An interesting thing happened when I was driving to work a few days ago.  It was about 9.30 am and I had been warned to leave early and go slow as the roads were icy.

Then a car pulled out of a driveway ahead of me and I understood what real slow driving was. A lazy snail could have over-taken us.

Just as I was getting really wound up by being stuck behind such an infuriatingly cautious driver, my car started sliding across the road by itself.  My instant (and totally wrong) reactions were to press the brakes and turn away from the ditch I was gradually approaching.  But of course braking on ice is about as effective as running in high heels.  You just know it’s going to end badly.

In a moment of clarity, I released the brakes and steered in the direction I was moving towards, despite all my survival instincts rallying against this.  Sure enough, the car began veering back the other way and I again steered the wheels into it… a split-second later the wheels caught the road and I was back in command, my previously arrogant attitude banished by the rush of adrenaline and the realisation of what could have happened had I been driving any faster.

It was quite the lesson, this little incident: slow-the-bleep-down when roads are icy.  But there was a deeper lesson again for me -what was the rush in the first place?  Why was it so important to me to be going faster??  It’s not like I was even late for work, I had left home extra early.  And it’s not as if driving fast was going to have any beneficial impact on my day at large so why oh why was I so annoyed at having to drive slowly behind a car that, as it turns out, may just have been my guardian angel?!

It’s something I also noticed a couple months ago when I drove into town at half my usual speed, too busy being upset to bother keeping up with the rest of traffic.  The funny thing was, driving so slowly had a calming, soothing effect – not so much because the speed of the car itself has ever affected my mood, but because I realized that when I’m going fast I’m being propelled by an anxious internal “hurrier”, a striving, straining, grasping part of me that’s desperate to ‘get somewhere’.

This issue is one that needs to be looked at also in yoga, as so often we hear of injuries occurring when people push their bodies too hard, too fast.  We want to get that complicated pose NOW – or we want our hips to open up or our core to get super strong right this minute!  And yet, why??  Why do we need to do these things so badly that we end up hurting ourselves in the process??  (And I include myself in this as much as anyone.)

What’s so wrong with practising slowly and gently so that we grow and develop at a pace that is fully appropriate to our minds and bodies AS THEY ARE – not as we might like them to be or think that they should be?  At the end of the day, where else can we ever be except in this moment, in this place?  Refusing to accept this ironically creates the unhappiness we think we’re avoiding!  And yet simply slowing down and taking our time with washing the dishes, driving to work or eating our dinner can reveal what we’ve been searching for all along.

It’s not an easy thing to do, changing a deeply ingrained, age-old pattern of behaviour.  But it’s something that could transform our lives and our peace of mind.  And there’s one simple thing we can do to reach the thing we’re all straining for – happiness… SLOW DOWN!  The moment we do that and stop our mindless rushing, we give happiness a chance to catch up.  Once we slow down and settle into the long car journey or the fact that today my hamstrings are just too tight to open into the splits, then we create the space for happiness to sit right there with us and keep us company on our journey.

“The journey is often better than arriving.”

So – why not make the most of that journey for who knows what little gems it may hold.  Take it nice and slow and relax because that way – if you do hit an icy patch – you may just have the time to correct your course and avoid crashing head-first into the ditch.

Be kind.  Om Shanti!

Ellie