Emotional Resilience and Accountability Training

Module 3: Slowing down

Urgency can show up in our bodies as shallow breathing, rigidity, closed ears, and moving fast, as well as the pressure to perform, making decisions before we’re ready, ignoring messages from our body, and forgetting to ask how other people feel.

In contrast, slowing down is the cooling waters to the hotness of urgency. And we mean slowing WAY down. Slowing our breath. Stopping to relax our muscles and notice what our senses are taking in.

Slowing down inherently allows room for various cultures and perspectives, because it creates more time to be in relationship with others, to feel into our bodies, and to settle into humility.

Please watch the following video, and then complete the question prompts below.

• When you think of urgency, how does it show up in your body? How does it show up in the ways you treat your body? 
• What could you do differently when it comes to slowing down to care for your body and your general well-being? 
• Where do you tend to show up in the world with a lot of urgency? How might that negatively impact those who experience racial trauma on a daily basis?  
• Where could you use some slowing down when it comes to the speed at which you interact with other people?  
• What might practicing humility look like for you? 
• How might slowing down in your work and personal social circles leave space for cultures and perspectives different from your own?

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Click on the titles below to jump around to other modules:

• Introduction to the course
• Module 1: Taking inventory of our personal nervous system tendencies
• Module 2: Leaning into the truth on how whiteness shows up in us
• Module 3: Slowing down
• Module 4: Communication in connection – Part 1
• Module 4: Communication in connection – Part 2
• Closing
• Body scan video