Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast: A Simple Practice for You and Your Animals #153

Autopilot is efficient, until it isn't. Most of us move through our days holding unnecessary tension, shortchanging our breath, and repeating patterns that work against us. Our horses and dogs do the same.

But there's one concept that can begin to shift all of it: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

In this episode, Mary explores how slowing down and doing smaller movements opens the door to self- awareness, and why that awareness is the foundation for healthier movement, better coordination, and more connected interactions with your animals. You'll hear how this concept shows up in the most ordinary moments of your day, whether you're getting out of a chair, heading out for a walk with your dog, or bringing your horse in from the pasture.

This isn't about adding more to your routine. It's about noticing what's already happening and making a small, intentional choice to do it differently.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The phrase "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" originated in elite military units as a reminder that efficiency, not speed, is the true foundation of skilled performance. It applies equally to movement education for humans and animals.
2. Slowing down and using smaller movements lets you actually feel how something is being done, which is the only way to improve it. Speed and efficiency follow naturally from that foundation, not the other way around.
3. Many people habitually hold their breath, grip harder than necessary, or engage muscles that aren't needed for the task at hand. These harmful patterns often go unnoticed until you slow down enough to pay attention.
4. Your horse and dog are continuously reading your physical and emotional state. Checking in with yourself before you interact with them, even for a few seconds, sets an entirely different stage for what follows.
5. Ordinary moments throughout your day, like how you stand up from a chair, put on a harness, or clip a halter, are opportunities to train your brain's reticular activating system (RAS) to notice what's actually happening in your body and in your animals.
6. You don't need a dedicated practice session to apply this. Any routine action becomes an opening to slow down, check your breath, and ask: where can I let go of unnecessary tension?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. If you're like most people, you're going through life on autopilot a lot, and that autopilot setting may not be serving you. We all have habits of how we move, how we hold ourselves, how we think, you know, how we breathe, all those kinds of things. And they might be working against us. And here's the thing. The. This is also true for our animals, for our horses and our dogs.

They have habits of how they move, you know, how they coordinate their parts. They have habits of how they act, how they react in the world. And there's one simple thing that you can do to help release yourself and your animals from habits that are no longer serving you, and that one simple thing is to slow down and do smaller things. Okay, so let me explain. There's a saying, and it's.

You may have heard of it, it's slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And I believe this originated in, like, elite military units. They would say this over and over again. It was like a bit of a slogan that they would. They would use to encourage them to slow down and to really find the smoothness and efficiency in what they were doing. And then the speed and the power come automatically because you're starting from an efficient base.

So this is what we talk about in. In the work that I teach as well, both in Feldenkrais for humans and de Bono moves for animals. We talk about doing things in a small, slow way so we can feel how they're being done, and then we can improve on it. That gives us a foundation then, for healthy movement, for healthy behavior. So let me give you just simple examples from your own life.

You know, you get up out of a chair, you probably do it many times a day, right? You get in and out of your car. You know, you do all kinds of things over and over again. But if you just pause, doesn't have to be every time, but, you know, more. More often, you just pause and you notice, first of all, how am I breathing? Are you holding your breath?

We go through life so often where we're holding our breath, we're tensing muscles that we don't need to, that are actually working against us. Instead, if you think, okay, I'm getting out of a chair. What if I turn myself first so I'm not twisting and torquing my knees. You kind of like line up your ankles under your knees. You know, you make sure your. Your. Your leg. Your feet aren't falling in or out, and you just take, you know, a few seconds longer to stand up.

But you do it in a way that's respecting your body. And again, you notice, like, where can I let go of effort? Like, you know, maybe each time you answer the phone or you do something, you find that you're holding your breath. So something I noticed about myself early on, when I first started getting into the Feldenkrais method, I discovered because I started paying more attention to things, right?

Because I started to slow down, I noticed that when I get in my car, instead of just holding the steering wheel in, you know, an appropriate. Using an appropriate amount of tension, I was actually gripping it for dear life. So I was probably doing this, you know, all the years I'd been driving up to that point. And it was like, oh, wait a minute, I don't have to be so tense, right?

I can let my shoulders relax. I can hold the wheel in a way that's going to be safe and comfortable. Because, you know, when we. When you're unnecessarily tensing one area, it's reflected in our entire body and in our mind. So just a simple act of slowing down, noticing your breath, asking yourself, where can I let go of unnecessary tension, right? Those conserve you. And the same thing when we're, when we're interacting with our animals.

Certainly in the work that I teach, the hands on de Bono moves for dogs and horses, we do a lot of slowing down and doing small movements so we can best help the animal. But even just like simple, everyday things you're already doing, maybe you're about to take your dog for a walk and you just, instead of just, you know, kind of repetitively putting on the harness, you know, doing whatever, you just take a moment and you check in with yourself.

You check in with your dog, you notice your dog's demeanor. Now, hopefully your dog is happy because you're going on a walk or something like that, but you. You take that extra moment to check in and start to train your brain to notice things. That's what you're doing. You're actually telling your brain, your reticular activating system, that part of the brain, what they call the ras, the ras, to pay attention to these things.

Same thing when you're with your horse. Instead of just kind of absentmindedly putting the halter on, if you're about to take your horse out of the pasture and you're about to do something together, instead of doing it just by rote, like, take a moment again, check in with yourself. Where can you let go of unnecessary tension? How are you breathing? Because remember, your horse and your dog feel all of that.

That in. That affects how you interact with them, and you put it on. And maybe you think, well, from putting on, whether the halter for a horse or a harness for a dog, my putting it on in a way that's gentle, like, can I ask my horse to turn towards me a little bit? Can I take that extra moment when I'm putting the harness on my dog to make sure it doesn't hit the collar in an uncomfortable way?

You know, you just take that extra time, right? Let go of the unnecessary tension, and then you can start your walk or your, you know, whatever activity you're doing from a completely different place, right? You're setting the stage then for a more harmonious, connected interaction. So these small things we do throughout our day will affect us personally, you know, in a positive way, helping us let go of patterns of breathing and movement and tension that are not serving us, and help us interact with our horses and our dogs in a more positive way that's also benefiting them.

So remember, slow down, do smaller movements until you really have that sense of this is the easiest, most efficient way to do this. And then you'll find that the. The speed will just happen automatically. Remember, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So wishing you lots and lots of smooth motor moments in your life with you and your animals. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me.

I so appreciate you, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.