A Tale of 'Whoa!'

Laurie Handlers has been teaching the principles of tantra in the Washington area for about six years. She runs her tantra company, Butterfly Workshops, out of her home on Reno Road in Northwest.

She says that tantra is about much more than sexuality and that learning to use certain breathing and exercise techniques leads to a fuller life. Tantra is "a fast path to spirituality, and a slow path to everything else," she says. "It slows down the mind, slows down aging, slows down the amount of breath we have to take."

Handlers, 56, discovered tantra seven years ago when she needed to slow down her life. She had left her job and separated from her lover. "I was breaking up with everything in my life and had no idea what was next."

A friend suggested she take a tantra workshop. "It was like coming home," she says. "I woke up to the power of the body and ancient wisdom."

Because it's considered New Agey and somewhat hokey by many Americans, she says, "most people shy away from it." But tantra is thousands of years old.

The Western mind has focused on the sexual aspects of tantra, she says, but tantra "makes you over from the inside out. You start to look different. Life occurs differently."

More slowly, she says. "And way richer."

The practice has "tempered my moods," she says. "I'm much slower to respond or react to things. It's given me a chance to actually do more with less effort."

Once you incorporate the tantric methods into your lovemaking, she says, "it slows down and can last for hours."

Today she has 10 or so trainers and course leaders working with her. She teaches courses in corporate leadership, sexual harassment prevention and anger management. When people slow down and "manage their own sexual energy," she says, "they're more in control of all aspects of their lives."

Putting on the Brakes

Honore laughs about his tantric sex experience. He and his wife, Miranda France, signed up for a tantric sex workshop in London, where they live. But one of their children got sick and France had to dash home. Honore went through the training solo. He and France haven't had time to attend another workshop.

For a founding father of the Slow Movement, Honore is very busy: There is much work to do and not a lot of time. The Slow Movement, Honore says, is in its early stages. He uses feminism as an analogy. In the beginning, he says, there were various and diverse voices speaking out against society's treatment of women. There was no central figure.

So is Honore the Gloria Steinem of the Slow Movement? "I'd rather be the Jane Fonda," he says. He hopes his book is the flag around which everyone will gather.

Honore has heard folks say that "slowness is not an American characteristic."

He's not sure that's true. He runs into Americans all the time who thank him for his book. At the Grand Hyatt, Susan Gleceir, 42, overhears Honore extolling the virtues of slowness. In blue jeans and wearing her blond hair in a ponytail, the cheery Kansan steps over to Honore's table and praises slowness. "I agree with everything you are saying," she says.

So do other Americans. Carol Holst is the program director of Seeds of Simplicity. "American culture is full of delicious paradoxes," Holst says.

The notion that Americans must go fast is a myth, she believes. The Slow Movement, she says, is "resonating with what it means to be an American," focusing on "the deeper meanings of life, which do not have so much to do with excess and consumer products."

So, she is asked, how is the Slow Movement progressing in America? If you take a deep breath and pause for a moment, you can probably imagine her answer.

"Things," she says, "are going rather slowly."