Imagine a long-maned stallion breezing across a golden plain, a V of Canada Geese— wild and free, unruly and uncouth. Now lets take that same picture of freedom and flip it’s on it’s head. Nature is freedom, but it’s also highly ritualized, following tight rhythms, intricate patterns, cycles, and rules— like the sophisticated geometry of a snowflake. Animal, bacteria, fungi, protozoa; everything, including us human-beings, is made up of an expansive cosmology of overlapping and dancing rhythms and cycles, governed by intricate rules as strong and delicate as spider webs.
the flower clock: In 1751 Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) designed a flower clock, by arranging selected species in a circular pattern, according to the time of day they flower. For example, among members of the daisy family, he used the hawk's beard plant which opened its flowers at 6:30 am and the hawkbit which did not open its flowers until 7 am.
There are the cycles we’ve become familiar with, like the waning and waxing of the moon, the solar calendar of seasons, tidal currents, and the opening and closing of flowers. Some cycles are as long as infradian rhythms, which are cycles longer than a day, such as migration cycles, seasons and menstrual cycles. Ultradian rhythms are shorter than 24 hours, such as the 90-minute REM cycle of sleep, the 4 hour nasal cycle, or the 3 hours cycle of growth hormone production; or gene oscillations— whereby certain genes are expressed more during certain hours of the day. We’re made up of an endless circling, spiralling and cycling of energy flows, waxing and waning in a dizzying cosmology.
I guess this is the sacred balance that David Suzuki refers to; where the the cycle of huckleberry and the 4 year circling journey of salmon are married to bears’ yearly rounds, and salmons’ swim is seduced by the pilgrimage of clouds of plankton.
Chronobiology is my latest science love affair— a field of biology that examines cyclic phenomena in living organisms and their adaptation to solar and lunar rhythms. These cycles are known as biological rhythms and are constituted by an acrophase (active phase) and a bathyphase (less active phase); much like Traditional Chinese Medicine’s Yin and Yang cycle. Like much of the best science of today, chronobiology, in it’s meticulous way, supports long held, but under-appreciated traditional knowledge (ex. the effects of the seasons on our health) and polishes it up for our modern minds.
In the way that the vital bits of that which fades, returns again with the vigour of fresh sprouts, our accepted knowledge bases are a lot like all good cycles; forgotten traditional wisdom resurfaces in the guise of this or that ‘new’ science. And so, good science is able to adorn traditional knowledge with fresh magic.
Take for example the magic of the hypothalamus, that small but great regulating brain structure which synchronizes our outer and inner worlds, and there by synchronizes our endocrine and autonomic nervous system with seasonal changes. Through the lens of the hypothalamus we can see that our physiological, immunological and behavioural processes within are all humming to the tune of our environment: the length of daylight, temperature, rainfall, are all cyclical cues that speak to our inner cycles.
Up to 23% of genes in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells, report seasonal differences in expression— and the fact that the exact inverse can be seen in southern hemisphere Australia supports the idea that immune responses are modulated by day length and temperature; and thus seasonal timing is vital for our immune function.
Sleep deprivation, light at night, jet lag, shift work, indoor heating, air conditioning, winter trips to Puerto Vallarta, global warming— our circadian biology and it’s connection to terra firma is a relationship that is drifting apart. And perhaps we wanted it this way? Biological cycles can be scary— not to mention a bit of a downer. All cycles are based in gain, but also loss; growth, but also decay; waxing, but also waning; summer, but also winter… and so we’ve tried to escape the bathyphase and unhinge ourselves from cause and effect— the winter’s cold, death. But remember, cells that escape their cycle of life and death are the foundation of cancer cells.
“instinctual drift: describes the tendency of animals and humans to stop performing behaviours in the way they learned and start reverting back to their more instinctual behaviours.”
I love the example of the 5 stage sleep cycle: much like a spiralling cycle we pass through five phases of sleep: stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. It takes us about 90-120 minutes to reach REM sleep, and then the cycle begins all over again. Some overly curious scientists decided to perform an experiment where they doggedly woke up subjects right as they entered the REM stage of the cycle. Amazingly, the subjects’ sleep cycle was so intent on continuing it’s cycle and completing it’s REM stage that the sleep cycle began to spontaneously shift into REM, requiring the experimenters to wake up the subject 64 times by night 3. Moreover, once the experiment came to an end, sleepers spent extra hours in the REM stage to make up for the missed REM hours in previous nights.
Our modern move away from biological and environmental cycles is momentous, but so is the stuborn will of these cycles— from lunar pulls down to our sleep cycles— I find this soothing.
So while we can count on the stubborn will of cycles to continue cycling — it’s culture, ritual, and practices that have wed our inner cycles with outer cycles most beautifully— marrying our inner worlds with our outer worlds. The celebration of Equinoxes and Solstices is one small way to acknowledge that “nothing is dead, nothing is inert, nothing is disconnected, uncorrelated or aleatory. Everything, on the contrary, is fatally, admirably connected…according to an incessant cycle of metamorphoses.” (Baudrillard).
In the alternative healing realm we’re told more and more to shape our destiny with our mind, we’re learning about neuroplasiticty and the power of our intentions— it’s an exhilarating and empowering phase of healing. Lets not forget, though, the healing that exists before us and outside of us— the beauty of that which happens without us lifting a finger— the cycle of seasons is medicine that you don’t need to pay for, or be the cause of.