Have you ever felt like life was moving at sloth speed? Slow, foggy, and maybe even comically stretched out—like Flash the Sloth at the DMV in Zootopia, taking what feels like an eternity to type a single word? Or, for a less family-friendly example, Jordan Belfort on Quaaludes in The Wolf of Wall Street? Thankfully, most of us don’t actually move that slowly—but we laugh because that stuck-in-slow-motion feeling is familiar.

In Buddhist practice, this state is called sloth and torpor—the third hindrance on the path to awakening. But it isn’t laziness. More often, it’s a kind of protective fog. Sometimes it shows up as withdrawal when the effort of growth feels overwhelming. Other times it’s simply our body asking for genuine rest.

Either way, we tend to judge ourselves far more harshly than we’d ever judge an actual sloth. Rather than calling them lazy we more often think of them as adorable.

And many of us may be feeling this more than usual right now. As summer winds down and the fall equinox arrives tomorrow, our energy naturally begins to shift. Like the summer flowers offering their final blooms, we too may feel called to slow down.

The question is: how do we work skillfully with this energy? A few reflections to try: