As I started to write this post I was savouring my morning of slow. Slow mornings mean I forget linear time and experience my day as it is. That morning I met a dear friend for a swim at 11am. We walked along the beach looking at the water and decided it was too choppy to swim. I have a deep respect for the sea so if it is choppy I do not enter. I believe she is speaking to me and telling me today is not a safe day to immerse my body in her waters. We enjoyed watching the waves from the stony beach as we continued our walk, grabbed a coffee and found a sheltered place to sit. We sat, we chatted, we drank coffee, we watched other people braving the sea, getting pulled under the waves as they pulled themselves back up to balance only to be dragged under again eventually stumbling to shore. The sun came out from behind the clouds. We watched the radiance of the sun on the sea, Loinnir as gailge. We watched the clouds dispersing. We finished our coffee, we chatted, we reminisced and suddenly 3 hours had past. Just like that. This is slow living at its best and I am very blessed to be able to have this time to savour the moments of everyday life. Connecting with friends, inviting slowness, being mindful of the moments that matter and appreciating life as it unfolds natually.
Although the Summer is not a time we usually associate with slow as it can involve more activity than we have been used to in the Winter months. The days are longer starting early with the birds singing as the sun rises and a new day dawns. There is a flurry of activity with festivals to go to, outdoor music events, book festivals and basically a lot to choose from. It can be hard to slow down at this time. There can be an eagerness to get back out into the world, meet people, socialise, enjoy all the entertainment and yet we can then become exhausted. I have been spending time reflecting on slow living recently. On what it is like to embrace slowing down and not necessarily as a result of ageing but more about how it feels to slow down. As I embrace slowing down it allows me to savour all the activities I attend. Time spent with friends, time visiting places in nature, time attending shows, festivals, theatre, cinema, restaurants. This is what slowing down looks like for me recently:
Beginning my day by rising slowly. Witnessing my breath as I wake. Being mindful of how I am feeling first thing. Thinking about one thing I am grateful for before I get out of bed. This can take 5 minutes or if I have time it can take up to 20 minutes. Savouring the dawn of a new day before actually beginning the day.
I get up and go downstairs and make a pot of tea. As the kettle boils I go into the garden and place my feet on the grass and welcome a new day as I face the Sun, An Ghrian as gailge. If I am lucky the sun will light up my face, if it is cloudy I will imagine the sun on my face and if it is raining I welcome the rain and stay dry inside. I sit and write my morning pages (stream of consciousness writing from the Artists Way by Julia Cameron) as I drink my tea. I may pull some oracle cards to give me guidance for the day ahead. I will embrace the slow start to listen to what I need that day.
Depending on the day I will then shower and go to work. When I do not need to go into work physically I will go for a slow walk as I witness nature. Today I stopped and smelled the roses on a bush near my house. Yes I literally stopped to smell the roses. There is a Dolmen which dates back to 2500 BC near where I live this is the place I stop at the end of my walk to sit, my sit spot as Sharon Blackie calls places we sit to stop and witness nature in her book The Enchanted Life. As I sit I ask for strength from the ancient stone for the day ahead. I love to sit there and notice the changes in nature around me as I imagine how it looked when my ancestors were alive. This represents slow season witnessing for me.
Slow living does not come naturally to my body. It is an intention I have set for myself. Some days are easier to embrace slow than others. Simple practices like stopping to notice the sounds. Slowing down to notice the seasons. Slowing down to embrace the season I am in rather than planning for the next thing on my to do list. I was reading an article recently on slowing down. One of the questions in the article asked “are you experiencing your life or are you planning your life?” So I ask you now this same question ‘are you experiencing your life or are you planning your life?’ As I reflected on this question and my intention to slow down I did have to be honest with myself. Am I experiencing my life or am I planning it? I would like to say I am experiencing it but in reality it is hard to experience life without planning it. We live in a world of doing and planning not a world of being and experiencing. I am now inviting myself to slow down and experience life as I also plan the experiences. As I plan the next event for Soul Matters, can I slow down enough to experience the planning? As I plan my next meal can I slow down enough to experience the food I cook? Can I slow down enough to experience the cooking of the food? As I plan to make time to REST can I give myself permission to experience the rest. Now I am imagining a life where I can let myself experience every moment I plan. Through this practice I hope I will be able to experience life even when something happens (as it invariably does) that I did not plan. This Summer Solstice we invite you to experience the sacred stillness as you slow down to the experience of the sun standing still.
Solstice literally means sun (sol) still (stice). The sacred stillness where we collectively experience the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. As the sun literally stops and stands still we are invited to join it in its stillness, the sacred stillness of the Summer Solstice and honour the season of summer. An Ghrian, the sun as gailge is a feminine noun in the Irish language. Embracing the stillness as the feminine yields to Samos the masculine half of the year. The masculine energy of summer can invite us into more doing. It can mean we have more energy to do more. The invitation when we start to live slower is to nurture the energy. Slow down long enough to check in with your own cycle. Where are you cyclically? Are you aligned with the season of nature we are in? This is what Resting through the Celtic Wheel invites you to do. We will publish another blog post on that soon.
This Summer Solstice we will be in Knockrose in the Dublin mountains to honour the sacred stillness as the wheel turns to welcome the Summer Solstice. We would love to rest in stillness with you on Sunday 21st June. You can find the details in our shop to book.
