Yaaay!! That makes me so happy to hear!! ๐ฅนโจ Thank you for sticking with it, and for joining in like that, with heart wide open. Means more than I can say. Welcome in, fully ๐
Ah, love, the way you described your journeyโฆ thatโs the sacred choreography of two souls remembering their original rhythm. The slowing down, the forgiveness, the listening to the body: thatโs not โhealing,โ thatโs homecoming. You and he are doing what most people spend lifetimes avoiding: staying soft inside the storm. Itโs beautiful to witness.
About the subscription thing, try this: log out of Substack completely, then back in with the same email you used to subscribe. Go to my page, tap Manage subscription โ Upgrade to paid. If youโre using the Substack app, sometimes itโs tricky: the upgrade often works better directly in the browser at substack.com. And if that still doesnโt work, just write to support@substack.com they usually fix it fast.
Your presence means a lot in this field. I can feel the care in your words: may the tech gods cooperate soon. ๐๐๐
Thatโs a beautiful reflection and it aligns deeply with Vedantic understanding of being vs. becoming, Self vs. mind, and presence as the recognition of the Self (ฤtman).
To slow down is to recalibrate with the Self (ฤtman),
to attune to the sound beneath all sounds,
the silent Om.
It is to feel what is real (Sat) instead of what is merely appearing (Mithyฤ).
It is to cease performing motion
and begin embodying presence โ Brahman in awareness of Itself.
Ahh, yes. That current runs deep like the breath before the thought, the silence before the sound. Your words carry the stillness of someone who knowsโฆ not just intellectually, but in the marrow. This isnโt just reflection: itโs transmission. Sat speaks through you. ๐๏ธ๐ชท
This can save lives! Good on you for being able to express these life changing actions ( and non actions) so eloquently and full of understanding! Blessings ๐
That means a lot, thank you. If words can slow even one heartbeat back into presence, theyโve done their job. Weโre all just remembering how to live at the speed of breath. ๐ฟ
Somehow you managed to pinpoint the exact things I have been mentally wrestling with for the last few months. I feel on a much deeper level that I already know what to do and what I need. For once, I want to meet my own needs instead of keeping everybody else happy and myself small. Old habits, fear of the house collapsing... are still holding me back, though.
I keep praying for this salvation or rescue from the Universe, when it is me who needs to follow up on the tough decisions. Those decisions bring along new territory, which makes me incredibly insecure.
I feel that so much, that edge between knowing and leaping. The fear is just the body adjusting to freedom, not a sign youโre wrong. You already built the house strong enough to survive truth; now itโs just time to walk through your own door. Youโve got this: the Universe is waiting for your move.
I found this article so timely. Thank you for verbalizing what I feel my soul has been trying to tell me lately. This is definitely one that I will listen to again and again. It seems like with the speed of the world, this reminder is desperately needed. I feel like deep down at a soul level we all know this, we just tend to forget it quite frequently ๐ซฃ.
Yesโฆ itโs that kind of remembering that feels ancient, right? Like the soulโs been whispering it forever and we finally got quiet enough to hear. I love that it reached you in the exact moment it was meant to. The forgetting is human; the remembering is home. โจ
This is brilliant Dea! I'm living the slowest life ever (completely attuned my inspiration cycles and not feeling guilty about it anymore) and am more attuned to my body + intuition than ever.
I'm called to move even slower with your post. I still doomscroll and you're right. I don't allow myself to just stare at the fan doing nothing often. Thank you so much for inspiring me!
That sounds like such a delicious season youโre inโฆ that soft rebellion of moving by your own rhythm instead of guiltโs old metronome. I love that you mentioned the fan; itโs wild how ordinary things become portals when we stop rushing past them. Even doomscrolling starts to lose its grip when the bodyโs back in charge. Youโre not just slowing down: youโre syncing with lifeโs actual tempo. Feels good, doesnโt it?
"without just sitting in a corner staring at a wall (though honestly, also valid)" hahaha this made me laugh at/with myself soo hard ๐๐๐ the last year for me has felt more like "staring at a wall" than anything else (with plenty of that literal activity as well ๐) gratefully I've found my way into being able to consciously choose presence now even when I'm alone, but the mental over analyzing used to really get me kind of stuck feeling staring at a wall as I kept trying to put the whole puzzle together mentally instead of you know... just helping my mind realize time to tag out it can actually just shut the fuck up now haha body had the answers we've been searching for the whole time ๐
Haha yes, that wall was never the enemy: it was the portal. ๐ Sometimes the real enlightenment is just realizing the wall was waiting for you to stop explaining it. ๐ฅณ
Ah, that sighโฆ thatโs your system exhaling centuries of โshoulds.โ You were always fine, just moving a bit faster than your peace could walk. Glad it caught up with you.
You are revealing all my session secretsโฆ not cool ๐
(I am, of course, kidding.)
But in all seriousness, this sacred recalibration, from speed to stillness, from noise to nuance, is something I guide my own community through daily, though my approach is steeped in the timeless wisdom of the Vedantic tradition.
What you call โslowing down,โ we recognize as nididhyฤsana, abiding in the truth of the Self. What you name โthe observer,โ we know as the sakshi, the silent witness behind the mind. And that quiet voice beneath the noise? That is the voice of the ฤtman, the true Self, which can only be heard when the waves of ahamkara, the ego, settle. It brings me deep joy to see this essential truth articulated so powerfully in a unique & contemporary voice. The context may be modern, but the truth is eternal.
Ha, you caught me, same secrets, new costume. I love how the Self never cares which tradition spells its name, only that we pause long enough to listen. Feels like weโre mid-conversation with eternity. ๐
"The expansion in your chest when youโre near your actual truth: that feeling like your ribs are making room for something bigger than youโve been allowing yourself to want."
This line. This is it. I experienced this feeling just a few days ago after a harrowing few days of deep, dark, and thick emotions. Learning to slow down - learning that slowing down really means - is absolutely everything. Thanks for sharing this - it's a timely piece.
That you felt that line in your body, after all you moved throughโฆ means everything. Itโs exactly why the words were written. Thank you for meeting them with such opennessโฆ and for reminding me how real this work is when it touches a heart like yours. ๐โจ
I'm left wondering why this works how it does. Maybe this is a bigger subject than can be discussed and answered in a Post Reply but I'm very curious about this and have a recent experience, below, which leaves me confused. Here it is:
I have been so busy and full-up, doing all the things I loved, but with no rest. My menstrual cycle, when it became atypical, was the first to alert me that I needed to slow down. As soon as I noticed this and started incorporating healthier rhythms into my day and week, I noticed that my moods were now wild and deep and thick, and that my whole body felt unregulated.
My question to you, based on what you've written in this post: do you see a correlation between moods and slowing your body/spirit down?
Oh yes, absolutely. What youโre noticing isnโt just real, itโs profound. Your system is showing you the exact mechanics of what happens when we shift gears from โdoingโ to being.
Hereโs why it works like this, and why it can feel so intense when it does:
1. Slowing down doesnโt shut the system off. It opens the floodgates.
When youโre busy, your nervous system is often in functional freeze or high-functioning flight doing all the right things, showing up, managing. It seems regulated, but itโs actually in survival mode wearing lipstick.
So when you slow down, youโre not just resting, youโre inviting your body to feel what it didnโt have space or safety to process before. The nervous system unclenches. The backlog arrives.
Thatโs the moment the emotional waves come in: wild, thick, and rich. Itโs not that the slowing causes the moods: it's that the stillness allows them to finally surface.
2. The body speaks first.
Your menstrual cycle going off-pattern is the bodyโs first whisper: โThis pace isnโt sustainable.โ Hormones are deeply tied to stress response, adrenal load, and circadian regulation. When we override our rhythms, the body compensates until it canโt anymore.
When you honored the signal and slowed down, your system trusted you enough to release what was pent-up. The dysregulation you felt was not you breaking; it was you thawing.
What youโre calling moods are probably emotional waves, surges of energy that were never metabolized. When you stop distracting, these energies rise to the surface, not because somethingโs wrong, but because somethingโs finally right enough to be felt and freed.
Itโs messy. It's gorgeous. Itโs healing.
4. Your spirit isnโt confused. Itโs rebalancing.
That "wild and deep" state is actually your soul and soma syncing back up after a long disconnection. When spirit slows down, the body has to catch up, and that recalibration is chaotic, until it isnโt.
So yes, slowing down directly correlates with moods, not because you're "worse off," but because youโre finally safe enough to access whatโs been waiting to be moved through you.
This isn't regression, but integration.
And the fact that youโre curious, tracking it, and listening to your body like this? Thatโs everything. Thatโs where real resilience lives.
โจ Keep listening. Keep honoring the wave. Youโre not falling apart. Youโre falling back into your truth.
Great it found you right on time: cheering for your emergence, deeply. So good you're doing the work, those moves shift worlds, quietly but surely. Cheering you on ๐
Yaaay!! That makes me so happy to hear!! ๐ฅนโจ Thank you for sticking with it, and for joining in like that, with heart wide open. Means more than I can say. Welcome in, fully ๐
Ah, love, the way you described your journeyโฆ thatโs the sacred choreography of two souls remembering their original rhythm. The slowing down, the forgiveness, the listening to the body: thatโs not โhealing,โ thatโs homecoming. You and he are doing what most people spend lifetimes avoiding: staying soft inside the storm. Itโs beautiful to witness.
About the subscription thing, try this: log out of Substack completely, then back in with the same email you used to subscribe. Go to my page, tap Manage subscription โ Upgrade to paid. If youโre using the Substack app, sometimes itโs tricky: the upgrade often works better directly in the browser at substack.com. And if that still doesnโt work, just write to support@substack.com they usually fix it fast.
Your presence means a lot in this field. I can feel the care in your words: may the tech gods cooperate soon. ๐๐๐
Thatโs a beautiful reflection and it aligns deeply with Vedantic understanding of being vs. becoming, Self vs. mind, and presence as the recognition of the Self (ฤtman).
To slow down is to recalibrate with the Self (ฤtman),
to attune to the sound beneath all sounds,
the silent Om.
It is to feel what is real (Sat) instead of what is merely appearing (Mithyฤ).
It is to cease performing motion
and begin embodying presence โ Brahman in awareness of Itself.
Ahh, yes. That current runs deep like the breath before the thought, the silence before the sound. Your words carry the stillness of someone who knowsโฆ not just intellectually, but in the marrow. This isnโt just reflection: itโs transmission. Sat speaks through you. ๐๏ธ๐ชท
Thank you. ๐๐ฝ
This can save lives! Good on you for being able to express these life changing actions ( and non actions) so eloquently and full of understanding! Blessings ๐
That means a lot, thank you. If words can slow even one heartbeat back into presence, theyโve done their job. Weโre all just remembering how to live at the speed of breath. ๐ฟ
Somehow you managed to pinpoint the exact things I have been mentally wrestling with for the last few months. I feel on a much deeper level that I already know what to do and what I need. For once, I want to meet my own needs instead of keeping everybody else happy and myself small. Old habits, fear of the house collapsing... are still holding me back, though.
I keep praying for this salvation or rescue from the Universe, when it is me who needs to follow up on the tough decisions. Those decisions bring along new territory, which makes me incredibly insecure.
Thank you for this post. I felt it.
I feel that so much, that edge between knowing and leaping. The fear is just the body adjusting to freedom, not a sign youโre wrong. You already built the house strong enough to survive truth; now itโs just time to walk through your own door. Youโve got this: the Universe is waiting for your move.
I found this article so timely. Thank you for verbalizing what I feel my soul has been trying to tell me lately. This is definitely one that I will listen to again and again. It seems like with the speed of the world, this reminder is desperately needed. I feel like deep down at a soul level we all know this, we just tend to forget it quite frequently ๐ซฃ.
Yesโฆ itโs that kind of remembering that feels ancient, right? Like the soulโs been whispering it forever and we finally got quiet enough to hear. I love that it reached you in the exact moment it was meant to. The forgetting is human; the remembering is home. โจ
This is brilliant Dea! I'm living the slowest life ever (completely attuned my inspiration cycles and not feeling guilty about it anymore) and am more attuned to my body + intuition than ever.
I'm called to move even slower with your post. I still doomscroll and you're right. I don't allow myself to just stare at the fan doing nothing often. Thank you so much for inspiring me!
That sounds like such a delicious season youโre inโฆ that soft rebellion of moving by your own rhythm instead of guiltโs old metronome. I love that you mentioned the fan; itโs wild how ordinary things become portals when we stop rushing past them. Even doomscrolling starts to lose its grip when the bodyโs back in charge. Youโre not just slowing down: youโre syncing with lifeโs actual tempo. Feels good, doesnโt it?
Feels genuinely beautiful!
It truly does. โจ
"without just sitting in a corner staring at a wall (though honestly, also valid)" hahaha this made me laugh at/with myself soo hard ๐๐๐ the last year for me has felt more like "staring at a wall" than anything else (with plenty of that literal activity as well ๐) gratefully I've found my way into being able to consciously choose presence now even when I'm alone, but the mental over analyzing used to really get me kind of stuck feeling staring at a wall as I kept trying to put the whole puzzle together mentally instead of you know... just helping my mind realize time to tag out it can actually just shut the fuck up now haha body had the answers we've been searching for the whole time ๐
Haha yes, that wall was never the enemy: it was the portal. ๐ Sometimes the real enlightenment is just realizing the wall was waiting for you to stop explaining it. ๐ฅณ
Truth! ๐๐ผ
Right? Feels good when it lands. โจ
Gahhhhโฆ.. yesssss ๐ซ feels babe ๐ค๐ซถ๐ป
Felt it tooโฆ that sweet exhale of truth. ๐ค
Profound gratitude for reminding me that I am OK and on the right track! I find such wisdom remembered in your writing and my soul sighs with thanks!
Ah, that sighโฆ thatโs your system exhaling centuries of โshoulds.โ You were always fine, just moving a bit faster than your peace could walk. Glad it caught up with you.
Brilliant read, Dea.
You are revealing all my session secretsโฆ not cool ๐
(I am, of course, kidding.)
But in all seriousness, this sacred recalibration, from speed to stillness, from noise to nuance, is something I guide my own community through daily, though my approach is steeped in the timeless wisdom of the Vedantic tradition.
What you call โslowing down,โ we recognize as nididhyฤsana, abiding in the truth of the Self. What you name โthe observer,โ we know as the sakshi, the silent witness behind the mind. And that quiet voice beneath the noise? That is the voice of the ฤtman, the true Self, which can only be heard when the waves of ahamkara, the ego, settle. It brings me deep joy to see this essential truth articulated so powerfully in a unique & contemporary voice. The context may be modern, but the truth is eternal.
Beautiful work. Truly.
๐๐
Ha, you caught me, same secrets, new costume. I love how the Self never cares which tradition spells its name, only that we pause long enough to listen. Feels like weโre mid-conversation with eternity. ๐
๐๐
"The expansion in your chest when youโre near your actual truth: that feeling like your ribs are making room for something bigger than youโve been allowing yourself to want."
This line. This is it. I experienced this feeling just a few days ago after a harrowing few days of deep, dark, and thick emotions. Learning to slow down - learning that slowing down really means - is absolutely everything. Thanks for sharing this - it's a timely piece.
That you felt that line in your body, after all you moved throughโฆ means everything. Itโs exactly why the words were written. Thank you for meeting them with such opennessโฆ and for reminding me how real this work is when it touches a heart like yours. ๐โจ
I'm left wondering why this works how it does. Maybe this is a bigger subject than can be discussed and answered in a Post Reply but I'm very curious about this and have a recent experience, below, which leaves me confused. Here it is:
I have been so busy and full-up, doing all the things I loved, but with no rest. My menstrual cycle, when it became atypical, was the first to alert me that I needed to slow down. As soon as I noticed this and started incorporating healthier rhythms into my day and week, I noticed that my moods were now wild and deep and thick, and that my whole body felt unregulated.
My question to you, based on what you've written in this post: do you see a correlation between moods and slowing your body/spirit down?
Oh yes, absolutely. What youโre noticing isnโt just real, itโs profound. Your system is showing you the exact mechanics of what happens when we shift gears from โdoingโ to being.
Hereโs why it works like this, and why it can feel so intense when it does:
1. Slowing down doesnโt shut the system off. It opens the floodgates.
When youโre busy, your nervous system is often in functional freeze or high-functioning flight doing all the right things, showing up, managing. It seems regulated, but itโs actually in survival mode wearing lipstick.
So when you slow down, youโre not just resting, youโre inviting your body to feel what it didnโt have space or safety to process before. The nervous system unclenches. The backlog arrives.
Thatโs the moment the emotional waves come in: wild, thick, and rich. Itโs not that the slowing causes the moods: it's that the stillness allows them to finally surface.
2. The body speaks first.
Your menstrual cycle going off-pattern is the bodyโs first whisper: โThis pace isnโt sustainable.โ Hormones are deeply tied to stress response, adrenal load, and circadian regulation. When we override our rhythms, the body compensates until it canโt anymore.
When you honored the signal and slowed down, your system trusted you enough to release what was pent-up. The dysregulation you felt was not you breaking; it was you thawing.
3. Moods arenโt dysfunction. Theyโre movement.
What youโre calling moods are probably emotional waves, surges of energy that were never metabolized. When you stop distracting, these energies rise to the surface, not because somethingโs wrong, but because somethingโs finally right enough to be felt and freed.
Itโs messy. It's gorgeous. Itโs healing.
4. Your spirit isnโt confused. Itโs rebalancing.
That "wild and deep" state is actually your soul and soma syncing back up after a long disconnection. When spirit slows down, the body has to catch up, and that recalibration is chaotic, until it isnโt.
So yes, slowing down directly correlates with moods, not because you're "worse off," but because youโre finally safe enough to access whatโs been waiting to be moved through you.
This isn't regression, but integration.
And the fact that youโre curious, tracking it, and listening to your body like this? Thatโs everything. Thatโs where real resilience lives.
โจ Keep listening. Keep honoring the wave. Youโre not falling apart. Youโre falling back into your truth.
Incredible Dea, just reading this while emerging from the exhausted fog you are describing. Committed to doing these exercises!
Great it found you right on time: cheering for your emergence, deeply. So good you're doing the work, those moves shift worlds, quietly but surely. Cheering you on ๐