Slow Doors

Here's a great exercise to measure your patience and to practice slowing down when you travel.

More and more public places are installing those over-sized automatic revolving doors that I remember first seeing at hospitals and airports.  The doors are bigger now, roomy enough for at least five to seven people, though a recent, brash experiment on The Strip in Vegas demonstrated that they don't quite fit a Cooper Mini (nor do the Clark County jail cells).   

They're also more responsive to their human passers-through. If you walk too quickly, or get too close to the front of one of the door panels, it will slow down. This is annoying, in part because the design change was probably inspired by liability attorneys rather than form or function. 

But, it's also an opportunity. If you force yourself to stay in the middle of the space and sync with the door's energy, you can feel your blood and brain slow. Take a few revolutions and it's almost meditative.

Try it when you're heading inside for a new business lead or client review or another potentially stressful meeting. I can see a movement brewing.

In cities around the world people start their travel days with this technocractic version of the Buddhist stupa perambulations, centering themselves with three, or seven, or seventeen slow turns before tangling with the jagged arcs and lines of our frenetic days.