If You Can’t Find Your Safe Anchor, Slow Down And Trust Yourself To Get There
How a deep diver champion teaches us to slow down
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SlowPowerPEOPLE
If You Can’t Find Your Safe Anchor, Slow Down And Trust Yourself To Get There
How a deep diver champion teaches us to slow down
When you dive down 45 meters (150 feet) for your fish dinner, you better take a deep breath. And slow down. The underwater experience of this woman champion holds lessons for all of us in slowing down.
Some people successfully integrate the principles of slowing down in their personal and professional lives and make the power of slow part of their lifestyle.
One of them is Kimi Werner whom I want to introduce you to. She learned to implement going Slow to improve her diving. And her life.
Growing up off the grid in an isolated part of coastal Maui, Kimi became a champion deep-sea diver, spearfisher, freediver, artist, and chef-hunter. She started as a little kid floating behind her father as he free-dove for her family's primary food source. Kimi’s own first-time spearfishing at 24 started out terrifying, lonely, and uncomfortable. But it ended with fish for dinner and an unquenchable obsession. That day changed her life, it changed her mindset. “This is me. I am proud. I did this.”
Touching the bottom
Eventually, she came to the point to hold her breath for more than four minutes to reach depths of over 45 Meters (150 feet) and win every category she entered at the 2008 U.S. National Spearfishing Championships, in the dark waters off Newport, Rhode Island. The waters there were the opposite of what she was used to diving in Hawaii where she could see exactly where she was diving. She had 4 days to prepare in the dark waters and eventually a principle she had learned years before helped her to manage the opaque waters.
One of her early teachers told her: “When you feel the need to speed up, slow down.”
“I would see a layer of green below and I thought to myself thank goodness there's the bottom and then I'd go right through it. I'd see another layer of brown below that and I say okay there it is, and I'd go right through that too and this would freak me out. It would send me back scratching to the surface gasping for air and I honestly started to think I was never going to find the bottom of the Atlantic”, Kimi describes her story from the event in Rhode Island.
“But through learning to slow down and trust myself I was able to let go of my expectations of where the bottom should be and instead just believe that that bottom would come. And I did make it all the way down there.” – Kimi Werner
Days later she became the national champion and for the next five years, she got caught up in competitions and constant pressure from the outside and imposed by herself to win. She finally hit the point where she realized that the whole reason she got back into diving (after years of attending university and working in restaurants) was to slow down because she truly believed that going back to a simpler life was not a step backward. But the competitions, winnings, and the media hype after her championship pulled her in a different direction.
Reaching inside of her
She knew she had to walk away from the contests and deep diving as a career. She quit. And was called a quitter, a waste of talent, and a disgrace. “And these words seriously hurt me, and they broke me for a while because I didn't know who I was anymore or what I wanted without all of this. But I found out.” She was able to reach inside herself and realized what her priorities had turned into and what she needed to do to turn that around. She still wanted to dive and hunt fish and be a cook but not necessarily dive to compete. And it turned out that people as a whole could relate more to fish as food than they could fish as trophies.
Going slow is a decision you make for yourself. Kimi was moving down a road she didn’t want to go anymore. She turned back to being herself. “The moment I took up freediving and spearfishing again but without competitions, I reconnected to the happiness of my childhood.”
Today Kimi is a certified culinary chef, and an award-winning environmentalist inspiring people to respect nature. She is also an artist who embodies the heart and soul of simple and sustainable living and continues diving and exploring other cultures to understand how they fish and integrate fishing into their cultures and lives.
Kimi is a great example of the importance of being confident in yourself, finding your own path, and keeping with your values, instead of giving into today’s societal pressure of rushing to the finish line and racing to win and outdo everyone else.
Feeling when it’s time to slow down
One crucial lesson she learned and is passionate about telling people is that the need to speed up became her truest indicator that it was time to slow down. When you feel your body or mind is speeding up and want to go faster, slow down. Focus on your breath, and pause. By slowing the mind down or relaxing unused muscles in your body you will be able to go further. To pause and not follow the urge to rush and hurry, “re-organizes” your brain, your energy, and how you absorb your surroundings.
Slowing down helps you to calm down and make logical decisions. It helps you to become more aware of everyone around you.
You get clarity of your life's path.
“I truly believe that we all have the power to slow down and make more conscious, more meaningful decisions that can not only improve our personal lives but that can change the world.” – Kimi Werner
Impulses we can take away from SlowPower Person Kimi
Slowing down and letting go off expectations can bring you to your destination
Taking the time and care to find out what your values are and how to follow them results in a satisfying and fulfilling life
We all have the power to slow down and make more conscious, more meaningful decisions
Slowing down can change our personal lives
Slowing down can help to improve the environment
When you slow down you better connect with yourself and strengthen your confidence in yourself
When you feel the need to speed up, slow down.
Links
You can listen to Kimi Werner’s TED talk here »»»
Kimi Werner’s Instagram »»»
Kimi Werner’s food and recipes » » »
Thanks for reading,
