My gums live under capitalism… Maybe yours do too?

I was brushing my teeth the other day and I was doing this new thing where I press gently and spend more time on the activity.

I’ve started doing this thanks to my hygienist, who told me, as I have been told before, that I brush too vigorously and my gums have receded as a result.

Despite having been given this precise information years ago, and intellectually knowing it to be true, my body had a whole other timeline for compliance.

Seven years to be exact.

Why is this?

That night as I was cleaning my teeth slowly, humming a song to delay my hand, I felt a revolt in my body.

A forceful, whooshing, rushing energy. 

Like a let’s just get this done as efficiently as possible so that I can move onto the following task kind of vibe

With an internal tutting and I have other more important things to do sternness. 

All philosophically under-pinned by the belief that hard and fast is the superior pace of delivery.

The next thing on my to-do list by the way, was going to bed.

There was no emergency, or urgent duty, or deadline.

Just a revealing of my under-lying pressure to get shit done.

That’s always there, mixed and mingled with a sense of shame at my lack of productivity as per our culture’s expectations.

No wonder going slowly was unconsciously avoided for years.

Confronting all of this is uncomfortable and not on par with the mundanity of the act at hand.

Fair enough if I’m at some kind of retreat or intensive. I think.

Except that’s not how healing works. 

It lives in the prosaic and subtle.

The micro shifts of spaciousness and choice, revealed by awareness.