Slowly

I thought I was walking more slowly because my body was starting to slow down. It just might have something to do with getting older. Then I began to realize it wasn’t that simple. I began to notice that I was moving more slowly at the same time that I was much more aware that I was walking.

I quickly discovered that it wasn’t that much of a problem for me to walk more quickly. Perhaps I still did not walk as fast as my sons. It just was no longer my habit to walk fast.

The past couple of years I have become accustomed to paying attention to my walking when I would go across a parking lot. It became my normal practice as I would leave my car in the parking lot to go into Target or Menards. I would deliberately pay attention, be mindful that I was walking. I was alert and aware of my surroundings, I consciously felt the hard asphalt surface as each foot pressed against it. My hands and face would feel the air. It gradually became a very engaged tactile experience.

Then I started paying attention out of habit, but the experience had changed. It was no longer just my feet that were in touch, my whole body had become alert to what was happening. My attention wasn’t so focused on my feet or my hands and face anymore. I clearly felt different.

Maybe its has been as simple as my no longer really paying attention. However, I don’t think that is what has been happening because I have a deeper, richer sense of being present. There still are times when I am very aware, perhaps deliberately aware that my feet are moving forward, one in front of the other. Now, however, my awareness is more general, more global.

I feel more like I am walking in a bubble of alert awareness. I am simply there. The experience is typically less tactile, more deeply felt. I move more slowly. My body moves through space with more deliberateness. I have a deeper sense of being in the place that I seem to occupy. My whole body tingles, not just my feet or my hands and face. There is no urgency to hurry or move forward.

I have a similar experience of slowness when I am around people or just about anything else. It almost feels like a kind of abstract, formless awareness. And I find that I move more slowly, more deliberately. I listen more attentively. I look at things with a deeper awareness that almost seems like I am looking through them.

I experience more things in unfamiliar ways. My experience is less tactile, and more deeply felt. It also feels like it happens in slow motion.

It still remains relatively easy for me to return to the tactile, sensory experience. I can be intently aware of the hardness of the pavement I step on, the rough surface of the tree I touch with the palm of my hand, the soft warmth of the person I wrap in a lingering hug. That happens relatively easily when I focus on the sensory connection.

But the experience has become pervasively more deep and rich. What lingers, colors and slows my movements has become less sensory and more an experience of my heart. My days unfold in this background of subtle awareness that opens me to a slow moving current of joy.

Perhaps I still look like an old man who walks slowly. How would anyone suspect that I am basking in a feeling of being intensely alive. Neither would they understand how that feeling of being alive would probably evaporate the second I sped up my pace.

I suspect that this all has something to do with being open to the feeling of being present. It is an experience that is most pervasive in the early part of the day. Most of the time it diminishes as I approach evening. At that point, I am probably just moving slowly because I am tired.