Slow Living is the choice to live consciously with the goal of enhancing personal, community and environmental well being. Slow Living recognizes the role that time plays in shaping the quality of our lives. By slowing down we make time to savor our experiences and to connect more fully with others. The process of slowing down involves simplifying our lives and minimizing distractions so that we have more time and more energy to focus on what is meaningful and fulfilling. By consciously choosing to do less, we contribute to reducing some of the negative social and environmental impacts of our actions.

Beth Meredith and Eric Storm summarize Slow Living as follows:

Slow Living means structuring your life around meaning and fulfillment. Similar to "voluntary simplicity" and "downshifting," it emphasizes a less-is-more approach, focusing on the quality of your life. … Slow Living addresses the desire to lead a more balanced life and to pursue a more holistic sense of well-being in the fullest sense of the word..

Origin

Slow Living has its origins in the Slow Movement

Slow Movement

The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization...

, which began in Italy with the concept of Slow Food

Slow Food

Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It was the first established part of...

 (in contrast to fast food). This approach of taking the time required to fully engage with an activity and to savor life, nature, people, and place, has expanded to many other areas of life. When applied to one’s whole way of being, it becomes Slow Living.

Slow Living borrows from the earlier and related lifestyle approaches including Voluntary Simplicity and Simple Living

Simple living

Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...

 which emphasize consuming less and being more self-sufficient. However, Slow Living emphasizes building relationships with local producers over self-sufficiency, and puts a greater value on enjoying life and psychological well-being. While Slow Living shares Downshifting’s

Downshifting

Downshifting is a social behavior or trend in which individuals live simpler lives to escape from the rat race of obsessive materialism and to reduce the “stress, overtime, and psychological expense that may accompany it.” It emphasizes finding an improved balance between leisure and work and...

 more moderate approach to personal change, the movement is not urban-focused or limited to a particular age group, and it looks beyond finances and consumption to all areas of life.

Slow Living combines concepts from Positive Psychology

Positive psychology

Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...

, Environmental Sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

 as well as historical understandings of The Good Life

The good life

The good life is a term for the life that one would like to live, or for happiness, associated with the work of Aristotle and his teaching on ethics.-Religious approaches:...

.

Personal motivations for these movements are varied and can include spirituality, health, having more quality time for family and friends, living lightly on the earth, socio-political goals, stress reduction, and personal taste.

Sub-Categories

Within the growing global Slow Movement

Slow Movement

The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization...

, many of the sub-movements focus on particular areas of life including:

• Slow Food
  Slow Food
  Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It was the first established part of...
  
  
• Slow Money
  Slow Money
  Slow Money is a movement to organize investors and donors to steer new sources of capital to small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. Slow Money takes its name from the Slow Food movement. Slow Money aims to develop the relationship between capital markets and place,...
  
  
• Cittaslow
  Cittaslow
  Cittaslow is a movement founded in Italy in October 1999. The inspiration of Cittaslow was the Slow Food organization. Cittaslow's goals include improving the quality of life in towns by slowing down its overall pace, especially in a city's use of spaces and the flow of life and traffic through them...
  
  , or Slow Cities
• Slow Design
  Slow design
  Slow Design is a branch of the Slow Movement, which began with the concept of Slow Food, a term coined in contrast to fast food. As with every branch of the Slow Movement, the overarching goal of Slow Design is to promote well being for individuals, society, and the natural environment...
  
  
• Slow Media
• Slow Parenting
• Slow Sex
• Slow Fashion/ Slow Clothing
• Slow Gardening
• Slow Art
• Slow Travel

Beyond these specific movements, Slow Living finds ways to bring this “slow philosophy” to all aspects of life.

Principles

Qualities of Slow Living include:

• Holistic – taking into account as many areas of life as possible, including the personal as well as the social, and both short and long term consequences
• Elegant Sufficiency – having enough for fulfillment, while avoiding waste and excess, valuing quality over quantity.
• Savoring – taking the time and directing awareness to fully engage with your experiences in ways that are enjoyable and life enhancing.
• Distinctive and Tailored – valuing the unique characteristics of each place, person and moment, and fostering this uniqueness in your own life.
• Environmentally Sustainable – being conscious of the environmental impacts of your choices and actions and seeking to reduce harm and enhance restoration.

U.S. Slow Living Summit, Brattleboro, Vt.

The first U.S.-based Slow Living Summit, was held in Brattleboro, Vermont

Brattleboro, Vermont

Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located in the southeast corner of the state, along the state line with New Hampshire. The population was 12,046 at the 2010 census...

 June 1-3, 2011 and is scheduled for May 30-June 1, 2012. It was organized by Strolling of the Heifers, a Brattleboro-based non-profit organization dedicated to supporting family farms by connecting people with healthy local foods. The gathering drew more than 200 people from across the United States, with keynote speakers working in the movement towards local and regional sustainability in New England and beyond. Among speakers: New Yorker writer and book author Bill McKibben (founder of 360.org); Google Inc. community-affairs director Matt Dunne and Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farms co-founder. The summit was developed to explore of ways to build healthy, thriving local economies while encouraging, mentoring and supporting a new generation of activists, entrepreneurs and engaged citizens. By convening around local and regional sustainability, the summit sought to connect together farmers and other food producers, business and business groups concerned for social responsibility, sustainability-oriented nonprofits, socially responsible entrepreneurs and investors, governmental entities and educational institutions and programs at all levels. The organizers defined "Slow Living" as follows:

This simple phrase expresses the fundamental paradigm shift that is underway in this age. “Slow” encodes the transformative change from faster and cheaper to slower and better—where quality, community and the future matter. It’s about slowing down and becoming more mindful of our basic connection with land, place and people, taking the long view that builds a just, healthy, fulfilling way of life for the generations to come. It is about common good taking precedence over private gain. It is about shifting not just consumption but investment to support the local and regional economy.

See also

• Slow Movement
  Slow Movement
  The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization...
  
  
• Simple Living and Voluntary Simplicity
  Simple living
  Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
  
  
• Downshifting
  Downshifting
  Downshifting is a social behavior or trend in which individuals live simpler lives to escape from the rat race of obsessive materialism and to reduce the “stress, overtime, and psychological expense that may accompany it.” It emphasizes finding an improved balance between leisure and work and...
  
  
• Positive Psychology
  Positive psychology
  Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...
  
  
• The Good Life
  The good life
  The good life is a term for the life that one would like to live, or for happiness, associated with the work of Aristotle and his teaching on ethics.-Religious approaches:...
  
  
• In Praise of Slow
• Mindfulness (psychology)
  Mindfulness (psychology)
  Modern clinical psychology and psychiatry since the 1970s have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on the concept of mindfulness in Buddhist meditation.-Definitions:...
  
  

External links

• Create-The-Good-Life.com (website)
• In Praise of Slowness (book)
• Slow is Beautiful (book)
• Slow Living Summit (web page)
• Slow Living Summit blog

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