The frequency of s(f)low

Tapping into internal rhythms and remembering to harvest presence

September 28, 2025

The word slow is deserving of more detail. Because it, like any word, affects our perception of what it describes.

For example there’s blue, and then there’s ultramarine, cobalt, indigo, woad, cerulean, royal, prussian blue, teal and so on. Slow also appears in different hues. There is steadiness, responsive, presence, attendance, and settling as in dust, earth, people, or sediment.

Slow is an inherent rhythm I embody, a practice of remembering, and the shifts which arise season after transformative season. I find that if I ignore these expressions of slow flow, or they remain untapped, a wave of discomfort and disconnection washes over me. I then ask, what is it that I’m going to do differently? What resources can I naturally apply in a different way? What don’t I need?

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The following may seem like a non sequitur, but stay with me. Within our physical body lies a current that’s undeniably present and responsive—a long, slow rhythmic wave.

For about five years, somewhere between 2007 and 2012, I hung out my shingle as a massage therapist and Ayurvedic practitioner. During this time I also learned and applied other therapeutic modalities, one in particular being cranial sacral therapy. Now for anyone who doesn’t know, cranial sacral therapy is profound. It’s a hands-on practice, yet very subtle. If you were a bystander, you’d think nothing was happening but the laying on of hands.

To put it simply, cranial sacral therapy works with your cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) in an attempt to reestablish its flow. Childbirth, stress, surgery, physical injury, you name it, can cause a disruption. The cranial bones, specifically the occiput and the sacrum are nexus points of concentration. Pumps, if you will, which move the fluid up and down the spine, bathing the spinal cord and then our entire nervous system in this fluid. Generated in the choroid plexus nestled in the center of your brain’s two ventricles near your pineal gland, the fluid is clear, a little gelatinous, and practically electric. It’s kind of like a chemical conduit.

Its movement throughout the body is felt as a wave. Unlike the drum-like timbre of the pulse, CSF is more of a swelling up and then receding back. Cradling the ankles, resting a hand over the sternum, or gently placing the thumbs at the temple the wave can be felt. Because as mentioned earlier, whether it’s your bicep or bowels, there is nothing in the body that the nerves (and the cerebral spinal fluid) don’t innervate.

Now as a therapist, it’s pretty far out to feel this. It’s like receiving a message from the body’s electric mother board. The current can be palpably clear or muddled. And it’s very, very slow. Otherwise known as the long wave.

Therapeutically speaking this modality can be incredibly healing and beneficial for pinpointing and releasing trauma and reducing physical pain. But this isn’t why I’m bringing it up. I’m sharing this because there are many parts of us that remember and respond. Parts perhaps that we’re not even conscious of. Also, I’d like you to notice that at this very moment there are multiple, overlapping rhythmic flows moving in concert within your body. And together they’re generating this semi-silent groove that assists and ensures that our relationship with life remains animated.

All of these flows have a rhythm. Like music, they can either speed up or slow down with conscious deliberation. There’s the fastest, your thoughts (faster than light), then your heartbeat and blood, the breath, the lymph, and finally this very long slow tidal flow of cerebral spinal fluid. I find it noteworthy that this undercurrent which is arguably our primary essence, (present very early in utero to support the construction of the neural tube) super subtle, and borderline energetic is also, coincidentally, the slowest.

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The very architecture of the words, for example, slow down or speed up, rise and fall, revolve and wobble, when sewn together over time form a wave. Hold on tight because the roller coaster’s about to begin or sit back and put your feet up, the dishes are done. If we physically experienced how fast the Earth was spinning in space we’d lose our minds. Yet even though it’s happening simultaneously, the rhythm we’re actually experiencing is much slower: the seasons and so on.

Our lives are an entanglement of currents where constant micro-adjustments are being made. Movement is a constant.

Evolutionary anthropologist, Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias, when studying how societies morph with the seasons, “initially presumed people simply adjusted because of the seasonal availability of different foods. But their changes extended way beyond sustenance into the realms of politics, economics, rituals, and relationships.” Meaning everything shifted. The role or duty they fulfilled in the community, the grandeur of architecture that was built and then inhabited for celebration and ceremony, even in some instances their names would change. They would remember and arrive into an entirely different version of themselves with each new season.

I find this fascinating. Seasonal fluidity, in a sense, is like the long wave but expressed socially. Each season triggers an intentional collective pivot. Not only is this highly adaptable and flexible, it’s also a sophisticated form of remembering. There’s a reliance upon and an intrinsic ability to shift between different ways of being and social organization.

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“They straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” - The Site of Memory by Toni Morrison

Tibetan Buddhists have a word for meditation. Interestingly it’s not meditation, but more accurately translated as remembering. Elizabeth Gilbert shared this in conversation with Rich Roll, the larger context being that of coming home to our eternal unwavering, soul essence. Sitting quietly, what is the monk remembering? Is there stillness? Upon what wave do they ride? I’d be willing to bet it’s the long wave of consciousness, wonder, and curiosity—a steady, sequenced, moving in and out of different rhythms.

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Indeed, words describe what is perceived and what is perceived then finds its way into form. If I cease to tether ‘slowness’ solely to velocity but place and time, it becomes something I inhabit, cherish, leave, remember, and return to, again and again. I become a cartographer with no end in sight for what can be explored.

Yours, Erin

Creative Advising 1:1 sessions Bridge slow living principles, design, lifestyle and business.