Nourish your body and your soul: Four slow living activities inspired by the Swedish winter, that you can benefit from at home

Catherine Grist
Mar 8
7 min read

Updated: Mar 16

I recently ran another winter retreat up here in northern Sweden. This time a whole week. The theme: Unplug to Recharge. The venue: a beautiful off-grid retreat centre, deep in the forest, where slow living is not just available, but necessary.

The theme was very much slow living, but I feel like everyone found a new depth to this concept and experienced it to an even greater degree that I could even have imagined. The result? Pure magic.

So I wanted to share with you four things that the participants took away to continue in their daily lives, that you too can implement from home to embrace all the benefits of slow living yourself.

Slow walks

This might sound strange, we all know that walking is good for our physical and mental health – exercise, sunlight, fresh air, nature – all scientifically proven to support our health. But what about “slow walking?”

By this, I don’t even necessarily mean the speed at which you walk, but the intention with which you approach it. So often, we schedule in the minimum amount of time to cover that 2-3 kms or 2-4000 steps, pop on the headphones with tunes or a podcast, and off we go. We know exactly where we are going to go, and we know exactly how it will be, and we will genuinely feel great afterwards.

But here in Sweden there was no – where am I going to go? There was no – what am I going to listen to? We just geared up and went. We had the luxury of a guide, yes, but it was that feeling of switching off from the planning and the schedules and just going to see where it took us. We noticed things along the way – animal tracks, the different shapes and ages of the trees, we felt the different textures of the soft versus compact snow, the sun or wind on our faces, the beauty that is a new piece of nature we have never seen before (and that stands even if we have, for nature is always subtly changing).

We took a slow walk, during which we could just be. And I highly recommend that. It’s like a meditation without having to worry about switching off all those thoughts because you see and notice things around you and that connects you back into the here and now, and to yourself, and those you are with, and to the natural world all around.

“It’s so nice to actually open your eyes and notice what's around you, and have time to actually look” Clare

Can you start to approach your walks a bit differently, or add some in if you don’t have a regular walk? Proper slow walks where you ditch the headphones and allow yourself a decent amount of time to see where the path leads you, with eyes open to just explore and see what you might notice and find?

2. Slow food

Again, if you are following along here with me, I doubt the concept of nourishing food and cooking from scratch with seasonal wholefood ingredients is a new concept for you. We know this sort of food, which takes time to make, nourishes us deeply. But how about the process itself? What about the value that slow connection with the food brings to us as well?

It’s a deep care and love that goes into the food here at Jep's Place, a reflection of deep care and love that we have for ourselves. At the retreat, it was mostly Petra that prepared the food, with some help from Jan (the grill master) and myself (I mainly made cakes – how very “nutritionist” of me!) but we also sat down together to do a slow food workshop where Petra shared with us some of the techniques she uses for storing and preparing food in a slow way to last through the seasons. Her bread is not fast bread, but sourdough made slowly and with care to preserve and nourish the starter. She also makes delicious water kefir through a process of fermenting over three or more days, again caring for the grains as well. She pickles and cans produce from the garden and forest, and we all helped to prepare some cabbage to make sauerkraut – a gift from us to the next guests since it takes time to ferment and be ready.

So often we need food fast even if it isn’t fast food. And that’s normal and not likely something we can altogether avoid, given the demands of modern life. But what I would love for you to think about doing is making some slow food – some ferments or just a lovely meal to share, that takes time. Allow yourself the time to do that, to slow down, be present with the food, give it love as your prepare it and not rush the whole process.

This might sound crazy, but there is actual scientific research as well that shows that when we prepare food with love and intention, the energetic frequency it vibrates is higher – mad or what?

"I have bought some water kefir grains today, and can't wait to get started making my own kefir at home!" Lucy

Slow breathing

Isn’t that mad? Our breath is always there – I say this frequently when guiding meditations – we don’t have to consciously ask our bodies to breathe, they are always supporting us this way. And yet how often do we notice our breath? Give it some conscious attention?

How we breathe significantly affects our nervous system. When we are activated into fight or flight response, our breath instinctively speeds up as we prepare to out-run danger or fight off an attack. Yet conversely, when we breathe rapidly, we signal that fight or flight response to our bodies too.

During the retreat we did a breathwork workshop and used those techniques to support us through a two-minute ice bath in the frozen lake. An obvious danger to our bodies, an instinct to fight for life and flee in any “normal” situation. Back at Jep’s Place, we did some conscious breathing in meditation, playing with how it made us feel and how we can use it to calm our nervous systems, relax, and restore our bodies into parasympathetic – rest and digest – response.

Have you tried breathing in different ways and noticing your breath? Can you take a moment to sit and do that? See if you can slow it down a bit, especially on the outbreath. Breathe a little deeper into your belly and your chest, notice if you breathe through your nose or your mouth, and see how it feels to do the opposite. Taking some time to breathe slowly can do wonders for our mental health and our ability to approach things with a clear mind, to reduce the impact of stress even in stressful situations.

4. Slow socialising

This one is not something I have consciously thought about or articulated before this retreat, yet it came up with many participants and feels like it really is at the crux of what I do with intention and foster at group events. And I love it.

How often is socialising given the time to unfold at a deeper level? There’s so often an agenda here too isn’t there? A party with drinking and dancing, or running around after kids, just trying to get in those snippets of conversation. Seeing people we haven’t seen for so long. We end up trying to catch-up 6 months of stories in an evening or a single meal!

“When I got home, I immediately cancelled the plans to go to a concert that night, and chose instead to spend time with my kids at home, clearing space to be with them and talk and connect properly”. Jiten

So there we were, a group of people together that had mostly never met each other before, and we weren't trying to understand a lifetime of stories and information. Instead we were getting to know each other slowly, listening deeply, feeling seen and heard for who we are in the here and now. There was time to come back to a conversation the next day when something resonated, and time to ask more or share considered reflections.

We learn about ourselves too in the connections we meet with other people. We connect not just with them, but more deeply with ourselves.

“ I'm always in such a rush and I really want to spend time, quality time with people. I just don't often get the chance to do that. Just sitting there with a cup of tea and talking about life is amazing.” Shelly

So how about the next social event you plan or attend, you do so with this in mind? Can you schedule enough time, or schedule fewer events, to allow for this time for slow socialising and a deeper connection?

What's your take-away?

We can’t live our lives slowly all the time, and in reality we don’t need to. And we shouldn’t need to take a whole week away and be forced into slow living to be able to reap its benefits.

In a way, I really wish that people didn’t need retreats like the ones I run, to be able to get into this more connected mode of being, to feel calm, but sometimes a catalyst is needed, and that’s what I offer here.

“ I came from a very hectic work period and had some burnout symptoms, so I really wanted to come here and just do nothing really, and kind of have the ability to finish a thought." Christoffer

I’ll be running this retreat again in 2027 - check out the details here. I’m also offering an autumn retreat with a little less snow and a lot more foraging that has a similar unplug and recharge theme in August. And if you’d like support in embracing and trying some slower living and you can’t wait until August or next year, please be in touch and I would be so happy to support you on your “slow living” journey from home.

With love and alchemy,

Catherine x