What Living in Italy Taught Me About Slowing Down (A Wellness Essay)
- Amby Mathur
- 9 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Ambika Mathur | Travel with Amby
I used to be the kind of person who was constantly in fight or flight mode. I would wake up at 5am, drive 30 minutes on a dark freeway to the yoga studio, teach two back to back hot yoga classes, rush to get ready, drive 20 more minutes to the landscape architecture office, pour myself a cup of coffee, hurry to my desk, crank out construction plans and meetings, go on a walk during my break, eat lunch at my desk while slaving away on AutoCAD, drive 45 minutes back home, go on a walk, cook, clean, sleep, repeat. The crazy thing? I thought I was enjoying myself.
Somewhere along the way, busy-ness had become my personality. I wore it like a badge of honor, measuring my worth in how full my calendar was, how fast I replied to emails, how little I stopped. Rest felt like something you earned at the end of a long week, not something you were allowed to just do.
Then I moved to Italy, and the whole system broke down.
Slow living in Italy is not a wellness trend you opt into. It is the default. And once you stop resisting it, it changes you in ways that are difficult to explain and impossible to unlearn.
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Table of Contents
Slow Living in Italy: The First Few Months Were Uncomfortable
I want to be honest about that, because most wellness content skips the awkward part.
When you are used to moving fast, stillness does not feel peaceful at first. It feels like you are forgetting something. I would return from my Italian lesson in Naples, sitting on the terrace with un caffe and my sketchbook, the streets below me alive and noisy and beautiful, and I would feel this low hum of anxiety. Should I be doing something? Should I be somewhere?
Italy does not care about that anxiety. Yes, Neapolitans drink their espresso fast- standing at the bar, gone in two minutes, back to their day. And yes, the Neapolitans all seem to be rushing on their scooters with very little patience for anyone else on the road. However, beyond that? It's a different story. People take many breaks throughout the day, meetings are slow and last several caffes, local shopkeepers close from 2-4pm, many people go home in the afternoon for lunch and a nap... While Naples is loud and chaotic, many people are happily moving around at a schedule that works for them. This is for a large, metropolitan city. If you go to a smaller town in the countryside, things are even slower.
Now, over three years later of living here, I've slowed down a bit and have started to match the pace of things around me. I'm still productive and growing my career, but I've created a schedule that works with my natural energetic swings. I meditate and stroll with my dog every morning. I love my morning chit chat and cappuccino at the bar. I typically don't start working before 10am. At 2pm, I take a break, reading a book, taking a nap, hopping in the sea, meeting a friend for coffee, whatever I feel like. In the evenings, I put away my laptop, enjoy another passegiata with my dog, cook, and enjoy quality time with my husband.
One thing that genuinely helped me slow down was making an effort with the language. When you can actually speak and understand Italian, it improves the quality and slows down the pace of your interactions, because you are able to be present and interact with those around you.
While language apps are not a replacement for an in depth, in-person course, language apps like Babbel are a great tool for short, practical lessons, based on real-life scenarios, like ordering food, making small talk, or (importantly) flirting in Italian.
What "La Dolce Vita" Actually Means in Practice
La Dolce Vita translates to "the sweet life," but it is not just about indulgence, exactly.
What I noticed, living here rather than visiting, is that Italians are incredibly intentional about the small rituals of the day. Italians never take their morning coffee to-go. Even if they are only at the bar for two minutes, it is a sacred moment. The Sunday lunch is not just food. It is an event that anchors the whole week, takes hours, and is time for family and friends to be together. The evening passeggiata is not exercise with a destination. It is the point.
There is a philosophy built into the rhythms of daily life here that says: the moment you are in is worth your full attention. Not because nothing else matters, but because the present moment also matters.
The concept of il dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing) is not romanticized by Italians. It is simply practiced. Without apology, without earning it first.
The Table as a Sacred Space
Nothing rearranged my relationship with time more than Italian meal culture.
While weekday meals at home may be quicker, weekend meals at home and any meals out at restaurants are often two hours, minimum, if you are doing it properly. Courses arrive at their own pace. Conversation fills the gaps. Nobody is checking a phone. The table is not a place you eat and leave. It is a place you stay.
The Mediterranean way of eating (fresh, seasonal, shared, unhurried) is at the heart of Italian wellness culture. It is not a diet. It is a relationship with food that the rest of the world has been trying to bottle and sell back to itself for years.
Learning to Stop Without a Reason
One of the more radical things Italy normalised for me was doing nothing with no justification attached.
Laying on a lounge chair under the sun. Reading a juicy romance in the middle of the afternoon. Having a two hour apertivo with girlfriends on a random Wednesday evening.
Back home, leisure always had to be productive. I was reading to learn something. Walking to get steps in. Weekday happy hours were for networking.
Here, the concept of riposo (the afternoon rest) is still woven into culture in many places. Not everywhere, and not as universally as it once was. But the idea behind it, that human beings need a pause built into the day and not just a collapse at the end of it, is something that I have finally and fully embraced.
In the afternoon, I often take twenty minutes to rest with my legs up on a wall and reconnect with myself while listen to my mindfullness app, Activations. I've been using it at least once a day for over a year now, and it has been a wonderful tool. You can get 25% off with my link.
It Changed How I Travel, Too
This shift did not stay contained to my daily life. It changed how I move through places entirely.
I used to arrive somewhere new and immediately start optimising. How many things can I see? How many restaurants can I hit? How do I make sure I do not miss anything?
Now I go slower. I pick one neighbourhood and walk it properly. I sit somewhere long enough to become briefly familiar. I leave things for next time, because next time becomes something to look forward to rather than a failure of efficiency.
Some of my favorite moments I have had in this country have happened because I was not rushing to something else. Chatting with a cute boy over a slow pasta lunch at a friend's home, not knowing that boy would later become my husband. Following the aroma of fresh cornetti into a hole-in-the-wall bakery turned into an apprenticeship and beautiful friendship with the local baker. Floating on my back in the Mediterranean sea, admiring the historical buildings in the distance.
Slowness makes you available to things. Speed moves you past them.
If you want to experience slow travel Italy in its purest form, the islands of the Gulf of Napoli are a good place to start, especially Ischia and Procida.
Slow Living in Italy: What I Carry With Me Now
I am not going to pretend Italy fixed me or that I never get stressed about work. Old habits are persistent and life gets complicated.
But something genuinely shifted in how I understand rest, time, and what a good day actually looks like.
A good day does not have to be full. A good day does not have to be full. Some of my best afternoons here have been nothing more than lounging in the sun with my kindle. BTW, I love my kindle. Having access to unlimited books means I am less likely to doom scroll on Instagram.
Life does not have to be optimized. It is allowed to have long lunches and slow coffees with friends and unplanned hours in it. It is allowed to end with you having done less than you planned, if what you did instead was something that brought you joy.
Italy did not teach me to be lazy. It taught me to be present. And presence, it turns out, is not the opposite of a productive life. It is what makes a productive life feel like it was worth living.
If you are searching for a place that embodies slow living in Italy at its most unhurried and beautiful, start with Southern Italy. The pace here is different from the north, the food is extraordinary, and the culture has not yet been flattened by mass tourism. Come slow, stay longer, and let the place do its work.
Un bacio,
Amby
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