How to Slow Down ~ Sloths, Spanish & Spring Break

I tend to think that people associate sloths with being lazy, yes, because of the name, but mainly because they are just…slow. Is being slow lazy?? Maybe not. Today I am going to tell you about what I learned over spring break from a sloth in Panama. Then we will do a walking meditation together.

In this episode we will learn: 
~ What sloths and speaking Spanish taught me over spring break.
~  why slowing down is the new productivity hack.
~ A walking meditation experience with the musical stylings courtesy of The Sonic Yogi

Meditation Music by Sonic Yogi
Deep Sleep With Singing Bowls
Pythagorean Dream

Listen to Sonic Yogi on:  Spotify  Apple Music Amazon Music Watch Sonic Yogi’s Ted Talk
Interesting Mentions:
Whitney Howard Designs: Inspirational Jewelry Dr. Joe Dispenza Take Your Time: the Wisdom of Slowing Down by Eknath Eswaran Mitch Hedberg
Heartwood Retreat Center : location for Cheri’s Georgia Mountain Retreats Jekyll Island: Location for Cheri’s seaside retreat
The Host for this podcast: Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW The Stress Therapist and Author

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A word from your host, Cheri Flake, LCSW: Feeling good after our Stress Therapy session? Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, The Stress Therapist on social media or go to www.iLoveTherapy.com to find out about meditation classes & meditation and yoga retreats.

 

[00:00] Hey, beautiful people, what’s up? It seems like it’s been so, so.

[00:04] Long, and today me, I’m gonna talk about slowing down. Me, the one who talks so fast.

[00:10] The one who moves so quickly, the one who rapidly tries to get through every single thing, I am going to.

[00:17] Tell you about how to slow down because I got a big lesson from.

[00:22] A sloth in Panama over spring break. Let’s talk about it.

[00:27] I can’t wait.

[00:28] So relax and settle in and slow.

[00:30] Down and listen up because your stress therapy session is about to begin right now.

[00:36] One of the best experiences I’ve ever had, the way she facilitated, the way she held the space. And I tell the truth when I need to tell the truth. She was magical. The accessibility to be able to meditate today. Beautiful.

[00:47] Yeah. Amazing experience. And I know leaving this retreat, I’ve been to so many meditation retreats. This was different because it’s accessible. I can start with five minutes and build from there. Every meditation retreat I’ve ever been to, I didn’t build a practice. I’m confident that I’ll build a practice following this one. So it’s just made it real, real life application.

[01:05] And the place is magical. The music, the food, the art, the walks to the place have no expectations, but yet know it’s amazing.

[01:29] Hey, beautiful people, it’s time for some stress therapy. A podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living.

[01:36] In the real world.

[01:37] Finally, a place to park my 25 plus years of experience of working as.

[01:42] A psychotherapist in the mental health field.

[01:44] And now, your host, me, the stress therapist, sherry flake.

[01:58] Hey beautiful. Hey people.

[02:00] What’s up?

[02:00] So I just spent about twelve days.

[02:03] With my beautiful family, including two teenagers.

[02:08] In Panama, in Central America, where we just, I mean, we traveled the whole country. We went into the mountains, we went down by the beach. It was really, really hot, it was super duper cold. It was easy, it was luxurious, it was primitive, it was really hard. It was so many beautiful things. And I have to tell you, I learned so much there first. I have read the book by eknatheshwaran. I know, I’ve raved about his books before. I’ll put this in the show notes. He’s one of the most brilliant writers, I think, in the world ever. And all of his books are absolutely brilliant. I cannot say enough good things, but.

[02:52] He does have a book called take.

[02:54] Your time, how to find patience, peace and meaning.

[02:57] And I have read this book two times, y’all.

[03:01] Two times.

[03:02] I’ve read this book.

[03:05] And a little bit after having read that book, I probably did a podcast on it, too. I think I even did a podcast.

[03:13] On how to take your time.

[03:14] Take it.

[03:14] Right.

[03:15] Like, I don’t know. I think I might have been missing a message now that I’m saying this out loud, and I’ll get to this, but right after that, my friend Whitney.

[03:23] Who lives in beautiful Calabasas, California, she’s.

[03:26] An amazing and beautiful and wonderful person. And she runs whitneyhowarddesigns.com.

[03:30] Definitely go there and buy her beautiful jewelry.

[03:33] It’s inspirational jewelry. It’s so cool. And she sent me a necklace, and.

[03:37] It had a little turtle on it, and it says, slow down, you know, take your time.

[03:43] And knowing that I’m just one of.

[03:46] These people, I mean, can you relate to this?

[03:47] I mean, I’m just constantly in a hurry. I’m trying to get to the next thing. I’m trying to bust out as much as I can. I’m trying to be super productive. I’m trying to, you know, hurry up and sail through these things so I.

[04:00] Can get to the more important thing.

[04:02] But, like, what is the most important thing? And I think the first time that I kind of got ahold of this insight was at a Joe Dispenza meditation retreat. If you have an opportunity to go to one of his retreats, I highly recommend it. You’re like, with a thousand other people in a beautiful, sacred place, and he has these long meditations, and he uses science back it up. And so he’s giving these explanations and.

[04:26] All of this beautiful, just logic around.

[04:30] Meditation and why it’s so important. And he says something like, okay, this is my spin. This is Sherry’s spin on Joe DiSpenza’s insight. But it’s something like, you know, we’re in such a hurry. We hurry up in the morning and get up, and then we hurry up and take a shower so we can hurry up and get our coffee and hurry up and get to work so we can hurry up and finish so we can hurry up and get home so we can hurry up and be in traffic and hurry up and make dinner, so we can hurry up and.

[04:56] Watch the show or read the book.

[04:57] Or whatever we’re going to do.

[04:58] So we can hurry up and go to bed.

[05:00] So we can hurry up.

[05:00] Like, where are we going? Like, you’re already there. Like, here we are. We’re here. You’re already here.

[05:06] Where are you going?

[05:07] Why you in such a hurry? And we’re just, we’re in so we are. We are.

[05:13] We are in such a hurry, and.

[05:15] We’Re obsessed with getting to the next thing and filling up every single space with something.

[05:22] I mean, we haven’t been bored in.

[05:23] For, like, ten or 15 years, for real. I mean, it’s going to be unbelievable.

[05:29] To find out what this is doing to our brains, because I don’t know.

[05:31] About you, but I grew up in.

[05:33] The seventies and the eighties, and, like, I was bored, like, most of the time. Like, life was pretty boring.

[05:39] And we would have to, like, look.

[05:41] Out the window and see, stare at a bug or watch the rain, and we would wait.

[05:46] We would sit there and wait for people and we would wait for phone.

[05:50] Calls and we would answer the phone.

[05:55] And we would, like, be excited to have somebody come to the door, whatever. We are getting inundated with just stuff, and it’s filling up every single one of our seconds.

[06:05] And when I was in Panama, even though, have you ever heard something a million times and then finally get the.

[06:12] Message because it’s been said a different way.

[06:15] When I was in Panama, I really, I learned something there about slowing down. Now, first, you know, we went on this hike, and my family kind of hikes a lot. I’m not that impressed with a difficult hike, I don’t think. And this, you know, little map said it was going to be difficult. And, you know, I asked the guide, you know, is it going to be difficult? And he was like, um. Well, I asked him if it was easy, actually. And he was like, um, no.

[06:41] So. But, I mean, I thought it would just be like, you know, like, hard.

[06:45] To find the path or whatever.

[06:48] Meanwhile, we’re having to use ropes to, like, rappel down.

[06:51] You know, I’m saying, like, it’s, like, really difficult.

[06:54] And you have to think about every.

[06:56] Single placement, every single time you put your foot down where it’s gonna go.

[07:02] You have to look.

[07:03] You know, I’m not. My kids are jumping around like crazy nuts. I’m trying to keep an eye on them, but I’m also very cognizant of.

[07:10] Where my body is, where my hands are.

[07:14] You know, I’m taking a three foot step up into, like, a slippery, flat, wet rock.

[07:22] I mean, you got to be really.

[07:24] Careful, and so you have to slow down.

[07:27] And when someone forces you to slow down, you succumb to the luxury and.

[07:34] Beauty that lies in slowing down.

[07:37] And was it worth it?

[07:38] Yes.

[07:38] We saw beautiful cascadas.

[07:39] We went and saw these lovely waterfalls and walked all about, and we even went under the waterfall.

[07:46] My daughter said something like, are you.

[07:47] Going to miss this opportunity of a lifetime?

[07:50] And me and my husband looked at each other like, hell no.

[07:53] And we just jumped in. It was freezing cold.

[07:58] And I don’t know if you’re a Mitch Hedberg fan like me, but he has a joke about being in a waterfall, and he’s like those commercials about washing your hair in a waterfall fall.

[08:05] It wouldn’t be like that. You know, that thing would knock you on your ***, you know, and it kind of did, and it was freezing cold.

[08:11] And I wonder if I could put a picture in the show notes. I don’t think I can, but I’ll throw it in my Instagram. If you want to come and see me at the stress therapist on Instagram, I’ll put up a picture of us in the waterfall. I mean, it was awesome, but I.

[08:26] Really was forced to slow down on.

[08:28] The way there, you know, I think.

[08:30] It was a, like, I don’t know.

[08:31] 2 hours there, 2 hours back, something like that. And on the way back, and I.

[08:36] Had to slow down. I had to slow down.

[08:41] And it made the experience richer and it made the experience better. And while I was traveling around Panama, in Panama City, there are many people who speak English, but it’s still not exactly normal, if you will, to be speaking English.

[09:02] It’s still a little bit rare.

[09:04] And so no one in my family speaks. My kids and my husband speak German, so I had to be the translator for the trip. And my Spanish is pretty good.

[09:16] I have some fluency there. And so it was really, really fun.

[09:20] To have to speak Spanish, to have.

[09:22] To push myself and that kind of thing.

[09:23] But again, again, like, I want to say, like these things so quickly, and.

[09:29] I had to slow down.

[09:33] Now, I might have mentioned in a different podcast, whenever I’m talking about, like, arrivings, coming, going, anything like that, I have to stop and think about the verbs. It’s difficult for me to remember coming, going, arriving, leaving, departing, going out. All these different verbs. I have to really think, and I.

[09:49] Had to slow down my speech.

[09:52] I had to because I was speaking in Spanish. And sometimes I can speak in Spanish without going through the translation, but oftentimes I’m translating as I go. So I had to slow down in order to be understood, in order to guide my family, in order to not miss the plane, in order to not miss the boat, in order to get whatever information we needed, in order to order whatever, I had to slow down.

[10:19] And it gave me an appreciation for the language.

[10:22] It got me so excited to speak.

[10:24] It because I was being patient with myself.

[10:29] I was being patient with myself. I was slowing down and remembering, okay, this is not my first language. I can do this, right? And I was slowing down in order to be understood, in order to converse.

[10:41] In order to make a friend, in order to have an experience, in order.

[10:44] To all of it. It was just so good because I.

[10:47] Was forced to slow down.

[10:49] I didn’t have a choice. My aptitude with the language was only.

[10:54] So high, and so I had to slow down. And so it was this magical, wonderful gift, and, oh, my gosh, I’m so thankful for it. And then to just top off everything, we are in a country where sloths, yes. Are indigenous to the culture. So we go to this park, and I guess there are hundreds of sloths there, but they’re very difficult to see because they. They blend in perfectly with their environment. And, of course, they’re moving slowly, right?

[11:28] And we’re looking, and we’re looking, and we’re walking. And my kids are going so fast.

[11:31] On this hike, and I’m slowing down. I’m like, let’s stop. Let’s look around.

[11:37] Let’s see if we see a sloth, right?

[11:40] And thank goodness my boy spotted one.

[11:43] He’s like, there’s a sloth. Now, we did see monkeys. Those are easy to see because they’re making all kinds of noise, and they’re moving all about, and they’re really rapid, and they’re just easy to spot because they’re causing a ruckus in the trees, so it’s really easy to notice them.

[11:56] Sloths, on the other hand, and again.

[11:59] You can go to my instagram page. It’s up there right now.

[12:02] He stress therapist. Sloths move so slowly. They are the exact color of the tree that they tend to reside in. It is very difficult to spot them. My boy spotted one, and it was magical. I mean, this little guy is, like, just reaching his arm slowly up to grab a branch, and you know what? He falters a little bit. In the video that I put up there. He kind of gets one of his nails stuck on the branch, and then he goes around it, and he finds his way, and then he slowly turns his head and looks right at us. It’s super cool. And I even pan out. So you can see how difficult it is to kind of spot one, but it was such a nice reminder that you’re not missing a **** thing if you slow down. In fact, it’s richer, it’s better, it’s brighter, it has more color. Everything looks better and just goes better and feels better a little bit slower.

[13:15] And, I mean, I get it. People are like, oh, I wish I had your energy. I mean, I do. I have a lot of energy, and I wish I had this, that.

[13:21] But I make a lot of mistakes, and I think I miss out on quite a bit. And I’ve kind of decided that speaking Spanish and seeing sloths and slowing down.

[13:35] On a hike and just being on.

[13:37] Spring break and experiencing the most amazing country, Panama, I can slow down. I have slowed down and that there are so many instances when slower is better.

[13:51] You know, I know we have a tendency to be, you know, really impulsive.

[13:56] Like, it’s very difficult to have a decision that’s unmade.

[13:59] It’s hard to live in a gray area in a world where everything is.

[14:03] Yes or no, black or white, go.

[14:05] Or stop, you know, and living in.

[14:07] These little gray areas where you take your time, you go ahead and take it. You take your time, you slow down. I mean, it’s just. I can’t even tell you every single thing has been a little bit better. And so I offer this to you.

[14:24] I invite you to slow down in your life.

[14:26] Find out where can you slow down in your life. Is it just walking to the car?

[14:32] I mean, I used to resist. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. If you’ve been on a retreat with me, I always tell the story, but so you already know it. But when I was first learning about.

[14:43] Meditation, and here comes this thing, this walking meditation, I’m like, what?

[14:48] I mean, I’m not into this at all, right?

[14:50] It’s so slow. It’s slow walking. It’s lift, lift, push, place, lift, push, place for, what, 45 minutes, on and.

[15:03] Off, eight times a day on a retreat. I’m like, oh, my gosh. I’m going to jump out of my skin, man.

[15:08] I can’t deal. I can’t slow down. Not me.

[15:12] And I’m telling you, like, everything. The thing that you resist is really.

[15:18] The thing that might heal you, the thing that you need. And so I would invite you to try a walking meditation.

[15:26] Yes.

[15:27] That’s what we’re gonna do.

[15:28] We’re gonna do a walking meditation. I’m gonna talk you through it. We’re gonna do a walking meditation together where you’re definitely not gonna be walking as fast as you normally walk.

[15:42] And I think that there’s a lot of merit to slowing down physically, because.

[15:46] It slows your breath, it slows your.

[15:48] Thoughts, and it’s a lot easier to.

[15:51] Slow your breath and have your thoughts, therefore slow rather than slow your thoughts and then have your breath slow.

[15:57] Both of them work, but it’s a.

[15:59] Little simpler to use your body. And when you do walking meditation, this phenomena comes to life as well.

[16:06] And so in order to have this.

[16:07] Experience, we’re going to slow down together. So we’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’re going to do a walking meditation together. You only need six or 8ft long and maybe two or 3ft wide. And go outside, go in your foyer, your favorite room, wherever, and we’ll do a quick walking meditation together right after this. I’ll be right back.

[16:46] Okay, so standing in your walking meditation.

[16:52] Location, I want you to just stand there for a moment and just be.

[16:57] Aware of your feet.

[17:04] Just noticing your feet on the ground, kind of thinking about your feet, maybe just for a moment.

[17:11] Like they’re little cars with four wheels.

[17:17] The four spots on your feet have equal weight. And what that feels like to give.

[17:23] Both feet equal weight.

[17:25] Usually we’re slouching or we’re, you know, we’re doing the famous standing in line at the coffee shop pose or, you know, getting annoyed at the bank pose or whatever. I want you to feel what it.

[17:41] Feels like to give both of your feet equal attention, equal weight.

[17:47] Just feel the bottom of your feet and what it feels like to have them connect to the ground. To be in shoes or out of shoes or in socks. To have the earth up against your feet, feet. And as you begin to walk, your.

[18:06] Meditation is lift your heel, push off, and then place that foot and then go to the next foot. Lift, push, place. And you can go at any pace that you’re comfortable. Lift, push, place. Lift, push, place.

[18:43] And this might be too fast for you.

[18:47] Might be too slow. You just find the rhythm where it’s most comfortable for you to keep all of your attention on the placement, the movement, and the beautiful ability to be able to walk your body around. Lift, push, place.

[19:21] I’ll leave you on your own to walk for just a few minutes, very.

[19:28] Very mindfully with all of your attention on lift, push, place, lift, push, place, lift, push, place. Slow down, slow down.

[28:02] Remember, if you need a little reminder to slow down, you can go to Whitney Howard designs.com and pick up one of her pieces of inspirational jewelry. Some of them are devoted to the idea of taking your time slowing down, and I want to hear what you.

[28:21] Have to say about it.

[28:22] Let me know.

[28:23] Come on a retreat with me.

[28:24] I would love, love, love to have you. We will definitely be doing three different types of walking meditation on the retreat in May. I have a very special guest star.

[28:32] Sonic Yogi is going to be there.

[28:34] We’re going to have amazing food and experiences together May 16 in the north Georgia mountains in Blue Ridge and I would love to have you. You can go to ilovetherapy.com and click on retreats and join me.

[28:49] And then I have that retreat also next March.

[28:51] And then we have one in September at the beautiful Jekyll island. Slow down, write me and tell me all about it. Sherry estress therapist.com or you can go.

[29:01] To my instagram and send me a.

[29:02] DM estress therapist and tell me about your experience slowing down walking meditation. I want to hear all about it. I love you. Have a lovely, lovely day.

[29:12] How y’all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good morning. Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the stress therapist on social media, hestress therapist on Instagram and stresstherapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there.

[29:32] If you live in Georgia and you’re.

[29:34] Ready to be one of my clients, go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free face to face consultation with me. At the very least, jump on my mailer so you don’t stress or miss one thing.

[29:46] Until next time, have a lovely, lovely day.