How to Hurry Up and Slow Down

: By Suzanne E. Court

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How to Hurry Up and Slow Down

by Suzanne E. Court.

Horses are one of the fastest animals on the planet, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons we love them and have found them useful in so many ways. However, whether they are in the wild or in a paddock as a herd, they don’t seem to move very much at all. In part, this is because of the 18 hours a day they need to devote to eating, but also because they know to conserve energy.

Unless a horse sees a good reason to move in a hurry, he just doesn’t bother. If they ever express a sense of urgency, it is because they believe their lives could depend upon being on the move. Or they may go for a gallop sometimes for the sheer joy of it.

Humans and Their Sense of Urgency

The sense of urgency that humans experience is very rarely existential. It is more likely to be habitual and conforming to the lie that we must achieve as much as possible, as quickly as possible. The haste we bring to situations not only colors our experience, but it also determines the quality of experience. Unfortunately, millions of humans feel dictated to by time and live at such a fast pace that we convince ourselves there’s not enough time to truly live. It’s how we choose to experience time that makes it feel either eternal or scarce.

As human life speeds up, some people deliberately choose a slower pace of living, not necessarily by deciding to move to a small town or live rurally (you can still be very busy in the country!), but simply by living at a slower pace. In Europe in the 1980s a groundswell of people saw how profoundly they missed out on a peaceful inner life through living at an exaggerated pace physically and mentally, so they started a “slowness movement”.

As reported by Carl Honoré in his book, In Praise of Slowness, this began in 1986 with a protest against fast food when a McDonald’s restaurant opened in Piazza di Spagna, Rome, sparking the “slow food movement”.¹ It’s appropriate that it was in Italy where this awareness emerged, for Italians love their food and treat it with great respect. An Italian family or group of friends taking hours over a meal, while enjoying several courses and convivial conversation, is a beautiful and natural part of their culture.

Carl Honoré’s 2005 addendum to his book In Praise of Slowness documents the impact of the slow movement while offering cautious optimism that the human world is getting the message:

Everywhere, people are waking up to the fact that the cult of speed is a bad thing. And now growing numbers of us are defying convention to embrace slowness. Speed still has the upper hand but the pressure for change is building.

Living in a continuous climate of urgency brings with it uncomfortable physical sensations of tension leading to negative impacts on our health. Within such tension we are essentially living under the pressure of the adrenalin-driven flight or fight state for which the Norwegian philosopher Guttorm Floistad assigns the term “hurry-sickness”.

Ironically, as soon as we slow down to consciously enjoy the process of doing, rather than focusing exclusively on the end result, the more time itself seems to slow down. The faster we go in a day, especially if our activities arise from a sense of urgency, the less we feel we are achieving and the sooner the day vanishes, often leaving us quite dissatisfied.

The more we want to achieve through what we are doing, the less enjoyable our doing becomes. The sense of working against the clock to achieve what is expected, rather than following creative and intellectual processes according to the time they deserve, is not only counterproductive, it is also stressful. Work created under the stress of performance anxiety is a special form of human craziness and is unlikely to produce much of high quality.

One thing I used when in stressful employment was a manual egg timer. To take a break, I would turn it over and meditate on the sand passing through it for the whole three minutes that it took. It was a lifesaver some days.

Horses and the Present Moment

Since horses continuously live in the present moment, they have much to teach us about time. Spending time with a horse shows us how easy it is for hours to pass when doing something as simple as grooming and just hanging out with our equine friend.

Taking the time it takes is normal and natural for horses. They are never in a hurry unless they are running from perceived danger or anticipating feed time (an artificial situation created by domestication). It is incredibly easy to provide a spacious atmosphere around horses because they automatically default to relaxed states whenever they can.

Noticing the spaces

As you observe horses you might notice that there is usually a small gap between them doing one thing and another. I have a bad habit of finishing a job and going straight on to another without a break, but I’ve noticed that horses will finish eating their hay or patch of grass and take a couple or more seconds to look up, look around and stand still before they move on to the next thing they want to do.

I took this lesson from them, and now remind myself every day to take a breath and look around, listen to the environment, feel how the air touches my skin, smell the grass and flowers (and horses) around me. To do this between every task, as well as in the middle of a task, takes no time at all and is very refreshing. Take the time to notice that you are alive.

An excellent strategy to break the tyranny of time is to literally practice doing nothing a couple of times a day. Strangely enough, doing nothing, if “done” in the right way, doesn’t feel like nothing.

There are two kinds of doing nothing. Firstly, there is the frustration of being stuck somewhere (e.g. a doctor’s waiting room) while feeling trapped by the situation and wishing you were somewhere else. “I am too busy to be wasting my time sitting here,” we might say to ourselves as we clench our jaw and tap our fingers.

Secondly, there is doing nothing while deciding not to be frustrated, and resisting the temptation to label it as “wasting time”. In this nothingness you can choose to be open to being fully present, taking in everything around you in an attitude of acceptance of what is happening right now.

Living with Minimal Stress

Horses model for us how to live with others with minimal stress, how to ignore clock time when we can, and how to be present-moment focused. Most of the time horses look as though they are doing nothing, which is an image at odds with documentaries portraying them as highly active graceful creatures galloping across vast spaces, with stallions fighting for supremacy, mares giving birth and foals joyfully leaping about.

All those things are true of course, but a film of real-time horse life would be far too boring to watch since mostly they simply stand quietly, taking in their environment, sleeping, grooming each other, mooching around, foraging and walking leisurely to new pastures and water. Although we admire horses for their athleticism (and exploit them for it too), most of the time they simply chill out and eat while subtly communicating with each other. They keep their vital energy for when they really need it.

What can horses teach us about time? Although they move slowly much of the time (as well as fast when they need to) that’s not necessarily the lesson we need to take, although experimenting with doing everything 10% slower for a day is a rewarding practice. When I remind myself of the present moment and decide to slow down I am much more likely to achieve something of value than when I’m in a hurry. I believe this is because I am giving everything quality attention.

Horses are masters at teaching us how to be in the moment because they treat the present as though that’s all they ever have (which is the case for all of us). Horses appear to have all the time in the world because they don’t invent “psychological time”, that is they don’t tell themselves the story of all the things they have to do next, and they don’t live in an environment of assumed scarcity.

Doing nothing

One way to learn about time from horses is to be in their presence doing absolutely nothing for an hour or more. Observe everything and share their space. There is nothing to do, nothing to achieve and only something to be.

Allow the essential being of the horse and your own essential being to share space. Ask them to show you a peaceful place where there is no need to fill your mind with concerns for past or present. Time will do its own thing without any help from us.

When we are mindful we are not rushing against the clock trying to get as much done as quickly as possible so that we can get to the next more important thing. When we are in a hurried frame of mind we are not fully aware of where we are or what we are doing because a good portion of our mind is taken up with concern for getting to the result. This is regarded as a normal state of mind in modern life but, sadly, it means that much of the time we are not fully aware of the life we are living.

If we are not living in the present, then we really aren’t experiencing life in anything like its fullness. If we keep wishing we were in the next moment, closer to finishing whatever it is we are doing, we do not know or respect the life we are currently having. In fact, to be projecting constantly into the next moment means we literally have forgotten how to live.

In early 2020 we had no choice but to slow down as every nation dealt with the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. For us at Earthhorse Aotearoa, “lock down” became a perfect time to work at leisure with the horses. We had no clients, and the horses’ willingness to offer their calm presence felt ever more spacious, deeper and peaceful. There was no traffic passing by, no visitors, and the birds sang louder than ever as human noise subsided and time slowed down.

We gave away expectations of achieving anything as we groomed, trimmed hooves, worked horses on the ground and rode around the farm. We stopped caring about whether a job took five minutes or five hours. We became more aligned with the horses’ concept of time; the edges of their attention defined by changes around them as they lifted their heads or turned their ears to listen to a bird, a snapping twig or another horse moving.

Sometimes they made the subtlest of movements that demanded close attention to notice. Slowing down to the pace of horse awareness while being mindful of the slightest change in their attention has enriched my relationship with them and given me a different perspective on time generally.

Whatever level of communication we seek with them, it is worth spending time getting to know our best four-legged friends without time constraints, and we just might discover a spacious mind bringing us into deeper connection with nature and with ourselves.

Article Source:

BOOK: Soul Connection with Horses

Soul Connection with Horses: Healing the Mind and Awakening the Spirit through Equine Assisted Practices
by Suzanne E. Court.

Soul Connection with Horses introduces concepts of awakening and spaciousness as understood in many spiritual traditions and demonstrates that horses effectively model awakening for humans. Through this approach, horses help re-establish natural bonds and intuitive ways of knowing that have become obscured by conditioned thought and ineffective individual narratives.

Horses show us that we can trust our intuition and learn how to live from the soul while making meaningful connection with ourselves, other people, animals and the natural environment. By considering how horses experience the world through their senses, how they process emotion and how they express their needs, we see that they live through the same social, psychological and spiritual paradigms as humans. This book invites us to walk in the hooves of the horse, to experience the horses’ worldview and to access our own soulful wisdom.

Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

photo of: Suzanne Court, PhD Suzanne Court, PhD, is a qualified equine assisted therapist and mental health practitioner with over 30 years' horse experience and ten years’ experience working professionally with horses in the mental healing and spiritual space. She teaches group and individual courses and gives lectures on Equine Assisted Therapy. She comes from a musical and academic background, having been a performing classical guitarist and a professor of music. She has published widely in historical musicology, and this book is her first regarding horses. Her website is www.earthhorse.co.nz

Article Recap:

Horses embody slow living, teaching us to embrace the present moment and let go of the urgency that dominates modern life. Inspired by the slow movement and horse behavior, this approach highlights the dangers of "hurry sickness" and the benefits of mindfulness. By slowing down, practicing awareness, and eliminating time constraints, we create space for meaningful experiences, deeper connections, and a richer relationship with ourselves and the world around us.

#SlowLiving #Mindfulness #LessonsFromHorses #PresentMoment #SlowDown

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