Being Lazy and Slowing Down (BLSD) was created by Kimine Mayuzumi and Riyad A. Shahjahan — scholars, educators, life partners, and parents navigating the complexities of academic and everyday life together.
Rooted in both lived experience and scholarly inquiry, BLSD emerged from their shared desire to challenge cultures of chronic busyness, overwork, and disconnection within academia and beyond. Through reflection, dialogue, writing, and community-centered practices, they encourage more sustainable, embodied, and meaningful ways of living and working.
Their work has been shaped by years of research and experience related to higher education, temporality, embodiment, healing, decolonizing knowledge, and work-life balance. BLSD continues to evolve as both a personal and collective project grounded in slowing down, intentional living, and human connection.
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More about each of them
Kimine Mayuzumi, PhD
Kimine is the editor-in-chief, co-founder, and guiding force behind Being Lazy and Slowing Down (BLSD), a venture devoted to helping higher-ed professionals move away from chronic overwork and reconnect with a more sustainable, meaningful way of living and working. Named 公音 (pronounced Kee-me-neh), Kimine was born in Japan’s scenic Gunma prefecture and raised amidst quiet mountain landscapes that continue to shape her appreciation for slowness, reflection, and embodied living.
After years in academia, Kimine began envisioning another possibility — one that did not require sacrificing well-being, joy, or humanity in the pursuit of productivity. BLSD emerged from both her scholarly work and lived experience navigating the pressures, expectations, and emotional demands of academic life.
Through her work, she creates spaces where overwhelmed higher-ed professionals can pause, reflect, heal, and rediscover clarity and purpose during periods of transition, burnout, uncertainty, or change.
Kimine’s research interests include minoritized faculty experiences in academia, transnational feminism, Indigenous knowledge, temporality, and healing practices. Her scholarly work, including her dissertation on Asian women faculty in academia and the co-authored book, Whose University Is It Anyway?: Power and Privilege on Gendered Terrain, reflects her longstanding commitment to questioning dominant academic norms and amplifying voices and ways of knowing that are often marginalized within higher education.
Through workshops, webinars, reflection spaces, Tai Chi instruction, and small-group programs such as Slowing Down Circle (SDC), Writing Circle, and Weekly Reflection & Planning, Kimine supports scholars and professionals in cultivating gentler, more sustainable approaches to productivity, self-care, writing, embodiment, and everyday life. Her work resonates deeply with those seeking greater ease, intentionality, and balance without disconnecting from their ambitions, values, or commitments.
A certified Tai Chi practitioner, instructor, and lifelong learner, Kimine views Tai Chi as both a healing practice and a way of reimagining how we move through life with greater presence, awareness, and harmony. She offers local Tai Chi classes as part of BLSD’s commitment to supporting wholistic well-being through mindful movement and embodied practices.
Kimine finds grounding in meaningful conversations and family life with her two children and her soulmate, Riyad A. Shahjahan, whom she met during graduate studies at the University of Toronto.
Riyad A. Shahjahan, PhD
Riyad is the editor and co-founder of Being Lazy and Slowing Down, LLC, a Professor at Michigan State University, and a former coach for the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD).
His research interests include the globalization of higher education, decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy, cultural studies, temporality and embodiment in higher education, and de/anti/post-colonial theory. A passionate pedagogue, Riyad encourages his students to move beyond conventional boundaries of thought and ways of being.
From 2012 to 2019, he coached faculty members through NCFDD’s Faculty Success Program (FSP) and continues to facilitate workshops and webinars on scholarly writing. While deeply engaged in his own scholarly work, Riyad values work-life balance and believes that striving toward harmony between professional and personal life is essential for a sustainable and healthy way of being in academia.
A proud father of two children, Riyad enjoys sharing good food, traveling, and watching exciting soccer matches with his family.
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Modified on May 14, 2026