Slowlife: How to Live a Slower, Stress-Free Life.
The fear of missing out, or FOMO, drives us to want to do as many things as possible in the shortest amount of time..
We train ourselves to juggle the multitude of tasks we load onto ourselves so as not to lower our productivity standards..
A gap in our schedule makes us feel anxious—what if we’re slipping into laziness? Even leisure is managed like a full-time job; doing a thousand things is seen as a good thing. But perhaps the price we pay for this frenzy of activity—stress, burnout, anxiety—isn’t worth it.
What Is the “Slow Life”?
The “slow life” is an approach that proposes consciously slowing down—eating, thinking, reading, or breathing more slowly—to live with greater mindfulness and less stress.
Action is necessary when the situation demands it; in the face of adversity or when a problem arises, acting quickly helps reinforce self-confidence and control over one’s own life. But it’s also necessary to know when to stop; if we simply act without paying attention, problems—far from being resolved—can multiply.
Not knowing how to move at a more leisurely pace—paying attention to what we’re doing, cultivating concentration—is a direct consequence of our “fast” culture; we want everything “right now.” The brain adopts a rhythm that prevents us from staying focused, analyzing, or simply contemplating what’s happening to us moment by moment. That’s why we become essentially reactive, and we can lose sight of the collateral damage caused by not pausing for a moment to think.
What can we do? It seems obvious that we should do fewer things, or do just one thing at a time. But let’s focus on something much more effective: doing things more slowly. Read more slowly, think more slowly, eat or breathe more slowly. It may seem too simple, but doing everything faster increases the likelihood of making mistakes; if we don’t have time to do things right, when will we have time to redo them?
Going “a thousand miles an hour” is unsustainable for both body and mind; eventually, we lose the ability to pay attention and focus properly on a task, and the result is usually more stress and anxiety. More than just a passing trend, the “slow life” is a philosophy that has been around for centuries—it’s the need to cultivate mindfulness, observation, and contemplation to better understand our world and ourselves. It all starts with one fundamental question: Why do I have to rush so much?
7 Practices for Slowing Down, Reducing Stress, and Easing Anxiety
Although it may seem like a simple concept, slowing down requires practice, just like any other habit. It’s important to realize that we’ll be going against the grain, so we’ll need to stay strong and persevere. Here are some suggestions for achieving this.
1. The first exercise is to learn to observe your own body—to scan yourself to see if there’s tension in your neck, if your head feels heavy, or if you’re unable to concentrate… If so, you need to stop—not to do something else, but to “do nothing”—simply continue observing as the tension dissolves and your breathing settles into a slow rhythm that brings calm and rest.
2. It can be very helpful to set an alarm or leave a Post-it note in plain sight to remind yourself to “stop or slow down” every two or three hours at most. Use that moment to take a deep breath and move very slowly around wherever you are. Walking very slowly, paying close attention to your movements, is one of the most effective ways to reduce stress and tension.
3.- Many of the tasks we rush through could easily be done at 75% or 50% of our usual speed, such as writing a report or preparing dinner. The idea is to do them “mindfully and gently”—neither too fast nor too slow.
4.- When your mind races and thoughts crowd in, it’s good to take a step back and review the thoughts that arise. Are these thoughts helpful, or are we ruminating for the umpteenth time on a problem that hasn’t even happened yet? This process slows down your thinking and also makes it easier to identify and let go of thoughts that lead nowhere.
5.- Probably the most difficult practice is “saying no.” This difficulty in letting things go—much like the difficulty in getting rid of clothes that have piled up and gone unworn for years—is what causes our schedules to fill up with things to do. It’s easier to pause and slow down if there aren’t twenty items on the list. In reality, saying “no” means saying “yes” to what we consider most important and worthy of our attention.
6. Grounding ourselves firmly in reality—in a calm and mindful way—involves the ability to pause and observe, to contemplate our surroundings, the people beside us or passing by, and to observe our own thoughts and feelings as well. It is this time to pause and reflect that reveals who we truly are and where we want to go.
7. Estudios como Global Digital Studies such as Global Digital confirm that we spend an average of 5 hours a day looking at our cell phone screens. This “ultra-processed” time is just as harmful to the brain as “ultra-processed” food is to the liver. Today, the key practice for maintaining mental health and emotional well-being is to “stop” using your phone at least half an hour before eating and about two hours before going to bed.
The Hammam Ritual: Slow Living Applied to Self-Care
Few practices better embody the art of slowing down than the hammam ritual. In contrast to the two-minute shower we squeeze in between tasks, the hammam offers exactly the opposite: warming up without rushing, letting the steam soften the skin and the mind, and caring for the body with gestures inherited from a tradition that has understood for centuries that well-being takes time.
Our Black Soap Cream prepares and softens the skin, and the Ramie Kessa Glove then exfoliates it with that slow, mindful friction that transforms hygiene into a moment of reconnection with oneself. At El Jardín de Hammam, we bring together these time-honored products for precisely that purpose: to turn personal care into your favorite “slow” ritual—that moment of the week when the clock, at last, stops ticking.