Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast: A Nervous System Truth About Change

Slow Is Smooth. Smooth Is Fast.

Lately, it feels like everything is moving at once.

The world.
Our relationships.
Our identities.
The way we work, connect, age, adapt.

So many of my clients are talking about the same thing:
“I’m trying to keep up, but my system feels overwhelmed.”

There’s a constant background sense of urgency — like we’re supposed to be doing more, processing faster, adjusting quicker, staying ahead of change that never seems to slow down.

And yet, the deeper truth I keep encountering in my own body is this:

Speed without regulation isn’t actually effective.
It’s just exhausting.

My partner is a lifelong athlete and he regularly reminds me of a phrase his mentor always used with him:

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

At first I found it irritating. Historically, when I’m on the struggle bus, I’m not particularly receptive to motivational phrases, but this one felt different. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s profoundly accurate — especially when it comes to how human nervous systems actually function.

When we move too fast internally, we lose precision.
We grip. We over-effort. We react instead of respond.
We burn energy without actually going very far.

But when we slow down enough to feel ourselves — our breath, our body, our internal state — something subtle shifts. Movements become cleaner. Decisions become clearer. We stop leaking energy.

And paradoxically… things start to move forward more easily.

This is all easier said than done, everyone can understand the concept, but putting it into practice is something different.

I’ve been applying this in a very literal way through rock climbing.

I started climbing almost two years ago, and I am not a natural. I didn’t come in fearless or athletically gifted. I came in nervous, curious, and very aware of my body.

What surprised me most wasn’t the strength component — it was how much progress depended on slowing down.

When I try to rush up a wall, I get sloppy. I grip too hard. I waste energy. I miss footholds that are right in front of me.

But when I slow down and actually feel each movement — placing my foot with intention, shifting my weight gradually, pausing to breathe — everything changes.

I move less.
I use less effort.
I get further.

The moments where I want to hurry are usually the moments I need to slow down the most.

This mirrors my internal life more than I’d like to admit.

My nervous system’s default pattern is to go into hyperdrive. Over-functioning. Anticipating. Managing. Holding more than my share. Moving fast in an attempt to create safety or control.

This holiday season was a clear example of that. I slipped back into an old rhythm of doing too much, holding too much, and being on high alert. And while I can do that — I always have — my body made it very clear that it comes at a cost.

The recovery afterward wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet. Slower digestion. Fatigue. A deep need for warmth, rest, simplicity. Less stimulation. Less output. More presence.

It was a reminder I’ve received many times before, but one I keep needing to relearn:

Pushing through change doesn’t make it easier.
Regulating through change does.

We often think effectiveness looks like speed, productivity, momentum. But real effectiveness — the kind that’s sustainable — comes from something else entirely.

It comes from:

• feeling safe enough to pause

• listening to the body’s signals

• moving in smaller, more precise ways

• choosing timing over force

Not doing more.
Doing the right amount from the right internal state.

This is true in relationships.
In work.
In health.
In aging.
In periods of reinvention.

It shows up differently depending on where you are in life.

For some people, it’s navigating young children, sleep deprivation, and the constant cognitive load of caring for others.

For others, it’s being in the thick of a career — building, striving, proving, holding a lot of responsibility while trying not to lose yourself in the process.

And for many of us in midlife, it’s something quieter but just as profound:
a body that’s changing, identities that are shifting, old ways of pushing no longer working the way they used to.

I’m noticing this in myself more and more — learning how to listen to a perimenopausal body, how to recover from overexertion instead of powering through it, how to relate to time and energy differently than I did in my 30s.

The common thread across all of it is the same:
when we try to meet these transitions with force, urgency, or self-judgment, our system contracts.

When we meet them with presence and precision, something inside us reorganizes.

Especially in times of collective instability, when everything feels uncertain, the impulse is to move faster. To solve, fix, figure it out.

But what I keep observing — in myself and in others — is that the nervous system doesn’t reorganize through pressure. It reorganizes through presence.

Through being here.
In the body.
With what’s actually happening.

Not five steps ahead.

There’s a quiet kind of mastery in learning to move slowly in a fast world.

To place your foot carefully instead of leaping.
To breathe before responding.
To feel your internal state before making a decision.
To let your system catch up to your life.

Not because you’re falling behind —
but because you’re choosing to move with precision instead of panic.

And from that place, something surprising happens.

Life starts to feel less like something you’re chasing…
and more like something you’re actually inhabiting.

If you’re navigating change right now and feeling overwhelmed, resistant, or exhausted by it — you’re not broken.

You may simply be moving faster than your body has the capacity to integrate.

And sometimes the most effective thing you can do isn’t to push harder…

It’s to slow down just enough to feel where you already are.

Because smooth movement doesn’t come from force.

It comes from being regulated enough to move with care.

And from there, real momentum becomes possible again.