The Slow Hare Wins the Race

This is what one of my teachers would always say to encourage us to slow down enough to really sense, hear, notice.  It feels more relevant today than ever before.  Time feels slippery; in one instant feels like I’m wondering through a dream where time has no bounds and on the other, I feel I’m waking, with a start, to a world that has sped past me.  I’ve always had this sense but it has become magnified since returning from Thailand last month; the slow, dreamlike quality of being inside a limitless, incubative creative space, contrasted with all the global events unfurling at breakneck speed.   

Thailand was amazing (of course) filled with learning, un-learning, re-learning and did I mention learning?!  (It also had gibbons, pterodactyls, a serious man on his motorbike at the neighborhood market with his serious dog (that if ‘The Fonz’ were a dog it would have been him), butterfly pea tea, temples, delicious street food, food poisoning, falling through a floor, a few wild boar…and many other savory and not so savory stories).   I studied with some of my favorite teachers in Northern Thailand and then traveled South to study with my structural integration community to then return to Northern Thailand and study some more(!).  And, as usual, I now sit on the other side with more questions and curiosities than I had before my trip.  My heart and head are full and overflowing!!  And while I wish I could be here to announce the dates of my spring/summer classes, I am realizing that some space for integration is desired and necessary before engaging in more teaching.

While I am still super nerdily excited about my upcoming classes and all the mutual learning and fun I anticipate them to bring, I am feeling my focus being split between getting them out into the world and needing that space to integrate, process, grapple with and evolve.  I have been dragging my feet acknowledging this, but I’m reminded of a pact I made with myself:  To never offer anything that my whole heart, mind, body and energy aren’t with 100%.  Right now, whether I wish it or not, I am being pulled in two very different directions.  So I am granting myself space… which also means that all classes will be postponed for the interim.  

I have a feeling of when those classes might reappear, but I also know it would not be helpful or wise to make any predictions right now.  Part of necessary integration for me is sitting with not knowing.  That used to be a frightening place, but I now understand it is a necessary part of evolution…a personal microcosm of what we as a global community are elbows deep in right now…  

 We all revolve at different speeds.  I often find it challenging as a slow mover to accept a pace that is not considered ‘success’ or ‘winning’ or insert whatever other busy word the powers that be would love for us to believe is the true measure of the worth of a person.  Thankfully, I’m beginning to know better…though I still find the need to coach myself to honor my pace.  Anyone else feeling this?

Recently a free-box mug reminded me of this quote from Lao Tzu:

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished”

I hope you all are well wherever you dwell, and are finding the balance of doing/creating and granting yourselves the necessary space to integrate.

Big gratitude and appreciation for all my peers serving up some much needed compassion and nervous system space holding for our co-humans!!  Ya’all ROCK!

Looking forward to seeing you on the other side💫

Slothfully yours, 

Lauren

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