In Praise of Slow

by Carl Honore

  Often CAM is a last resort for patients failed by Western medicine. Nik Stoker, a twenty-seven-year-old advertising manager in London, used to suffer from excruciating menstrual pains. Every month, her hormones went haywire, waking her in the night with hot flushes and condemning her to chronic fatigue in the day. Her emotions yo-yoed wildly, and she found it hard to work. Eventually, her doctor put her on the contraceptive Pill, a common remedy for menstrual pains. For years, she bounced from one brand of Pill to the next, never curing the problem, and suffering side effects. The drugs made her feel like she was carrying a cannonball in her stomach and legs. Sometimes she could hardly walk. “I felt like I was going bananas,” she says. When scans and even investigative surgery failed to pinpoint the source of her woes, doctors offered little sympathy, telling her that all women suffered menstrual pains and that the only thing for it was a hot water bottle and a good rest. “They made me feel like I was just moaning, you know, just wasting their time,” she says.

  In desperation, Stoker went to see Tom Lawrence, an acupuncturist-cum-herbalist recommended by a friend. It was her first foray into CAM, but his relaxed, holistic approach put her at ease right away. The first consultation lasted more than an hour, during which Stoker talked and talked and talked, not only about her symptoms but also about her diet, career, mood, social life and hobbies. Lawrence wanted a complete picture. Stoker felt someone was finally listening to her. The treatment itself was a long way from Medicine 101. To realign and rebalance the energy lines coursing through her body, Lawrence inserted a forest of needles into her lower legs and wrists. He asked Stoker to stop eating dairy products, and made her some capsules containing a dozen herbs, including field mint, angelica root and liquorice. Mainstream medics may scoff at the methods, but the results are real enough. After her first appointment, Stoker felt less tense than she had in years. A dozen sessions later, the menstrual pains had more or less cleared up. Her life is transformed. “I’m a different person now,” she says.

  Like many patients who reach beyond conventional medicine, Stoker thinks CAM has healed both her body and her mind. She feels less irritable now, more able to cope with stress and the fast pace of life in London. “You know that sickly, worked-up feeling you get when you have a million things to do and you don’t even know where to start?” she says. “Well, I don’t get that so much anymore. I have a lot more calmness and clarity of mind.”

  As long as CAM remains on the medical fringe, however, patients will have to negotiate a minefield of misinformation. There are plenty of charlatans eager to cash in on the fashion for alternative therapies, promising “holistic” care and then delivering a pale imitation of it. It takes years to learn the techniques of Shiatsu or Ayurvedic massage, yet unqualified hairdressers offer them as a post-cut extra. Often the improper use of CAM therapies is nothing more than an expensive waste of time. But sometimes it can do real damage. Some studies suggest that St. John’s wort, a herbal remedy for depression, can interfere with drugs used to treat cancer and HIV. And some CAM cures have been very misleadingly sold: in China, the herb ma huang (ephedra) is the traditional remedy for short-term respiratory congestion, but American companies marketed it as a dietary aid and energy booster. The result was a string of deaths, heart attacks and strokes.

  Gradually, though, law and order is coming to what some regard as the Wild West of medicine. Governments are drawing up codes of practice and establishing minimum standards for some CAM practices. In 2001, the UK finally set up an official register of osteopaths. A dozen US states have passed laws to license naturopaths, healers who practice a range of alternative therapies from homeopathy to herbalism. Critics warn that the “formalization” of CAM could stifle innovation—even the most ancient healing tradition is always evolving. Even if that is true, though, winning an official seal of approval will bring benefits, not least funding from the public purse.

  At the moment, most people pay for CAM out of their own pockets. And many treatments are not cheap. In London, a single session of acupuncture can cost over US$60 dollars. Persuading the state to pick up the tab will not be easy. At a time when the cost of health care is skyrocketing, governments are in no mood to extend coverage to new treatments, especially those supported by scant scientific evidence. That is why CAM is often treated more as a luxury than a necessity. Against a backdrop of economic hard times, the state medical insurance scheme in Germany has cut back the number of alternative treatments it covers.

  Yet there may be an economic case for spending public money on at least some CAM therapies. To start with, alternative medicine can be cheaper than conventional rivals. A course of Shiatsu massage might fix a back problem that would otherwise lead to expensive surgery. In Germany, St. John’s wort is now used to treat more than half of all cases of depression. Studies show the herb has fewer side effects than prescription antidepressants. And at 25 cents a day it is a lot cheaper than Prozac.

  CAM may be able to lower health care budgets in other ways, too. The holistic mind-body approach favoured by many practitioners puts the stress on prevention, which is cheaper than cure. CAM also seems to excel at treating chronic illnesses, which gobble up around 75% of all health spending in the industrialized world. In the United States that adds up to nearly a trillion dollars a year.

  The number crunchers are taking note. In Britain, where the state medical system is notoriously cash-strapped, hospitals are starting to fund treatments such as aromatherapy, homeopathy and acupuncture. Around 15% of American hospitals offer some form of CAM. In 2003, for the first time, two naturopathic physicians were appointed to the committee that decides which treatments the US Medicare program will fund.

  Many private companies now build CAM into their benefit packages. Microsoft will pay for its employees to see a naturopath. On both sides of the Atlantic, meanwhile, leading insurance companies are footing the bill for a growing number of CAM treatments. Chiropractic care and osteopathy top the list, but many private health care plans now cover homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture, biofeedback, massage therapy and herbal remedies. A half-dozen US states now oblige insurers to cover at least some alternative therapies. In Europe, insurance companies already offer lower life insurance premiums to people who meditate regularly.

  Nevertheless, acceptance from the insurance industry is not the only guarantee that an alternative therapy actually works. At the Hale Clinic, Danira Caleta practises what must be one of the slowest and most gentle forms of medicine, reiki, which involves channelling energy by holding the hands above the body. The aim is to work in harmony with the patient, activating his or her “internal doctor.” Though insurance companies shy away from reiki, more than a hundred hospitals in the United States now offer it, and Caleta is deluged with people willing to pay from their own pockets.

  Marlene Forrest turned to her for help in 2003. The fifty-five-year-old had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and was facing a double mastectomy. Memories of her father’s death after an operation ten years earlier had sent her into a panic, and her mind was racing from one dark scenario to the next. To calm herself down, and to prepare her body for surgery, Forrest booked an appointment with Caleta.

  Caleta combines reiki with other techniques to heal and relax. She starts off by steering the patient through a deep-breathing exercise, and then uses guided meditation to help them visualize a peaceful scene in nature. “People who live in cities respond especially well to making that connection with nature,” she says. “It really calms them down.”

  After five sessions with Caleta, Forrest’s anxiety melted away, and she went into hospital feeling serene. As she lay in the ward, waiting to go under the knife, she worked through the breathing exercises, the meditation and the visualization. When the porters came to wheel her into the theatre, she was actually smiling. “I just felt so relaxed,” she says. “Like I was ready for anything.”

  Following the operation, Forrest, who runs a retirement home in London, made such a miraculous recovery
that hospital staff dubbed her “superwoman.” Apart from a tiny initial dose, she needed no painkillers at all. “The nurses and the doctors were amazed,” she says. “They kept looking in on me to see if I needed any morphine, but I didn’t. They said I must be brave or have a high pain threshold, but that wasn’t it at all; I simply wasn’t in any pain.” The breast-care nurse was so impressed she urged Caleta to treat more cancer patients.

  Caleta’s brand of healing is not only for the clinically unwell. It can also help people develop a Slow frame of mind. Just ask David Lamb. In 2002, the busy, thirty-seven-year-old textile agent came down with labyrinthitis, an inflammation of the inner ear that causes dizziness. Unhappy with the care on offer from his GP, he booked a few sessions with Caleta, who shaved four weeks off his recovery time. What really impressed Lamb, though, was the slowing, soothing effect that the treatment had on his mind. Long after the labyrinthitis cleared up, he continues to visit Caleta every three weeks. “Everyone has to find a way of dealing with the stress and the fast pace of life in London,” he says. “For some people it’s yoga, for others it’s the gym or gardening. For me it’s reiki.” An hour under Caleta’s hands usually helps Lamb de-stress and slow down. Her healing touch has also led him to rethink his priorities. “Reiki slows you down by making you think about the things that are really important in your life—your kids, your partner, your friends,” he says. “It makes you realize that rushing about trying to land the next big deal, earn more money or buy a bigger house is actually pretty meaningless.” Which does not mean that Lamb plans to give up his job and join a commune. Not a chance. Instead, he uses the slowness of reiki to cope better in the fast-moving business world. Before big meetings, when his head is spinning, he stills his mind with the visualization and breathing exercises. Not long ago, he visited Caleta to calm his nerves two days before negotiating a large contract with an overseas supplier. On the big day, he strode confidently into the meeting, made his case lucidly, and closed the deal. “I am a businessman, and I like to make money, but there is a right way to do it,” he says. “Even if you’re in an aggressive environment, you can approach it calmly. Reiki gives you an edge by bringing out that calmness. A calm mind gives you more confidence, more power.”

  Not surprisingly, Caleta is branching out from hospitals and clinics to the workplace. She recently treated Esther Porta, a thirty-year-old consultant at a leading PR agency in London. For the second time in five years, Porta had come down with optic neuritis, a nasty inflammation of the optic nerve that triggers a temporary loss of vision. Thanks to Caleta, her recovery was so quick and so thorough that even her doctor was astounded. When colleagues noted how well she looked, Porta owned up to using a healer. Rather than smirking, the company brass wanted to know more. One member of the board has suggested bringing Caleta into the office to help the whole staff slow down and boost their health.

  Intrigued by the rave reviews, and fed up with the failure of physiotherapy, sports massage and medication to fix my leg, I decide to give reiki a try. Caleta arranges to put me through the paces on a Monday afternoon at the Hale Clinic. She is a reassuring presence, a forty-three-year-old Australian with laughing eyes and an easy smile. The treatment room is small and white, with a tall window looking out onto the back of the building behind. There are no crystals, no star charts, no incense sticks, none of the New Age trappings I was expecting. Instead, it looks very much like my GP’s office.

  Caleta begins by asking me about all kinds of things that never came up in my hurried consultation with the orthopaedic specialist: my diet, work routine, emotional state, family life, sleeping pattern. She also listens closely to a blow-by-blow account of how the pain in the leg has shifted and changed. When there is nothing more to say, I lie down on the treatment table, and close my eyes.

  The first step is to slow down my breathing. Caleta tells me to inhale deeply through the nose, allowing the abdomen to expand, and then exhale through the mouth. “It’s a Chi Kung technique, to get the energy circulating again,” she says. Then we move on to the guided meditation. Caleta talks me into a beautiful beach scene: a tropical sun; blue sky; a gentle breeze; warm sand underfoot; a lagoon of still, translucent, turquoise water; an emerald jungle dotted with red hibiscus and yellow and white frangipani. “It’s absolutely spectacular,” she whispers. “And you feel a sense of freedom, openness, stillness, tranquility, peace.” This is true. I can almost feel myself floating on my back in the warm water, gazing up at the sky. Caleta then asks me to imagine a white ball of healing light moving up through my body.

  By the time she is ready to start the reiki, I have forgotten the meaning of the word “stress.” She rubs her hands together and holds them above various parts of my body to get the blocked energy flowing again. Though I cannot see her, I know where she is standing from the strange heat. It seems to come from within me, as though something has been activated deep inside my body. In my lower back, the heat is faint, no more than a whisper of warmth. When Caleta holds her hands above my right leg, it feels positively hot.

  The session lasts an hour and leaves me feeling pleasantly mellow, yet also alert and energized, ready for anything. My leg, though, is unchanged. “It takes time,” says Caleta, reading the disappointment in my face. “The body heals itself at its own pace, so you have to be patient. You can’t rush it.” This neat summary of the Slow philosophy somehow fails to give me hope for the leg, and I leave the clinic with mixed feelings.

  A few days later, though, a breakthrough occurs. The pain in my leg has eased off, and the swelling is down, too. It is the first clear sign of progress in months. I cannot explain it with science, and neither can my orthopaedic surgeon when I meet him again a week later. Maybe Caleta’s willingness to take the time to listen helped kick-start the healing. Or maybe it is possible to use universal energy to help the body repair itself. Whatever the explanation, reiki seems to work for me. My next appointment is already booked.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SEX: A LOVER WITH A

  SLOW HAND

  Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that

  they hurry past it.

  —SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855)

  THERE ARE SOME THINGS a person never lives down. In an interview a few years ago, Sting confessed to a fondness for Tantric sex, and raved about making love to his wife for hours on end. In an instant, the English rocker was the butt of a million jokes. Commentators wondered how he found time to write songs, or how his wife could still walk. By the time Sting tried to play down his dabblings in Tantra, it was already too late. He was forever fixed in the public imagination as the priapic pop star. Even today, DJs introduce his songs with snide references to never-ending nooky.

  Sting should have known better. There is something inherently ludicrous about taking courses to improve your sexual performance. And Tantra, a mystical blend of yoga, meditation and sex, is a particularly easy target for scorn. It conjures images of hirsute hippies romping in the nude. In an episode of Sex and the City, Carrie and the girls attend a Tantric workshop. After a long, slow buildup, the male instructor accidentally shoots his seed into Miranda’s hair. She spends the rest of the episode manically wiping her bangs with tissues.

  But Tantra has more to offer than just cheap laughs. All over the world, people are warming to the very Tantric idea that slower sex is better sex. Most of us could certainly devote more time to making love. That may seem, at first glance, like an odd assertion. After all, the modern world is already saturated with sex. From movies and the media to advertising and art, everything is laced with erotic themes and imagery. You get the feeling everyone is at it all the time. Only they’re not. Even if we spend a big chunk of the day watching, talking, fantasizing, joking and reading about sex, we spend very little time actually doing it. A large study carried out in 1994 found that the average American adult devoted a meagre half an hour per week to making love. And when we finally do get down to it, it is often over before it rea
lly gets started. Though statistics on sexual behaviour must always be taken with a pinch of salt, academic surveys and anecdotal evidence suggest that an awful lot of couplings have a whiff of the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am about them. Published in the early 1950s, the historic Kinsey Report famously estimated that 75% of American husbands reach climax within two minutes of penetration.

  Fast sex is not a modern invention—it goes way back, and probably has its roots in the survival instinct. In prehistoric days, copulating quickly made our ancestors less vulnerable to attack, either by a wild beast or a rival. Later, culture added extra incentives to hurry the sex act. Some religions taught that intercourse was for procreation rather than recreation: a husband should climb on, do his duty and climb off again.

  Things are supposed to be different now. The modern world likes to take the Woody Allen view that sex is the most fun you can have without laughing. So why do we still rush it? One reason is that the biological urge to fornicate fast remains hardwired into the human, or at least the male, brain. Our rapid pace of life must take some of the blame, too. Busy schedules militate against long, languid sessions of erotic play. At the end of a hard day, most people are too worn out for sex. Working fewer hours is one way to free up energy and time for sex, which is why couples make love more on vacation. But fatigue and time pressure are not the only reasons for fast sex. Our hurry-up culture teaches that reaching the destination is more important than the journey itself—and sex is affected by the same finishing-line mentality. Even women’s magazines seem more obsessed with orgasm—how intense, how often—than with the foreplay that triggers it. In their book, Tantra: The Secret Power of Sex, Arvind and Shanta Kale wrote, “One of the first victims of Western man’s unseemly haste is his sex life. Efficiency is measured by the speed with which a person completes an act effectively, and an effective act of sex is an act which results in orgasm. … In other words, the quicker the orgasm the more effective the intercourse.” Pornography takes the Western obsession with closing the deal to its ultimate conclusion, reducing sex to a blur of frenzied pumping crowned by the all-important “money shot.”