Slowdown Medicine

in this last episode of season 1, meet the love of dana's life. no, not her husband (sorry, ray ray). and not baby honey biscuits the cat (like she cares). but slowdown medicine, the entity that chose her so many years ago and continues to radically guide her (and now you) through our world saturated with urgency, pathologizing, and unhinged hustling. gather 'round! and hear the tale of how a UTI transformed our dear dana's life, slowed her the eff down, and introduced a more resonant, compassionate, and awe-filled existence. and you can have this, too.

can the entirety of slowdown medicine be contained in one episode? ABSOLUTELY NOT. could another 100 episodes be dedicated to this? FRIGGIN YES. is crying in my jacuzzi steeped in slowdown medicine, so we'll always be diving in deeper? 1000%

**warning: this episode is a spell. you may experience a desire to slow down, reclaim your attention, and get a little (or a lot) weirder.**

~shownotes~

• báyò akómoláfé, essay, a slower urgency
• simone weil, essay, attention and will & human personality 
• have a big burning question for advice dom? leave a voice message at 760-820-9070
• grounding meditation (for dana's clients and now for you!) 

/// podcast art ~ natalee miller, theme song ~ kat ottosen, sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock //

Chapters

• 0:00 The Concept of Slow Down Medicine
• 16:44 The Power of Slowing Down

Transcript

dana: 0:00

Welcome, welcome, welcome back to crying in my jacuzzi, the ebbs and flows of living an examined life. I am your reverently irreverent host, Dana Bollicki. And guess what? This is the very last episode of the first season. Don't you worry, we're just going to take a little time, cook up an incredibly tender, wild and weird season two. And I want to say for this last episode, I can't tell you how many times I tried to get this episode out and she just wouldn't come, Just wouldn't. All pieces wouldn't come together. It was just not time.

dana: 0:50

You know how I feel about all things having agency. This podcast has agency. It has its own designs and desires. And let me tell you, this episode absolutely has its own designs and desires and opinions and timing. And it makes all the sense in the world that this episode, this topic, one of my greatest loves, one of my absolute greatest guides, is choosing this moment in time to step forward to hold us, to guide us, to accompany us as we process, as we grieve, as we rage, as we call for a ceasefire in Gaza, as we mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living. And so, without further ado, my darling crybabies, I give you Slow Down Medicine.

dana: 2:32

Dear friends, gather round for an enchanting story of how I received profound spiritual guidance from a burning bush. No, not that kind, Not like the biblical kind. Anyway, once upon a time I had a UTI for those of you not familiar a urinary tract infection, An infection of my P-hole, and I had this infection for six whole months and in that time, my friends, I learned things, things that I had actually learned many, many, many, so many times before that I had to get this, so the fuck down. So, through this unexpected urethral portal, urethral portal, urethral portal portal I found what I now consider a life partner, a great teacher, the very beloved, sometimes a little clingy but always wise guide that I call Slow Down Medicine. It's the way that I see the world, it's an ontology, it's my ontology, it's how I understand the nature of being through this lens of Slow Down Medicine, and it's not something that can be defined just in this one episode. It's at the heart of crying in my jacuzzi, it's at the heart of everything that I do, but I'm gonna talk to you about it today and just send it through the airwaves, right? This episode is a spell. I mean, maybe all episodes are a spell. So here it is, However, these words, these intentions, these wonderful sound effects and magical moments that you receive here today. Just let them simmer. That's all they're meant to do. Let them do the work in the background. You don't have to force, you can just soften, slow down, let it in, allow, move through you, slowly but surely, Working its medicinal magic.

dana: 5:45

I had left New York where I lived for just like a smidge under a decade. My husband had been there 14 years or something like that, and we moved to the desert, and part of why we moved to the desert was we no longer felt in sync with the hustle of the city and the energy that we were looking for. What we were looking for in our lives felt different than what we were getting in Brooklyn, and we had lived all around Manhattan and had spent the last handful of years in New York and Brooklyn and the last two years that we were in New York my partner got sober and he has given me permission to talk openly about that process and I had also stopped drinking. It wasn't super consciously, in solidarity. My body really just started hating alcohol and again, this was part of that early slow down medicine inoculation that was happening, that I didn't know was happening when it was happening, but our lives were slowing down and the place we lived wasn't a match and we stayed inside of that for a long time and we're feeling our way and didn't feel like we could leave it, didn't feel like we had the money or the resources to really go somewhere else. We didn't know where the somewhere else was.

dana: 7:17

You can go back to episode two, I believe, how to not so accidentally move to the desert. I talk a little more about that there. But the slowing down was entering our field of consciousness, it was calling us. We felt it, we were being required to slow down and finally we were able to really see that. We knew we did want to slow our life, and so when we came out to the desert in 2014, we were surprised that it felt as resonant as it did, but it did, and things unfolded in ways for us to stay and we knew that. We knew that we were going to see New York and finding this place for us was a match for the pace we wanted to live our lives. So I thought that I had become this like queen of slowdown A couple of years in the desert. Look at me moving so much slower, not bopping around the city, not doing this that the other really just doing my coaching yes, a little consulting, and then a little this, a little that like really I thought I was going slower than I was, but I think what it really was was like that gear down shift.

dana: 8:43

Slowdown medicine doesn't always happen real fast, as you can imagine. The signs were also everywhere. I wanna put this out here that when something's really trying to come through and we've probably all had some version of this experience the synchronicities, the language of the divine, it abounds. And so for me, everywhere I turned was a message for slowdown, Like I would hear people say it, like walking in, like the grocery store, or I would see it written like graffiti'd, I would see, which is like maybe some, like real adult graffiti, middle-aged graffiti, as the lovely Hilary Sklar has been documenting for years. But I would see it everywhere, I would hear it everywhere. It would be in every card that I pulled, it would be in any reading that I got. It would be just constant in the wildest ways.

dana: 9:49

The slowdown message was just making its way toward me over and over and over again and I could not ignore it. I'm sure I tried, but I was getting the message, even though I thought I was so good at all this slowing down, to slow down even more right, to take it in more deeply, to let the lessons get more complex, get more nuanced for me, to embody them, internalize them more, that it wasn't just about my time in my calendar and how much I was doing or not doing in a day. It was going slow down to the next level in my thoughts, in how I was processing my emotions, in how I was processing the world around me, in how I was being in my relationships, in every single aspect of my life. Slowdown medicine was knocking at the door, and maybe it is for you too.

dana: 10:52

A side effect of all this slowing down is that you gotta have some lightness, you gotta have a sense of humor, the lightness for that, allowing yourself to be changed along the way right, holding the goal lightly, holding almost everything lightly, which might seem counterintuitive to the emphasis on looking at what is a value. But if you clench it so tightly, you're gonna miss so much. You're gonna miss so much magic, so much wonder and awe that's happening all around you, and so slow down medicine will just keep it lively. Keep it light. You will just have to have a sense of humor about the whole being alive on the planet thing.

robot cohost alex: 11:55

That's slow down medicine. What a crack up For a cosmic entity. They have a surprisingly bench sense of humor. Dane are going too fast. How about a searing slow down reminder every time she pees? Oh, is everyone going too fast? Try on a global pandemic twisty.

dana: 12:17

We live in a world that is moving so fast we're all living at the speed of culture and slow down medicine invites us to sit in discomfort, in complexity, knowing there is suffering and releasing the impulse to fix, to have a solution, to have an answer, to help make it all better, to have that clear one, two, three, next steps, to put it all back together again in a way that makes us feel better. No-transcript, stable, less scared, secure. I think about it like this Like these are fractured times we live in, not irreparably broken, but fractured, or there's an imbalance. And for me and I'm presenting it here to you, take it or leave it, but for me I've looked at the imbalance at one way is these two questions that I feel like pull at each other? They're really not questions, they're energies, right, but I'm going to present them as questions and in some ways it's like the polarity and the pull, the tension, the yin and yang between divine masculine energy and divine feminine energy, and that's just one way some people look at it. It's really more the energies, the core essences that are present in all things, and so one of them, the one that I've associated with divine masculine energy, is what is possible, what is possible?

dana: 14:15

And that question has driven quite a bit of humanity, of modernity. What is possible, what can we do? And with that question driving our dominant culture, our social expansion, the fractures come from that energy being overemphasized, going off the rails, obsession with productivity, inefficiency and linearity, achievement, optimization, hassle culture, we all know it, we're all in it. And the other side, the other question, the balance, is what is of value? And I've thought about that as this divine, feminine energy, the essence, the essence of that right. What is the value, what is most important? And these questions belong together, they complement each other and there's a forever dance of imbalance, balancing, rebalancing, rebalancing, rebalancing, rebalancing, rebalancing, rebalancing, right.

dana: 15:35

And so in this speed up over emphasis on what is possible, the what is of value, that emphasis has gotten smaller and almost like when we even look to answer that question, we're looking through the lens of what is possible and it's hard to see and tune into what is of value. When we're going so fast I would say it's nearly impossible or we're only going to catch little glimpses, little pieces. We won't be able to tune into the hole. You know it's like if you've ever been on a speeding train or in a fast moving car and you're looking at things out the window and it's all a little bit blurry and you kind of have to, like, really put intention on focusing and you're like, oh, there's a little house or oh, there's a person walking down the street or you know whatever it is, but it takes focus and you only can catch a little piece. And so, for me, the slow down.

dana: 16:47

Slowing down is what allows us to rebalance, to tune in more with the what is of value, what's the big picture? What is the big picture? Zoom out Big vision. We cannot do that when we are moving so so, so fast. And the emphasis is on fast and fixing, because when you're fixing you're only looking for what's wrong and everything's through that lens. The pathologizing Another cultural obsession Everything's a problem to be fixed, everything gets so short-sighted. And so the slowing down, the processing, our processing, how we process information around us, slowing down our thoughts, being able to create just a little bit of space to really observe and see the bigger picture, compassion, that capacity to cultivate that that requires us to be able to see a bigger picture. We have to slow down to be in that compassionate connection with others and with ourselves.

robot producer janet: 18:17

Oh, hi, it's me Janet. Do you have a burning question that you want some guidance on? Do you sometimes like to be told what to do, maybe by a bossy but tender advice? Dumb, perfect. Then call 760-820-9070 and leave a voicemail with your question. That's 760-820-9070.

dana: 18:42

So this slowing down I have understood to be the invitation, the vehicle that connects again, that like what is a value to what is possible, brings it back into relationship. And I want to say that the way slow down medicine works, one it works because you're listening, you're taking some of this in, and slow down medicine very often just works, kind of works you on in the background and you all think about it. You think about the words. Even slow down medicine, you'll think about the idea of slowing down. It'll start, it'll pop up, if it's not already in your life, and you might just find yourself starting to turn towards it. Be curious about it. Notice the places where you're going real fast, have some compassion for yourself. That's another way. It's another way that that slow down works is if you can just slow it down a little. Notice where you're like oh yeah, I'm in that thing, I'm doing that thing that I always do. Even that little bit of awareness that is slow down medicine. See what I did there and bring a little compassion for yourself. That's it Right, that starts it, that gets it going to tuning into that willingness of like okay, I'm interested in this, I am curious about this. I do want to open myself to slowing down, to slowing down the way my mind works, to slowing down the way that I'm hustling through my life, the way that I feel like I'm so busy and I don't have time for this, this or that myself or the other important things in my life or things that I want to give some time and energy to Right. That's the willingness that to keep part Three, releasing the how. The how will start to arise naturally, just by you starting to notice, notice some patterns, notice yourself, having a little compassion, that compassionate observation that will start to slow things down and you can just soften the grip on the how.

dana: 21:03

All right, might be a real coping mechanism, controlling making things all nice and neat in a row, having all the plans, having the backup plans, needing to know all the things. You might just feel just a little softening around. That I'm gonna suggest. You're not even gonna need to force it, you're not even gonna need to force the softening. That sounds so funny, right? And then the connection to yourself, the space that you're making, the spaciousness that comes along with this, even just these like little nanoseconds that you're opening up and being just the tiniest bit more present with or a tiniest bit more compassionate with, or the tiniest bit more curious about, that's you reallocating your energy, that's you starting to make space, that's actually you starting to make time, bend time. What? Yes, and that connection that you're slowly, little by little, building with yourself, building with the world around you. More things, more information, more guidance will start to arise, because it's in there already A stinging peahole of your soul. Just embrace it. Those little places that stretch you, that are like the signs and the signals that are like hey, hi, slow down. Hopefully yours doesn't show up like that, but maybe there are other signals, other little lights flashing inside you, other little stingy peaholes of the soul that are asking for your attention, are asking you to slow down. Turn towards them. Do not ignore, do not override. I know, I know, I know it can feel so hard. You don't have to do it all at once and it's going to work. You sometimes gently, sometimes a little less, but maybe you be UTI free. Let me just set that intention out into the world, out into your little urethra Stay healthy, little one, just let it flow. So this is the medicine.

dana: 23:27

When we slow, we make space for what is a value, what needs attention. Often we've been too busy a coping mechanism, but too busy to turn towards. We make space for compassion, accepting others, truths as just as real as our own Connection to ourselves, to each other, to our intuition, to our bodies, to the earth. Hello planet, more acceptance for how we got here, less judgment for that journey, perhaps some more creativity and curiosity for where we're going. And we also get to cultivate our attention presence.

dana: 24:26

The French philosopher and activist Simon Veil calls attention the rarest and purest form of generosity. And in a world where our attention is diminishing and has been shrinking over time, faster and faster, one of the most precious things, we have to give each other our most generous attention, to hold complexity. The world demands this of us right now, and in our speed and in our collective predilection towards judgment, in our learned behaviors to go faster and faster and scroll and just be firehosed with information, absolutely more and more unable to process it, let alone our own emotions about it all, we must slow down. And so, of course, along this journey I came across the writer, philosopher, post activist Bio-Akoma Lafe, and he shares this African proverb the times are urgent, let us slow down. And he wrote. The first time I heard this African saying, I knew I had happened upon something important, something that needed to be shared at this time when the theme of urgency, the subject of the eleventh hour and the prospects of an apocalypse scenario are now familiar tropes in our conversations about the future. So, everywhere I was invited to speak, I offered an invitation to slow down, which seems like the wrong thing to do when fire is on the mountain. But here's the point In hurrying up all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today's most challenging crises.

dana: 26:35

We rush through into the same patterns we're used to. Of course, there isn't a single way to respond to crisis. There is no universally correct way. However, the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet to be resolved. Sometimes, what is the appropriate thing to do is not the effective thing to do. Slowing down is thus about lingering in the places we're not used to, seeking out new questions, becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Slowing down is taking care of ghosts, hugging monsters, sharing silence, embracing the weird. The call to slow down reminds us that we do not simply act upon the world as if the world were external to our actions or as if we're external to it. We are the world and it's ongoing actioning.

dana: 27:40

The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers. It's about questioning our questions. It's about staying in the places that are haunted. I'll share the link to this essay in the show notes so you can read the whole thing and revel in it, as I do so often. What Bio says when I'm saying here is this is about questioning our questions, is about looking at the ways in which we've been programmed to hurry up and hustle along and be efficient, even in our efforts to do better, do good, and how that hustle ultimately separates us from the world, from each other, from ourselves, because we can become more invested in fixing than seeing, more committed to taming than wilding, more enthralled with smashing monsters than hugging them, more just consumed with running away from ghosts and taking care of them, more used to acting upon things instead of interacting, instead of entangling with them.

dana: 29:19

What I can say now with certainty is that my life as it is now is because of slowdown medicine. It has transformed my life. It continues to on a very regular basis, and I just know that everything that I am like, who I'm becoming and who I've become and, yes, the things that I have in my life, the relationships, the depth, the tenderness, the work that I do and what I feel and experience doing my work, the great satisfaction, the transformation that's available to my clients and my students all slowdown medicine. The way that I understand the world, which feels so much richer, more complex, more nuanced, more full of wonder and awe. Slowdown medicine, without a doubt. And how I see the world and move through the world.

dana: 30:33

What I know is possible. And I see it in all of you too, opening their eyes, opening their hearts, at a time where our attention is probably the smallest that it's ever been. And look at us, look at us, look at us, look at us, seeing each other trying so hard to see and remember that we belong to each other. All of this I understand and I see and I feel a slowdown medicine. So I want to say that I humbly offer this to you, but I think it's already yours. But maybe this is just a moment of permission to acknowledge it and embrace it. Let it in a little deeper into your life.

robot producer janet: 31:28

Oh hi, it's me Janet again. Let's ground all of this slowdown business into a practice, one you can do anytime, anywhere. I honestly don't know how Dana held out on you for a whole season. Deep grounding is her very favorite practice. I don't have a body, but I have a grounding wire. Ha, just a little AI robot humor. Okay, let's ground together.

dana: 31:51

So if this is not the moment for you, maybe you come back to it in a bit or maybe you just listen to the sound of my voice and find your own way and then come back again later. But just find even a little relaxing, centering moment here If you can. Feet flat on the floor, wherever you are, doesn't matter if you're outside, great feet on the earth, even if you're in a building 30 floors up. Feet on the floor, proxy for the earth. This is energetic work Breathing in through your nose, nice and slow and deep, if that feels good for you, otherwise through your mouth and then out through your mouth, and we'll do a few of those first, and if it feels good to close your eyes, and that's something you can do right now, please do Good and now let your body guide you into a breath that feels soft and comfortable. Good, and now bring your attention, your breath, to the core, to your core, to this circumference of your abdomen. This is a place that holds a lot of energy, sometimes stress, judgment, different things for us, and so, breathing in, see how it feels to physically let your belly fill up with breath. If you got to loosen those pants, go for it, and we're all wearing probably elastic pants after the past few years anyway. Exhaling, bring the navel back towards the spine, really push the air out. Your attention is calming down slowly to this circumference of your abdomen. You are visualizing it like a tree trunk, a thick, beautiful modeled bark, and on your next exhale you are going to stretch and extend that tree trunk from your core all the way down to your seat, through the layers of building, down into the earth, through the water table layers of city, wherever you are down, and down through the crust and mantle layers of the planet, the outer core, and then the molten iron crystal inner core of our beautiful Mother Earth, several miles high and wide, this inner core roiling, ancient, alive. And visualize, breathe, feel, experience your grounding trunk wrapping around this core three times and pulling snugly. Good. And now, on this next breath, you are going to let that wrap around, just melt right into the earth. So instead of you peeing this separate entity wrapping around, you, get to just melt and soften right into the planet and just feel this connection all the way from the core of the planet, all the way up to your little spot. And we're going to just leave this here, this connection which is always here. You can come to it anytime. It's always, always, always here for you. If you feel a little spun out out of your body, busy, busy, busy, swirl, swirl, swirl, just come back. Remember this connection. If the tree trunk helps you, great, if it's another color or visualization, just go with whatever feels right, but remember this connection, breathe into it. Take a few breaths here, always Practice with this Practice.

dana: 35:54

Slowing down, grounding continues to be one of my most favorite, most accessible sometimes I just need it to be easy and most rewarding practices to help me slow down, to support that slow down medicine, to support that spaciousness, to support me being truly generous with my attention and presence. May it be so for you as well. That is my wish. We all slow down and remember how we belong to each other. Go forth, my darling, with your attention and your urethra burning bright, make space inside of yourself and then soften that border and let it pour out around you. And maybe it's just a trickle, a hot burning trickle.

dana: 37:08

Oh, my god, I cannot stop. I'm sorry. Or maybe it's a gusher. Either way, it's perfect. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me on this journey. I cannot wait to bring you season two. So just go back, listen to the previous episodes, play around in the practices, embrace your inner, cry baby. Slow the fuck down and I will see you on the flip. Smell you later Crying in my decusy. If you enjoyed what we did here today, go over to wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast and give us a rating this many stars Five as your heart desires.

robot cohost alex: 38:21

Five stars though.

dana: 38:23

The music and other musical bits by the very talented Kat Autison, sound designed and editing by the effervescent Rose Blake Long. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to playing with you more in my jacuzzi. That sounded dirtier than I meant it, but you know what I mean.