28: The Quiet Wisdom of Slowing Down w/Jennifer Tessler

One-Degree Shifts

In this episode of One-Degree Shifts, Pascal sits down with Jennifer Tesler, the director of Alalaho, a Nectara partner retreat center in the Netherlands. Alalaho is rooted in five core values: honesty, heart, commitment, brilliance, and magic. They stand for deep, authentic healing that honors the full spectrum of human experience, offering transformative journeys guided by love, patience, and creativity. Through their retreats, Alalaho fosters a space for personal and collective growth, where participants are invited to slow down, trust the process, and connect to the deeper wisdom within.

In this conversation, Jennifer shares her insights from over a thousand days spent in meditation and her journey into slowing down in both personal and professional realms. We explore how intentional slowness and deep trust in the organic unfolding of healing can affect people seeking healing and also how a retreat space in the plant medicine space changes when it prioritizes slowness and small over speed and scale.

Main Themes

1. The Philosophy Behind Alalaho
The meaning of “Alalaho” and its connection to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and its focus on depth and longevity over speed and scale.

2. Slowing Down in a Fast-Paced World:

Our cultural addiction to speed, efficiency, and “bigness.”

3. Meditation as a Lifelong Practice:

The profound effects of meditation on navigating life’s challenges.

4. Trusting in Divine Timing:

The concept of divine timing—how trusting the slower, natural unfolding of events often leads to deeper healing and wisdom.

5. The Paradox of Stillness and Action:

Pascal draws parallels between the archetype of the jaguar—spending most of its time in stillness yet ready to pounce with precision—and how we can find wisdom by balancing periods of pause with moments of intentional action.

6. Integration as a Slow and Lifelong Journey:

The importance of viewing integration not as a quick fix but as a lifelong process of becoming.

7. Healing, Acceptance, and Growth:

The balance between acceptance and transformation, acknowledging that some parts of us may not need to change.

8. Community and Connection in the Healing Space:

The importance of community in the healing process, and how Alalaho nurtures a connected, intentional team to ensure the integrity of the space. Jennifer reflects on the profound healing power of human connection and relational fields during retreats.

Notable Quotes:

1. “The word Alalaho comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and it’s a word that points to the nature of mind, in particular to the aspect of space and that capacity of the mind to hold the whole spectrum of human experience.” – Jennifer

2. “The archetype of the jaguar teaches us to have divine self-care for ourselves but also pounce when it's the right time to do so.” – Pascal

3. “Scale and impact is still important to us, but not at the expense of sacrificing the depth, longevity, and deep-rootedness of the work that we do.” – Jennifer

4. “We always talk about integration as a lifelong journey…not just about getting better for ourselves, but healing for the sake of helping the world become the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” – Jennifer

5. “The slow work is that the things that happen and are really deep are most of the time quite unnoticeable… there’s a lot of evolution and growth, but it’s gradual and almost imperceptible in the moment.” – Jennifer
6. “Traditional Tibetan thinking believes in transformation… but they also have such a relaxed relationship to their own neurosis. There’s this acceptance, like, ‘that’s part of the human realm,’ and it’s so refreshing.” – Jennifer

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