Slow Coaching

Resisting the oppressive weight of a constant growth mentality.

It is August now, one of the few months in the year where people are allowed to be slow to respond to emails, with vacation auto responses pinging back and forth in the virtual ether like space debris, lost in the ever expanding void that is late summer. The pressure is off, and every request is met with a ‘we will circle back in the fall’ blissfully ignorant that this imaginary future fall is fast approaching. The pace of mid August languishes in the sunlight, too hot to move too quickly.

May I suggest that we need more of this pace? That the break neck acceleration that threatens us from behind the Labour Day long weekend is a problem not an aspiration? As you consider these questions let me tell you, this blog post is going to be a statement. A manifesto. A description of what I am trying to build with Alchemy and why I think it is so desperately needed right now.

What is Alchemy Coaching?

It is so easy to get caught up in the pace of our capital driven, productivity at all costs, extraction based society. That shit is toxic and malignant. It spreads its tendrils out into all the corners of your life and then tells you that something is wrong with you if you feel burnt out or run down. It demands conformity while screaming at you to be authentic and true to yourself. In a desperate effort to fit into these expectations we twist ourselves into pretzels, contorting our very souls.

Dramatic? I’ve heard that before.

For those of us at a further proximity to power, whether you be racialized, disabled, queer, or neurodivergent, there is no way to meet the demands of this society without committing violence against ourselves. Hell I am not sure anyone can thrive in this system without violence. That violence is expected of us, taught to us constantly, and it can feel like the familiar thing to do. Cut yourself off from the consequences of your actions, from the impacts of your consumerism, from the emotions and needs of yourself and others. It is almost comfortable. The devil you know and all that. But there is a different way. Probably a million different ways, but let's just start with one yeah? Take the pressure off, explore what it means to experiment without the binary of success or failure.

Stop trying harder, try easier.

This is the kind of coach I am. A gentle coach. A slow coach. I am not going to teach you how to be a better cog in the military industrial machine. I am not going to teach you to be better at capitalism. I am not going to teach you to improve your productivity as though that is the only metric available to measure your worth. I refuse. Instead, we will explore what it means for you to turn the difficulty down on your life, in whatever small ways you can. I am a thinking partner, a responsive and skilled mirror, a pause from the rush to get clear on what you actually want and need. Sure, I mostly work with creatives, and a lot of my clients are neurodivergent in one way or another. But this slowing down, this seeking of ease, it can be for anyone. The only prerequisites are the desire to get off the hamster wheel, and a willingness to try something different.

Acknowledging Influences

This perspective is inspired and influenced by a number of important concepts and thinkers. Tricia Hersey, and her concept that Rest is Resistance is important to mention, along with the recognition that this concept is meant first and foremost for black women. The Principles of Disability Justice, pioneered by Sins Invalid, a group of racialized disabled humans who experience the intersection of a number of -isms. Ant-capitalism, which to me is an off shoot of decolonization and therefore must be credited to indigenous thought leaders and their traditional knowledge. And lastly, the Slow Food movement, born in Italy in the 80s out of protest against fast food and the erosion of local and traditional ways of preparing and sharing food.

All of that is to say this slow movement doesn’t belong to me. But it has radically changed me. The hustle burnt me out dramatically three times in my first three decades of life. I can’t do that again, the cost is too great. Trying to push through has only granted me chronic illness and fear.

Now What?

I am convinced adulthood in this capitalistic hellscape is just a constant refrain of ‘after this things will slow down’ over and over again until we die. So here is my hot take:

Things will only slow down if you slow them down.

In physics the law of inertia states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Most of the time this outside force is friction, acting against the forward momentum an object has. But honestly, I think this applies directly to the pace we go in life. Too often change only comes as a result of cataclysmic events forcing that change. Looking around these days, I can list off at least 5 cataclysms without thinking too hard about it. It seems time is right for doing things differently.

So what are we going to do about it? Well, if you are ready to make some changes in your life and you want personalized support to do it, then you are gonna book a discovery call with me and we are going to talk about the apparent oxymoron of setting a goal to slow down.

In the meantime, here is an experiment to test out:

The next time you have the chance, do 5% less. When you are making plans, booking work, taking on projects, any of it. Explore what it looks and feels like to turn the dial down by 5%. That’s all.

Having a hard time figuring out what 5% is? You can visualize it. Image a dial in front of you, with a hundred little ticks. Grab the dial and gently turn it down, 1 2 3 4 5. If you need something more tangible than that, you can carry a tv remote around with you and actually physically turn down the volume before committing to things. Pull that bad boy out and point it at the demand in front of you, 1 2 3 4 5, turned down.

Then, notice what happens inside you and around you. Just like that, you have run a life experiment on slowing down. What you do next with the data you collect is up to you. And remember, failure is as useful as success because it gives us more information.

Remember that you have value and worth just by being human. You don’t have to earn it. Happy Experimenting ~