People tell me quite often how badly and guilty... and lazy they feel when they loose their real interest, juice, spark... simply motivation to work... no matter how much they usually love their profession.

And I would like to say: Cut the self-blame and let's look at it more closely!... Generally, I think the word "laziness" and other shaming formulations don't help at all... and perhaps should be avoided altogether... and what you feel is most probably an absolutely natural phase of biorhythmic cycle... or - much more rarely - a signal your organism struggles with some disease.

As to the natural biorhythmic cycle: It seems to me like "square pranayama" ... one of the yogic breathing patterns: you 1) breathe in, 2) wait, 3) breathe out, 4) wait etc. etc.

In more details I would describe the phases like this:

1) BREATHING IN: It's a phase of in-spiration, taking in, letting in of stimuli, sensations, information, knowledge, experience... getting inspired, filling oneself with new fresh stuff that wasn't there before... till one feels full and can't get in any more... and needs to...

2) ABSORB it all: In breathing cycle this means exchanging gasses on the inner surface of lungs and than inner breathing on cellular level... in biorhythmic cycle it seems to mean to let the load of stimuli that rushed in so fast from the outer world, to be re-chewed, ruminated like cows do it... actually the new experience needs to be compared with our previous experience, the emotions that we went through too fast need to be re-lived, re-experienced - processed in our body while the pictures of the situations connected with them pass like a film in front of our inner sight again. All this in order to prevent suppression - stuffing our new experience into our unconsciousness and adding to the inner tension that is unhealthy for both our psyche and our body....

This second phase is the time for creativity, associations of new ideas with the old ones and coming up with new connections, new ways and new solutions. This is the time to evaluate, put into perspective, figure out the actually meaning of what has been happening in the world around us.

This is the "let me think about it" period, the time of "let me sleep on it"... as processing the new material on unconscious level can bring even better insight and clarity.

And of course as our organism in this phase wants to ABSORB the new stuff it had been filled with... it is naturally disinclined to do outer work that would interfere with the inner absorption process.

Unfortunately, our culture doesn't reserve time for this phase with exception perhaps of artists, scientists and other creative professions... and virtual absence of respect for the ABSORPTION PHASE causes inner conflict and overwhelms people who have to go to work every day and perform outwardly, do more repetitive, standard even mechanical - but not less respectable and demanding and motivation needing - work... on and on and on. And this distortion: not allowing the the time for absorption, keeps being justified and reinforced since young age and children are being made guilty and called lazy... right? And most of us suffer from this inner enemy of fear of being lazy... as if it was completely real... and, as I noticed, only few of us question validity of the concept of laziness at all.

A reasonably healthy organism feels by itself when this phase of ABSORPTION is over and the organism naturally, happily and with self-satisfaction starts to...

3) BREATHE OUT, exhale, ex-spire... That seems to be the phase of real outer WORK when people put out what they had made out of the meeting and comparing of newer and older experience, of outer and inner worlds... all that had happened in the phase 2).

Now, this is a period in which people who love working are proud of themselves as they are naturally and smoothly outwardly productive, full of energy, active, materializing their ideas or just expressing them... and do not have to overcome any inexplicable "laziness" any feared/hated inner resistance and sleepiness.

What a wonderful time when energy and juice and spark and charisma is in everything we do... like summer, like harvesting crops of what we seeded in the spring... and aren't these four phases of natural biorhythm some parallel of seasons of a year as well??

Great time indeed for those more active and extraverted ones... while inner absorption seemed the time cherished by those more introverted ones... those less appreciated by our contemporary hectic life style culture.

Well, everything under sun goes to its end... and so does BREATHING OUT. And there follows the phase of...

4) STAND STILL, REST, TAKING A BREAK... recuperating, restoring ones strengths, recharging our batteries,... doing nothing... what a good snowy winter provides for nature in mild climate... another phase not so much loved by our production-oriented culture and by our employers... as the organism would naturally like to take off more than a couple of weeks. A couple of months as children's summer holidays would be much more like it.

And again some of us can blame ourselves for their or rather their organism's responding to the cycle of the Universe more obediently or willingly... and may feel guilty for their "laziness"... and may keep trying heavily to overcome the voice of Nature... so much that their bodies have to stop them... and they fall ill or worse they completely lose touch with the natural cycle and... like insomniacs who feel tired but can't sleep... end up suffering from chronic fatigue.

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So one pays rather dearly for disobeying the natural cycles... as we were conditioned to since childhood. The organism tries to remind one of one's natural biorhythm and natural needs by tiredness and if necessary by illness... but our times overcome it by tee, coffee or other drugs, by exercising in fitness center, by intense stimulation... and by medicaments that heal symptoms and not the cause... and in the end we don't seem any better.

So why don't we try to respect our biorhythm as much as we can... and rather process or "live through" our guilt than "act it out" in forcing ourselves against our instincts? I find it a fascinating experiment to go back to nature and learn from it... while correcting the shaming voice of inner enemy, of various authorities that wanted us to be... the same way as they were... slaves of thoughtless mass production... maybe good for the time of industrial revolution but definitely not good for the times of creativity, originality, new solutions and respect to human beings... and of scarcity of raw materials and vulnerability of our natural environment.

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So now... more practically speaking:

I was trying to figure out if there is any regularity in the lengths of the four phases of biorhythm as described here ... and I didn't find any.(In square pranayama, for example, each phase lasts the same time... that's why it is a square.)

It seems for some of us the whole cycle is faster than for others, but also the duration changes with age and even successive cycles differ in lengths... in my experience.

I think a psychic can tell intuitively what phase a person is in... and predict approximately how long the phase is going to last as well as estimate when it started... but we have to take into consideration that between the four phases themselves there seem to be transitional periods... sort of blend of two successive phases.

Obviously each phase dictates a natural optimal ratio of "inner" and "outer" work and work vs. rest... and this too a psychic can intuitively estimate for a client in order to maximize use of potentials of various phases of a cycle and to support the client to keep in sink with hypothetical inner compass that tells us where to go in order to keep a sense of harmony, meaning and fulfillment in our lives.

Being able to figure out what phase a client finds oneself in helps understanding his/her own biorhythm and how its phases feel and of course accepting them against the guilt feeling... but also to differentiate between natural phases of one's cycle and possible symptoms of a disease. I don't suggest a client should get dependent on a psychic... but rather use psychic's hints and inspiration to learn to rely on one's own intuition and gather experience concerning one's own biorhythms.

And... I most definitely think the cycles reflect the "will of the Universe" and being in harmony with them, in my experience, pays off for everybody in a long term much better than forcing oneself against them and ending up constantly panting like an overheated doggie (... certainly unlike a pranayama practitioner).

Prague, Czech Republic, June 2004