In our hurried world, where we scurry to get from one place to another, and we feel stressed because we have such looming deadlines, we actually benefit from slowing down. When we get rushed, we breathe more shallowly. Our lungs don’t fill and we deprive ourselves of essential oxygen. Oxygen exchange is most efficient in the smallest airways, the alveoli. Deeper breathing, done slower, calms the heart, increases our blood oxygenation, lowers blood pressure, enhances lymphatic drainage (and the clearing of body toxins), reduces anger, reduces frustration, and stimulates our mental processes.
It’s the last point that makes so many of us think we fail at meditation. When we breathe deep and slow, our minds, theoretically, are also supposed to slow and clear. In the beginning, though, as we increase oxygenated blood to our brains, our mental processes speed up, our thoughts race, and we give up because we can’t seem to control that speed. We say we fail at meditation when actually; we are beginning to succeed at it. Let your thoughts race, just keep your breathing slow, deep, and steady. Over time, you’ll learn that what you thought was deep slow breathing actually isn’t, and you’ll discover deeper, slower breathing that will allow you to still your mind and achieve the meditative state.
What breathing slower does on a daily basis is – surprise – speed you up in good, not frantic, ways. By slowing down just one thing – your breathing – you’ll find you get more things done, you have less confusion, less stress, less anger, less confusion, and you’re more creative, you think faster and better, and you feel more energetic.
Just by breathing slower and deeper.
Try it.
Put your hand on your belly button. Breathe in. If your belly button sucks in, you’re breathing too shallow. When you breathe in your belly button should move out. It does that because your diaphragm is displaced by the air in your lungs – because you filled your lungs with air. Singers, public speakers, athletes, and performers all know this. That’s part of why they can do the things they do. If you want to increase your performance, your creativity, your health, breathe slower. Breathe deeper.
Other areas of your life benefit from slowing down, too. Reading slower helps you absorb the information better. Speed reading has been all the rage for decades – cram in that information, there’s so much data and we have to have it all right now. But we often don’t retain crammed information, and if we speed read a book – or contract – we don’t retain enough of the information to be useful. We get tripped up because our eyes went so fast we missed large portions of vital information. So, sure, scan a contract or book to get the overall outline and general theme of the material; then read it again to fill in the blanks and make the connections that you will remember much longer. Slowing down allows your mind to make connections and see new things that you miss when you zip through something. In the end, by slowing down, you actually learn more, know more, and are more creative with what you absorbed. By slowing your reading down, your mind – working faster because you’re breathing slower, can make faster connections between what you already know and what you’re now learning. You break out of automatic mode when you slow down. The end result is actually being able to do other things faster.
Speed accounts for almost all the accidents we have – we got to moving too fast to think and – bam! – accident. Whether it’s because we were hammering too fast and smashed our thumb, or because we were chopping veggies too fast and sliced off a section of fingernail - or finger, or driving too fast and hit that car/pole/curb – these are all caused by going too fast. By slowing down, just one heartbeat slower, we do a better job, and get done in about the same amount of time. Best of all, because we did a better job, we now won’t have to go even faster to make up the time we have to take to re-do the job we messed up when we went too fast the first time.
Slow down your speech by a heartbeat, too, and you’ll find people understand you better. Your jokes will be funnier, your speeches will sound more like confidential and confident conversations, and you’ll seem smarter and wittier. If you have to have a speech printed out, double space it, use an all-caps font, and highlight key points. Don’t sweat saying each word so long as you move gracefully from point to point. And don’t lock yourself behind the podium, either. Take time to gesture and move around. Movement will slow you down and relax you, make the speech more intimate for the audience. By speaking slower, too, your audience will remember more of what you’re saying.
People talk about fashion as if it were all about the clothes. So maybe clothes do define fashion, but they don’t define style. Stylish people move just a heartbeat slower than others. Your wisdom won’t wilt if you deliver it more slowly, and when you talk to others, that infinitesimal pause will let them know you are listening and pondering their words before responding. That’s stylish to the nth degree. Style savors the journey and appreciates fully the destination.
If you slow your whole life down by a simple, single heartbeat, taking deeper, slower breaths, you’ll find yourself smarter, wittier, healthier, more stylish, more competent, free of most accidents, able to savor your food more, and with longer lasting friendships and better romantic relationships.
Try it. Slow your life down by just one heartbeat.