After recording our Gathering Gold episode a few weeks ago on Living in the Rhythm, I became more curious about the topic of rhythm. What is rhythm?
Rhythm is our breath: an inhale and an exhale.
Our natural world follows seasonal rhythms: spring follows winter which follows autumn which follows summer. When we tap into these rhythms, we often feel more aligned with and connected to the great breath of the world which rides on its own inhale and exhale.
Our heartbeat, our pulse, is our rhythm.
Rhythm is the syncopation between two beats. The beats of social and alone. The beats of creativity and fallow. The beats of sleep and awake. The beats of talking and silence. Some people have shorter time between beats, or between certain beats. Others have a longer time. And the rhythm can change at different points in our lives.
But I believe that we have a natural rhythm, like we have a natural temperament, that doesn’t vary significantly throughout our lifetime. The more we can reconnect with and trust our natural rhythm, working with the voices of “should” that arise, the more aligned we’ll be with our soul. And soul-alignment is one of our keys to sustained well-being and joy.
My Natural Rhythm
I also became more curious about discovering one’s own natural rhythm. Of course I’ve been curious about this for years, and it’s embedded into my Trust Yourself course, but, as I often write, we learn in layers and spirals. This has been another layer of learning for me. After the episode I wrote in my journal:
I am the rhythm of my body, which is still, slow, and quiet. I can move quickly and I can dance wildly, but I need a lot of time alone. I need engagement and conversation, but not nearly as much as I have at other points in my life.
I am the rhythm of a big blue butterfly with its slow flapping wings that are in love with air and flowers. I am not a hummingbird. I am not a puppy. I am cat through and through, languid and in love with the sun. Fierce when I need to be fierce and fast when I need to pounce.
Like a cat, I am efficient with my energy: I work in quick bursts when an entire book or course pours out. My creative rhythm is not a slow burn; it is all fire. I am not the Stephen King rhythm of writer who writes every day for three or four hours. When the book comes through, it comes all at once and then I need months or years to replenish the well of creativity.
I wonder what my natural rhythm was as a child. I learned early to emulate my mother, which meant I was always busy. I stayed busy through high school, and then I burned out and found my own rhythm in college. I loved my college rhythm: some classes, not too much. Some social, not too much. Plenty of creativity. Lots of spaciousness.
Your Natural Rhythm
As you contemplate your natural rhythm, I invite you to consider the following areas where rhythm shows up:
- Social: How much time do you need to spend with others versus how much time alone?
- Conversation: How much conversation do you need? Consider the rhythm between quiet and words.
- Creativity: Are you a butterfly or a hummingbird?
- Sleep: Are you a night owl or day bird?
- Work: How many hours a day do you need to work?
I’d to hear from you in the comments!
**
And for those of you who prefer to read instead of listen, here’s an excerpt from the podcast where I asked the full dawn moon to teach me about rhythm. “Tell me,” I said to moon. “I’m here to receive.” This is what she said:
“Trust the rhythm. From fullness comes emptiness, from emptiness, fullness. This is not human invention, it’s the rhythm of the world.
“The ocean tides ebb and flow, the seasons cycle according to their rhythms of beginnings and endings. You have spent your life immersed in the world of transitions, which are, by definition, death and rebirth cycles. I hang in the morning sky before dawn in my full glory, but now I will recede, wane into emptiness, for that’s how it will appear to you.
“In fact, I am always whole and full, just as the core of the trees do not die when the leaves fall. There is a wholeness that underlies everything, even death. You are grieving now, dear daughter, as you accompany your beloved cat through her illness.
“You long for the cat she was just a few months ago, bounding through this world in full radiant health. I will hold you through your grief, which also has a rhythm. Times when it crests and crescendos, and times when it recedes.
“Underneath grief, there is also a wholeness, the steady ocean beneath the waves. And underneath Tashi’s failing body lives the wholeness of her soul. There is a vision of her that can run at top speed through the yard to meet you at the creek.
“You saw it last night in your dreams. Both are true.”
Then I wrote:
It’s all rhythm. Everything in this world, when we look closely enough, has a rhythm. Our breath, with its inhale and exhale, is a rhythm.
This is from Gabrielle Roth, who created the Five Rhythms dance, which I was immersed in for many years. She says,
“I have found a language of patterns I can trust to deliver us into universal truths, truths older than time. In the rhythm of the body, we can trace our holiness, roots that go all the way back to zero, states of being where all identities dissolve into an eternal flow of energy. Energy moves in waves, waves move in patterns, patterns move in rhythms. A human being is just that, energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more, nothing less, a dance.”
We see this rhythm in everything we do, from loving to money to the seasons. What I’ve been seeing with Tashi as I walk alongside her is that just as there’s a rhythm to being born, a contraction and expansion as a baby comes into the world, there’s a rhythm to dying. Unless it’s a sudden death, the dying process is just that, a process.
There’s vitality and life, and then death seems close. A baby making its way through the birth canal will drop low in the cervix, then retreat, then drop down low again. The uterus contracts and expands, and eventually the baby is born.
So it is when we’re in a death canal. There’s a process of contraction and expansion where life and death are closer together. There have been times when it seems like Tashi is at death’s door, and then she moves through that tunnel and is very much here in the living again, purring, playing, eating, loving.
This is true for every life transition, from the bigger rites of passages like getting married and becoming a parent to the everyday transitions of dawn and dusk, morning and night, work and play, effort and ease. It’s all rhythm. Why is it important to name this?
Because I think when we see life as it is, when we name the patterns that underlie our reality, it’s easier to accept life on life’s terms. When we can name the rhythms of inhale and exhale, birth and death, we’re more likely to step into the rhythm, which is flow. We’re conditioned to believe that life is linear, which means there’s a final destination where we’ll live happily ever after.
We think, I just have to find the right partner, get to a certain place in my career, make a certain amount of money, and then I’ll be happy. It’s not like that. Life isn’t linear.
It’s a spiral. We think we live in linear time. And on one level, we do where one day leads to the next. But there’s another way in which we live in non-linear time.
So we’re living these lives where we’re conditioned to reach for the goal and then everything will be okay. But then we reach the goal and life is still mysterious and challenging. All the money in the world won’t protect you from the rhythm of the world, which includes ebbs and flows.
Money recedes. Money is in abundance. Money is scarce. Money comes and grows and goes.
Love recedes. You meet the love of your life, but then you fall out of love and then you fall back in love deeper than before.
And then you bump up against each other’s traumas and you lose connection. And then you find repair and fall in love all over again. Nothing stays the same.
It’s the hard part of change and also the great part of change, because when things are hard, you know they won’t stay hard. This is the rhythm, the movement, the flow of the river of life. And our task, which isn’t always easy, is to follow this rhythm flow as best we can.
To grieve when it’s time to grieve. To welcome and joy when things are joyful. To make room for doubt and remember that doubt and trust are consorts, which means that every time we move through a layer of doubt, our trust widens and deepens.
It’s interesting because when I was a child I loved being around others and I was a chatty kid. Then as I got older I became more shy, and when I had depression when I found your work many years ago I became an introvert and thought I was one. I have now realised I am an extrovert. I love being around people and having a lot of conversations. Not saying I don’t need alone time, because I do, but as I get older I find myself wanting more social connection than ever before.
I have also found since becoming a Mum a few years ago, I want more connection with others too because motherhood can be isolating.
That’s all very interesting, Julia. It sounds like you’re coming back to your original nature around your social rhythm.
What a wonderful, thought provoking & comforting post. Your wisdom is such a gift Sheryl and I was blessed the day I found your work. I want to send you an hug as you travel the heartbreaking road of an ailing, dying beloved pet. My heart was in pieces when I went thro the same thing several years ago before finally losing her. I can truely empathise with your feelings x
Thank you so much, Lynn. It really is a heartbreaking process, and I gratefully accept your virtual hug and empathy. xo
“Living in my rhythm” has been on my mind and heart ever since your podcast episode, Sheryl. Whenever I ask myself that question, it automatically makes me tune back into myself and my soul. However, with what comes up, I’m not sure if it’s my own natural rhythm or just a side effect from what’s happened in my life. For context, growing up I was always such a free spirit, I felt deeply (which I occasionally struggled with) yet laughed deeply too. Typical extrovert, class clown at school. Then I lost my mum when I was 19. My dad has been ill on and off since her diagnosis and is still facing complications today. On the lead up to my mum’s death and still now, I feel like I can laugh but not to hard, throw myself into something, but not too much, love, yet not too deeply. When I’m good, I’m an extrovert through and through yet when grief strikes along with the self-doubt, confusion about life, and then the heartache that follows, I want to hide. Conversation lights me up but I tend to find myself not putting myself out there enough to have them. Maybe in the fear that no one will ever understand or get me? Is it possible for too much to have happened to even be able to start a conversation? That’s a long way to put that I think my natural ebbs and flows with what’s showing up in my life if that makes sense. On the outside, you wouldn’t know what I hold inside. I say it all the time but your work has saved me Sheryl, it opens up the parts of me that I don’t always understand or feel shy to share with others and the world. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Sheryl xxx
This is very beautiful to read, Rachel, and yes, it makes perfect sense that your rhythm ebbs and flows depending on what’s showing up in your life. And yet… this, too, is rhythm: how our hearts expand when we’re feeling good and contract when we’re going through hard times. It’s all rhythm, and there’s room for all ways of being.
Thank you, Sheryl. I hadn’t thought of it like this before. Thank you always xx
I’m sending you comfort and well-wishes as you grieve your beloved Tashi, Sheryl.
I know from my reading of your website that you get many, many long comments. But here I go adding another one!
I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your works.
I’m in many transitions now. Lots has happened to me in the past few years. I graduated highschool, I moved out for the first time, I became disillusioned with my childhood idol: my aunt, I desperately tried earning my emotionally-unavailable father’s love, I met the most wonderful soul on the planet (my partner!!), my mother kicked me out of my childhood home and shattered my trust, and now I have gone to college.
All of this manifested itself in terrible relationship anxiety!! I spent hours upon hours reading about traditional methods for ROCD treatment, and it made my soul sick. While in the thick of it I read through a few of your articles, but nothing clicked. Soon, once medicated and in a calmer place, I could sit and fully see what you’ve written in your blog.
This has started me on a path of healing myself and making new sense of the world. I couldn’t have done it without the tender care you put into your writing.
I remember reading about how someone in Brazil told you that you have healing hands. You Absolutely do!!
Your writings make me feel truly seen as a highly sensitive person.
So thank you again for being so forthcoming with your sensitive heart and wonderful insights. They reach so much farther than you could know.
Your book will be arriving to me soon, and I cannot wait to sink into it.
Once again, sending you and your sweet Tashi love,
Bella
Thank you for your beautiful comment, Bella, and for your kind words about our dear Tashi. I’m actually using my healing hands directly on her ;). I’m so glad that my writings have been you feel seen, and I hope you enjoy the book. xo
Hi Bella,
I agree with you. Traditional methods for treating ROCD (which are the same for OCD in general) make my soul sick, and sometimes feel like they border on unethical. I know they work for some, but definitely not all!
Hi, Sheryl, I loved reading this post, specially the last 7-8 paragraphs, which really made sense to me; I can totally understand and accept the idea that the river of life ebbs and flows and how beautiful it can be to learn how to navigate through that. The thing is, I seem to experience a lot more ebbs than flows in my life, and this can feel so frustrating and unfair, that I feel like giving up pursuing happiness sometimes, and just settling for a miserable life. I know other people who feel the same way too, I was talking to a friend and she said that the ebbs seem to last too long, and that she could do with a little more balance between the ebbs and flows, and I can’t totally relate to that. Would you have any advice to offer in this case?
P.S.: Sending you all the good vibes while you go through this tough transition 💞
*can totally relate
(Autocorrect typo, sorry)
Lovely post, thank you.
Slightly unrelated, but it is common for ROCD/RA to shift from one’s partner to one’s unborn child – i.e. ‘do I really want this baby?’ My wife and I have not started trying just yet, but this is where my mind is taking me…
100% normal, Joshua. It can shift to anything that matters to us, and of course nothing matters more than our child (even one who isn’t quite here yet).
Thanks. I just love how it is with my wife with just the two of us, and I’m terrified of that changing. And given how badly my mental health can flare up (albeit with much less RA than in the past), I’m scared I don’t have the bandwidth to be responsible for a child on top of that.
Joshua, I felt compelled to reply to your comment. My first child was an unexpected pregnancy and I absolutely experienced my RA for nearly the whole first trimester. Once I accepted that we were having the baby it slowly turned into neutral and sometimes excited feelings but it certainly wasn’t that way the whole time.
thank you. I’m just so scared that I’ve been somehow ‘lying’ to my wife during our 6 years of marriage, and that my ‘truth’ is that I don’t want a baby. (I put those words in inverted commas because they come from the fear-based part of myself)
I very much relate to the ‘truth’ ‘and ‘lying’ fears – and am currently experiencing them after 10 years of marriage. My ‘truth’ for so long is that I want to be with my husband and now that we’re going through a massive growth period individually and together it feels like I’ve been ‘lying’ to myself and that we’re not actually a good match, etc etc etc.
What I can say in my experience in relation to being a parent is that it’s a mixed experience. We fell into parenthood unexpectedly, fought it tooth and nail when I first learned I was pregnant, and also love my children more than anything in the entire world. It’s completely changed my life in good ways and in hard ways that sometimes I wish were not the case, but there’s no going back and at this point I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
All of that ‘knowing’ is on the other end of actually having a child so it’s a risk to go for it (hopefully that’s not spikey). I could say the same thing about continuing to commit to my marriage even if it doesn’t always ‘feel right’. Having kids doesn’t always ‘feel right’ but we still love them and care for them. I realize kids and marriage is somewhat different in terms of it’s reversibility, but hopefully you get where I’m going with the analogy. It’s the risk of loving.
Thank you for your response, Shoshana. It isn’t spiky at all – like most of life, I know these things are a leap in the dark.
Hi Joshua (and everyone),
I think your thoughts and fears are very understandable. Also, it seems difficult to me to “know” beforehand how one would feel about expecting or having a baby – if one has no such personal experience in life so far!
I’m now in my forties and in the 3rd trimester of expecting my first baby with my husband. The 1st trimester was really tough for me – yes, physically, but mostly mentally. I recognized that my feelings of insecurity, anxiety, fear, of being lost and threatened etc etc were all because of the pregnancy (which was planned/expected by the way) and the tremendous change that thereby awaited me and us! That’s where Sheryl’s course “Birthing a New Mother” helped me to normalize and understand and empathize better what I was going through. Thoughts like, “I changed my mind, I don’t want this… this is too hard. I’m not ready for this. Our marriage isn’t ready for this. What if everything goes awfully wrong… This is insane: I’ve signed up for something lifealtering not even knowing what I’ve ordered!” were common for me in that time.
By the time I got in my 2nd trimester I noticed a clear shift in my inner self: I had started to accept the whole idea of a baby coming to change our life as we knew it and I felt more at ease and calm altogether. The feelings of anxiety and confusion subsided almost completely – more than ever before in my life! I also noticed how the idea of having a baby had already started to yield a new sense of meaningfulness into my vision of the future, my husband and me as a family and even my own identity.
Now, at the start of the 3rd trimester something new has come up yet again: a couple of times I’ve caught myself empathizing with the story of someone who lost their baby at child birth, and it has felt just excruciatingly sad and devastating to me. Which, in turn, has shed light on how attached I’ve now become to my unborn baby, how much I already cherish her and look forward to having her, taking care of her and building my future life around her… <3
So it's definitely been a process – especially for someone like me who's lead a fairly independent life for 4 decades before even considering having a child – to come into grips with the thought of giving up a lot of "my life" – my rights, privileges and independence – for a baby.
Ending this ramble on the very point I started with: based on what I hear from others, I gather that having a child can bless us with love, growth, affection and other beautiful things that may be hard if not impossible for us non-parents even to fathom before having the experience of being a parent ourselves, and so for that reason at least for me the decision to try having a baby was in fact a leap of faith – hoping and trusting in the midst of all the uncertainty and the fears that everything might just go well and that it would all be worth the risks in the end. And right now I'm just infinitely grateful for this possibility to become a mother!