The Power of Pausing: How Slowing Down Makes You Stronger
Slowing down isn’t passive.
Slowing down allows for precision.
Precision = strength.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “no pain, no gain.” But in bodies, especially after age 50, strength isn’t built by racing through reps or pushing past fatigue. Strength is built in the space where you allow yourself to notice what’s happening, to adjust, and to move with intention.
We live in a culture that equates speed with success: more reps, more volume, more sweat, more output. Over time, our nervous system forgets how to slow down or regulate. We burn out or, even worse, injure ourselves.
When it comes to our movement practice, whether it’s yoga or strength training, rushing often goes hand in hand with a shift in our attention toward extrinsic motivators: —following dogmatic alignment rules, burning calories as fast as possible, amping up reps, or chasing the next goal. The faster and more intense the workout is, the more likely you are to slip into old movement patterns that don’t serve you, or new ones that don’t meet your body where it is
What Is a Somatic Approach to Movement?
A somatic approach to fitness and movement focuses on the whole body and, in fact, the whole self, and uses movement to retrain and balance the nervous system and build resilience.
Applying this approach sharpens your awareness of your body as you move.
The somatic approach brings you out of the “power through” mindset and into the experience of your body: noticing your breath, feeling your weight shift, and your alignment. You tune into the subtle decisions your nervous system makes moment by moment. That shift can change your relationship with your body, how you experience pain, how you move, and how you feel while you’re doing it.
Because movement isn’t just a muscular process; it’s a neurological one. Your nervous system decides which muscles to fire, when, and with the most efficiency.
When you slow down:
You allow your nervous system to shift into a rest-and-digest (parasympathetic) mode.
You tune into the subtle movement of your stabilizing muscles.
You can connect with your breath and its relationship to the diaphragm and pelvic floor.
Interoception and proprioception sharpen, so your sense of yourself in space and how you’re moving through it becomes more precise.
A slower, mindful movement is often more challenging and far more transformative than rushing through 20 reps.
This is where “simple is not easy” comes in.
A slow, controlled squat.
A pause in a split lunge.
A mindful exhale during a hip hinge.
Pausing Widens the Gap Between Stress and Response
Slowing down creates space between what you feel and how you react. Stress used to be acute and situational: a predator, a danger, a moment. Today, it’s ongoing and ambient: a constant barrage of information, serving others' needs first and skipping your rest and recovery day. When stress becomes chronic, digestion, sleep, energy, and recovery all slip out of rhythm.
Stress isn’t the enemy. In the right amounts, it’s deeply supportive.
Low stress feels like steadiness, a normal heart rate, good digestion, restorative sleep, ease.
Beneficial stress feels like a spark, a slightly elevated heart rate, a hum of focus or creativity, productive muscle tension, followed by a quick return to baseline.
Harmful stress is the overload, rapidly rising blood pressure, poor digestion, headaches, chronic pain, insomnia, compromised immunity, irritability, and difficulty relaxing.
And these markers look strikingly similar to menopausal symptoms.
Athletes develop an intuitive sense for balancing beneficial and harmful stress. They train just enough to stimulate adaptation, not so much that they break down.
Midlife women, on the other hand, often juggle hormonal shifts, sleep disruption, joint changes, mood fluctuations, and metabolic shifts. They unknowingly push themselves in ways that work directly against their goals. When adaptation and resilience are already compromised, layering on high-intensity, fast-paced, “do more” training without awareness can lead to burnout, inflammation, and stalled progress.
Pausing and noticing becomes your superpower.
It helps you discern the difference between healthy challenge and harmful overload. It lets you shift your mindset, honor your physiology, and choose “less but better.” And when your stress response calms, the entire landscape of your life changes: pain perception softens, inflammation eases, digestion improves, sleep deepens, and compassion, for yourself and others, becomes easier to access.
Slowing down doesn’t just make you stronger. It makes you wiser.
Why This Matters Even More for Perimenopausal and Menopausal Women
When hormones shift, your stress dial becomes more sensitive. You don’t recover the way you did in your twenties, not because you’re fragile, but because your physiology is reorganizing. Your body asks for a different kind of care: more attunement, more rest cycles, more mindful loading, and movement that builds capacity without draining your reserves.
Slowing down helps you:
Load joints with better mechanics.
Recruit stabilizers that protect your knees, hips, shoulders, and spine.
Sync the diaphragm and pelvic floor with your breath.
Train strength without overwhelming your nervous system.
Build better movement patterns that last longer and feel better.
This is training with your body, not against it, and it’s the key to a midlife movement practice.
A Somatic Approach to Getting Stronger While Avoiding Pain, Injury, and Dysregulation
When you strength train, start by doing a very slow version of each exercise you’ve programmed for your workout, but without weight.
Perform each movement slowly and consciously, without resistance, taking the time to practice proper form from beginning to end. Mirrors can be beneficial here.
When you feel like you’ve mastered the movement with proper form, add a small amount of resistance or weight. Again, repeat as above, take the time to practice the exercise with this light resistance, making sure you maintain proper form from start to finish.
Continue adding resistance while still maintaining proper form.
This approach may feel slow and tedious at first, but it is worth it. Focusing on the process rather than the end goal is one of the hardest shifts to master because traditional fitness culture has conditioned us to count reps, chase calorie burn, and measure success solely through visible metrics.
By taking the time to train your nervous system to perform each movement with pain-free form, you’ll eventually meet all of your goals, including losing fat and gaining strength and resilience, without pain or injury.
Slowing down:
Invites you to feel your weight shift.
Allows you to sense where you’re bracing.
Helps you notice your breath.
Reveals subtle engagement of the stabilizing muscles.
You’ll stop muscling through.
And start moving with integrity.
Simple Is Not Easy
When you strip away speed and momentum, what remains is the truth: how you breathe, how you compensate, how you focus, how you feel. Slow doesn’t mean gentle. Slow means honest.
And being honest with yourself is a powerful training tool.
A Somatic Invitation
If you’ve been rushing, gripping, forcing, or moving on autopilot, consider this your reminder: Strength is not the absence of ease. Strength is the presence of awareness.
Join me for virtual yoga and somatic strength classes—or work with me privately to build a movement practice that supports your body and your goals.