights:
• Slowing down feels impossible when your life is structured around "doing"
• Moving quickly can serve as protection from feeling uncomfortable emotions
• 95% of diseases share stress as a common denominator
• How our inner child wounds show up in daily life
• How conscious breaths can help regulate your nervous system and change your perspective
• Benefits of a meditation practice (even just 3 minutes daily)
• Anxiety healing practices like lying flat on the floor to ground you
• Choosing to "do nothing" instead of reaching for constant entertainment
• How presence changes our lives
We invite you to take a deep breath, slow down, and notice what comes up for you. We'd love to hear your takeaways and even your resistance to slowing down—it's all welcome.
How did you like this episode? Tell us everything, we'd love to hear from you.
If you'd like to learn more about 1:1 or group coaching with Brenda or Catherine message them and book a Sales Call to learn more.
Email:
desireasmedicine@gmail.com
goddessbrenda24@gmail.com
catherine@catherinenavarro.com
Instagram:
@desireasmedicinepodcast
@Brenda_Fredericks
@CoachCatherineN
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Desire is Medicine.
We are two very different womenliving a life led by desire.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Inviting you into our world.
I'm Brenda.
I'm a devoted practitioner tobeing my fully expressed true
self in my daily life,motherhood relationships and my
business Desire has taken me onquite a ride and every day I
practice listening to andfollowing the voice within.
I'm a middle school teacherturned coach and guide of the
(00:35):
feminine.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the
truest and hopefully thehighest version of me.
I don't have children, I'venever been married.
I've spent equal parts of mylife in corporate as in some
down and low shady spaces.
I was the epitome of tired andwired and my path led me to
explore desire.
I'm a coach, guide, energyworker and a forever student,
(00:58):
even after decades of inner work.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
We are humble beginners on the mat, still
exploring, always curious.
We believe that listening toand following the nudge of
desire is a deep spiritualpractice that helps us grow.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
On the Desires Medicine podcast.
We talk to each other, weinterview people we know and
love about the practice ofdesire, bringing in a very
important piece that is oftenoverlooked being responsible for
our desire Welcome back familyand friends.
So recently, brenda and Irecorded a podcast on story and
(01:40):
one of the things that wedefinitely touched on in that
podcast episode, as well as inmany episodes, is we use this
phrase slow down, down.
It might as well be become abillionaire, because it's
definitely a desire and there'sno one way, one path to get
there and you're going to beforever working at it.
I think if I were a billionaire, I'd probably be forever
(02:02):
working at saying a billionaire,but that might just be me.
And and it dawned on us like,how do we even teach people to
slow down?
And how did we learn to slowdown?
How did it happen for us?
How do we even know we weregoing fast?
When I think back, I'm going toask Brenda in a minute.
She's definitely here andsmiling at me, joined by her,
(02:24):
which is fantastic.
I used to have my coaches usedto say to me Catherine, you need
to go slower, just go slower.
And I say, if I go any slower,I would be dead, like I can't
slow down anymore.
It really felt completelyunfathomable.
So if I've been telling you, orBrenda has been telling you, or
(02:45):
one of your coaches or havebeen telling you to slow down,
and it feels like you cannotpossibly go slower, you can go
slower.
It's so wild that that's thecase, but it is Right, brenda.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh yeah, this is such a great topic and the idea for
this episode came from when Iwas listening to that story
episode the other day.
And we're talking about slowingdown so you can be with
yourself, so you're not in story, and it really hit me that we
talk about this a lot.
We talk about slowing down, andwhat does that even mean?
(03:23):
Like you said, it might as wellbe become a billionaire,
because if you have a belief, itdoesn't even feel like a belief
, it just feels true.
You've got a lot of shit to do.
You know, women, we have a lotof shit to do.
We thought that having awashing machine and a dishwasher
in the 1950s they advertisedthat stuff like, oh yeah, get
(03:45):
these appliances and you'll haveso much more time Well, that's
not true.
We just created more things todo, and maybe that's our human
nature to do things and beproductive.
And also we like to do things.
I think we have a sense ofaccomplishment when we get
things done and we pursue ourpassions and our creative
(04:06):
projects or even emptying thedishwasher or making dinner but
it can get out of control.
So how?
So?
Maybe you don't even realizethat you're going fast.
I think that most of my life Ididn't even realize I was going
fast.
I love getting my stuff done,you know, and before I started
(04:30):
this spiritual journey, innerwork, whatever you want to call
it I was teaching full time.
I was married, I had a fourbedroom house and two kids and
animals and a family to takecare of, and at one point I was
taking care of my grandmotherwho was dying.
I was burning the candle atboth ends.
(04:53):
What the heck would slow downhave even meant for me back then
.
You know my life, my entirelife, was set up to.
I had a lot to do and, and alot of times our jobs or the way
we set up our lives.
It's almost like in order toshow up for your life, you're
(05:15):
required to override yourself.
You have to go fast if you wantto do all the things, because I
think that we think that we'resuper women.
We're like super women orsomething.
So I think we need to reallylook at can we do everything?
Can we do all the things thatare actually on our plate?
(05:37):
Because I know, when I askclients what can go, do you have
to do this?
Is this true to do?
When I ask clients what can go,do you have to do this?
Is this true to do?
You know?
Yes, it feels like a yes, likehow do you, what do you drop off
?
When you're, when you have alife that's set up, that you
feel like you have to doeverything.
It feels almost impossible toslow down and just be any
(06:05):
thoughts on that.
Catherine.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So when you say slow down and just be, that's one
reason to slow down for sure ithas me think of.
It might be a meme or a quoteeverything is important until
there's a health crisis and thennothing's important other than
the health crisis and dependingon where you are on your
(06:34):
personal growth, work, and evenif you are in personal growth
because if you're not in it,then you're not noticing things
then it doesn't matter, itdoesn't bother you, it's like
you don't know, you're late.
If you don't know what time itis right, you just don't know.
You don't know.
But if it's within yourawareness and you see yourself
repeating patterns or getting tothe same argument or feeling
(06:58):
like you're in the twilight zone, you're going through the same
circumstance with anotherindividual and it's like the
same exact circumstance.
But you've gone through thesame circumstance with like four
or five different people Onecould have been romantic, one
could be familial, the otherone's coworker.
If you start to say to yourselfI want to change this, slowing
down is the priority and thathealth, the health marker of
(07:22):
those relationships, the stressmarker of the strain of those
relationships or the strain ofthat pattern, becomes the most
important thing, while alsoeverything else feels super
important.
So that's my first thought.
The first thought is everythingis important until your health
goes and then, once your healthgoes, nothing's important other
(07:44):
than your health.
Statistically speaking, theysay 95% of all disease.
What it shares in common isstress, and stress comes from
overriding and crossing your ownboundaries, not being able to
regulate and ground yourself,not being able to take the time
and space.
I think, as a society, one ofthe ways in which we allow
(08:06):
ourselves to slow down is to beentertained.
Maybe you watch a movie, or youscroll TikTok or Instagram or
Facebook, or you connect youtext with friends, answer emails
, something like that, when, inactuality, what's potentially
needed in a high stress body isfive breaths.
(08:28):
Maybe that could be the firststarting point.
Maybe 10 minutes of laying flaton the ground staring at the
wall, maybe 20 minute meditationsession, a one minute
meditation session, something tohelp regulate your cortisol
throughout the day so thatyou're not highly stressed all
day long.
So when I think about ourpropensity to want to get things
done, that makes sense.
(08:49):
You said it feels great to getthings done.
Yes, absolutely, and we couldget things done our whole life
for sure, just like we couldn'thave fast food or eat out every
day, right, all meals.
But only because we can doesn'tmean we should.
And then the question becomeswell, why not, why don't we?
We don't eat out every meal, wedon't have fast food every meal
(09:10):
because we want to havenourishing meals.
One of the reasons why we can'tjust go, go, go and get things
done all the time is becausewe're pumping our adrenal system
.
Sometimes it's, by the way wespeak, speak really quickly, and
you know we're informing ourbody that we're in a go, go, go
state.
Sometimes it's we're walkingreally quickly or moving from
(09:33):
task to task really quickly, andthat lets our body know hey,
we're like in fight, flight,freeze, like let's go, let's
make this happen.
So we've kind of talked abouthow does it show up for us
moving fast and slowing down canjust be just being.
(09:53):
But why else is it important?
I sort of brought in the.
It's an important piece in partto regulate your nervous system
to slow down, to regulate yournervous system to slow down.
But one of the most importantreasons to slow down,
unfortunately, is to feel thefeelings that are uncomfortable.
That's the reason, because ifright now I want to cry, but I'm
(10:16):
too busy and nobody got timefor that.
Well then, I'm not cryingbecause I'm busy One of the
things that happens to me themost with clients, new clients,
especially when I just expand mynervous system and hold theirs,
often they cry and they're likethis never happens.
Why does this happen to me, ohmy God.
And they start thinking I'mdoing some kind of witchery.
And it's not that.
It's just that finally we'reholding space for them to be
(10:37):
able to feel, and now all theseemotions are just erupting and
showing up as tears.
Right, it could show up likeanything, but that happens.
That happens to be the way inwhich it mostly shows up.
The easiest way I think it'slike the easiest feeling is
(10:58):
overwhelmed, crap.
I have so much to do, so muchto feel, so much to heal.
Where the F do I start?
And then it's just like tears.
You might as well just stop andcry, because what else is there
?
Where do you even start?
So I would say and I'm sureBrenda will agree, but I'm about
to ask her One of the mostimportant reasons to slow down
(11:20):
is for us to be able to feel,and then part of that same coin
is so that then we can be felt.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I'm thinking so many people are like I don't want to
feel that they're, like I don'twant to feel that.
It's so uncomfortable to feelthe feelings it really is.
But if we don't feel ourfeelings and we don't give space
for that, it really affectseverything.
(11:49):
It affects our health, it showsup in a manifestation in our
body and health issue.
It affects our relationshipsand, like you said before, you
know if we're repeating patterns, if we're going through the
same thing with in ourrelationships, at our job, if
the same things are coming upfor you all the time, if
(12:10):
basically everyone's an asshole,then you probably have some
pent up feelings inside of youthat want to be felt, and a lot
of those things are inner childwounds.
You know, your inner childmaybe got some hurt and so you
have an issue that's happeningon the surface that needs to be
(12:34):
dealt with, that may bedifficult, and then underneath
is some old hurt that wants tobe attended to and that takes
time.
You know, I just had thismyself.
I just had this issue.
I'm at an Airbnb in Californiaand the sewer started
overflowing and it was a reallybig issue and my inner child got
(13:02):
touched in there and I washaving trouble communicating
with the Airbnb owner and Ireally had to look at that.
And when I really sat with it,when I really slowed down
because it was triggering to me,that was my first sign.
My alert was oh, I feeltriggered here, something is
(13:23):
really bothering me.
It wasn't my fault.
This has happened before.
It's a common thing thathappens.
And when I really sat with it,I was unable to be present as an
adult in this situation becauseI had an inner child wound and
my inner child needed some love.
She.
What came up for me was I brokesomething really important.
(13:48):
I broke something expensive.
I'm going to get in trouble Now.
Those things are not what'sgoing to lead as my adult, but I
needed to sit with myself andreally give myself some love and
assure my inner child that shedidn't do anything wrong and
that she's safe and fine andI've got her.
(14:11):
And once I attended to that, Iwas able to show up and just
deal with the issue.
Turns out this has happenedmany times in this particular
Airbnb and has nothing to dowith me, but I was unable to be
present for that situation andshow up clean and clear, without
feeling what was underneath itand who knew that was underneath
(14:31):
it, and my experience withmyself and with clients is that
this is often the case.
So something happens in yourlife, you're annoyed at
something and there's actually amuch deeper thing there.
Everything has a deeper thing,most things have a deeper thing,
(14:53):
and it can be uncomfortable tofeel that.
And if I wanted to move fastand I didn't care, then I could
have overridden that and nothave that little bit of healing
and spaciousness with myself.
And that's okay too, because weget to choose if we want to
(15:17):
feel something in the moment ornot.
And guess what?
If you don't feel it, that'sfine, you don't have to, but it
will show up again.
So if you really do want tohave a different life and have
different relationships and havedifferent experiences in your
life, then when things come toyou, instead of seeing it as a
(15:40):
pain in the butt or oh, thisthing happened again, they must
be an asshole.
If you slow down and feel whatwants to be felt inside, that's
what healing is and that's whatbecoming a full adult is, so you
can live the life of yourdreams and be fully expressed
(16:02):
and basically just feel happyand joyful because you have some
spaciousness inside of yourbody.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I love the correlation that you brought in
when we're talking about slowingdown.
One of the reasons to slow downto feel ourselves, so that then
we can be felt by others, butsomething even before being felt
by others.
As we slow down, we're makingspace to be able to feel what
the deeper thing is.
And, for good or bad, if wepause to feel something and we
(16:35):
can't feel the deeper thing,it's probably just not time, not
that it's not there, and youcan't really miss it or do it
wrong, because it'll just showup in a different way, in a way
you know it'll continue to showup until we're ready to see it.
And so you're 100% right.
Like Brenda's just said, we getto decide if we want to feel
(16:57):
something, and we can alwaysmove quickly and not feel.
That's always one of theoptions.
If, for some reason, it'soutside of capacity, we have way
too much to do, we're in grief,we're taking care of toddlers,
elders, hospice.
If our plate is maxed, thenmaybe that's not the moment.
(17:20):
Yes, we get to go on to thenext.
That's also an option, and whatwe want to bring in today is to
remind ourselves that slowingdown to just be is also an
option.
There's a reward, a potentialreward, if we get to feel all
the way through and see what'sreally the rub, that's happening
(17:43):
, why we're really activated.
We get to feel into and havethe opportunity to face
something as an adult, topotentially heal parts of our
inner child.
And it could just be that weslow down to just be and nothing
comes up.
And we just took five deepbreaths and got to regulate
(18:05):
ourselves and give ourselvesjust like a moment of peace.
Because the truth is I'm goingto remind us, myself included
that uncomfortable feelings popup.
We don't want to feel them andit's literally like we're
holding a beach ball underwaterall the time.
Brenda talked about the realtruth that it's trapped in your
(18:26):
body, and that's true, but theenergetic sensation is like nope
, don't come up, nope, don'tcome up, nope, don't come up,
like, don't, don't, don't, likeyou're holding the dam with your
hands, and that dam could berage or anger, or grief.
It could be so many things.
So how, brenda, do we now bringback our attention to slowing
down?
(18:46):
Like, where is a great startingpoint?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Can you remember yours?
It's a really great questionFor me, the practice of slowing
down.
There's so many things, but forme it comes down to two things
Two practical suggestions that Iwould offer our listeners right
now, and one you touched on,which is breath and breathing,
just breathe.
(19:11):
I think the most basic exampleof that is, if you get mad,
count to 10.
You know, we always say that ifyou get mad, just count to 10
before you say anything.
But the same thing could be ifyou're having a feeling or
somebody's doing something andyou're feeling annoyed or pissed
off about it.
You don't have to reactimmediately.
(19:32):
Take a few breaths, take fiveto 10 breaths.
Getting fresh oxygen in yourbrain can change your
perspective and even in five or10 breaths, some new thought
could come in that would bedifferent than what you would
have reacted with.
So, at any time, you canbreathe.
Your breath is life.
(19:53):
So that's one.
And the second one ismeditation.
Having a sitting meditationpractice is probably one of the
first things that I did inlearning to slow down, and you
know what's that quote.
If you don't have 15 minutes tomeditate, great, then meditate
(20:16):
for an hour.
There's no good way to meditate.
You can have a sittingmeditation practice where you
sit and meditate for threeminutes a day.
If you don't have three minutesto meditate, that's something
to really look at.
If you don't have three or fiveminutes to meditate for
(20:38):
yourself in a day, I would behighly concerned and I would
start meditating immediately.
You start slow, you start whereyou are Three minutes, five
minutes, set a timer and justsit there wherever you are.
I used to do this in myclassroom before the kids came
(21:02):
in in the morning.
I don't buy it that you're atwork or you don't have time.
I don't buy it.
You can always fit that in.
So starting a meditationpractice just literally teaches
your body to slow down.
It adds just that little bit ofspaciousness in the day.
And I want to be clear I dorecommend 15 minutes, but if you
are like I cannot do 15 minutes, there's just no way.
(21:25):
Or if it feels overwhelming,start with three minutes.
Start with two minutes if youhave to, but just start.
It's a great way to slowyourself down.
What would you recommend,catherine?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I've been meditating since I'm 19.
I don't know if I have tons ofexperience there.
I don't know if that would bethe spot that I start people or
would recommend.
Breath is definitely one.
When I've heard people kind ofrebuttal or rebuke the
(22:02):
meditation piece.
I haven't heard so much.
I don't have the time I oftenget.
Well, what does that mean?
What does that look like?
Like what's the right way to doit?
And I've done different kindsand I have some meditation
audios.
Oh, plug, plug.
We have a meditation audio forwhoever reviews this podcast and
sends us a screenshot.
That's just a side note, but ifyou do review the podcast on
(22:23):
Apple podcast, please send ascreenshot and you can get a
meditation healing audio.
So that's a possibility.
I would recommend one to 10minutes of laying flat on the
ground staring at the ceiling.
I have found that exercise tobe extremely grounding.
(22:44):
There's nothing to do.
You can set a timer if you want, or you have a clock and shot
like an eye shot and you know.
Okay, I started at 330, at 340,I'm done.
And for all my fast-paced twinsout there, the thought is going
(23:05):
to be a million thoughts persecond about everything you
could be doing with 10 minutesand I want you to tell your mind
.
This is what I'm doing, like Icould be doing all of those
things, and this is exactly whatI'm doing, and I'm doing this
because I'm actively working onchanging my like task cadence.
(23:31):
That's one of the things that Iwould recommend for sure eyes
open, not laying like lay downon the ground.
Don't lay down on a bed or onthe couch, because you will fall
asleep because for doers, we'reso tired.
I wouldn't say lay down onsomething soft, because chances
are you're going to fall asleep.
And I would ask you, I wouldchallenge you and ask you this
(23:59):
is so big.
I would challenge you that everytime you want to go for
entertainment whether it'sscrolling on your phone,
instagram, facebook, tiktok,snapchat, cnn News, whatever it
is that you like to sort ofbinge and just numb out to
(24:24):
Television, movie, comedy,horror, whatever your fast food
entertainment is the one thatyou go to all the time, that you
really enjoy.
The challenge would be can younot do it and just do nothing
instead, so that you can beginto really feel yourself and sort
of come back to yourself?
I'm not saying it's a foreverthing.
(24:45):
It could be.
You know, I wanted to watch TVfor half an hour.
I want to scroll for half anhour.
Okay, I'm going to do nothingfor 15 minutes.
The next 15 minutes, I'm goingto do that.
Ideally, the practice is justfor you to have the experience
of what it feels like to donothing, so that you can
counterbalance the sensation ofdoing many things really quickly
(25:05):
, so you can start to feel whatit feels like in your body.
Ideally, this exercise, littleby little, will begin to show
you oh, wow, when I move reallyquickly, like I actually have a
low level anxiety in my body,like there's an anxiousness
because I'm just wanting to getto the next thing and the next
thing and the next thing, and itreminds me of a generation Xer,
(25:28):
like Pac-Man, you just want thenext thing and the next thing
and the next thing, you justwant to chomp on all the bits.
And when we're doing nothing,you can feel into all the
anxiety that comes up from likedoing nothing.
Your mind is like I should bedoing this, I should be doing
that, I should be doing this, Ishould be doing that.
And it provides really greatinformation from both polar
(25:49):
opposites where you can walkaway and say to yourself oh,
this is actually where I'm at.
This is a true read of my pacein my life.
This is a true read of howquickly I'm attaining my goals
or not attaining my goals.
This is a true read of where Iam with my health and my money
(26:10):
and my relationships.
Because in this time whenyou're doing nothing ideally so
that you can become morecomfortable in slowing down and
doing things slower you're goingto have tons of thoughts about
yourself.
The challenge there is can younot make yourself wrong and
(26:32):
adjust them really, reallyslowly?
That's what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Those are some beautiful suggestions that you
gave.
I love the lying down on theground practice.
I know that's a really big onethat you do.
It really is like a form of ameditation, is what it sounds
like to me, and it doesn't evenmatter what you call any of
these things, it's not important.
Whatever works for you, just doit, just try it.
(27:03):
Maybe you just want to sit innature or under a tree for a
little bit each day.
You could slow down by going ona walk.
There's so much that you coulddo.
These are just some suggestionsthat we're offering and I will
say that the benefits are reallyvaluable.
Moving fast is a protection forour heart.
(27:26):
It's a protection that kind ofkeeps us tight and closed
because, like you said, if weslow down, we're going to feel,
but that is the path to moreintimacy and feeling ourselves
and more love.
If you want more love and youwant more presence in your
relationships and you want to beavailable for your desires,
(27:48):
then slowing down is one path tohaving those things and I think
it's worth it.
I find that when I slow downand feel, there's some really
beautiful moments that come, andI think that's, those are the
things that make life worthliving.
Those are the things that weremember the beautiful moments
(28:10):
that we shared with other people, the stories, the times that we
sat in the coffee shop, wherethat beach day that was just so
slow, where we really didn'thave anything to do and we
didn't have our phones and wejust sat around and talked and
laughed and ate good sandwiches.
Those are the things that wereally remember.
So slowing down is worth it.
(28:33):
I love how we've just ourcadence has even slowed down in
this episode, as we've beentalking about slowing down.
It's such a juicy topic, so weinvite you to take a deep breath
and slow down, see what comesup for you.
We would love to hear whatlanded for you in this episode,
(28:55):
what your takeaways are, whatyour resistance is to slowing
down.
It's all welcome.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
Until next time.
Thank you for joining us on theDesire is Medicine podcast.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply
intimate with ourselves andothers.
You can find our handles in theshow notes.
We'd love to hear from you.
Welcome to Desire is Medicine.
We are two very different womenliving a life led by desire.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Inviting you into our world.
I'm Brenda.
I'm a devoted practitioner tobeing my fully expressed true
self in my daily life,motherhood relationships and my
business Desire has taken me onquite a ride and every day I
practice listening to andfollowing the voice within.
I'm a middle school teacherturned coach and guide of the
(00:35):
feminine.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the
truest and hopefully thehighest version of me.
I don't have children, I'venever been married.
I've spent equal parts of mylife in corporate as in some
down and low shady spaces.
I was the epitome of tired andwired and my path led me to
explore desire.
I'm a coach, guide, energyworker and a forever student,
(00:58):
even after decades of inner work.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
We are humble beginners on the mat, still
exploring, always curious.
We believe that listening toand following the nudge of
desire is a deep spiritualpractice that helps us grow.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
On the Desires Medicine podcast.
We talk to each other, weinterview people we know and
love about the practice ofdesire, bringing in a very
important piece that is oftenoverlooked being responsible for
our desire Welcome back familyand friends.
So recently, brenda and Irecorded a podcast on story and
(01:40):
one of the things that wedefinitely touched on in that
podcast episode, as well as inmany episodes, is we use this
phrase slow down, down.
It might as well be become abillionaire, because it's
definitely a desire and there'sno one way, one path to get
there and you're going to beforever working at it.
I think if I were a billionaire, I'd probably be forever
(02:02):
working at saying a billionaire,but that might just be me.
And and it dawned on us like,how do we even teach people to
slow down?
And how did we learn to slowdown?
How did it happen for us?
How do we even know we weregoing fast?
When I think back, I'm going toask Brenda in a minute.
She's definitely here andsmiling at me, joined by her,
(02:24):
which is fantastic.
I used to have my coaches usedto say to me Catherine, you need
to go slower, just go slower.
And I say, if I go any slower,I would be dead, like I can't
slow down anymore.
It really felt completelyunfathomable.
So if I've been telling you, orBrenda has been telling you, or
(02:45):
one of your coaches or havebeen telling you to slow down,
and it feels like you cannotpossibly go slower, you can go
slower.
It's so wild that that's thecase, but it is Right, brenda.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh yeah, this is such a great topic and the idea for
this episode came from when Iwas listening to that story
episode the other day.
And we're talking about slowingdown so you can be with
yourself, so you're not in story, and it really hit me that we
talk about this a lot.
We talk about slowing down, andwhat does that even mean?
(03:23):
Like you said, it might as wellbe become a billionaire,
because if you have a belief, itdoesn't even feel like a belief
, it just feels true.
You've got a lot of shit to do.
You know, women, we have a lotof shit to do.
We thought that having awashing machine and a dishwasher
in the 1950s they advertisedthat stuff like, oh yeah, get
(03:45):
these appliances and you'll haveso much more time Well, that's
not true.
We just created more things todo, and maybe that's our human
nature to do things and beproductive.
And also we like to do things.
I think we have a sense ofaccomplishment when we get
things done and we pursue ourpassions and our creative
(04:06):
projects or even emptying thedishwasher or making dinner but
it can get out of control.
So how?
So?
Maybe you don't even realizethat you're going fast.
I think that most of my life Ididn't even realize I was going
fast.
I love getting my stuff done,you know, and before I started
(04:30):
this spiritual journey, innerwork, whatever you want to call
it I was teaching full time.
I was married, I had a fourbedroom house and two kids and
animals and a family to takecare of, and at one point I was
taking care of my grandmotherwho was dying.
I was burning the candle atboth ends.
(04:53):
What the heck would slow downhave even meant for me back then
.
You know my life, my entirelife, was set up to.
I had a lot to do and, and alot of times our jobs or the way
we set up our lives.
It's almost like in order toshow up for your life, you're
(05:15):
required to override yourself.
You have to go fast if you wantto do all the things, because I
think that we think that we'resuper women.
We're like super women orsomething.
So I think we need to reallylook at can we do everything?
Can we do all the things thatare actually on our plate?
(05:37):
Because I know, when I askclients what can go, do you have
to do this?
Is this true to do?
When I ask clients what can go,do you have to do this?
Is this true to do?
You know?
Yes, it feels like a yes, likehow do you, what do you drop off
?
When you're, when you have alife that's set up, that you
feel like you have to doeverything.
It feels almost impossible toslow down and just be any
(06:05):
thoughts on that.
Catherine.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So when you say slow down and just be, that's one
reason to slow down for sure ithas me think of.
It might be a meme or a quoteeverything is important until
there's a health crisis and thennothing's important other than
the health crisis and dependingon where you are on your
(06:34):
personal growth, work, and evenif you are in personal growth
because if you're not in it,then you're not noticing things
then it doesn't matter, itdoesn't bother you, it's like
you don't know, you're late.
If you don't know what time itis right, you just don't know.
You don't know.
But if it's within yourawareness and you see yourself
repeating patterns or getting tothe same argument or feeling
(06:58):
like you're in the twilight zone, you're going through the same
circumstance with anotherindividual and it's like the
same exact circumstance.
But you've gone through thesame circumstance with like four
or five different people Onecould have been romantic, one
could be familial, the otherone's coworker.
If you start to say to yourselfI want to change this, slowing
down is the priority and thathealth, the health marker of
(07:22):
those relationships, the stressmarker of the strain of those
relationships or the strain ofthat pattern, becomes the most
important thing, while alsoeverything else feels super
important.
So that's my first thought.
The first thought is everythingis important until your health
goes and then, once your healthgoes, nothing's important other
(07:44):
than your health.
Statistically speaking, theysay 95% of all disease.
What it shares in common isstress, and stress comes from
overriding and crossing your ownboundaries, not being able to
regulate and ground yourself,not being able to take the time
and space.
I think, as a society, one ofthe ways in which we allow
(08:06):
ourselves to slow down is to beentertained.
Maybe you watch a movie, or youscroll TikTok or Instagram or
Facebook, or you connect youtext with friends, answer emails
, something like that, when, inactuality, what's potentially
needed in a high stress body isfive breaths.
(08:28):
Maybe that could be the firststarting point.
Maybe 10 minutes of laying flaton the ground staring at the
wall, maybe 20 minute meditationsession, a one minute
meditation session, something tohelp regulate your cortisol
throughout the day so thatyou're not highly stressed all
day long.
So when I think about ourpropensity to want to get things
done, that makes sense.
(08:49):
You said it feels great to getthings done.
Yes, absolutely, and we couldget things done our whole life
for sure, just like we couldn'thave fast food or eat out every
day, right, all meals.
But only because we can doesn'tmean we should.
And then the question becomeswell, why not, why don't we?
We don't eat out every meal, wedon't have fast food every meal
(09:10):
because we want to havenourishing meals.
One of the reasons why we can'tjust go, go, go and get things
done all the time is becausewe're pumping our adrenal system
.
Sometimes it's, by the way wespeak, speak really quickly, and
you know we're informing ourbody that we're in a go, go, go
state.
Sometimes it's we're walkingreally quickly or moving from
(09:33):
task to task really quickly, andthat lets our body know hey,
we're like in fight, flight,freeze, like let's go, let's
make this happen.
So we've kind of talked abouthow does it show up for us
moving fast and slowing down canjust be just being.
(09:53):
But why else is it important?
I sort of brought in the.
It's an important piece in partto regulate your nervous system
to slow down, to regulate yournervous system to slow down.
But one of the most importantreasons to slow down,
unfortunately, is to feel thefeelings that are uncomfortable.
That's the reason, because ifright now I want to cry, but I'm
(10:16):
too busy and nobody got timefor that.
Well then, I'm not cryingbecause I'm busy One of the
things that happens to me themost with clients, new clients,
especially when I just expand mynervous system and hold theirs,
often they cry and they're likethis never happens.
Why does this happen to me, ohmy God.
And they start thinking I'mdoing some kind of witchery.
And it's not that.
It's just that finally we'reholding space for them to be
(10:37):
able to feel, and now all theseemotions are just erupting and
showing up as tears.
Right, it could show up likeanything, but that happens.
That happens to be the way inwhich it mostly shows up.
The easiest way I think it'slike the easiest feeling is
(10:58):
overwhelmed, crap.
I have so much to do, so muchto feel, so much to heal.
Where the F do I start?
And then it's just like tears.
You might as well just stop andcry, because what else is there
?
Where do you even start?
So I would say and I'm sureBrenda will agree, but I'm about
to ask her One of the mostimportant reasons to slow down
(11:20):
is for us to be able to feel,and then part of that same coin
is so that then we can be felt.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I'm thinking so many people are like I don't want to
feel that they're, like I don'twant to feel that.
It's so uncomfortable to feelthe feelings it really is.
But if we don't feel ourfeelings and we don't give space
for that, it really affectseverything.
(11:49):
It affects our health, it showsup in a manifestation in our
body and health issue.
It affects our relationshipsand, like you said before, you
know if we're repeating patterns, if we're going through the
same thing with in ourrelationships, at our job, if
the same things are coming upfor you all the time, if
(12:10):
basically everyone's an asshole,then you probably have some
pent up feelings inside of youthat want to be felt, and a lot
of those things are inner childwounds.
You know, your inner childmaybe got some hurt and so you
have an issue that's happeningon the surface that needs to be
(12:34):
dealt with, that may bedifficult, and then underneath
is some old hurt that wants tobe attended to and that takes
time.
You know, I just had thismyself.
I just had this issue.
I'm at an Airbnb in Californiaand the sewer started
overflowing and it was a reallybig issue and my inner child got
(13:02):
touched in there and I washaving trouble communicating
with the Airbnb owner and Ireally had to look at that.
And when I really sat with it,when I really slowed down
because it was triggering to me,that was my first sign.
My alert was oh, I feeltriggered here, something is
(13:23):
really bothering me.
It wasn't my fault.
This has happened before.
It's a common thing thathappens.
And when I really sat with it,I was unable to be present as an
adult in this situation becauseI had an inner child wound and
my inner child needed some love.
She.
What came up for me was I brokesomething really important.
(13:48):
I broke something expensive.
I'm going to get in trouble Now.
Those things are not what'sgoing to lead as my adult, but I
needed to sit with myself andreally give myself some love and
assure my inner child that shedidn't do anything wrong and
that she's safe and fine andI've got her.
(14:11):
And once I attended to that, Iwas able to show up and just
deal with the issue.
Turns out this has happenedmany times in this particular
Airbnb and has nothing to dowith me, but I was unable to be
present for that situation andshow up clean and clear, without
feeling what was underneath itand who knew that was underneath
(14:31):
it, and my experience withmyself and with clients is that
this is often the case.
So something happens in yourlife, you're annoyed at
something and there's actually amuch deeper thing there.
Everything has a deeper thing,most things have a deeper thing,
(14:53):
and it can be uncomfortable tofeel that.
And if I wanted to move fastand I didn't care, then I could
have overridden that and nothave that little bit of healing
and spaciousness with myself.
And that's okay too, because weget to choose if we want to
(15:17):
feel something in the moment ornot.
And guess what?
If you don't feel it, that'sfine, you don't have to, but it
will show up again.
So if you really do want tohave a different life and have
different relationships and havedifferent experiences in your
life, then when things come toyou, instead of seeing it as a
(15:40):
pain in the butt or oh, thisthing happened again, they must
be an asshole.
If you slow down and feel whatwants to be felt inside, that's
what healing is and that's whatbecoming a full adult is, so you
can live the life of yourdreams and be fully expressed
(16:02):
and basically just feel happyand joyful because you have some
spaciousness inside of yourbody.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I love the correlation that you brought in
when we're talking about slowingdown.
One of the reasons to slow downto feel ourselves, so that then
we can be felt by others, butsomething even before being felt
by others.
As we slow down, we're makingspace to be able to feel what
the deeper thing is.
And, for good or bad, if wepause to feel something and we
(16:35):
can't feel the deeper thing,it's probably just not time, not
that it's not there, and youcan't really miss it or do it
wrong, because it'll just showup in a different way, in a way
you know it'll continue to showup until we're ready to see it.
And so you're 100% right.
Like Brenda's just said, we getto decide if we want to feel
(16:57):
something, and we can alwaysmove quickly and not feel.
That's always one of theoptions.
If, for some reason, it'soutside of capacity, we have way
too much to do, we're in grief,we're taking care of toddlers,
elders, hospice.
If our plate is maxed, thenmaybe that's not the moment.
(17:20):
Yes, we get to go on to thenext.
That's also an option, and whatwe want to bring in today is to
remind ourselves that slowingdown to just be is also an
option.
There's a reward, a potentialreward, if we get to feel all
the way through and see what'sreally the rub, that's happening
(17:43):
, why we're really activated.
We get to feel into and havethe opportunity to face
something as an adult, topotentially heal parts of our
inner child.
And it could just be that weslow down to just be and nothing
comes up.
And we just took five deepbreaths and got to regulate
(18:05):
ourselves and give ourselvesjust like a moment of peace.
Because the truth is I'm goingto remind us, myself included
that uncomfortable feelings popup.
We don't want to feel them andit's literally like we're
holding a beach ball underwaterall the time.
Brenda talked about the realtruth that it's trapped in your
(18:26):
body, and that's true, but theenergetic sensation is like nope
, don't come up, nope, don'tcome up, nope, don't come up,
like, don't, don't, don't, likeyou're holding the dam with your
hands, and that dam could berage or anger, or grief.
It could be so many things.
So how, brenda, do we now bringback our attention to slowing
down?
(18:46):
Like, where is a great startingpoint?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Can you remember yours?
It's a really great questionFor me, the practice of slowing
down.
There's so many things, but forme it comes down to two things
Two practical suggestions that Iwould offer our listeners right
now, and one you touched on,which is breath and breathing,
just breathe.
(19:11):
I think the most basic exampleof that is, if you get mad,
count to 10.
You know, we always say that ifyou get mad, just count to 10
before you say anything.
But the same thing could be ifyou're having a feeling or
somebody's doing something andyou're feeling annoyed or pissed
off about it.
You don't have to reactimmediately.
(19:32):
Take a few breaths, take fiveto 10 breaths.
Getting fresh oxygen in yourbrain can change your
perspective and even in five or10 breaths, some new thought
could come in that would bedifferent than what you would
have reacted with.
So, at any time, you canbreathe.
Your breath is life.
(19:53):
So that's one.
And the second one ismeditation.
Having a sitting meditationpractice is probably one of the
first things that I did inlearning to slow down, and you
know what's that quote.
If you don't have 15 minutes tomeditate, great, then meditate
(20:16):
for an hour.
There's no good way to meditate.
You can have a sittingmeditation practice where you
sit and meditate for threeminutes a day.
If you don't have three minutesto meditate, that's something
to really look at.
If you don't have three or fiveminutes to meditate for
(20:38):
yourself in a day, I would behighly concerned and I would
start meditating immediately.
You start slow, you start whereyou are Three minutes, five
minutes, set a timer and justsit there wherever you are.
I used to do this in myclassroom before the kids came
(21:02):
in in the morning.
I don't buy it that you're atwork or you don't have time.
I don't buy it.
You can always fit that in.
So starting a meditationpractice just literally teaches
your body to slow down.
It adds just that little bit ofspaciousness in the day.
And I want to be clear I dorecommend 15 minutes, but if you
are like I cannot do 15 minutes, there's just no way.
(21:25):
Or if it feels overwhelming,start with three minutes.
Start with two minutes if youhave to, but just start.
It's a great way to slowyourself down.
What would you recommend,catherine?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I've been meditating since I'm 19.
I don't know if I have tons ofexperience there.
I don't know if that would bethe spot that I start people or
would recommend.
Breath is definitely one.
When I've heard people kind ofrebuttal or rebuke the
(22:02):
meditation piece.
I haven't heard so much.
I don't have the time I oftenget.
Well, what does that mean?
What does that look like?
Like what's the right way to doit?
And I've done different kindsand I have some meditation
audios.
Oh, plug, plug.
We have a meditation audio forwhoever reviews this podcast and
sends us a screenshot.
That's just a side note, but ifyou do review the podcast on
(22:23):
Apple podcast, please send ascreenshot and you can get a
meditation healing audio.
So that's a possibility.
I would recommend one to 10minutes of laying flat on the
ground staring at the ceiling.
I have found that exercise tobe extremely grounding.
(22:44):
There's nothing to do.
You can set a timer if you want, or you have a clock and shot
like an eye shot and you know.
Okay, I started at 330, at 340,I'm done.
And for all my fast-paced twinsout there, the thought is going
(23:05):
to be a million thoughts persecond about everything you
could be doing with 10 minutesand I want you to tell your mind
.
This is what I'm doing, like Icould be doing all of those
things, and this is exactly whatI'm doing, and I'm doing this
because I'm actively working onchanging my like task cadence.
(23:31):
That's one of the things that Iwould recommend for sure eyes
open, not laying like lay downon the ground.
Don't lay down on a bed or onthe couch, because you will fall
asleep because for doers, we'reso tired.
I wouldn't say lay down onsomething soft, because chances
are you're going to fall asleep.
And I would ask you, I wouldchallenge you and ask you this
(23:59):
is so big.
I would challenge you that everytime you want to go for
entertainment whether it'sscrolling on your phone,
instagram, facebook, tiktok,snapchat, cnn News, whatever it
is that you like to sort ofbinge and just numb out to
(24:24):
Television, movie, comedy,horror, whatever your fast food
entertainment is the one thatyou go to all the time, that you
really enjoy.
The challenge would be can younot do it and just do nothing
instead, so that you can beginto really feel yourself and sort
of come back to yourself?
I'm not saying it's a foreverthing.
(24:45):
It could be.
You know, I wanted to watch TVfor half an hour.
I want to scroll for half anhour.
Okay, I'm going to do nothingfor 15 minutes.
The next 15 minutes, I'm goingto do that.
Ideally, the practice is justfor you to have the experience
of what it feels like to donothing, so that you can
counterbalance the sensation ofdoing many things really quickly
(25:05):
, so you can start to feel whatit feels like in your body.
Ideally, this exercise, littleby little, will begin to show
you oh, wow, when I move reallyquickly, like I actually have a
low level anxiety in my body,like there's an anxiousness
because I'm just wanting to getto the next thing and the next
thing and the next thing, and itreminds me of a generation Xer,
(25:28):
like Pac-Man, you just want thenext thing and the next thing
and the next thing, you justwant to chomp on all the bits.
And when we're doing nothing,you can feel into all the
anxiety that comes up from likedoing nothing.
Your mind is like I should bedoing this, I should be doing
that, I should be doing this, Ishould be doing that.
And it provides really greatinformation from both polar
(25:49):
opposites where you can walkaway and say to yourself oh,
this is actually where I'm at.
This is a true read of my pacein my life.
This is a true read of howquickly I'm attaining my goals
or not attaining my goals.
This is a true read of where Iam with my health and my money
(26:10):
and my relationships.
Because in this time whenyou're doing nothing ideally so
that you can become morecomfortable in slowing down and
doing things slower you're goingto have tons of thoughts about
yourself.
The challenge there is can younot make yourself wrong and
(26:32):
adjust them really, reallyslowly?
That's what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Those are some beautiful suggestions that you
gave.
I love the lying down on theground practice.
I know that's a really big onethat you do.
It really is like a form of ameditation, is what it sounds
like to me, and it doesn't evenmatter what you call any of
these things, it's not important.
Whatever works for you, just doit, just try it.
(27:03):
Maybe you just want to sit innature or under a tree for a
little bit each day.
You could slow down by going ona walk.
There's so much that you coulddo.
These are just some suggestionsthat we're offering and I will
say that the benefits are reallyvaluable.
Moving fast is a protection forour heart.
(27:26):
It's a protection that kind ofkeeps us tight and closed
because, like you said, if weslow down, we're going to feel,
but that is the path to moreintimacy and feeling ourselves
and more love.
If you want more love and youwant more presence in your
relationships and you want to beavailable for your desires,
(27:48):
then slowing down is one path tohaving those things and I think
it's worth it.
I find that when I slow downand feel, there's some really
beautiful moments that come, andI think that's, those are the
things that make life worthliving.
Those are the things that weremember the beautiful moments
(28:10):
that we shared with other people, the stories, the times that we
sat in the coffee shop, wherethat beach day that was just so
slow, where we really didn'thave anything to do and we
didn't have our phones and wejust sat around and talked and
laughed and ate good sandwiches.
Those are the things that wereally remember.
So slowing down is worth it.
(28:33):
I love how we've just ourcadence has even slowed down in
this episode, as we've beentalking about slowing down.
It's such a juicy topic, so weinvite you to take a deep breath
and slow down, see what comesup for you.
We would love to hear whatlanded for you in this episode,
(28:55):
what your takeaways are, whatyour resistance is to slowing
down.
It's all welcome.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
Until next time.
Thank you for joining us on theDesire is Medicine podcast.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply
intimate with ourselves andothers.
You can find our handles in theshow notes.
We'd love to hear from you.
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