040 - Mini Musing: Changing Your Pace
Welcome back to Threshold Moments, dear listener.
In this Mini Musing, I share my desire to find a balance between slow, medium, and fast pacing and my quest for alternative sources of joy and purpose — outside of my Instagram feed.
Join me as I explore the inner pull I have to incorporate faster physical activities while recognizing and honoring the importance of slower pacing for restoration and balance.
Connect with Sarah
Resources
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello, welcome to Mini Musings.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:43]
Today I wanted to talk about fast health, which then led me to, oh, maybe I'll touch into medium and slow. And what does that even mean and how can it be incorporated? I'm going to start off by saying that my husband came home today and I said, oh, I took Arjuna, our dog Arjuna. I took him for a mountain bike. He came with me and I went through the woods and it was so fun.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:09]
And he said you went mountain biking? I said I did. And he said, what inspired that? I said I've really been feeling the need for some fast health and he said, what do you mean? And I said I feel the need to do things that have a faster pace. You know, I've really been practicing slowing down in so many areas. And that requires a lot of trust. But physically, I've been feeling a need for fast. I was an athlete my entire life. And then after having kids, things really slowed down.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:49]
And I have some lifting in my schedule now, but I don't have a lot of athletic endeavors that need my body to quickly read the dynamics around me and adjust to them. And there's something that that does for me, and I think that it does for many when we have some form of fast health. So that's a tiny, tiny little touch into the idea of fast health. And I might say fast health as opposed to fast. What if there's fast health?
Sarah Tacy [00:02:24]
Is there lack of health? Is there dissonance when we're going fast? And so perhaps to give a different side of fast might be that you're running from one thing to the next thing to the next and you're totally like out of your body the whole time. And you're in your head and you're feeling buzzy and you're maybe feeling overwhelmed. And you don't even notice that you're hungry.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:49]
You don't notice your body's needs. You don't notice your preferences. You don't have time. And then you get home and you collapse. So there may be fast in your life. There may be fast in my life. That's the one that I've been purposely trying to slow down, to notice choice that could use or choice that could use an invitation for a different pace and to explore something else. If you remember back in episode 18, I had a podcast on resuscitation, and I'm going to give a little overview because this has something to do with what I'm about to talk about, which is that all of us have a window of tolerance, a window of presence, a range of regulation, a range of resonance, all very similar things. We have a range of things that we can experience in life and feel present and feel in our body. And when our resources are low and our demands are high, that range gets smaller.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:55]
And it may be when the range is small that we can do more things that are fast. We might be, you know, lawyers that can be in really quick dialogue all day long. But to slow down and talk to our kids might just be like, no way. Or we might be people who could be like, oh, I could take a bath for hours, but I can't handle trying to figure these things out at work. Right?
Sarah Tacy [00:04:21]
As the range of resonance, the window of tolerance, as it gets smaller, our capacity to do more gets smaller. And in that episode, I spoke about when we recognize that we're in resuscitation, how can we honor that phase when our eye statements get smaller, where it might feel like the world is against us, where we might not see that there's anyone or anything that's trying to help us, and where the things that we'd usually say, yeah, I'll help with that, or yes, I'd love to go to that. That we might be in a phase where the answer is no to outward energy expenditure, yes to self-care, yes to receiving. And that is my edge. Like that is my work to receive.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:10]
And as the window gets bigger and as we start to build in more conditions, which was another podcast about building in conditions, I'll put that in the show notes, we may notice that we have greater capacity to have a variety of speeds in our life and a variety of activities. And I recently, as I just said, have been like, oh, you know, maybe I want to get back into sprinting. I'm going to do some hill sprints. I'm going to go flip tires. I like love to flip tires with my girlfriends.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:46]
Things that really felt strong and were quick bursts in alchemical alignment. So I'm going to name a few things because some of these theories come from alchemical alignment. It's not that they're new to my life, but it's like the orientation to these maps and these phrases were, and it made things make sense in a new way. So in yoga, I'll start there. In yoga, we have the koshas, we have the physical body, we have the energetic body, we have the mental body.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:21]
We have witness consciousness, which one might say is the spiritual body. We have the bliss body, that which is beyond division, that which may be our blueprint. And in alchemical alignment there is the pemser, which I believe some of this comes from somatic experiencing. And the P stands for physical, the E emotional, the M mental, the S spiritual, the E energetic, the R relational. And from here, you could pull out a million different categories.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:00]
There could be like a sexual category. And the reason why you have these categories could be that, oh, I'm totally frozen. And it's like, are you totally frozen? Or are you frozen in the mental area around a certain thing? Are you frozen in the physical area in a certain thing?
Sarah Tacy [00:07:21]
Do you have a fight going on in the relational area but not the spiritual area? So we can start to differentiate and take away from the all or nothing thinking and say, Oh yeah, in this specific area, I tend to have this response. My body tends to have this combination. And I thought it might be interesting to go through this idea of fast, medium and slow health in the pemser categories. And I wanted to add that Bridget Fixmans, who is on this podcast and you can check her out in the lineup again, I'll put that in the notes, is the one who once said to me, what do you do for a healthy fight outlet?
Sarah Tacy [00:08:11]
I was like, oh, I don't, I don't feel the need to fight. Like I'm not having that impulse. And then I thought to myself, is my impulse to fight frozen? And as she shares on her on the podcast, I believe that she has an aikido practice that she's been doing for I think close to 40 years, that that's a fight outlet. That when I was an athlete and I was fighting for the ball and then I'm sprinting down the field and I have fight and flight.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:42]
That if someone were on a peloton to bring it to something that might be more in the realm of what a listener might have around here would be like, if I have a peloton, then I thought that was a flight and one of my friends was like, really? Because it feels like a fight to me. Like I'm going so hard and I maybe you're fighting the other people on there. You're fighting your old score. It's like, oh, that full outlet and push ups.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:06]
You know, that could be like a push need that gets mad. And then when I think of like dorsal bagel, where it could be similar to a freeze, but instead of a collapse, it's like a relax and connect. Are there any areas in life where we can do that, whether it's with a tree, I'll get into this. So I'm just saying for me, there seems like a similarity between having fight and flight outlets and the freeze. And then like maybe fawn would like go right into the middle a little bit more and the freeze, like a healthy freeze.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:45]
I don't like even saying a healthy freeze, but could there be healthy dorsal vagal? So this morning was a Monday morning and my daughter was sick last week. So I had her Thursday and Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday we had both girls and they were, you know, really having some. They were just really poking each other. And for me, that's not like the easiest dynamic to navigate and it takes a lot of energy.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:16]
And so when both girls went to school, I found myself going to my phone and I almost opened up Instagram, but I had deleted it for the weekend. I've been doing that as a practice just to notice my pull and also open up my free time and just switch patterns so Instagram wasn't immediately there. So that gave me enough of a pause to notice that I was about to collapse into Instagram and use that as my dopamine. And I know I don't always feel great afterwards. And I was feeling a little down this morning, so I remembered that I had been having a craving for some fast health.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:56]
And I decided to start by turning on music and music that's like a little faster than I would generally listen to and Just Dance. And he did. And I felt so good. And then I told you that next I took my dog mountain biking and I got home and I just like out loud. I was like, that was so good.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:16]
That was so fun. So two things I want to name here is that my range of resonance in general is getting bigger. And that also just a month ago, there were so many things stacking that it was kind of shrinking a little bit. And while it was shrinking, I was laying in bed one night and everything in my life had lined up in a way where it was like I had like dinner was made for me that night. And I went to song circle with my girls and things were good with my husband and everything was good.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:51]
And I went to bed. There were some things that I was definitely grieving. And I think this played into it. But I went to bed and I had this thought that was kind of scary. And it was like, that's the point.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:03]
And some people say that this is a midlife thought, like a midlife threshold where you've done all the things you're supposed to do. And maybe, like, in this situation, it's like, I have no one to point my finger at. And I was feeling a little bland. I was feeling a little beige. And, you know, and I could go into the shame of the privilege and like whoever gets to get to the point where it's like I don't have something to point my finger at for my lack of joy in this moment.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:38]
So it was something like that moment was something that helped me say, hey, I have this life to live and I am going to actually prioritize joy. And I am going to not just try to do it all right. Like the idea of like nervous system regulation be regulated. But what if it were about life and joy and challenge? And I mean, I think about like living on purpose with purpose.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:06]
And also what might happen when one is giving of themselves to something bigger and donating time to things and people and missions that matter. And so I started saying yes to even more things that I knew were in alignment with my soul that I knew were a yes. And even if it took a little extra effort with family and scheduling, I've been doing that and this includes like good friendship. So I'm going to say that these are all things that have gotten me especially interested in fast health and having outlets for fight and flight, so that that's not having to all like all that fight and flight doesn't have to all come out in the relational field. That's a big one.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:59]
If fight and flight are also coming out in the physical field in healthy ways that aren't injurious, then maybe not so much of it has to come out in the relational field. Maybe I might not have to ruminate. I might not find myself ruminating in my mind as much, spending my energy on stories about things that aren't happening, but I don't seem to be able to control the stories. So I'm finding in a physical form. And this is also like the yoga again, the coaches of if I work on this layer on this veil that it will begin to trickle through the others, possibly.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:43]
So the fast health of the physical I've named of the emotional might be that I could name my feeling and it doesn't mean I can actually, I actually have access to this all, all the time. But what about those times where I'm naming feelings in the moment? It's a big one for me. And so it might even be like, how are you feeling? And I actually don't have great access to this.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:06]
I often am like, OK, I got a pause. I got to feel into my body. So I would say I'm maybe I'm building into this. I might have fast emotional health where I could say immediately what if I know something is not right? Or immediately I might have fast emotional health if it is reading the emotions of another, but that might go into relational for mental.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:29]
It might be being in a dialogue that really turns you on about a topic that you love and somebody else has a perspective that's slightly different or larger or more focused that gets you to think a little different and the two of you are just going back and forth. Or maybe it's a full group and ideas are ping ponging back and forth and you realize that your enlightenment or your awakening is so much grander when you're in the presence of others who are also in that realm. The spiritual I think could be like downloading in the moment. Like you ask a question and you download the answers in a moment. That you feel divine guidance in the moment and that you can adjust quickly.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:15]
Energetic might be energy healing or I'm going back to like I'm thinking of without being an aikido practitioner. But having some theories shared in our class would be that if somebody is sending their verbal or their emotional energy towards me, that I might energetically shift my body position so that I don't feel like their force and their words are coming right into my body for me to digest. So I might be aware of the energy in a room and make quick adjustments so that I'm not digesting at all. Some people might put an imaginary bubble around their body or a shield or a mirror, or they might be aware of a toroidal field. You don't have to know what all of these things are.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:59]
I'm naming a bunch of them, and immediately they're able to digest and move energy or avoid. And relational, I feel like kind of comes into all these things. But perhaps fast relational is to be authentic without too much effort. It might be a quick yes or no that is true to yourself. This might be standing up for yourself or standing up for something that you believe in in the moment.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:30]
Medium, If we were to move to medium now and going to medium physical, I'm thinking like jogging and yoga and theatrical dance. Modern dance, Energetic. I'm thinking of pausing so we have PE energetic. Oh, excuse me. It's emotional next.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:56]
Yeah. So emotional would be like pausing and noticing. Oh, yes, I do have a feeling. I think this is really like where I sit more often. I do have a feeling and then being able to state it and being aware of the other person's just goes into relational.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:13]
But then to go into somebody else's awareness of, OK, this is where their emotions are. This is where they're coming together. Spiritual. I think of this being like having rituals that you could do every day. That might be your morning practice, that might be noticing the sun or the sky and feeling gratitude.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:34]
I feel like it's things that are kind of woven into the everyday. Now. You guys could have all your own list. You could actually get off of listening to hear and go, oh, I'm going to write down fast, medium, slow. I'm going to write down Pemsor and I'm going to see like what shows up for me for these things because these are just my experiences and my opinions and maybe you're from now they would be different.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:57]
I just really think that it's a worthwhile thing to tune into. So medium energy might like energetic again. I'm thinking like, oh, how would I clear the energy? It's like more ritual again. I'm thinking of like having sage and noticing my movement needs, which might be thought of as physical again, but I might even just notice my energetic and go, OK, I see what state I'm in.
Sarah Tacy [00:19:25]
So there's some mental coming in here and feeling it. I'm going to make some choices depending on the energy I'm feeling. I'm going to rest, I'm going to eat certain foods. I'm going to move my body because I notice my energy and I can respond to it. Relational.
Sarah Tacy [00:19:50]
The relational, I'm thinking of like going for a walk with a friend and having an easy conversation where it might not feel like right away. Everyone's challenging each other's perspectives and ideas, and it's growing and it's expanded. It could be just like easy conversation. Movement might be included. The Pemsor doesn't have to always be isolated.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:14]
They can really weave in quite nicely. It could be getting together with somebody new that you feel like you've known for a long time, or getting together with an old friend and there's just not a lot of thought behind it. And the stories flow easily and maybe there's some laughter and maybe there are some tears. This could also be like medium emotional and the slow. I'm thinking for physical stretching, resting, a bathroom reading which could be like or I'll say snuggling.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:58]
Reading could go into mental but I'm also imagining that there's some relaxation in the body emotional. I love the idea that slow emotional is just like, I don't understand yet. And that's OK. Maybe in five years I'll understand what happened or for some people who do ceremony work that that it's like, wow, that was really big. I'm going to be integrating that for a long time.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:27]
And so I feel like in slow health, there's a lot of trust and a lot of letting go and a lot of divine timing. The mental slow is I'm thinking of meditation, I'm thinking of daydreaming, I'm thinking of looking at the trees, which might be relational and the stars like slow gratitude. This also comes into like the emotional of like slow feeling the presence of where you're at and the spiritual for slow. I really am going to go back and say I feel like that's faith, base faith in something greater than you. It could just be like that.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:14]
I don't know, and I'm not going to fight right now to know. But I just like trust. I trust in the process, even though it doesn't always feel good and it doesn't seem on my behalf. Even when things are the worst they could be, I'm just going to have faith. I'm going to trust in the unseen, the energetic of slow.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:45]
I imagine like putting my feet on the ground and grounding of sitting against the tree, of looking up to the stars that slow given receive of energy. I don't know biodynamic cranial sacral therapy all that well yet, but I do know that they have different paces that they feel moving in the body from Maybe I won't name them. This is the moment I do actually know on the top of my head, but I'm like, but to just say that there's because I I am not yet fully embodied in these paces. And until I get to have that real full experience of them all that there can be. Maybe I'll talk about paces in nature, the pace of a squirrel verse the pace of bird, a spawn that energetically when we really are slowing down and relationally maybe I was until like even relational here.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:51]
That unfolding and relational slow for me is I have a good number of friendships where I feel a soul connection to people and I understand the dynamics of my life the way I do, meaning I understand them. And of course there's so much I don't understand and that of theirs. And just that I trust that our friendship will blossom when it's meant to blossom and that I don't have to force it and I don't have to cling. And if it doesn't even all happen in this lifetime, that that's totally fine. I'm just so psyched that we had that moment to meet that moment that meant something.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:48]
I've had friendships that have gotten really hard and it seems like they might not ever get better. And trying to, in the moment, honor what's best for me, not knowing if that means down the line that we won't be friends, or if that means in the moment we've decided to take a break. And that then who knows, 10 years later there's a reunion. Or if I'm working something out with a friend that we could say like, and we're not going to rush it. It's not going to be all or nothing, but we're going to kind of step a few concentric circles away from the center and not rush it and see what happens and just be honest with what's there and what's in front of us.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:37]
And to me, this is slow relational. And even as I talk about slow, I feel myself just melting into like, oh, doesn't that feel good? And yet I started this conversation because I was so psyched about fast health. I'm super, I'm just going to say this. I think this podcast will come out after Marianne Williamson's podcast.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:56]
And I'm sitting in the before stage. I'm actually, Yeah, I'm sitting in the preparation stage for that podcast. And I'm aware of how brilliant this woman is. And I'm aware of how quickly she can speak. And I'm aware of how well organized her thoughts are and how prepared they are and how she has an answer for every question and how often people are attacking her or in visibleizing her.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:25]
And I'm so interested. I may be totally changing the direction here, but I'm so interested with someone who has so much fast health, if there's going to be a way for us to drop into a pace where the heart can really be online and the direction not fully known, Where we'll be able to waver between slow, medium and fast and keep it within a range where we're both embodied. This woman has been speaking on stages since the 1980s, so she's really well practiced and really well rehearsed. And she's sat with Oprah many times on her show and on Super Soul Sunday. And she's been with Gabriel mate.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:22]
Yeah, just on some like really fast political shows. And so as I think about pace here, like, oh, how great that I get to practice all these different ranges. And I'm just calling in ahead of time. And we'll see how it goes because many of you listeners will have listened to this before. Listen to the podcast with Marianne before this comes out.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:43]
If we were able to have a flow can be in the river of life, of the ups and downs of slow and fast, allowing the heart to be there, to have really the whole penser within the range of resonance in a dynamic conversation. So that is my hope. And to bring it back to the earlier conversation, I'll say that my hope is that now that I've spent so much time practicing slow, I really look forward to dancing. Like, I want to go out and I want to meet with girlfriends and I want to go dancing, and I want to mountain bike. And I want to hike mountains in the winter and ski down them.
Sarah Tacy [00:28:27]
And I want to explore. And I just want to bring in so much more fast health into my life by choice. And in between the fast that I am pacing my life with downtime and with exhales. So another podcast we'll talk about pacing. I think that is so much like a part of the work that I do with people is to help them find pacing in which they can land in their body and be present and have choices.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:00]
So thank you for listening today as I step into the variety of health that we have The actually, I believe it's in the seven Realms map where we look at the level 1-2 and three of medium, fast, slow health. Also thinking about as you go home or you continue with your day of like what do you have for fight and flight outlets, healthy fight or flight so that it doesn't have to come out sideways in areas of your life that you don't want it to come out in sideways. That you have more choice. So that when you really need a fight or flight, it can be clear and directed. And the same thing with a dorsal vagal that there can be more choice and there it can be built into the day.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:47]
And then when it really like if you were ever in a life situation that you actually needed a freeze, that it could come in and be life saving. So show me universe life, show me, give me examples. Help me to see opportunities for fast, healthy, fast that brings joy into my body and into my life, that makes me feel so alive that gratitude streams through me. I don't have to reach for gratitude. I don't have to try to think of gratitude.
Sarah Tacy [00:30:24]
It streams through me. May I see that in all layers of my multi dimensional being in life. And may I also have medium built in through ritual, chosen tradition, choice in general. And may I have slow to nourish me in a different way to rebuild the energy so that when it's time to go fast, I'm ready. Thank you so much for listening, I'll see you next time.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:03]
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, it's very helpful.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:19]
You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.