Slow Down!

Lara and Iliya take it slow, Chiang Mai, October 2014.

In July I turned 37. Anita asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and on a whim I said yoga.  I'm not sure why, it just appealed. Perhaps I'm becoming more aware of my stiff and creaky body when I ease myself out of bed the morning after a big day of exercise. Perhaps its something I read about Ryan Giggs attributing his longevity as a footballer to Yoga (and look what he achieved - ON the field at least). Whatever it was, Anita booked us in for a free taster session and we dutifully trooped down to Pure Yoga in Causeway Bay for Dana's Hatha class.  In a nutshell: the class was great; Dana was very forgiving; we're both hooked; we signed up to a year's membership.  But the thing that blew me away more than anything was how it forced us to slow down. 

I have said it before in this blog: life is fast. Hong Kong life is particularly fast. With so much to see, do and experience, I worry that I won't fit it all in. We fill our mornings and our evenings, our weekends and our calendars.  Yet inside the yoga studio - no sound, no talking, no phones - life slows down. Breathing slows. Movement slows. It feels almost guiltily indulgent. 

Don't misunderstand me: yoga is hard.  I sweat profusely. My body protests at the contorted positions I ask it to adopt. My legs scream in lactic-acid-induced pain after a couple of minutes of Warrior II. There can be no mistaking that it is a thorough workout.  Yet at the same time it is undeniably slow - in stark contrast to so much of life. And perhaps therein lies the appeal. 

In his seminal book "In Praise of Slow", Carl Honore uses Yoga of an example of the counter-intuitive benefits of taking things, well, slowly.  Western exercise philosophy tells us that fast is right, fast is best.  Yet much eastern philosophy says the opposite. Yoga, Tai Chi, and even 'fast' martial arts like Aikido and Karate are based on an underlying philosophy of slowing things down and being aware in the moment - what would currently be labelled with the buzzword 'mindfulness'. 

I can't rate Honore's book highly enough and I'd urge anyone who feels their life is speeding out of control to buy a copy and enjoy a leisurely few hours indulging yourself in his wisdom.  The idea behind going slow isn't to become a slacker, or a layabout, or to be lazy for laziness's sake. Sometimes one needs to go fast, sometimes slow. But Honore urges us to get away from the idea that fast is always best. Its about balance, about finding the right speed for our lives in each moment - what musicians would call the tempo giusto.

Honore's central point is this: we have been conditioned to equate speed with productivity. In our drive to be productive, efficient and competitive we strive constantly to achieve more in less time - none more so that in the workplace, but increasingly at home and in our leisure time.  Yet as Honore points out, this equation is fundamentally flawed: "when everyone takes the fast option, the advantage of going fast vanishes, forcing us to go faster still. Eventually we are left with an arms race based on speed. And we all know where arms races end up: in the grim stalemate of Mutually Assured Destruction."

Nothing, and no-one, is immune form the 'fast is best' mentality - not even children: in the East, and increasingly in the West education starts ever earlier and involves cramming more and more into early years. Children are in a race - often driven by their parents - to hit milestones earlier: talking, walking, reading, writing, swimming, riding a bike, or learning their times tables. Earlier this year Anita and I found ourselves comparing pre-schools for Lara (who had just turned three) based in part on their academic curricula - what would she be learning? And by when? Yet perhaps we should take a leaf out of Plato's book, who several hundred years before the birth of Christ recognised that "the most effective form of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things."

Whether its eating, exercising, reading, working, raising children or having sex, Honore argues there is always a benefit in going slow. Do less; give yourself more time. Focus on quality over quantity.  Its a mantra echoed by all sorts of people, including the dean of Harvard University's undergraduate school - hardly a bastion of laziness or under-achievement. 

Its only when we slow down parts of our life that we make time for the other parts that matter - taking the kids to school, reading them a story, enjoying a slow meal or a good novel, reading, thinking, or simply daydreaming. As Einstein always maintained, we're at our creative best when we give ourselves time to do nothing at all. But perhaps the last word should go to Ghandi:

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."