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by
Adrienne
from
Psy-CenterCommunity Website
Human Being
Biorhythms
Biorhythms are the natural monthly fluctuations that govern:
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Physical:
This cycle effects the physical aspect of the body. It encompasses
your energy levels, your resistance, and your overall physical
strength and endurance. During the positive half of cycle is when
you will feel at your best. This cycles influences physical factors
such as eye-hand coordination, strength, endurance, and resistance
to disease.
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(Peak) You will feel physically fit to work on projects requiring
physical strength and endurance.
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(Low) During the down half of cycle
you are likely to have less energy and less vitality. Be sure to
follow this cycle if you require physical endurance for either
sports or your work.
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Emotional
This cycle governs the nervous system and also is referred to as the
sensitivity rhythm. This cycle influences our emotional states,
affecting love/hate, optimism/pessimism, passion/coldness,
depression/elation.
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(Peak) When you are feeling most creative, most
loving and warm, and you are probably more open in your
relationships.
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(Low) More inclined to be withdrawn and less
cooperative. You may also be very irritated and negative about those
things that occur in your everyday life.
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Intellectual
This cycle supposedly originates in the brain. It influences our
memory, alertness, speed of learning, reasoning ability, accuracy of
computation.
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(Peak) Considered to be at your most intellectually
responsive; you’re open to accepting and understanding new ideas,
theories and approaches.
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(Low) Much more likely to have difficulty
in grasping new ideas and concepts.
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Compassion (38 days)
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Aesthetic (43 days)
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Self-Awareness (48 days)
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Spiritual (53 days)
These cycles start the moment we are born. They are at a mid-point
at that time. They then go up and down at different rates over our
lifetimes. When any of the cycles are at a high point, things we do
that require aspects of that trait are more successful - the reverse
is true during the low points of a cycle. Many people report that
they can improve the quality of their lives by monitoring their
biorhythms and acting accordingly.
All three cycles go through positive (ascending) and negative
(descending) phases. The days on which a cycle passes from positive
to negative or vice versa are known as "critical" days.
There are three critical days in each cycle, and it has been proved
statistically that more accidents happen on these days than at any
other point in the cycle.
History of Biorhythms
As long as 3000 years ago, the scientists of ancient Greece were
recording the regular rhythms of basic bodily functions such as
respiration, kidney activity, pulse rate and, of course, the female
menstrual cycle. Most of us barely give them a thought; yet these
rhythmic cycles affect even the tiniest cells of our organism from
the day we are born to the day we die.
Hippocrates, the celebrated Greek physician, noticed that good and
bad days fluctuated cyclically in both sick and healthy people. It
was only relatively recently, however, that the theory of three
internal cycles with a definite effect on behavior patterns gained
credibility in our society, and its practical use was appreciated by
many people in all walks of life.
In modern times we think of the ’fathers of biorhythm theory as Dr. Wilhem Fliess and
Hermanna Swoboda.
A German physician in Berlin, Wilhem Fliess, provided the first
tentative explanation for this phenomenon, on the basis of
physiological and emotional cycles.
Later an Austrian physician, Prof. Alfred Telcher, further developed
the theory identifying a third component, the intellectual cycle.
Hermanna Swoboda was a professor of psychology at the University of
Vienna. Dr. Wilhelm Fliess was a nose and throat specialist in
Berlin. Like so many important scientific discoveries, both Fliess
and Swoboda were working along very similar lines with almost no
knowledge of each other’s work. It is quite extraordinary that these
two scientists, despite doing independent research, came to
virtually identical conclusions.
Both Swoboda and Fliess found psychology intriguing and due to books
and information beginning to surface at the time, took an interest
in human cycles. Swoboda published this paper at the Universal of
Vienna in 1900.
"Life is subject to consistent changes. This
understanding does not refer to changes in our destiny or to changes
that take place in the course of life. Even if someone lived a life
entirely free of outside forces, of anything that could alter his
mental and physical state, still his life would not be identical
from day to day. The best of physical health does not prevent us
from feeling ill sometimes, or less happy then usual."
Analyzing dreams, ideas and creative impulses of his patients,
Swoboda noticed very regular patters or rhythms. Some artists might
be familiar with these dry spells and then frenzies of creations
with predictable variations. He also observed that new mothers began
to show anxiety about their infants whenever a critical day occurred
or was about to occur.
Swoboda’s discovery of these two basic biorhythms led him to write a
succession of distinguished and widely-popular books explaining and
developing the ideas of human cycles. First of these books,
published in 1904, is titled The Periods of Human Life (in their
psychological and biological significance). His second book titled
Studies on the Basis of Psychology further elaborated his work on
creativity and the recurrence of dreams. In 1909 he published an
instruction booklet which included a slide rule to calculate
critical days called, The Critical Days of Man.
Swoboda’s best book, and one of his last, was a volume of almost 600
pages titled The Year of Seven. Much of that work was devoted to
proving biorhythm theory by giving a mathematical analysis of how
the timing of births tends to be rhythmic and predictable from
generation to generation within the same family.
Wilhelm Fliess on the other hand did not get nearly as much
gratification from his discovery as Swoboda. He did introduce
Sigmund Freud, a friend of his, to Biorhythms around the turn of the
century. Freud, well known as the father of modern psychology, was
very interested in human behavior and was fascinated by Fliess’s
work. During the course of five years they wrote over a hundred
letters to each other discussing their respective discoveries and
research.
Both Fliess and Freud were interested in human bisexuality. Fliess
begun to prove cellular bisexuality through his research of
Biorhythms realizing that both men and women had an emotional cycle
that was the same. He stated that Women are more influenced by the
emotional cycle and men are more affected by the physical cycle.
He concluded, due to cellular bisexuality both male and females have
both rhythms (saying that men have a pseudo menstrual cycle, if you
will). In 1909, Fliess published a book entitled The Course of Life,
which spurred other doctor, Hans Schlieper, to write a book on
Biorhythms called The Year in Space.
Circadian Biorhythms
Throughout the ages humans have been intrigued by the effect of the
sun, moon, and stars on their daily lives. The day-night cycle and
seasonal changes have been the fountainhead of religious beliefs and
scientific inquiry as long as humans have inhabited the earth. Only
recently have we attained a deeper understanding of biological
rhythms (or biorhythms) that regulate human existence.
We now know that the pineal gland, in addition to being an
independent pacesetter and timekeeper, is a photosensitive organ,
interpreting sensory messages from the retina. It translates
environmental messages of the light-dark cycle of day and night and
seasonal changes into hormonal messages sent throughout the body.
This results in an internal daily biorhythm called the
circadian
rhythm. The length of time it takes to complete a single cycle of
the circadian rhythm is referred to as the period of the rhythm and
is usually a full day. Secretion of melatonin by the pineal reaches
a peak during the night. This is one way that the pineal
communicates with other organs and acts as the body’s daily
timekeeper.
We are now learning that they include your
intuitive or psychic
cycle. This 38 day rhythm cycle coincides with Plato’s "four
aspects" and with Carl Jung's "four functions". Jung, the world
famous psychologist and teacher, described the four functions as
sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition. These four functions
directly relate to your regular four biorhythm cycles of physical,
intellectual, emotional and intuitional and they all work together
to regulate your physical and mental abilities and well being.
The 4th cycle (intuition) controls subconscious perception,
hunches, instinct
and your ’sixth sense’. If you’re interested in any field that
relies upon your subconscious abilities, whether they be telepathy,
healing at a distance, radionics, dowsing, strengthening psychic
ability, healing yourself or simply ’mind control’
Planetary Biorhythms
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