Embracing My Pace
This summer I’ve started doing this half walk, half jog thing. Since we moved in, I’ve walked up and down the long streets in my neighborhood a couple of times a week, keeping an eye on the squirrels, the trees, the birds, and my neighbors’ yards. My normal route takes me just under an hour, a nice, easy walk.
Sometime in July I started the half-jogging thing. (It’s more like shuffling, really.) I’ve always *hated* running, but one day I heard this very clear suggestion from my body: go a little faster. So, bemused at myself, I jogged a little. All the live oaks make lovely shadows on the road, and I shuffled for the length of the shadow—maybe ten or fifteen seconds. I walked a little, then did it again. I kept up my shadow intervals on the next few walks, walking anytime my body (mostly my right knee) said to slow it down. I bought new shoes with a little more cushion. I’m having a surprising amount of fun.
I’m always going to have a slower pace than a lot of people. I like to take my time, to savor things, to keep my breath nice and even. Given my freedom, I take my work slowly too. I like to (over?)think ideas, really plan things out, consider, consider, consider. I’m a plodder, not a sprinter. I’ve always thought my body is built more for endurance than speed. So this jogging is really weird and different; it’s challenging my ideas about my identity and capabilities. But it feels really good, so far. It helps me feel really present in my body, really connected to all my joints and muscles and breath. I’m finding myself really listening to myself, moment to moment. And mostly what I hear is: Slow down. Yes, even slower.
In my yoga class this morning, the teacher said, “the more you slow down, the faster you’ll progress.” This landed a little differently with me today than I think it might have even a couple of months ago. I have all the same cultural conditioning you do, all the same internalized nonsense about how in order to win, we have to be the fastest and the best. But my little shuffly jogs are helping me hear this truth: when I go slow enough to hear the internal messages, I can actually get faster (or stronger, or more flexible), faster. If I ignore the concerns from my right knee, I’ll injure myself, and probably quit trying to jog at all (frankly, that appeals to parts of me. Jogging in August in Florida is kind of terrible). But if I am going slow enough to listen, I jog when I can jog and walk when I need to walk. The jogging intervals are getting a little longer each time I go out there, which continues to baffle and delight me.
What do you hear when you listen to yourself?
What’s your natural pace?
How do you know?
Tuning in, being able to listen to those internal messages from your body, your heart, your mind—all practices of embodiment.
What good is living in a body if we don’t let it talk to us? If we don’t talk back? How’s your conversation going today?
