In Praise of Slow

by Carl Honore

  “Do you live in this neighbourhood?”

  “No, I’m from out of town.”

  “Figures,” he laughs. “Folks don’t do much walking round here.”

  “Yeah, everyone seems to be driving,” I say. “Maybe they should walk more.”

  “Maybe so.” As the squad car pulls away, the officer adds, with gentle irony, “You enjoy that walk now, ya hear.”

  Across the street, a network of underground sprinklers splutters into life, spraying clouds of water over the local baseball field. I stand alone on the sidewalk, amused and appalled. I have just been stopped by the police—for walking.

  Later that same day, Kentlands is also pretty quiet. Most residents are away at work. But there are people on the streets, and they are walking. Everyone says a friendly “hello.” I bump into Anjie Martinis, who is taking her two little boys to the shops. She and her husband are just about to sell their local row house and move into a larger home a few streets away. We talk about the trials and tribulations of parenthood, and the fact that Kentlands is good place to raise children. “You’d love living here,” she says. And you know what? I think she may be right.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MIND/BODY: MENS SANA IN

  CORPORE SANO

  This art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing

  from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of

  energy in our great men.

  —CAPTAIN J.A. HADFIELD

  ON A CRISP, SPRING MORNING, deep in the Wiltshire countryside, walking seems like the most natural thing in the world. Cattle graze gently in the rolling green fields. Locals trot by on horseback. Birds swoop low above the dense woodlands. The hustle and bustle of city life seems a million miles away. As I stroll along a country lane, gravel scrunching underfoot, I can feel myself shifting down a gear or two, which is as it should be. I am here to learn how to slow down my mind.

  In the war against the cult of speed, the front line is inside our heads. Acceleration will remain our default setting until attitudes change. But changing what we think is just the beginning. If the Slow movement is really to take root, we have to go deeper. We have to change the way we think.

  Like a bee in a flower bed, the human brain naturally flits from one thought to the next. In the high-speed workplace, where data and deadlines come thick and fast, we are all under pressure to think quickly. Reaction, rather than reflection, is the order of the day. To make the most of our time, and to avoid boredom, we fill up every spare moment with mental stimulation. When did you last sit in a chair, close your eyes and just relax?

  Keeping the mind active makes poor use of our most precious natural resource. True, the brain can work wonders in high gear. But it will do so much more if given the chance to slow down from time to time. Shifting the mind into lower gear can bring better health, inner calm, enhanced concentration and the ability to think more creatively. It can bring us what Milan Kundera calls “the wisdom of slowness.”

  Experts think the brain has two modes of thought. In his book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind—Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, Guy Claxton, a British psychologist, calls them Fast Thinking and Slow Thinking. Fast Thinking is rational, analytical, linear, logical. It is what we do under pressure, when the clock is ticking; it is the way computers think and the way the modern workplace operates; it delivers clear solutions to well-defined problems. Slow Thinking is intuitive, woolly and creative. It is what we do when the pressure is off, and we have the time to let ideas simmer at their own pace on the back burner. It yields rich and subtle insights. Scans show the two modes of thought produce different waves in the brain—slower alpha and theta waves during Slow Thinking, faster beta ones during Fast Thinking.

  Relaxation is often a precursor to Slow Thinking. Research has shown that people think more creatively when they are calm, unhurried and free from stress, and that time pressure leads to tunnel vision. In one study, carried out in 1952, participants were asked to encrypt simple phrases into a basic code. Sometimes the researcher handed over the words with no comment, but sometimes he asked them, “Can you do it a little bit faster?” Invariably, the participants floundered when asked to speed up. In a separate study, Canadian researchers found that hospital patients awaiting surgery come up with less creative endings for similes such as “as fat as …” or “as cold as .…”

  These findings match my own experience. My eureka moments seldom come in a fast-paced office or a high-stress meeting. More often they occur when I am in a relaxed state—soaking in the bath, cooking a meal or even jogging in the park. The greatest thinkers in history certainly knew the value of shifting the mind into low gear. Charles Darwin described himself as a “slow thinker.” Albert Einstein was famous for spending ages staring into space in his office at Princeton University. In the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes weighs up the evidence from crime scenes by entering a quasi-meditative state, “with a dreamy vacant expression in his eyes.”

  Of course, Slow Thinking on its own is just indulgence without the rigours of Fast Thinking. We have to be able to seize, analyze and evaluate the ideas that surface from the subconscious—and often we must do so quickly. Einstein appreciated the need to marry the two modes of thought: “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.” That is why the smartest, most creative people know when to let the mind wander and when to knuckle down to hard work. In other words, when to be Slow and when to be Fast.

  So how can the rest of us access Slow Thinking, especially in a world that prizes speed and action? The first step is to relax—put aside impatience, stop struggling and learn to accept uncertainty and inaction. Wait for ideas to incubate below the radar, rather than striving to brainstorm them to the surface. Let the mind be quiet and still. As one Zen master put it, “Instead of saying ‘Don’t just sit there; do something’ we should say the opposite, ‘Don’t just do something; sit there.”

  Meditation is one way to train the mind to relax. It lowers blood pressure and generates more of the slower alpha and theta waves in the brain. And research shows that the effects last long after the meditating ends. In a 2003 study, scientists at the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre found that the Buddhist mix of meditation and mindfulness affects the amygdala, the area of the brain linked to fear, anxiety and surprise, making adherents more serene and less likely to lose their cool.

  Meditation is not new. People of all faiths have been using it for thousands of years in the quest for inner harmony or spiritual enlightenment, which may explain why it has a slightly flaky image. To many, meditation evokes monks with shaved heads chanting “om” in mountaintop temples or New Age types sitting smugly in the lotus position.

  Yet such prejudice is starting to look outdated. Meditation is going mainstream. Ten million Americans now practise it regularly, and meditation rooms are popping up all over the industrial world, from airports, schools and prisons to hospitals and offices. Stressed-out, speed-ravaged professionals, among them die-hard agnostics and atheists, are flocking to spiritual retreats where meditation is on the menu. Some of the least flaky people on earth, including Bill Ford, the CEO and chairman of Ford Motors, are now committed meditators.

  To see how meditation works, and how it might fit into the Slow movement, I sign up for the first three days of a ten-day retreat in rural Wiltshire. The course is run by the International Meditation Centre (IMC), a worldwide Buddhist network that started in Burma in 1952. The British branch opened in 1979, and now occupies a converted redbrick farmhouse and its outbuildings. A modern pagoda rises up from the landscaped garden, its golden spires glinting in the spring sunshine.

  I arrive on a Friday afternoon with some trepidation. Will I be able to sit still for hours on end? Will I be the only person not wearing a sarong? My fellow retreaters, forty in total, hail from all over the world—Britain, Ge
rmany, France, Australia, the United States. On the tables in the cafeteria, bottles of Kikkoman soya sauce jostle with jars of crunchy peanut butter and small pots of Marmite. Many of the participants are practising Buddhists, with shaved heads and the colourful sarongs that are the national dress in Burma. But others are not. They have simply come, like me, in search of a quiet place to learn the art of meditation.

  In the first group session, we gather in a long, narrow room. The lighting is soft. A framed photograph of Sayagyi U Ba Kin, the founder of the IMC network, hangs on the front wall, below a plaque declaring in Burmese and English: “Truth Must Triumph.” Wrapped in blankets, and arranged in four rows, the students sit or kneel on cushioned floor mats. At the head of the class, the teacher perches cross-legged on a stool. He is Roger Bischoff, a mild-mannered Swiss man who bears a strong resemblance to Bill Gates.

  Bischoff explains that we are about to embark on the Eightfold Noble Path as taught by the Buddha. The first step is to purify our actions by observing a moral code: no killing, no stealing, no sex (during our stay), no lying, no drugs or alcohol. Next comes the meditation. The aim is to develop our concentration for the first five days, and then, in the next five days, to use that concentration to gain insight and wisdom. In an ideal world, the students will achieve—or at least be on the road to—enlightenment by Day 10.

  Everything at the Centre is designed to relax and still the mind. Many of the stimuli that keep us buzzing in the modern world are banned. So there is no television, no radio, no reading material, no Internet, no phones. We also observe Noble Silence, which means no chitchat. Life is pared back to the basics: eating, walking, sleeping, washing and meditating.

  There are many ways to meditate. Most involve focusing the mind on a single point: an object, such as a candle or a leaf; a sound or a mantra; or even a concept, such as love, friendship or growing old. The technique at IMC seems simple enough. Close the eyes and breathe in and out through the nose, fixing all attention on a point just above the upper lip. In a gentle, mellifluous voice, Bischoff tells us to slow right down, to relax and focus our minds on the soft touch of the breath just below the nose. This is not as easy as it sounds. My mind seems to have a mind of its own. After five or six breaths, it shoots off like a pinball, ricocheting noisily from one thing to the next. Every time I draw my concentration back to the breath, another barrage of unconnected thoughts comes stampeding through my head—work, family, sports highlights, snippets from pop songs, anything and everything. I begin to worry that there is something wrong with me. Everyone else seems so still and focused. As we all sit there in silent rows, like galley slaves on a ghost ship, I feel the urge to giggle, or shout something silly, like “Fire!”

  Thankfully, though, Bischoff interviews the students twice a day to clock their progress. This is the only time we are permitted to speak, and since it occurs in full view of the whole class, eavesdropping is easy. To my relief, it turns out that everyone else is struggling to achieve stillness of mind. “I feel like I just can’t slow down,” says one young man, despair in his voice. “I’m craving activity.”

  Bischoff offers a steady stream of encouraging words. Even the Buddha had trouble stilling his mind, he tells us. The main thing is not to force it. If you feel tense or agitated, then go lie down, have a snack in the kitchen or take a walk. Outside, the grounds resemble those of a convalescent hospital, with students slowly picking their way through the gardens.

  The meditation clearly has an effect, though, even on the fastest, most stress-addled mind. I feel wonderfully mellow at the end of the first evening. And as the weekend progresses, I begin to slow down without even trying. By Saturday night, I notice that I am taking more time to eat and brush my teeth. I have started walking, instead of running, up the stairs. I am more mindful of everything—my body, its movements, the food I eat, the smell of the grass outside, the colour of the sky. By Sunday night, even the meditation itself is starting to seem within reach. My mind is learning to be quiet and still for longer. I feel less impatient and hurried. In fact, I am so relaxed I do not want to leave.

  Without my realizing it, my brain has also been engaged in some very useful Slow Thinking. By the end of the weekend, ideas for work are bursting up from my subconscious mind like fish jumping in a lake. Before returning to London, I sit in the car scribbling them down.

  Is it possible to transfer that meditative calm from a retreat to the real world? The answer turns out to be a qualified yes. Obviously, the temptation to accelerate is far greater in London than it is in deepest Wiltshire, and few who pass through the IMC program reach a state of perfect Zen. Nevertheless, meditation can take the edge off a hectic urban life.

  After my stint at the Wiltshire retreat, I speak to a number of people to find out what meditating does for them. One is Neil Pavitt, a forty-one-year-old advertising copywriter from Maidenhead, outside London. He started attending retreats at IMC in the early 1990s and gradually became a practising Buddhist. He now sets aside an hour every evening to meditate.

  Meditation provides a bedrock of calm that helps him to negotiate the choppy, fast-moving waters of the advertising world. “It’s like a rock, something that I can always rely on. A solid thing that gives me a grounding, a centre where I can always return to for strength,” he says. “If things get really busy or stressful at work, I’ll just take five or ten minutes to do some breathing exercises, and that will bring back the calm to my mind.”

  Pavitt also finds that meditation unlocks the door to Slow Thinking. “It’s good for the creative part of work because it clears and calms the mind,” he says. “I often find that meditation helps to make a problem become much clearer, or it helps good ideas come up to the surface.”

  Other ways of meditating deliver similar results. More than five million people worldwide now practice transcendental meditation, a simple technique that takes fifteen to twenty minutes twice a day. Though invented in 1957 by an Indian yogi, TM is not anchored to any religious tradition, which is why it appeals to people like Mike Rodriguez, a Chicago-based management consultant. “I liked the idea of calming my mind without having any spiritual or religious baggage attached to it,” he says. Before TM, Rodriguez felt overwhelmed by the pace and pressure of work. Now he feels like an unflappable corporate warrior. “Everything can be spinning around me at a 100 miles an hour—the phones, the email, requests from clients—but I don’t get swept up in it so much anymore,” he says. “I’m like an island of calm in an ocean of craziness.”

  Like Pavitt, Rodriguez feels more creative: “I feel that I come up with more imaginative solutions for my clients now. When you give your mind a chance to slow down, it can really come up with some good stuff.”

  There is even evidence that meditating can make you happy. In 2003, scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison scanned the brains of people with a long experience of Buddhist practice. They found that their left prefrontal lobes, the area of the brain linked with feel-good emotions, were unusually active. In other words, they were physiologically happier. One hypothesis is that regular meditation gives the left prefrontal lobe a permanent boost.

  The findings do not surprise Robert Holford. Every year, the fifty-six-year-old psychoanalyst makes time in his busy schedule to attend a ten-day IMC retreat in Wiltshire. In between, he tries to meditate daily. Meditation gives his mind the confidence to steer clear of dark thoughts. “A still mind is like a taste of freedom,” he says. “It’s like you’re sitting on the bank and also in the river at the same time—you’re engaged with life but you have a wider view of it all, as well. That makes you feel lighter and happier.”

  Despite my earlier skepticism, meditation is now part of my routine. I take short breaks—around ten minutes at a time—to meditate in the middle of the day, and it makes a difference. I return to my desk relaxed and clear-headed. Though such things are hard to measure, I think meditation is making me more mindful, more able to enjoy the moment—more Slow.

&nb
sp; Meditation can pay physical dividends, too. Although the Western philosophical tradition drove a wedge between mind and body after René Descartes in the seventeenth century, the two are clearly connected. Clinical studies suggest that meditating may help keep the body in good working order. Doctors increasingly recommend it to patients as a way to cope with a range of conditions: migraines, heart disease, AIDS, cancer, infertility, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, stomach cramps, premenstrual syndrome, even depression. A five-year study in the United States found that people who practise transcendental meditation are 56% less likely to be hospitalized.

  The fitness world has also discovered the link between mind and body and the role that slowness plays in keeping both in good shape. Of course, the idea of slow exercise goes against the modern grain. The twenty-first-century gym is a temple of sound and fury. Egged on by a thumping soundtrack, people huff and puff on the cardio machines and in aerobics classes. I once saw a gym instructor wearing a T-shirt that said “Go Fast. Go Hard. Or Go Home.” In other words, the only way to build a better body is to pump the heart rate up to the top of the target zone.

  Or is it? Many of the exercise regimes that emerged centuries ago in Asia are based on slowing down the body and stilling the mind—a combination that can offer wider benefits than simply sweating away on a StairMaster.

  Take yoga, an ancient Hindu regimen of physical, spiritual and mental exercises that seeks to bring body, mind and spirit into harmony. The word “yoga” means “unite” in Sanskrit. In the West, though, we tend to focus on the physical side of the discipline—the breathing control, the slow, fluid movements, the postures, or asanas. Yoga can do wonders for the body, firming and toning muscles, fortifying the immune system, boosting blood circulation and increasing flexibility.