The Slowly Little Snail

Why is ‘slow’ so rich & teaming with life ?

I was recently hiking the mountains near my home in the Cévènnes and came across a beautifully large & fantastically camouflaged snail. Her shell was wide, yet flat. Unlike her British counterparts who are just all around fat, she carried an elegant & wide shell with delicate stripes of fawn brown & chocolate. She was none the wiser that I nearly landed on her smack on the middle of that rocky path. Her little eye stalks reaching, searching and calmly meandering her way to who knows where. 

So I stopped, relieved not to have crushed her, and I observed. I took the time. I slowed down. I breathed. I aligned with her pace. Oh what a glorious and free pace. No chains on her. Just liberty to BE. 

When we slow, there is a deactivation of the sympathetic nervous system. That fight, flight, freeze response to the external stuff of life. 

When we slow we trigger the engagement of the parasympathetic nervous system. Cortisol, adrenaline, and heart rate levels decrease. We stay in our conscious thinking ‘mind’, in lieu of resorting to the emergency measures of the subconscious. We’ve all experience those. That’ll be the squealing, shouting, startled, attack, crouching & cowering ninja moves we never knew we possessed. 

Fact : for every 1 neuron fired within the conscious mind there are 1,000,000 neurons that fire within the subconscious. Neurons being resident all throughout the body, in the two hemispheres of the cerebellum, in the heart, in the gut, in the kidneys etc. You get the picture. Our conscious and subconscious are body-wide, probably no cell discounted. So there’s a challenge to stay, more often than not, in the conscious mind, in the slow. 

Another part of this puzzle is that when we choose to do something in the physical the emotions follow. It’s not that we first have an emotion and then we react physically. There’s the example of the bear chasing the man, he’s frightened because he is running, he’s not running because he is frightened ! He saw the bear, he thought, “They are dangerous, I might die here!” He ran, then he got scared. It’s scientifically the sequence of how the body operates. 

Here we see the choice to run, to move fast .. The faster you’re moving, the more you’re body will respond in fear. The more you’re in fear, the more you’re thinking about yourself. The more that you’re thinking about yourself. The less compassion & kindness you have for others. That’s an issue! 

There is therefore no love in speed & the resulting fear.

The more that you’re hurrying and the more you’re stressing the more you’re missing the Spirit, the Universe and partnering in a symbiosis of Love. 

So take that and use this to your advantage .. slow down .. to a snail’s pace .. on the inside, a slowing of thought, a slowing of breath, a slowing of physical movement & an aligning with the Spirit. 

Slowing down will produce physiological peace in your body, you’ll be open to love, you’ll be open to staying in your body-wide conscious mind. You’ll be open to thinking clearly, you’ll be open to the Spirit, you’ll be receptive to hearing the Spirit, you’ll be receptive to hearing the truth from the Spirit .. the beginning stages of re-pattering the mind .. and the realising of a genuine & lasting transformation ..

Learn from the snail :-)