My current yoga bio states that although I love to teach dynamic and sweaty, my specialism lies in yoga for stress and fatigue. It's contradictory isn't it? I like it fast, but I wanna encourage slow...
I've been thinking about this in the last week as I build this site and try and figure out how I marry my love of both fast and slow. You see in some ways, I don't see them as mutually exclusive. Going through a double speed vinyasa practice often leaves me in a zombie state of zen bliss, whereas slow backbends can give me enough energy to write for four hours.
But the fact of the matter is that we now live in an era that's not just fast, it's not just perma-connected or 'always on', it runs at what I would call SUPER PACE. I'm as big a victim as anyone - I was complaining to someone earlier this afternoon that I seem to spend the first 27.5 minutes of most days checking social media.
And yoga seems to appeal to most folks as a natural antidote to that, a way of connecting and being present with themselves rather than their devices, no matter what style they practice.
While I mull over considerations like this, and the content of my first feature article for Yoga International on Stress & Fatigue (yes, it's going to be a difficult 6-week-edit birthing process) I am fortunate enough to have permission to reprint one of my favourite poems on the subject by my dear friend Chris Redmond.
Read it, and read it OUT LOUD.
The first bit fast, the second half (guess what) slow.... Enjoy, namaste & om shanti friends x
SPEED FREAK
Quick fixes.
Speed dating, instant messaging,
Slim Fast, fast lane,
0-60 in three seconds
in a thirty mile an hour zone.
Speed dial, sat nav,
voice recognition on my phone.
Twitter tweets twats facts; endless data
stream of collective unconscious
spew. Wade through
up to the minute news feeds,
sports results beamed
direct to the brain,
one thousand and twenty six apps,
telling me where and when is my next train.
I can
simultaneously
watch three films, nine TV programmes,
publish my blog, update my website,
Skype chat, Whatsapp,
send mails from all forty three of my accounts,
link all my posts on facespacemyplaceyourfacemyarse,
mow the grass, learn kung fu Neo-style,
flash fry a steak, meditate,
write a poem, make love,
do the recycling.
Sod that.
I’m done with it.
Please bring me back to what I know.
If this is the future, good luck you run with it,
but I am reclaiming slow.
Who’s with me?
The revolution starts here.
In a bit.
Slow
is the new fast.
Slow
is the new cool.
First thing I’m going to do
is set up a new messaging service.
I’m going to get me a mule.
A really lazy one,
who’s not in a hurry,
who clip clops along,
me on the back, wearing flip-flops,
singing a song.
I figure the slower you go,
the less need to worry.
It’s going to be hip to be slow.
Speed is so done.
I’m going to have It girls, calling me up saying
“Hi, yah, I hear you’re the one?
I need to get a message to someone,
less allegro, more largo.
I don’t want them thinking I’m in a rush though,
that’s so over,
how slow can you go?”
I’ll tell them, “I’ll go as slow as you need”.
“Oh wow, how do you do it?”
Next,
I’m going to stop time.
I’m building a transmitter
that will jam all watches and clocks.
We’ll look to the sun again,
think in seasons and crops.
We’ll arrange to meet, not at the drop of a tweet,
or a text or even at quarter past ten,
but when the sun is at it’s highest,
four days after full moon.
Then I suggest, when someone asks
“when will you be here/when will it be done?”
we just answer,
“soon”.
Half past three, quarter to nine and other familiar times
will be consigned to museums.
They will each be kept in their own shiny glass case.
We will stare at them and see them for the abstracts they are.
Cars will be designed with a second and third gear
in reverse, each one progressively slower,
so you go so slow, backwards,
you eventually start to go forwards again,
but with a whole new dimension in between, to consider.
The gap between now and then
will get bigger and bigger,
until finally, only now
will exist once more.
And the people will wonder
what all the rushing has been for.
If we remove time,
then all that’s left is space.
As Sun Ra said,
space is the place.
You heard it here first
There’s only one place left to go.
This greed for speed is exceeding it’s need
Who’s up for reclaiming slow?
