Slow Down, Cheetah

I want to talk about cheetahs for a bit.

My husband started calling me cheetah when we first met. I have some spots (beauty marks), and I liked to run quickly. In addition to running for exercise, I’d literally run from one thing to the next, perhaps to avoid really feeling, and truly knowing what’s real. I ran from pain. To avoid stuff. But as I did so, I know now that I also ran from some sacred moments that I didn’t slow down to savor.

I lived the go-go-go life for so long, starting in my late teens. While admittedly I enjoy a lot of different things and am a curious person, I easily do what some would call overcommit, and stay busy all the time. It’s been a trend most all my life. At one point in college, I was co-captain of my rowing team, an RA, a member of the rowing student board, working another part-time job, involved in a service project, and hanging out with friends as college kids do. It makes my head spin thinking about it. After college I stayed busy too — this included frequently hosting dinners for friends, taking on home renovation projects, training for marathons, and more. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy. But not necessarily good at slowing down to take as many breaks as I could. Then I had three kids and maintained a job throughout…and you know, it just keeps going.

I mostly balked at yoga until relatively recently — even though I knew it was beneficial for my body and mind, the pace just didn’t sit well with me. I did the occasional hot yoga when I felt it could replace a cardio workout or needed a good stretch. But it was so slow. And meditation felt…impossible.

Then, several years ago, when I was struggling with some issues that just kept rising up for me in different environments, I knew I had some work to do on myself. At the encouragement of a trusted advisor, I began an 8-week meditation course. About ten of us from various walks of life would gather weekly on Wednesday evenings to spend an hour doing a guided meditation. Those sessions, though painful at first, became easier, and almost enjoyable, over time. Joining the group and committing to showing up weekly kept me accountable to my practice.

I learned how to start to sit with myself. To focus on my breath, and to let everything around me go. We were instructed to practice at home, on the daily, an average of 45 minutes a day. I know, crazy, right? Who has that kind of time! While I wasn’t the best student, I gradually began to incorporate more and more ‘quiet sitting’ at home. I’d do it in the morning before a workout, or take a break from my home office and sit on my bedroom floor. At first, it was so uncomfortable. I just felt so unproductive and like there were so many other things I’d rather be doing with the time — even if those things were doing dishes or paying my bills. But, eventually I was noticing things were changing for me — I started to take more deep breaths when I was facing challenging situations. I’d reflect before I reacted. I could finally hear the voice inside myself telling me where to go, and how to find an alternative approach to navigating situations that formerly triggered me.

Meditation is like a surrender

At some point in my life, I had become a productivity lover. I loved this combination of words for a long time: efficient and effective (I used to use them in my startup jobs a lot). I think a lot of us pick up this programming somewhere along the line. Yet, the problem with productivity is it is so one-dimensional. It doesn’t take into account feelings. It doesn’t consider the needs of others. And it certainly lacks any consideration of what’s best for heart and soul. We are so much more than what we produce, more than our accomplishments than our achievements. So many of us feel such a need to put achievement, and accomplishments first. We often fixate on them.

The thing about meditation is, it forces you to sit with yourself and just be. Just be! With the feelings that come up. Feelings of delight, of pain…of things we haven’t felt in a long time. In meditation, you don’t judge those feelings, you simply notice them. Like a curious observer. There is no achievement, no accomplishment, in meditation. It’s an inside job, free of striving, and also free of external praise and reward.

If we are patient and do it long enough, we can start to sit, or as Glennon Doyle says in her new book, Untamed, sink, into ourselves. And this is where it gets beautiful. We sink into ourselves and we can hear our inner voice. Not the voices of our parents, of a spouse, friends, boss, and mostly, not the voice of the mean guy or girl in our head who constantly reprimands and shames us. It’s our true voice — the one that has been with us since the beginning. That inner voice knows what is real for us. But only when we slow down can we hear her.

We’re now faced with a time in history when we can’t necessarily keep running. I’m certainly feeling that, and I wonder if I’d be feeling nearly as peaceful as I do if I felt like I had to keep running like my old ways, but couldn’t. I imagine instead I’d be tenser, more anxious, and afraid.

Instead, I am feeling pretty calm and accepting of the slowness and quieter times where I’m forced to spend more time with myself. Cheetahs love to run in the wild, but they also spend a lot of quiet time resting peacefully. Perhaps the wise old Earth is telling us we’ve been moving too much, moving too fast, and missing too much of that voice deep inside. The voice that we can only hear if we slow down, and are willing to be still and sit with it for a while.

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