What is the Slow Living Movement all about?

The Slow Living movement, which originated in Rome in 1986 which Carlo Petrini’s protests against McDonald’s, is in essence about living more mindfully and restoring balance to one’s life.

Perhaps the best known aspect of slow living is the slow food movement, which focuses on eating and preparing ‘real food’, food cooked from scratch with ‘whole food’ ingredients, and avoiding processed food, as well as on eating local and traditional foods. Slow food also encompasses growing your own food, from growing green beans on a trellis of living corn plants to keeping bees or chickens or other livestock.

The slow movement is more than just slow food though. It is about slowing down and and paying attention in every aspect of  life, from reducing structured after-school activities with school children to slowing down one’s media intake. In fact, Wikipedia has articles on slow parenting, slow money, slow gardening, slow travel, slow art, slow media, slow fashion/slow clothing, and even slow software development, as well as slow food.

While the slow movement is perhaps essentially about paying attention, it has extended that concept to living ethically. It is not enough just to be mindful of one’s own life, living mindfully also means being aware of one’s impact on others. So while the slow fashion movement was initially about boycotting all mass-made clothes and wearing only those made by hand, it has now extended to include buying from small business, fair trade clothing, clothing made from recycled fabrics or repurposed vintage clothes, or otherwise ethical practices.

The Slow Living Movement intersects clearly with other movements or practices such as frugality, sustainable living practices and homesteading. All of these embrace, for instance, growing your own food and cooking from scratch, though for varying reasons, and all are also inclined towards reducing consumption and consumerism.

Slow Living then can be seen as a reaction against the clutter and over consumption inherent in current Western cultures, from so call ‘helicoptor parenting’, to eating in front of the television or in the car, to consuming a constant steam of information via media like twitter and mobile phone connectivity. It is about being aware of one’s effects on the world and other people, and slowing down to fully experience the effects of the world on oneself.