The Slo practice is an embodied, improvisation-based arrival practice that invites the practitioner to slow themselves down in opposition to the instantaneous speed of Western society. The practice aims to open up a pocket for temporal suspension in order to intentionally recognize the elements one is moving in relationship to and influenced by, within the practitioner and the practitioner’s environment. The Slo practice is an opportunity to research what the resistance of capitalism’s definitions of time and productivity might feel like in the body. It begins with an intentional arrival of a person or people, in any space large enough to move the body. In the practice, the practitioner listens to the needs, desires, and curiosities of the self and the group.

The Slo practice has been shared with various groups of people who identify as dancers or non-dancers and groups made up of people aging from 7 to 70 years old.

As the practitioners are guided verbally by a Slo practice facilitator, an intentional tuning to the self, the space, and the sound begins. Gradually moving through various states of warming the body via improvised movement, the Slo practice encourages individual and collective listening as a multi-sensory experience that allows for communication beyond words. This active listening is a practice of broadening awareness within and outside of the self, to allow for one’s actions to be responsive in a dialogic exchange with others. This type of listening imbues a release of judgment and expectation–to surrender to listening as a learner.

Listening, in the Slo practice, engages an interoceptive sense through which all bodily sensations are activated. Practitioners listen to the surfaces in the room with the surfaces of their skin, to the musical presence in relation to the beating of their heart and the rhythm of their breath, to those moving around them with their attentive vision and emotional sense. It is a continual commitment to curiosity about the unknown, releasing judgment in the pursuit of creative relationships, and valuing emergent understanding as it arises. The Slo practice is also continuously learning from itself, ever-changing in response to the time, place, and group of people in which it is utilized.

Photos by Isabel Fajardo