When Life and the Body Says Slow Down

Fear doesn’t always arrive as a scary thought. Sometimes it shows up as a racing heart, sweaty palms, and a body that refuses to cooperate while your mind stays perfectly calm. That’s what hit me on a ski run in Switzerland when my family headed straight into a long, steep slope toward Italy and my nervous system lit up like an alarm. 

I'm Susan Sutherland, your host, and I tell the story of moving at my kids’ pace, braking my way down the mountain, and realizing something that applies far beyond skiing: awareness doesn’t override sensation, and truth doesn’t instantly regulate the body. We talk about somatic fear, control versus surrender, and what it means to honor your own rhythm when everyone around you seems to be flying ahead. 

The most surprising moment comes when I notice hikers and gondola riders sharing the same views without forcing a downhill run. That image rewires the whole experience for me: you don’t have to move at someone else’s speed to belong, and you don’t have to override your body to stay included. Along the way there’s a cloudy-day reset, a stomach bug curveball, a ticket mistake that feels like a sign from the universe, and a deepened compassion for anyone whose anxiety can’t be “talked away.” 

If you’re navigating burnout, anxiety, people-pleasing, or the pressure to keep up, this one is a grounded reminder to choose alignment over urgency. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs permission to slow down, and leave a review with the place you’re ready to move at your own pace.

Transcript

Back From Switzerland

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, my friends. I am back from Switzerland, our spring break with my family, and would like to share with you some wisdom from the mountain. It wasn't really from the mountain because I couldn't process it while on the mountain, but I did have some downtime while we were there. And since I've returned in between the loads of laundry that come to welcome you home. But I want to share kind of what I've been unpacking because it was a weird experience. I did not grow up skiing like my little spoiled children have. They've been in ski school or lessons since they were five, I think five was the oldest of the starters. Brecken, I think, had a ski lesson at three. And it shows my ski experience as a child was with youth group. We went twice, but one time I realized in the cold air that I had an ear infection. If you are questioning whether or not you have an ear problem, put yourself in some freezing temperatures with some wind blowing in it, and you'll know for sure. Anyway, so that time I sat inside and watched the skiers. But another time I was on the slopes and we didn't have a lesson, but we got the skis, and basically you went to the bottom of the mountain, and when you were ready to stop, you fell over. Hopefully, before you hit the line of people waiting at the ski lift, not always, you do your best. And that was my ski experience as a child. And when I started dating Mark, I think the first time he and I went skiing was maybe I was 25 or something, where I still didn't have the same risk and consequence awareness that I have now. I'll say that. And it felt to me like going down was significantly easier than going side to side, you know, strategically or cautiously or even skillfully side to side. Nevertheless, we would do it a couple of days every other year. Then it started every year, and then I started having babies. And so a lot of times when everybody else was skiing, I was either pregnant or tending the little ones, and maybe we swap out for a couple hours. Anyway, I have not had the same amount of time on the mountain as my kids and did not get to do it while being a wee little thing where your fall is six inches. Basically, I I am setting up myself to tell you how bad I am at it. But I didn't arrive there thinking I was gonna be bad at it because it is something we do every single year. Now they've already been this year. They took a trip with dad skiing, and they didn't make me take two skiing trips because I don't even really love it. Anyway, I'm I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna get there. Dasha and I went late because he had a trip he was coming home from, his senior trip was school, and I met him at the airport, swapped out his bag from summer clothes to winter clothes, and away he and I went to Switzerland, where the others had already been skiing for a couple of days. But got there, I had a new fit, like a total new ski fit, because I had been wearing pants for the past many years. You get one ski outfit and we just wear it over and over. It is what it is. This is your ski outfit. And mine had stains on the back of the pants. And so at the end of last season, I threw them away, knowing that that would force my hand and make me get more. Well, then, y'all, we had snow this year. We had snow this year, and I had nothing to go outside in. I was like, okay, I've got to go get some snow clothes. So I did. I had my whole new fit. I was ready for skiing. And when we went to get my ticket, I did tell Mark that instead of the four-day pass, I was gonna do a three-day pass because I honor that I want to both ski with my family and also I don't even really love it that much. So I also love being by myself or exploring a town by myself. So I'm gonna do that one day. So let me tell y'all how that played out. Anyway, the first day we get up on the mountain and it's a beautiful day, like clear skies, which means you can ski over into Italy. It has to be clear for them to have opened that path. And we go over there, and I have not done anything, right? My first ski experience is gonna be what I think is a five-mile slope. Now, they do plenty of stopping and waiting on mom, but away we go, and it's almost the steepest that it gets over there. It's not like here where you have double blacks everywhere. It's very moderate or intermediate, I should say. It's very intermediate skiing. However, I haven't been on skis in a full year, and nobody's warmed up my legs. This there wasn't like warm-up. We're not doing Samson stretch and getting on the bike for a few minutes to warm up our legs. We're just we're just going for it. So we get out, and it's the steepest part, and I'm telling you, you guys, I had the most somatic physical response. I started sweating and my heart was racing, and I continued the whole day, but we would go a little ways, and by we would go a little ways, they dart out well ahead of me, and then they wait on the side of the mountain for me to catch up. And when I catch up, they start going again. So while they are getting lots of rest, I am not getting any rest at all because I have just gotten caught up and they leave again. Anyway, they're actually pretty kind about it for the most part. Although Zosha did say to me, Have you gotten slower or have we gotten faster? Both, my girl, both. But what I experienced was this absolute physical response. It continued through the whole day. I was having this, this physical, I won't say aversion, but it was it was like being encased in fear. And the fear isn't chosen and it wasn't being mentally negotiated. There was no, there's no trauma that it's calling on. There's no history. I've never had a big fall. I've never had a big injury skiing. Now I have had many people, my my tennis partner and a recent friend who have fallen and required surgery and been out for a long time, but that's not what's going on. I'm not even playing these stories in my head. My mind is clear. I am focused only on getting down the mountain, but I am so in my body and aware of my body and aware of this fear response. And it was really interesting because I don't live in a lot of fear. I don't, I don't create situations in my head. I don't worry about stuff that hasn't happened. So I know a lot of what I've been doing recently is holding destiny in an open hand, not thinking like everything happens for a reason. If this happens, it's meant to happen. Like if I fall down the mountain, then this is meant for me to learn from. But really holding choice and sovereignty as a co-pilot. It is easier to think and to navigate your way down a mountain if you think that you are held and that if something goes wrong, it was meant to go wrong. Not that you're making a choice to ski outside of your comfort level or outside of your pace ability. And so I was negotiating all of these things. Just I'm telling you that I was negotiating it. This wasn't a conscious thought pattern that I was having. I was pretty open in my thoughts, in that I was thinking, turn left, don't hit this person. It was very basic, rudimentary thinking of what was happening now. This is only in reflection that I'm telling you that something I sensed was that my body was responding in this unintegrated self-protection, this not consciously chosen. It's not like I feel fearful, body, please respond. It was like I am fearful in spite of being able to consciously negate fearful thoughts. And I think that's what I realized is that when fear isn't chosen, it can still be experienced. And awareness doesn't override sensation. And truth doesn't immediately regulate the body. Me knowing that I can deal with whatever happens did not regulate my body. It did not calm my heart rate down, it did not cool my sweat. I wish, I wish that I was wearing a heart rate monitor because my kids act like them going fast down the mountain is somehow superior. I'm telling you, if they could have navigated the cardio workout that I was having by going my snail's pace, I mean, their minds would be blown, I can assure you. But what I know is that I was present on the mountain. I was present in my body, and presence was not enough to dissolve that activation. And it doesn't mean that I wasn't in alignment. It meant that my body was speaking its own language. It meant that I had to be honest and recognize things that I don't like to admit. Like my body feels unsafe right now, even though I know I'm safe. It meant acknowledging that I have to choose my pace in order for me to feel safe. And that might mean letting others go ahead. It might mean that I have to contemplate holding them back or that I can't keep up with the pace of our relationship. I have to let them go because I have to honor what my body is speaking, even if I don't understand it, even if it is sounding alarm bells that I know in my head are kind of obnoxious. I had I have done hills steeper than these before at paces faster than I was going. And I was completely, I won't say terrified, but it was like when you're skiing, you have to surrender to gravity. And instead of doing that, I was clinging for control. I knew that the only thing that I could control was my ridiculously slow pace. And when it got faster, I felt genuinely out of control. The funny thing about the Italy side is it has some downhills that lead into uphills. A lot of them, actually. And you know that they're coming. You see the uphill coming, which means, Susan, you cannot go breaking, turn, turn, turn, turn into these uphills. You actually have to let go a little bit, or else you're not gonna have speed. And walking up a hill sucks more than going down the hill, maybe. I don't know if that's true. But I would have to let go a little bit in order to get up the hill. And the amount of fear that came over me in those moments. Now I felt like I was flying. Meanwhile, based on the people that were coming beside me, I could have been standing still. I mean, it was shocking. Even when I felt like I was going my fastest, people were flying by me. Now I'm telling you all of this is because, in retrospect, I realized that what I've been walking the first three months of this year is acknowledging that my pace is not meant to be like everybody else's pace. What happens when I don't go the same speed as everybody else? Because I'm listening to my body and what feels right for me. So I recognize that in my own path, how this time on the mountain really mirrored what I've been walking and how uncomfortable it was for me at the beginning of the year to choose to pull back, to choose slowness to put myself out there significantly less because I'm I'm just choosing to do things that feel aligned for me right now, even if it doesn't make sense for metrics or algorithm or for our pace in society. And choosing myself initially was really tricky. And I thought that being on the mountain consistently several days in a row, I would probably lean into that and be able to establish some sort of trust in my body. Hey, body, I'm listening to you. Even if they're flying by, I still acknowledge you. And maybe with that continued practice, my body would understand that I'm listening and could have just toned down the rhetoric a little bit, the palpitations and the sweating and the I mean, the sheer panic, y'all. But we didn't get there. What I did notice though, and this is kind of a fear that I've had as my kids surmount my abilities. I mean, that was long ago. But now, I mean, we might as well be skiing at different times of the day. They're gone, gone. And they they're so patient to wait for me at the bottom. They do a lot of waiting when I'm there. But I have kind of wondered what what happens when I don't go with them because they're there is so much joy that I find in watching them ski. There is so much joy in seeing the views from the top of the mountain. I mean, it is magnificent, and I can stand out there. I talked about joy and and trying to find joy going down the mountain, and I couldn't really look around when I was doing that, but I could find so much joy when I was just standing there. And when I was just standing there, you know what else I saw? I saw people hiking up the mountain, some on those skis. I I don't know if it's telemarket skis where you're just going downhill where your heel comes up, but they're hiking up with those kind of skis or hiking up in just boots. They've got boots and poles and they're hiking up the mountain. And so you don't even have to be a downhill skier to belong. You don't have to take their pace to find your place. And I thought that was really magnificent too. But the other thing beyond my personal experience that expanded for me on this mountain was my compassion. I am very quick to process or think or rationalize or or deem irrational somebody else's fear. But I experienced a situation where fear wouldn't listen. My fear was not to be negotiated with. My logic did not dissolve it. The advice I was giving myself did not make it go away. It felt empty. And compassion from that experiential level goes deeper than instruction. Fear can be real, even when it makes no sense. And it's not because the fear is right, it's because it's felt. And it's interesting because before I left to go on the trip, I did take note of something that I thought was really profound and was like, give myself a bat on the back. My family was gone for two days. I was waiting on my son to return from his senior trip home. And Mark and the Littles had flown out. So there were two nights I was here by myself. And when it was almost time to go pick up Dashell, what I realized is I had done no work. Now, normally it would be like everybody's gonna be gone. I'll get podcasts recorded in advance. I'm gonna create some posts, I'll do things, I'll schedule things or whatever. I I didn't. I built a puzzle or finished a puzzle that had taken way too long. I finished my book, I watched a little bit of Indian Wells. I mean, I really nurtured myself. I spent time outside. I did those things. And right when I was about ready to go, I was like, oh crap, did I schedule my podcast? It was like all the things that used to focus my mind, that pressure. And am I doing enough? Am I am I performing enough? It wasn't until it was time to leave that I realized I didn't feel that. And I kind of celebrated being in that place of feeling that I have two days and it's okay for me to just do what feels good to me and not do something in service to anything else. And that felt really good. And so the mountain was just a way to shake me back and say, okay, this is what it looks like when you do feel pressure to keep up to a pace that doesn't feel right in your body. Because that's exactly what I was experiencing on the mountain is this realization that what feels good to me doesn't feel good to the people around me. In fact, what felt good to me didn't even feel good to me. It was just the only way to make it down the mountain. But turn after turn, my turns are essentially breaking. It's not even just, you know, guiding myself slightly slowing down. I'm like break, break, break, break down the mountain. That is physically exhausting, y'all. It's so tiring. So if you ever try skiing, do let gravity give you a hand. But I was practically turning myself uphill to slow myself down because there was so much fear around me. But it did solidify the thought that the speed and the expectation and the version of keeping up with everybody else, that's not mine anymore. It's not. I'll do it my way, and it my way may be breaking all the way down the mountain, or it might be putting on hiking boots and hiking up and meeting them for lunch and taking more pictures because I feel more comfortable, even reaching in my pocket when I'm in boots and not skis. But it was really about learning to honor my rhythm and about choosing my alignment and allowing the evolution of my pace, even if that means going slower. A lot of times we think that the more we do something, the better at it we'll be. And I've just had to acknowledge that that might not be true for me on the mountain. Now, to fill you in on the rest of the story, because I know you're dying, to know how me showing up repeatedly enhanced my performance and allowed this fear to step back. Well, I told you I got a three-day ticket, and so the next day uh was cloudy. And I have skied in the clouds before, and it is one of the most disorienting things that you can experience. Like the slope is white, but clouds are white, and you can't tell where the slope is. I definitely thought when that happened last year that I was gonna ski off the edge of the mountain. And so when it was really cloudy, I decided that would be my day off. So it wasn't my intention to ski a day and take a day off, but that's what happened. So I ended up having a magnificent day in the little town of Zermont by myself, walking and getting a coffee and taking my book and having a lunch and walking the shops. It was glorious. And my family had a disorienting day skiing in the clouds, and that's okay. It did clear up for a little bit, so they were good. But, y'all, listen to what happened. The next Night, my youngest Brecken, we call him Brecki. Brecki starts throwing up in the middle of the night because what's vacation without a stomach bug? I mean, can you even really call it a vacation if somebody hasn't gotten a stomach bug? So he he's up in the middle of the night, and bless my children. Like Zosha's like clearing out of their shared bedroom, and Dash's clearing out of their shared bathroom, and everybody is treating him like he's got the plague because for real, we do not want this shared about. But Mark was like, you and the kids go, I'll stay here with him. Y'all, why am I gonna do that? I don't even know if you could say that I even like skiing. So why would I be the parent that goes skiing and he stays home? So I was like, no, no, no, I'll stay here. So I stayed home with him, and we had a very relaxing day of a friend's marathon and just getting him to feel better. Popsicles and you know, this kind of thing. So so that ended up being ski, day off, day off. So the next day, I'm gonna go skiing, and it is a gorgeous day, and we're gonna do this. Brecken stayed home. He just didn't have a lot of energy. So he wanted to stay home in the apartment, and so the four of us went out, and it was a really beautiful day, and we got out there really early in the line, and we're going, and you have to scan your little pass, and mine's red. My ticket doesn't work, and it's like all my family has gone through to the gondola, and then my ticket won't go through, and there's nothing you can do except get out of the line that you've been standing in for 30 minutes and go to the ticket desk. So I did do that, and it turns out my three-day past was for three consecutive days. Oops. So I had to get a day ticket. I mean, these are just if if there's any more signs from the universe that I should just wear hiking boots, I don't know what they are. I get my ticket sorted out and bless Mark's heart, he ends up showing up beside me at the ticket desk. Now, I just assume they could just go on, but he does know I will not find you on the mountain. They could tell me to go wherever they want to. They could say, you know, go to this lift or go to this run. I do not know where it is. I cannot get around the city streets where I have lived for 30 years. You cannot tell me slopes numbers and think that I'm gonna meet you there. And I think he knew that. And so he came and helped. And I didn't ask for help, but I'm telling you, I was grateful when he showed up beside me. I was super grateful for that. So we got our ticket sorted and ended up meeting Dasho and Zosha where they were waiting for us at the top of the gondola. And we had a good day. I feel like I skied pretty well, not fast, controlled, it was efforting, but a little less panic stricken than the first day. Fear, but not the overwhelming irrational fear that I had before. And I think it was like I'm choosing the slow pace, and that's okay. I honor myself. I think if the mountain distilled wisdom directly to me, that's what it is, is that I do not have to move at the pace of others to belong in the experience. I don't have to override my body to be included. I can choose my own way and still be fully here in this family moment. And that family moment included me sitting and drinking a coffee while they went and did a six-mile run and came back for me later. And that felt good to me and probably felt pretty daggum good to them too, because they could move quickly without waiting on me. But that was a bargain, and I didn't feel like I was taking away from them by not going on that run, and I didn't feel like I was being excluded. I felt like I was making a choice that honored me, and that felt pretty good. It's interesting because I just don't have a relationship with fear like this. And I know part of it is recognizing, I mean, as we mature, we are very aware of choice and consequence and risk and the fact that I'm taking care of myself, but I also have others to take care of. And I really love movement. And so for one week to then be detrimental to the movement that I get every other week of the year would kind of suck. So we're just kind of aware of those risks. But it's interesting. Mark has a motorcycle now and is playing planning on going on these adventure rides where you camp out and ride your motorcycle. And when he tells my parents this, I see their eyes become big as saucers as they're they're waiting for me to freak out about it. And I don't. And I didn't freak out about his heart attack, and I don't freak out about my kid at Disney with a bunch of teenagers, and I don't freak out about these things because I I just feel like whatever arises, I have the capacity to handle. And that's why this felt so irrational to me. Because couldn't I say the same thing about that? If I were to fall, I'll have the capacity to deal with what happens. Oh, I will tell you on that first rundown, first thing into Italy, I did fall. And I don't fall often because I go so daggum slow, but it was one of the falls where I ended up landing face down, no poles and no skis. So that was straight out of the gate, and it didn't hurt even a little bit. And everybody was so kind to bring my equipment back to me straight away. So maybe, maybe that didn't help. It didn't register as pain, but perhaps it upped my fearometer a little bit. So normally I just I don't have this great relationship with fear. It's just always a trust, not trust that nothing happens, but trust that when something happens, I can deal with it. But I'm still working on that. And perhaps, like I experienced the slowing down, the methodical reminder, each time I felt pressure to perform, each time I felt urgency at the beginning of this year, I would have to come back and say, this you're actually choosing to slow down. And even if everybody else looks like they're speeding ahead, that's not the pace you're choosing. But I had to continually bring myself back to that. And I guess maybe if I had those consecutive days on the mountains, I would have started feeling that when you can continually remind yourself that it's okay, it's okay. You build that trust in your body. And I think, even though Zosha on day one was like, this is your last time skiing, isn't it? I think I'm gonna do it again. And I think maybe I'll come back and listen to this and remind myself to do consecutive days to build that trust in myself. Maybe I will take a ski map, a map of the mountain, because the other thing I worry about is they get so far ahead and I really can't navigate the mountain, and then where do I go? And I don't know what I'm doing. So I think maybe I could perhaps lean into some of the things if I think before I get there, because I wasn't afraid when we were going. But if I think, what are the things that stir up this fear in me? If I could write those down, maybe I could mitigate some of them in advance to where they they just tone down from a 10 to a six, like a really reasonable level of fear. So I'll I'll be doing that. Let me tell you one other fun thing. This is how normally I interact with fear or just allow it to pass by me. We were on a gondola one day when I received a text from my friend, my tennis partner, who says, I hope you weren't on that gondola. Well, I don't really uh pay attention to news all that much. Nothing had come up. This is not in the realm of weather events that my stepmom alerts me about, or celebrity deaths, which my brother alerts me about. And so I had not received the information that a gondola in Switzerland had come unattached and then fallen down the mountain and a lady died. Okay. It didn't send me into panic. We're on a gondola, it is what it is, but it did make me think of my child who is now at home, and there's four of us on the gondola. And if we were all to fall and die, what would his experience be? And so I did take a moment to talk to him about this when I got home. And I told him, I was like, I know you're Kevin McAllister. I know you would figure things out. And he's like, Here's the deal, though, mom. Kevin McAllister had his dad's credit cards. I don't have anything. I only have my Go Henry card, which is what his allowance gets put on a debit card. I only have my Go Henry card, and I can't even see how much is on there, but with a$6 a week allowance, I don't think I'm gonna make it very far. So we did talk about what would be your strategic plan. If something happened, who would be your first contact? Who are you gonna call? And then I told him about the US embassy and hopefully who he would call would make those kind of suggestions and could get him help. But it's funny because that's normally what my reaction to a fearful situation would be is oh, okay, well, the only thing I could do is give him some tips and tools. Like if something were to happen, let's do it this way. But I'm not gonna sit here and worry about it, especially not when I'm sitting in a gondola. What are you gonna do? But anyway, so there we have it. That was my experience in finding joy. The joy was seeing the hikers who were taking pictures at all of the same spots we were. They just got up there a different way, and you can get a gondola pass without skiing down. So you can just ride your way up there and have a look and ride your way on down. I guess it's one of those things where you feel pressure until you don't feel obligated. And once you don't feel obligated, there's less pressure. So I wanted to ski because I want to continue to have the experience of that atmosphere of the beauty. Like, holy cow, it is so beautiful. And now I know that I get to have that without skiing. It takes this pressure off. Like, I want to keep speaking because I can, knowing that that's still available to me when I want to stop. All right, so that's what I wanted to share with you today was just a reflection about this experience and my relationship with control and surrendering and honoring my pace with learning that moving faster than my natural rhythm doesn't feel good in my body. And I don't want to live like that anymore. Not here, not in my home, not on a mountain, not anywhere. I'm slow down Susan. And maybe one day I'll pick up the pace in life, but it won't be because others are moving faster. It'll be because it feels good to me. All right. I let you know that I returned to green trees and yellow cars because spring is here and I am here for it. Thanks for listening. I love you.