This episode opens a five-part series exploring what it means to slow down in business during a season of personal and professional transition. Sara shares why her body, nervous system, and life circumstances are calling for a gentler pace, and how this shift is rooted in feminine wisdom and seasonal awareness. The conversation invites listeners to reconsider productivity, success, and sustainability through the lens of rhythm rather than pressure.
In this episode, we explore:
- The personal and physiological reasons behind choosing a slower pace of work
- How perimenopause and life transitions invite review, completion, and recalibration
- The concept of slow business as an alternative to hustle-based models
- Why businesses must reflect inner and outer seasonal rhythms
- Practical ways to reduce pace without abandoning depth or integrity
Key takeaways
- Slowing down is a form of self-trust, not a lack of commitment
- Businesses are extensions of lived experience and nervous system capacity
- Seasonal rhythms apply to work just as much as they apply to the body
- Depth, presence, and quality often increase when pace decreases
- Sustainability requires honoring rest, pruning, and release
Resources Mentioned
- Introductory workshop: How to Create a Simple, Sacred, Self-Led Business
Episode FAQs
1. What does slowing down in business actually mean?
It means adjusting pace to match nervous system capacity, life season, and inner rhythms rather than maintaining constant output.
2. Why is this conversation connected to perimenopause?
Perimenopause often brings heightened sensitivity and signals that invite deeper listening, completion, and recalibration across all areas of life, including work.
3. Is slow business incompatible with growth or profitability?
No. Slow business prioritizes intentional growth, allowing for impact and income without requiring constant intensity.
4. How do seasonal rhythms apply to modern businesses?
Seasonal rhythms offer a framework for balancing periods of action with periods of rest, reflection, and integration.
5. Who is this perspective most helpful for?
This approach is especially supportive for sensitive, spiritually oriented women navigating transitions, fatigue, or a desire for more sustainable ways of working.
Full transcript available below.
This fall, I’m offering a five-part series called The Season of Slow Business. It’s inspired by my move to France, my upcoming forty-eighth birthday, and this passage through perimenopause. This series comes from a personal call to slow down, listen more closely, and let my business evolve in rhythm with my body and the seasons.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll explore what it means to build a business that honors your body’s pace, your nervous system’s intelligence, and the natural rhythms of the earth. In a culture that values constant output and growth at any cost, slow business points toward another way—one rooted in feminine wisdom, seasonal living, and trust in timing.
As I prepare to turn forty-eight, I’ve been revisiting memories and noticing how perimenopause invites review and completion. This time feels like a circling back, a reckoning with unresolved parts of the past, and an opportunity to make peace with earlier chapters of womanhood.
One memory that’s resurfaced comes from my early twenties, when I lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand. After years of disordered eating and disrupted cycles, I immersed myself in Ayurveda, yoga, and nature-based healing. One afternoon, during a foot massage, my menstrual cycle returned after years of absence. It felt like a homecoming, a reminder of the body’s deep wisdom when given the right conditions.
That memory is returning now as I notice another kind of return happening in my life. Perimenopause is calling me to listen more deeply. What we often label as symptoms are signals—communications from the body and soul during a profound transition.
This year has been full: preparing for a move, a wedding, relocating to France, and navigating uncertainty around home and place. As autumn arrives, I feel an invitation to move away from the fullness of summer into something quieter and more spacious.
For the past two years, I’ve maintained a weekly publishing rhythm with this podcast and my Sunday Journal. That pace once felt aligned, but this season it began to feel heavy and obligatory rather than inspired. When work starts to feel onerous, it’s a signal to listen.
So for this fall season, I’m experimenting with a lighter publishing schedule—every other week instead of weekly. This is an intentional choice to create more space and to prioritize depth, presence, and nervous system regulation.
I’ve also been reflecting on the slow food movement, which values quality, intention, and connection over speed. Applying these principles to business invites a slow business approach—depth over speed, presence over productivity, seasonal rhythms over constant output, quality over quantity, and relationship over transaction.
Slow business is not about being lazy or avoiding growth. It allows for busy seasons and intensity, but those become conscious choices rather than a constant state. It’s about building businesses that are sustainable for your nervous system, your life season, and your soul’s calling.
Autumn teaches us about harvest and release. Trees let go of their leaves, pulling energy back into their roots. In business, this might look like slowing down, pruning what no longer serves, releasing outdated identities, and allowing grief for what’s ending.
These practices support long-term sustainability. When we release what no longer fits, we create space for what wants to emerge. This requires trust and a willingness to let the field lie fallow.
Some reflection questions to sit with include: Where does my business feel like a “should” right now? What pace feels natural to my nervous system this season? What would I change if I weren’t worried about others’ expectations?
Practical ways to integrate slow business include auditing your content schedule, building in seasonal rhythms, creating fallow periods, focusing on fewer activities with greater presence, listening to bodily signals, and giving yourself permission to change past agreements.
There is no perfect way to slow down. This is an invitation to notice where speed has overridden wisdom and to experiment with choosing spaciousness instead. Sustainable businesses are built on rhythm, rest, and attunement, not constant acceleration.
