Our biorhythm has a major impact on our lives. Expert Carola Kleinschmidt reveals 11 tips how we can use it skillfully – also when it comes to making a dentist appointment …
We humans vibrate roughly every four hours – energy highs and lows alternate. Ideally, this wave of energy carries us optimally through the day. Those who learn to skilfully surf their waves of energy arrive more relaxed after work. These eleven tips will help you:
1) Use a 4-hour rhythm
Our biorhythm swings from an energy high to an energy low approximately every four hours. While the energy wave is rising and at the energy high, we can work things off quickly or achieve a lot physically. Our battery fills up again in the downswing of the wave. So in the course of a day we have about two energetic high phases – we should use them.
2) The nonsense with the larks and owls
Only 20 percent of people are extreme morning people (larks) or extreme evening people (owls). The remaining 60 percent can easily get up between 7 and 8 and feel ready for bed between 10 p.m. and midnight. Most of us experience our first energy high around 11 am, sit in the noon low around 2 pm, wake up again from 4 pm – and tend to be tired after 9 pm.
3) Set the internal clock
For the energetically favorable daily run this means: Take time to wake up and then tackle the most important things of the day in the morning. Because you will not be so focused, receptive and fast again. Then treat yourself to a lunch break to recharge the energy battery. Then you can do a lot again in the afternoon.
4) Breaks are your secret power
While we can achieve a lot in the energy highs, think faster or sprint, our body and mind achieve a different high performance in the phases of the lows: It rearranges itself. Thoughts are organized, feelings are integrated, cells regenerate, energy recharges. In the job that means: After a phase of peak performance, we should let it go and do something more relaxed. Eating, a power nap and exercise also replenish the battery.
5) Figure out how to tick
If we have had a good rest on vacation – after two or three days – we can see when we wake up on our own and when we also feel awake. More like 8 (tendency morning person) or more like 10 (tendency evening person).
6) Better to go to the dentist in the afternoon
All processes in the body are controlled by our internal clock. Also our muscles, the heart, the feeling of pain. It is particularly helpful to know that our creativity is at its best in the morning high. Our muscles tolerate gentle movements in the morning and are less sensitive to injuries in the afternoon and are stronger in muscle building. Our pain sensation is lower in the afternoon – perfect for the dentist appointment.
7) into the sun!
Our internal clock is controlled by light. Those who get plenty of sunlight during the day strengthen this inner clock – and can switch off better in the evening. The body knows more clearly, so to speak: This day is coming to an end. Use this biological fact for yourself. Cycle to work or go out for lunch. Also good: a workplace with lots of daylight. Not so good: Blue light from the cell phone late in the evening. That disrupts the biorhythm.
8) Synchronization of performance curve and biorhythm
Studies have shown that competitive athletes are up to 20 percent better when they do sports at their personal wedding of the day. Simply because both the muscles and the concentration are so much better during these times. Crazy right? For us ordinary people this means: every salary negotiation will be easier for us, the difficult conversation, the exam, if we set the appointment shortly before or at our energy high.
9) What helps against the midday low?
People who tend to be evening people, i.e. who like to go to bed after midnight, tend to suffer from sleep deficits in our society. Researchers call this “social jetlag”. Because the world turns from 6 or 7 in the morning, and you have to get out of bed, even if your body still wants to sleep. A short power nap around lunchtime can help make up for this lack of sleep – in the evening you will still be normally tired again.
10) If only it weren’t for that nightly waking up!
Many people know that: You are totally tired in the early evening. But when you go to bed you wake up at night and lie awake. The problem behind it: You’re actually only tired because you’ve run through the day without a break. But the biorhythm is not even on sleep. If you lie down, you just catch up on the missing recovery, so to speak – and then you are fit again. You wake up and lie awake. The so-called sleep pressure was too low to sleep through the night. Because even at night our system vibrates in the energy wave. And in the phases in which we only sleep very lightly, we wake up when we are not really ready for bed. Therefore: It is better to take breaks and recharge your batteries during the day so that you only get really tired when your body and mind are ready to sleep.
11) Help, everyone in my family works differently!
The biorhythm often causes arguments in families. The youngsters sleep until noon, the little ones are up at six o’clock, the partner doesn’t want to have breakfast until ten … What to do? Make yourself a paper clock. Everyone enters the time window in which he or she is awake and ready for family. You can make an appointment in this time window. With the youngster, it might be brunch rather than breakfast. And the partner takes over the swimming at eleven – and you have free time. If you know your intersections, you can take the pressure off – then it is also easier to leave the late risers alone and also to distribute the family work along the strengths and the need for rest. The differences are not malicious, after all. It’s our biology.
© Scorpio
Book tip: “The interval principle. The art of finding the right rhythm” by Carola Kleinaschmidt (Scorpio 2021, 176 pp., 18 euros).