Rhythm gives you back your time
communication between body and life
You want focus, flow, and real spontaneity.
You want enough energy and time to do what matters.
Yet both can feel elusive, and the daily decision churn leaves you frustrated, exhausted, and conflicted.
Here’s what I’ve seen again and again in my work: those who found contentment didn’t share a specific diet, a particular workout, or even a meditation technique. I’ve known many who tried those and still couldn’t move the needle.
The common denominator? Rhythm.
They woke up and went to bed at about the same time.
They ate meals and moved their bodies at about the same time.
They set hours for work and hours for play, and they honored them.
They practiced the discipline of rhythm instead of succumbing to mood (masked as flow).
Rhythm is not rigidity
Think of the seasons. We don’t experience Spring and say, this is too strict. The seasons cue us. They tell us what’s coming so we can pace and prepare. The sun rises and sets at a time our body can trust. We plant seeds in spring without worrying about harvesting.
If the sun and seasons stopped keeping rhythm because they didn’t feel like it that day, life would get chaotic.
People are exactly the same.
This is obvious in children: We set times for waking, meals, naps, and bedtime. When a child cries at nap time, we don’t decide that they’re not in the mood to sleep. Instead, we teach them soothing. We help them build an internal rhythm, not to create rigidity, but to create safety through predictability. Not in all of life, but in this:
Rhythm is the container that tells your body you’re safe. Predictability in the basics gives you the mental and emotional agility you need for everything else you can’t (and shouldn’t) control.
Years ago, one of my first teachers told me to sit on the toilet for 5, maybe 10 minutes right after waking, after a sip or two of warm water. I did. I woke up at around the same time, I didn’t start with my phone, and I sat. Slowly my body learned: wake up, time to poop.
That’s rhythm.
Not knowing when you’ll poop next is stress. The same is true for all the basics.
Without a pace, you stay in constant negotiation. Should I sleep in, should I press snooze, when should I eat? You succumb to mood and other people’s urgencies, and your day gets eaten before you touch what you really care about.
If you resist schedules like I did, rhythm can feel like a cage at first. I promise you it’s not. It’s freedom.
With rhythm, you create space. You save energy for what’s meaningful, so you can create, negotiate, and make decisions where it matters.
Like the poop practice, rhythm trains your body to meditate when it’s time to meditate. Your system clicks in on cue. The same with sleep, waking, writing, and anything else. Mood has very little power over a rhythm that’s established. In these ways you save time and expand bandwidth.
Rhythm is communication. It speaks safety to your nervous system, so you can step forward, take risks, face the world, and express what’s true. It supports the work you’re here to do.
Without rhythm, the nervous system shifts into protection. Fight-or-flight becomes the default because you don’t know what’s coming. That does not create flow or spontaneity. Rhythm does. Without it, life feels scary and we become oversensitive to food, people, and choices.
Rhythm brings you into the present moment,
and in presence you access clarity, discernment, and joy.
Ayurveda has always emphasized aligning with natural rhythms for well-being.
Try this simple daily frame. Think of it as structure that breathes.
Wake up by 6 am, before sunrise. This time supports and instills peace and calm. Drink warm water, then sit on the toilet. Give movement a moment.
Sit for meditation (it’s a gentle way to wake into your body, and your mind is already in the ideal brain wave state for it). Then move your body; get the circulation flowing.
Enjoy lunch between 10 am and 2 pm when agni, your digestion, is strongest. Sit for 5 to 10 minutes after, then take a short walk outside. This time you take will reduce food coma, which eats up a lot more time.
Have dinner by 7 pm, ideally three hours before bed for deeper rest.
Create a bedtime ritual. Turn off media one hour before lights out. Look at your schedule for tomorrow, put the phone away, keep conversations light and elevating, stretch the body, and practice a few rounds of pranayam (breath).
Eyes closed by 10 pm.
If your life allows (I don’t know what you do for work), do your most creative work in the morning before lunch, and save rote tasks, errands, and external requests for the afternoon.
Start small and be kind. Choose one anchor, like wake-up time or lunch time, and keep it for a week. Notice how your body responds. Notice what softens when rhythm begins to communicate safety.
Presence — life — grows from there.
– Savitree
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Such clear, loving guidance. You also offer a lovely and doable place to start - like with one anchor for a week and then discern how they is going, what the impact of that shift has on you. So beautiful. You inspire me. I live with a rhythm, not hard and fast rules. So I deeply resonate with your wisdom!