What's the pace of your soul?

Some embodied ways to wonder.

Last month I wasn’t feeling well and a friend sent a kind message encouraging me to be gentle with myself. She acknowledged the burden that comes from our souls straining to keep up with the inhuman pace we expect of our bodies and ended her note with a blessing:

“May your body move at the pace of your soul.”

How deeply I long for that blessing to be so - for my outer life to fall in step with the deep wisdom I encounter through my inner life and to release my body from all cruel expectations so she can thrive.

But what is the pace of my soul? How do I move at that pace? What are the signs I’m not moving at that pace?

These are the questions I’m living and, so far, I don’t have many answers.

For now, all I really know is that…

… when I struggle to enjoy the gift of simply being in my garden because I can see all the things that need doing and I can’t help but reach for my secateurs, I am not going at the pace of my soul.

….when I schedule my day so full that I reach the evening and my head is spinning so much that all I can think to do to relax is to scroll on my phone, I am not going at the pace of my soul.

…when waiting in traffic, or in a queue or anywhere at all feels unbearable, I am not going the pace of my soul (“the soul is the patient part of us,” writes Jungian analyst James Hillman¹).

I don’t have neat answers but, if I’m honest, I know that lately I have not been going at the pace of my soul.

As I write this, the part of me that feels she should be centred all the time is disappointed, guilty even (didn't I just write about working less hard?).  Mostly, though, I don’t blame myself. I am just a human being after all and each of us human beings has a tendency to fall into rhythm with the world around us. Recently, I learnt that there’s a word for this: entrainment. It’s a biological concept but it has broad application and I have Sue Monk Kidd to thank for introducing me to it. In her book When the Heart Waits, she recounts her struggle to go at her soul’s (slow) pace. She describes meeting with a spiritual director and being offered the word entrainment and told:

“It’s the phenomenon of two rhythmic beings gradually altering their movements until they’re moving together in the same rhythm. Pendulums hanging on the same wall do it, crickets do it when they chip, even people do it when they talk. The point is we tend to align ourselves with the rhythm and pace around us.”²

While it’s difficult enough to resist the pull of the relentless pace of society the rest of the year, I wonder if it’s harder than ever in summer. The longer days mean there’s even more time to cram in activities and to some extent my body wants to keep up. I naturally sleep less in summer and feel more energised. It’s not just that I’m being compelled to go faster in summer, I actually want to move a bit faster too. Who knows, perhaps the pace of my soul is a little quicker in summer. Perhaps entrainment isn’t something we necessarily need to resist. And yet, there's a difference between speed and hurry. I doubt that the frantic pace I’ve been going at lately is truly the pace of my soul, even in summer. 

So, what is the pace of my soul (and yours)? How can we fall in step with the rhythm of our souls? What does it look like for our outer rhythms to match our inner rhythms? For our deepest knowing of what is life-giving and nourishing to reverberate in every area of our lives? For our summers to be journeyed with a pace that allows us to soak in the goodness of the light?

I don’t subscribe to a strict soul-body dualism. It’s my understanding and lived experience that the soul is revealed through the body, that our bodies are wise teachers, that our bodies are the angels of our souls (thank you to John O’Donohue for that lovely phrase). I believe we encounter the depths of our inner life both when we intentionally turn our attention inwards through silent contemplative practices and when we offer our attention to what our bodies and the entwined world around us are truly telling us. Both are pathways to our deepest knowing - that spring of life that we carry within us.³

Because I don’t subscribe to a simplistic soul-body dualism, I believe that to discover the pace of my soul, I don’t need to withdraw from my body. I can be curious about my soul’s pace while fully inhabiting my body. In fact, if I allow them, my senses and my breath will be my guides.

Here are some of the embodied things I’ve been doing to live my questions this week:

Greeting the day with a pause. Since I’m waking up earlier than usual (and the rest of my family isn’t), I’m enjoying a few minutes of solitude in the garden. Our honeysuckle is blooming and its scent mixes perfectly with my coffee. Choosing to begin the day with a pause, is my offering of slowness to the hurry I feel around me and within. I smell, I listen, I sip. I offer a blessing: “may my body go at the pace of my soul”.

Lying on the grass. I did this yesterday. It rained in the morning and I’d been inside on calls most of the afternoon. While the oven heated for dinner, I took myself into the garden for 10 minutes. I was planning to drink a glass of wine on the patio but I’d been writing about play and wondered if there was a more playful way to enter the moment. I lay down on the grass with arms outstretched and could hear the hum of the insects going about their good work. It wasn’t quiet but it was peaceful - a way of taking in the buzz of summer without the hurry. I have a feeling that the insects know how to go the pace of their souls, even when energised and busy, and I’m ready to learn.

Playing with my walking pace. I walk my dog daily and I notice how much my pace varies depending on my mood, the temperature etc. As a way to live my questions around my soul’s pace, I’m playing with varying my walking pace. I slow down, I speed up, I pause. Sometimes I run. I check in with myself and am curious to find a pace that matches or balances what I notice within. I give myself permission to look silly.

Breathing. If my body can show me the rhythm of my soul, I’m pretty sure it’s through breath. Not the shallow breathing I slip into when I’m becoming frantic but the belly filling breath that helps me to drop deeply into the moment and myself. This is the breath that guides me to where answers are revealed in their own time. As my spiritual director likes to say: “breathe deeply and allow yourself to drop down into that soul space within where wisdom awaits you.”

Watching the sunset One of the happy accidents of our bedroom being in the roof of our house is that every night I can watch the sunset as I get ready for bed. I open the velux window and lean on the sill, soaking in the beauty of the sky. It’s always different and yet deeply predictable. The sun rises and the sun sets and it takes the time it takes. When I hang out with the sunset I let the question linger between us: “How was today? Did I go at the pace of my soul?”

On Thursday 6th July (and possibly also Friday 14th July) I'm putting together some of these elements (and more) and inviting a small group to join me for a mini retreat. I’m calling it Soul Pace and we’ll be going for an evening walk. There will be a few invitations along the way and time and space to explore at your own pace. There will also be a sunset picnic. If you live local to Bedford, UK and are interested, get in touch and I'll send you more details . 

I’d love you to join us but, even if you can't, perhaps this letter can serve as an invitation to find your own way to be curious about your soul’s pace. Let go of trying to get to a quick answer and allow yourself the spaciousness of being in the middle of your wondering. It's the summer solstice today - the mid point of the year, when the light is long and summer officially begins. It feels as though nature is revealing the beauty of the middle; perhaps you can enjoy the beauty of yours.

With you in the middle,

Jen x

1. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper &Row, 1975, p69.

2. Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions, New York: Harper One, 1990, p35.

3. I know the Christian tradition has not always been very polite about the body but I’m not being radical here. There have always been champions of the body. Even Thomas Aquinas, the great doctor of the church describes the soul as the act of the body, undercutting any possibility of drawing a sharp opposition between the two. Ultimately though, the real mic-drop argument for the body’s value within a Christian schema is the Incarnation. As theologian Janet Soskice explained to me as a student in my 20s, how can orthodox Christian thinking about the body be anything less than positive in a tradition that has at its centre an enfleshed God?