Even slower

Onto something. (Image by Michael Mosimann from Pixabay)

I was working with a thirteen-year-old the other day on a simple rhythm.

When you break it down, you find that any rhythm is just a series of events that occur at specific intervals:

The “one and two and three and four and” occur at precise, even intervals. The X’s represent the places where you would clap or tap or hit a drum or play a note. It’s as simple as that. If you have trouble keeping a steady beat, you can use a device called a metronome to do it for you.

However, my student was struggling. He dutifully chanted “one and two and three and four and,” but his claps were haphazard and not precisely in alignment.

I encouraged him to slow down. He tried again, about the same tempo, and failed.

“Even slower,” I said. He tried again, a teeny bit slower, and failed.

In order for my student to succeed, he had to think of task in a completely different way. Instead of thinking of it as one unit, he had to think of it as eight separate events:

1: Silence

+: Silence

2: Clap

+: Clap

3: Silence

+ : Silence

4: Clap

+: Silence

It’s a to-do list with eight items in sequence. Once we literally went through the motions, one at a time, the student was successful.

True slowness is a different modality. It’s a level of mindfulness in which you are fully present and aware of everything that is happening, not just what seems to be happening. If you slow down enough, it feels like a altered state of consciousness. Maybe it is.

I’m not an ice skater, so I don’t know how to do a triple salchow. I can’t even identify all of the individual movements in the jump. But an ice skater can not only identify them, she can execute them faster than I can perceive them. Paradoxically, the route to this kind of dazzling speed is an exaggerated slowness very similar to what we did above with the rhythm: Break the jump down into its components and practice each one separately, putting them together piece by piece.

Once you discover how to access this meditative slowness, a world opens up. You can read more deeply. You think before you speak. You can handle strong emotions with grace. You can watch, fascinated, while a child performs a challenging task, like spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread, appreciating the complexity of the skills involved and providing the time and space for their development. And you, yourself, can learn hard things with minimal frustration.

To get there, it helps to have a trusted guide who can show you what it’s supposed to feel like. If you’re on your own, breathe deeply, give the task a try, and evaluate. Were you in total conscious control of everything that took place? If not, take another deep breath and say to yourself, “even slower.” Then, try again.