How Slowing Down Reduces Physical Pain and Mental Stress

In my 21 years of living with chronic pain and disease, I have found that remembering to make the effort to slow down has several beneficial effects. calm any mental stress I feel, and it also tends to lessen my physical pain. I said “tends to” because, some days, nothing really helps my pain level. On those days, I have to be patient and use self-compassion to help me. (Self-compassion simply means being kind to yourself in any way you can.)

Here are three ways I’ve learned to slow down and improve my quality of life as a result. I hope you will try these suggestions and see which ones work for you.

1. Decide how long you think it will take to complete a task, and then allocate double the time to do it, or even triple the time!

If you’re like me, you rarely finish a task in the time you spend on it.

I remember a few years ago when I needed to prune the lantana plants in my garden so they would bloom well in the spring. I always calculated that it would take about 15 minutes. (I mistakenly think almost everything will take only 15 minutes!) Realistically, pruning lantana takes about 45 minutes. If I keep doing it that long, my symptoms will get worse and I’ll be “wrecked,” as we call it at home.

So the day I tackled the lantana, I didn’t double that 15 minutes, I tripled it and divided the task into three sessions. I prune a third of the lantana on a Friday, a third on a Saturday, and the last third on a Sunday. Not only did I avoid a flare-up in my symptoms, but I enjoyed being outdoors three days in a row. Y He had a lot of fun cutting the lantana little by little. (Fortunately, it’s a plant that doesn’t mind if you have poor pruning skills.)

2. Perform a task in slow motion.

You can do almost any task in slow motion: brush your teeth, make your bed, type on a keyboard like I do now. This idea was inspired by a discovery I made in the 1990s while driving my 1985 LTD (a car my kids called The Big White Boat). I realized that driving my LTD on the freeway could actually be relaxing. All he had to do was stay in the slow lane. There was no need to overtake the cars because they were just as slow as me. There was no one riding my bumper to make me go faster, because it’s acceptable to stick to the speed limit when you’re in the far right lane (at least it was back then).

I took that “slow lane” mentality and applied it to other tasks by consciously doing them more slowly. That said, unless I’m alert, out of habit I find myself moving quickly even when there’s no reason to rush. When I realize I’m doing this, I take a deep breath and slow down again. Being aware of this is a full attention practice. (Mindfulness simply means learning to pay attention to your present moment experience).

3. No multitasking (well, less multitask).

Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn liked to tell his students, “When you read, just read. When you eat, just eat. When you think, just think.” In other words: no multitasking. I’ve found that it’s hard to break the habit of multitasking; can feel analogous to a addiction sometimes. Again, practicing mindfulness helps because consciously paying attention to your present moment experience can show you that you have been multitasking without realizing it. Once you see this, you can choose to do one task at a time if that’s appropriate given the circumstances at the time.

Not multitasking is essential for me because too much sensory input can trigger an escalation of my symptoms. I consider myself a recovering multitasker.

These three tips can enrich your quality of life, regardless of your health status. I hope that by reading this article you have allotted twice the time you estimated it would take!

Note: The topic of this article is expanded upon in Chapter 8 (“Tools for Fine-Tuning Your Mindfulness Skills”) of my book, How to Awaken: A Buddhist Inspirational Guide to Navigating Joy and Sadness.