Slowing Down

The body heals when it feels safe enough to stop bracing.

It feels productive to tackle healing with an all-in energy. For many years, I did MORE when I felt distant from my goals. I saw myself broken, needing to be fixed, so I kept myself under the whip of self-criticism, judgment, and constant inner performance reviews. I thought digging harder would help, but it only flooded my body with stress until I ran myself into the ground. Beneath it all was the quiet, relentless story: I’m not enough. Fear drove my every move, and I was always trying to be someone other than me.

I was running away from myself.

What I eventually discovered is that self-abandonment never leads to healing or love. When I stopped trying to fix myself and instead practiced presence with my pain, my limits, and the way my body, heart, and soul meet the world, growth could begin… But it required me to slow down.

You may be familiar with nervous system states. Shutdown or burnout lives in dorsal where we experience depression, shame, grief, low motivation, dissociation, and more. In this state, what we need is not force, but a slow and gentle return to ourselves and our sense of power. Healing here can only happen through presence, acceptance, and a felt sense of safety.

This is why my motto became: move with the slowest part of me. Even when I’m not in shutdown, I try to honor where I’m genuinely at, because we can never truly be further along than the slowest part of ourselves. When we push ahead while part of us is still stuck, we fragment ourselves further into stress, dissociation, and coping. Forcing a pace my body or heart isn’t ready for only overwhelms my system. So I no longer measure myself by what I think I should be capable of. I listen for the part of me that needs presence and pause.

There is deep wisdom in slowing down. It’s a profound act of grace to pause and hold the hand of the slowest part of ourselves… to create the safety that allows integration, capacity, and growth to unfold naturally.