Christina Simmons on Why Slowing Down Is an Act of Liberation

Christina Simmons, LCSW-C, joins Kendra Chapman for a conversation about how slowing down can restore focus, support healing, and reduce the mind-body strain created by constant urgency. They explore Christina’s personal path into social work and trauma therapy, along with the ways speed, survival, and conditioning show up in everyday life.This episode is especially useful for anyone feeling pressure to do more, move faster, or keep up with systems that reward burnout over well-being.

Key topics

• In this episode, Christina explains her current practice of going one thing at a time as a way to build deep focus and do better work.

• She shares how a formative experience in middle school, during her mother’s breast cancer transition, shaped her desire to offer support beyond the family system.

• Kendra and Christina discuss how schools, hospitals, and other institutions often hold some of life’s most vulnerable transitions.

• Christina describes how her education, psychology training, and social work path became a way of honoring her mother’s influence.

• We discuss why slowness can feel difficult for many people, especially when productivity, speed, and approval have been rewarded for years.

• Christina names the role of conditioning from education, work, colonialism, capitalism, and family systems in shaping urgency.

• She explains how rushing can affect the nervous system, digestion, immunity, stress hormones, inflammation, and information processing.

• Christina outlines a practical starting point for change: awareness, permission, reframing slowness, and recognizing that slowness is active, not passive.

• She talks about betrayal as self-abandonment, especially when someone constantly meets other people’s expectations at the expense of their own pace.

• Christina connects trauma, identity, and survival strategies, including how marginalized people may adapt by becoming faster, stronger, smarter, or more compliant.

• She shares how trauma can live in the body through bracing, numbness, dissociation, eating changes, relationship patterns, chronic pain, hypertension, diabetes, and inflammation.

• Christina explains that trauma can be intergenerational, epigenetic, and, for some listeners, connected to spiritual beliefs about soul-level memory.

• She describes her integrative trauma therapy approach, which includes EMDR, hypnosis, integrative and functional nutrition, somatic experiencing, mind-body medicine, and energy healing.

• The episode closes with a message that slowness is resistance, self-love, and a way to reclaim power.

Timestamps

00:00 - Opening the conversation and setting the tone

00:53 - Christina’s definition of going slow to go fast

03:37 - The middle school experience that sparked her calling

07:25 - Honoring her mother through education and doctoral study

09:47 - Why slowness matters without losing momentum

10:36 - How systems reward speed and productivity

12:28 - Why rushing strains the mind, body, and spirit

14:46 - First steps: awareness, permission, and reframing slowness

16:31 - Why slowness is active, not passive

18:48 - Why speed can become self-betrayal

19:12 - The pressure of expectations and survival responses

21:58 - How marginalized identities can lead to overfunctioning

23:58 - Purpose as your own song, not someone else’s script

24:47 - Christina’s trauma therapy modalities and healing approach

27:38 - How trauma shows up in the body and relationships

30:27 - Trauma, chronic illness, and inflammation

32:00 - Intergenerational, epigenetic, and spiritual dimensions of trauma

33:09 - Books, astrology, and other resources Christina recommends

38:40 - Turning practice into pattern through consistency

39:38 - Collective healing through presence and slower conversation

41:41 - The health risks of living in constant urgency

43:03 - Why the goal is priority, not perfection

44:05 - Final message: slowness as liberation and resistance

44:45 - Healing tools Christina offers for listeners

📩 For partnerships, consulting, speaking, and/or collaborations:

email: coachingwithkendrachapman@gmail.com

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🌟 Connect with our Guest: Christina Simmons

🌐 Website: https://www.risemdllc.com/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/risemdllc?igsh=MWF2OWxpbzdtY2hiYQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

🎙️ Podcast Episodes: https://www.coachingwithkendrachapman.com/episodes/

Various platforms: https://sites.libsyn.com/505653/links

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Video production by Tate Chapman. To see more videos created by Tate Chapman and his brothers, check out the Triple Dare Adventures YouTube Channel here https://www.youtube.com/@TripleDareAdventures

Music featured in this podcast is licensed through Epidemic Sound. All music is used under a valid license. Copyright remains with the respective composers, artists, and Epidemic Sound.

For more information about Epidemic Sound, visit their website.

Intro and Outro music Come Correct by the artist Teeklef

The Go Slow To Go Fast Podcast is provided for entertainment and educational purposes only. The views and opinions shared are personal and are not intended as medical, mental health, financial, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional regarding your specific health, medical, or personal circumstances. Any actions you take based on this content are at your own discretion, and results depend on your individual commitment, circumstances, and responsibility.