What Is Your Biorhythm?

In nature, many things run by cycles - the tides cycle, the weather cycles, the season cycles - even the sun goes through an active and passive cycle, or activity like solar flares.  So, if everything around us goes through cycles, shouldn’t we go through cycles as well?  This is what the concept of biorhythms is based on.  The principle is that all humans go through physical, emotional and mental cycles and if we understand these cycles, we can predict them, just like the weather, and use this knowledge to our advantage. 

In the study of biorhythms, our emotions, physical well being, and mental well being are all represented by curves.  There is a midline that is simply the middle state of all these factors.  When a curve goes above the midline, we have a high of the corresponding factor.  For instance, we would be happy if our emotional curve is above the midline, or we would be more physically resilient and better able to heal if our physical curve is above the midline.

The midline is a very important part on the biorhythm scale.  Not only is it important whether you’re above or below the midline, but crossing the midline is a very important time as well.  This indicates a turning point, but it also might be a hard time for you.  You may feel physically or mentally drained, or have emotional ups and downs. 

Biorhythm Chart. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Biorhythm curves also contain an average line.  This is exactly what it sounds like; it’s an average of all three curves.  It simply represents your overall well being.

If you think about it, many people already accept the ideas of emotions and physical properties running in cycles.  Women have a hormone cycle in their body that coincide with their menstrual cycle.  While it’s not necessarily as predictable and precise as some people may suggest, it still occurs.  And many people have theorized that men have a similar cycle. 

Biorhythms run on a different time cycle than this.  In fact, physical, emotional, and mental biorhythms all have a separate time cycle.  As one might expect, the emotional curve has a cycle of 28 days.  The physical curve is shorter at only 23 days, but the mental curve is much longer at 33 days.

Many people hear about biorhythms and think that it sounds like some ridiculous theory that is based on a random idea someone had; however, biorhythms were actually discovered by Dr. Wilhelm Fliess.  He was looking at case studies of his patients and actually noticed that they all seemed to have the same up and down fluctuation in all these factors. 

Some people still think it sounds a bit hokey, because it feels like predicting the future.  But biorhythms don’t predict major illnesses or any future events; they simply predict general well being based on past cycles.  This isn’t going to help you make major life decisions, but you can use it to help decide when to take a vacation, have an operation, or even work your exercise program around it to improve your results and overall health.

For more on biorhythms, see the resources below: