Creative ways to slow down to mark World Mental Health Day can begin with something simple: giving yourself a little more space to notice how you are spending your time, what has your attention and when you last allowed yourself to be fully present.
World Mental Health Day is observed every year on 10 October as an opportunity to raise awareness about mental health and encourage conversations around mental wellbeing. In 2026, the World Health Organization is focusing on “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change,” with an emphasis on ensuring that people with lived experience have meaningful opportunities to shape conversations, services and decisions that affect them.
For many people, observing the day can also be an opportunity to think about the small rhythms of everyday life. Nairobi is a busy city, and finding time to slow down can require a deliberate choice. A quieter morning, a walk without your phone in your hand, an afternoon spent writing by hand or an unhurried conversation can create room for reflection. These activities are not a substitute for professional mental health support where it is needed. They are simply ways to make space for creativity, connection and rest as part of everyday life.
Why slowing down can feel difficult in Nairobi
Nairobi has its own particular pace of commutes, meetings, traffic, messages, deadlines, social plans and the constant movement between different parts of the city. Even leisure time can become scheduled tightly around everything else. Digital communication adds another layer where a phone can move easily from a work tool to a source of entertainment, news, social updates and conversation. The result can be a day filled with activity without many moments that feel genuinely unhurried.
World Mental Health Day offers a useful reason to consider what that might look like. Instead of creating a complicated self-care routine, you could choose one activity that gives you an opportunity to pause and pay attention.
1. Take a phone-free walk through Karura Forest
A walk is one of the simplest ways to create some distance from screens and routines. Karura Forest offers marked walking trails, picnic sites, waterfalls, caves, cycling routes and opportunities for bird and butterfly watching. For a slower afternoon, leave some of the usual digital habits behind and pay attention to the sounds around you, the changing light between the trees and the pace of your own steps.
2. Spend an afternoon writing by hand
Writing by hand creates a very different rhythm from typing on a phone or computer. Your thoughts have to move at the pace of your hand, which can make the process feel more deliberate. You could write about something you have been thinking about, describe a recent experience or simply keep a page of observations from your week. There is no need to produce something polished.
For World Mental Health Day, you could try a few simple prompts:
- What has been taking up most of my attention lately?
- What have I enjoyed recently that I want to make more time for?
- Who have I been meaning to talk to?
- What is something I would like to remember about this season of my life?
- What would a slower Saturday look like for me?
The value of reflective writing can come from making time to notice your own thoughts rather than trying to arrive at a particular answer.
3. Visit a gallery without rushing through it
Nairobi has several cultural spaces where you can spend time looking, reading and observing at your own pace. The Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute offers a chance to experience contemporary African art through its exhibitions and creative programming. You can take your time moving through the gallery, spend longer with the pieces that catch your attention and consider the different ideas and perspectives presented through the work.
NCAI also has a library where visitors can browse books, making it possible to continue the experience through reading. After viewing the artwork, you can settle in with a book and give yourself some unhurried time away from screens.
4. Have a conversation without your phones on the table
Slowing down can also involve other people like a friend, sibling, partner or family member and meet somewhere comfortable for a conversation. Agree to keep your phones away for part of the time and let the conversation develop naturally without having a set agenda.
For World Mental Health Day, conversation can also be a simple way to make room for listening. The WHO’s 2026 campaign places particular emphasis on listening to people with lived experience and giving those perspectives a meaningful place in decision-making. In everyday life, that principle can begin with something as ordinary as giving another person your full attention.
5. Try an offline creative activity
Creative activities can give your attention somewhere specific to go and it might include creating a sketch, making a collage, writing a poem, developing a photo journal, cooking something slowly, arranging flowers or working on a handwritten scrapbook. The activity does not need to become a finished project, the important part is creating some time where you are doing one thing at a time.
If you are looking for offline activities in Nairobi, consider choosing something that uses your hands. Working with paper, ink, paint, fabric, clay or food can create a welcome change from the digital interfaces that fill much of the working week.
6. Share a slower experience with someone else
Slowing down can be easier when the activity is shared and Poetry O’Clock’s Keepsake Soirée is one example of this kind of gathering. It brings people together around handwritten letters, live typewritten poetry and conversation, creating an evening shaped by analogue writing and shared attention.
For World Mental Health Day, an experience like this can offer a thoughtful way to spend time with people you care about or strangers you might meet during the Soirèe while stepping away from the usual pace of screens, notifications and busy schedules.
7. Create a small personal ritual
A slower life is often built through small repeated choices rather than occasional dramatic changes. You could create a simple evening ritual for World Mental Health Day and continue it afterwards. Make tea and read a few pages of a book, write three lines in a notebook, sit outside for ten minutes or listen to an album without doing anything else at the same time, the ritual can be as short as fifteen minutes.
What matters is that it gives you a defined period of time where you are not trying to complete several things simultaneously.
8. Make space for analogue experiences
There is something distinctive about receiving and creating physical objects in an increasingly digital environment. A handwritten letter, printed photograph, physical book or typewritten poem takes up space. You can hold it, return to it and keep it somewhere visible. At Poetry O’Clock, this takes shape when a guest shares a thought, memory, feeling or occasion with a poet, who creates an original poem on a typewriter in real time. The process is brief, personal and deliberately tactile.
For those looking for slow living in Nairobi, a private writing experience can offer a chance to step away from the usual pace of digital communication and spend time with words, paper and conversation. Explore Table for Two to see how the experience can be shaped around a private gathering or personal occasion.
Slow living in Nairobi can start with one afternoon
World Mental Health Day does not have to be marked through a complicated programme. For some people, 10 October can simply be a useful prompt to look at the pace of everyday life and decide where there might be room for something quieter. The slowed down activities do not promise to solve difficult experiences, and they should not be treated as replacements for professional care or support. They can, however, create small spaces for reflection, creativity and connection.
For anyone exploring creative self-care, reflective writing, offline activities in Nairobi or mindful activities in Nairobi, the most useful place to begin may be with something simple enough to actually repeat. At Poetry O’Clock, we believe there is value in giving words time and giving people your attention. Sometimes that means sitting with a typewriter and turning a conversation into a poem. Sometimes it means writing a letter by hand or sharing an unhurried table with someone you care about.
This World Mental Health Day, consider giving yourself permission to slow down for a little while. Put the screen aside, make some room for conversation and creativity, and see what becomes possible when the day has a little more space in it.
