R&B: Rhythms & Balance

Integrating Practices in Your Daily Routine to Create Lasting Change

Everything in nature has a balance. Summer and winter. Night and day. Life and death.

As human beings, we are inextricably connected to nature. We have rhythms in our bodies that coincide with the rhythms of nature. As a woman, the connection between the moon and my menstrual cycle has always intrigued me. The affect the planets have on us as they orbit through space, the circadian rhythm present in our bodies as the earth rotates on its axis presenting us with sunrise and sunset times that we correspond to, and the tidal rhythms are a few of these connections.

When we feel out of balance, it’s often because we are not honoring our body’s connection to nature and what its needs are. The rhythms of rest and activity are the main ones that can cause us to experience imbalance in our mind-body-spirit.

Picture this – it’s nighttime, but you have the lights on, are on the computer, or watching TV, listening to music, or on your phone, and you ate a huge meal that’s just sitting in your gut, and suddenly it’s much later than you realized. You quickly turn everything off and try to go to sleep, but your mind won’t shut off and your body is agitated. You’ve been going all day, and night, and now that you need rest, you can’t seem to find it. When you finally do get to sleep, you end up sleeping in late, trying to “catch up” and when you awaken, you are groggy and uninspired to get moving on your day. You mope around, wasting most of the late morning time, and then skip lunch. Next thing you know, it’s late at night again, and the pattern repeats. Pretty soon, you start to feel sick, your digestion is off, and you’re starting to get depressed.

Sound familiar? Maybe it doesn’t resonate, because instead, you eat your biggest meal of the day at lunch, when the sun is high in the sky, and you feel the hungriest. You take a short walk after letting your meal digest for five minutes, and then you get back to work. Feeling fueled through the rest of your day, you finish up and head home, meditating either as soon as you arrive home, or in your car before you go inside, to let go of the workday and transition into a restful evening. You eat a light dinner, rest and walk again and then start to wind down, doing some light reading or taking a nice bath. When you awaken in the morning naturally, either before dawn, or just at sunrise, you feel refreshed and ready to take on your day, which of course begins with meditating and mindful movement.

Now, if the second scenario doesn’t sound like you either, maybe you fall somewhere in the middle, like me. You’re doing your best with the busyness of life and even though your schedule fluctuates, and you have several responsibilities keeping you busy, you find pockets of time for self-care. You wake up early and meditate, get some yoga or other mindful movement in, eat a healthy breakfast and take care of any hygiene needs. You calmly start the workday from a place of centered groundedness and take breaks throughout the day to breathe or check-in with your body. You eat a big lunch, work for a bit, and a light dinner and get a meditation in. Maybe you still have things to do after dinner, so you’re unable to start winding down after your evening walk, but you make sure to give yourself a break from technology an hour before you go to bed.