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Think of how you eat your meals. Do you taste each bite? Does your plate empty before you have the opportunity to enjoy your meal? If you’re a parent, are you eating each bite for yourself, or do you cram the food in as quickly as possible before the kids need you again? Do you sit fully in front of your plate, or are you positioned to the side, ready to leap to the next activity. Do you eat at a table, or on your desk next to the computer?

Growing attention is being given to the Slow Food movement. Originating in Italy, its followers urge us to rediscover the joy in eating. The origin of the food, the style of preparation, and the unique flavors are all to be appreciated. No more cramming meals in while we are checking emails.

The Slow Food movement is inviting us to actually savor the moment we are in, thereby not only enjoying our food more, but also being opened to a new world of food production and preparation. In the Slow Food manifesto, they write “May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.” The slow food movement allows followers to not only nourish their bodies, but also their spirits with each meal enjoyed.

Slow Family

I find myself wondering what it might look like to translate the concepts of Slow Food into a Slow Family. A quick google found that there is actually already a Slow Family Manifesto! Developed by Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll in Austin, Texas [||!prliignore5||], the Slow Family Manifesto declares “We hold this as truth, that the peace and the harmony we want to exist within the world, can be created within the family first, by bringing it home and lovingly, consciously and intentionally slowing life down.”

Most of us as parents experience life as a family as anything but slow, with days full of responsibility and activities. Our children grow up before our eyes, and we find ourselves wondering where on earth the time has gone. While certain phases will not be missed (sleepless nights and toilet training, anyone?), most of us wouldn’t mind having the magical power to slow the hands of time and somehow better remember the small moments of this precious time.

Unschedule Your Family

Truth is, we hold that magical power in our hands. Unschedule your kids with less activities and more open space, dedicate the weekends to be pure family time, in the midst of a busy day—Stop—ditch the next activity, and allow pure magic to appear. [Photo at right: Author Sarah and her son, Zekiah]

Beyond slowing down, we have perhaps an even more powerful magic available to us—that of mindfulness, allowing us to experience each moment as a whole. This mindfulness is not an easy task—the ways of our busy world are powerfully seductive.

Perhaps the real secret to a slow family is to find some way to be fully present to the small moments in our lives, shifting from function into connection—the diaper changes, car rides to school, night-time snuggles, and scraped knees. When we experience our life more mindfully, we can’t help but be changed. We nourish ourselves and our children, and the way is opened to new ways of being together as a family and as individuals.

So go ahead and slow down. Allow the unexpected beauty of the ordinary to capture your memory. Savour each moment as it is, not as you wish it could be, and watch the magic unfold…

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Photo courtesy of jenny downing