We live in a culture that worships speed. Productivity. Efficiency. The grind.
And what that has created is a generation of desensitized men (and women) moving too fast to feel anything.
I grew up in it. My parents were military. They ate fast, moved fast, and got shit done fast. You don’t slow down in that culture. You perform, you produce, you push. And I carried that pace with me for years, even as I was teaching mindfulness. Even as I was practicing yoga and meditation and martial arts. I was aware of it and eventually trained myself to slow down double time any time I caught myself rushing forward, even if it meant I would arrive late. I would remind myself that if it was important for me to arrive on time I should have left earlier.
Despite the awareness and the effort I put forth to change the pattern, I still catch myself eating fast at times. Sasha reminds me to slow down.
The key thing to understand is speed is not just a habit. It’s a nervous system strategy. If you move fast enough, the uncomfortable feelings never quite catch up.
That’s what speed actually is. Avoidance. Armour in motion.
Where do you most often catch yourself rushing?
When I returned to Canada after five years living on the South Pacific coast of Costa Rica, I felt it immediately. Landing in Ontario was like walking into a wall of rushing energy. Go go go. Everyone is moving fast, consuming, numbing. Alcohol in every corner store. Cannabis on every block. Substances that do what most men won’t allow themselves to do naturally… slow down.
Because if they slowed down, they would have to feel everything they’ve been running from.
A woman’s nervous system knows this. She feels your speed before you do. When you’re moving fast, you are not present. And she knows it. She feels alone in the room even if you’re physically there.
Speed keeps you in your head. And the head is a long way from the heart.
The 17 inches from the head to the heart cannot be traveled at speed. That journey is slow by nature. It has to be.
I have had three teachers in the practice of slowing down.
The first was Systema… the ancient Russian martial art that has strongly influenced my way of life. Systema is a King’s system… as opposed to a soldier’s… because it does not compromise.
‘A King rushes for no one’
Systema is the opposite of everything most men have been trained to value.. Slow work. Minimal tension. Breath as the foundation of everything. When I first encountered it, after 17 years of competitive martial arts training and being raised in a modern day warrior culture, I didn’t understand it. It took years to unlearn the conditioning and remove the armour that served me well as a competitive martial artist. What Systema revealed was this:
‘True power comes from the ability to truly relax.’
The slower I moved, the more I could feel. The more I could feel, the more sensitive I became to energy… my own and others. The less tension in me, the more I could sense in another. This is why so many experienced Systema practitioners become extraordinary healers. They have freed themselves of so much tension that they can genuinely feel other people. This has been my experience as a martial artist and bodyworker. I have to say though… the greatest training ground for slowing down hasn’t been the dojo… It has been the bedroom.
Enter my second teacher… Sasha. She is the most sensitive person I have ever been intimate with and she trained me to go even slower in lovemaking than I had ever gone before. What opened as a result is something I can only describe as tantric union. Not two bodies in friction. Two beings melding. She taught me to trust my own ability to direct energy and that ability came entirely from slowing down and resensitizing. The more I slowed, the more I could feel her. The more I could feel her, the more I could meet her. And the more I could meet her, the more she could fully open and relax into her feminine. There is nothing that pleases me more than to feel Sasha in that state of receptivity.
The third teacher was my own body. As I slowed down in breath, in movement, in eating, in how I walked through a room, tension began to release. Sensitivity returned. Intuition developed. Life started speaking to me in ways I had been moving too fast to hear. As I was being more present and practicing the art of active listening, I became more attuned to my own body and what it wanted from me. I was practicing intuitive eating and naturally began making healthier choices despite the monetary cost of those choices. I choose to eat like a king and consume the quality of food my body deserves.
As I became more aware, living in the present moment, I was able to notice all the other ways life communicates with us… numbers, symbols, animals, people, synchronicities, etc.
When you slow down enough, you develop the eyes to see and the ears to hear. And that’s when life becomes genuinely magical because you begin to have a direct experience with the sacred.
Slowing down is not passive. That’s the misunderstanding most men carry.
It requires more discipline than speed. Anyone can rush. It takes real courage and training to stay present with what arises when you stop moving. To feel the fear underneath the urgency. To sit with the discomfort instead of outrunning it.
Speed is a manifestation of fear. The moment you slow down enough to feel it, the fear begins to move. Slower is always deeper.
This is true in lovemaking. In conversation. In leadership. In conflict. In any relationship. When you slow down, you invite depth. When you go fast, you guarantee surface level connection.
What is it costing a man to keep moving at the speed he’s moving?
It’s costing him presence. His ability to hear the signals from his own body. The capacity to meet himself and others at depth. True connection with his partner, his children, the people he serves. His body’s wisdom. His own intuition. His access to something greater than himself.
And his partner feels all of it. His children feel all of it.
The moment he slows down, something shifts. His partner feels safer to relax into her feminine. His children feel him enter the room and settle. His own body begins to speak to him in ways he can finally hear. The whispers that were always there… the ones that become screams when ignored long enough… finally get to land.
Where to start?
The simplest entry point is one conscious breath. Right now. Inhale as slowly as you can without agitating yourself. Exhale even slower. Notice what’s there when you stop moving.
That’s where this work begins.
If you want to practice this with other men in real time, join us for the weekly Live Draw sessions. Every week I open a live container, draw a single card from a 52-card embodiment system I’ve developed over years of working with men, and guide whoever is present through a direct experience of slowing down. There’s a movement practice connected to each card, done slowly because that’s the only way it works. You can participate or simply witness. Either way, something will land.
For the man who is aware that he is standing at a threshold and ready to go deeper than a single breath, I offer private in-person immersion and online mentorships. Where the practice of slowing down gets to go into the places that need more than a moment of stillness to release.
Register here to join Saturdays Live Draw.
For private immersion enquiries go to jonathanmaccaul.com
I invite you to really sit with this article. Read it again… slowly. Take your time with it. Share what you notice. I would love to hear in the comments or a DM what landed for you after reading it the second time around when you intentionally slowed down.
With love,
Jonathan