BIORHYTHM THEORY

 

There is a season for everything

And a time for every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant and a time to reap . . .

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek and a time to lose;

A time to keep and a time to throw away;

A time to tear and a time to mend;

A time for silence and a time for speech . . .

every purpose under the heaven

Ecclesiastes 3:1

The rhythmic nature of life was recognized in the Bible; Ecclesiastes 3:1, and particularly in one memorable stanza which became the basis for an extremely popular folksong of the 1960s.  I can think of no better words with which to begin this inquiry.

The man who is generally credited with founding that body of theory and practice we now call biorhythms was Wilhelm Fliess.  Fliess was a prominent German doctor who practiced, primarily in Berlin, during the final decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth.  Around the turn of the century, Germany and Austria were regarded as the intellectual homelands of advanced medical theories.

Support for the idea of the cyclical or rhythmic nature of behavior also came from the United States in 1929.  Dr Rex B. Hersey and his associate, Dr. Michael J. Bennett reported a surprising observation after studying a group of workers in a railroad shop.

The theory of biorhythm is based on the premise that there are three powerful cycles or rhythms operating within each and every one of us.  These rhythms begin at the time of our birth.  The clock is, so to speak, set at that moment, and it runs regularly and inexorably until the moment of death.

The three cycles all begin at the same time, but because they are of different lengths begin to stand in a different relationship to one another in just a few hours after birth.

The PHYSICAL rhythm has a duration of 23 days.  It is the rhythm of strength and endurance;  when it is high there is a general feeling of physical well-being, and when it is low there is a feeling of physical fatigue.  On the days when the physical cycle is at its height we not only are stronger, but we feel physically more confident.

Fliess called his 28-day cycle the sensitivity or female cycle, but today this rhythm is more commonly referred to as the EMOTIONAL rhythm or cycle.  As with the physical cycle, the emotional cycle has a discharge period and a recharge period.  The first fourteen days of the cycle are the plus or discharge days.  During these days and individual seems to have more emotional "energy."  He/She tends to be more cheerful and optimistic.  The second fourteen-day period is the recharge or negative period.  It is the time when one is likely to find his/her nerves "on edge."  This is the period during which one tends to be more irritable and pessimistic, and one hasn't the emotional "strength" to cope with many ordinary problems.

The INTELLECTUAL, or mental cycle may in many respects be the most subtle of all the three biorhythmic patterns.  The full cycle runs for 33 days, and, as with the other cycles, the first half of the cycle is a period of discharge of intellectual energy, and the second half a period of recharge.  Most educators have noted that there are definite periods in which students appear to learn quickly, and others during which the learning process appears largely to stop.  Later it will restart again quite mysteriously. 

Biorhythm authorities advise that whenever possible the second half of the cycle should be used as a time for reviewing previously learned material, in order to fix it in the memory.

The term CRITICAL DAYS sounds ominous, more ominous than it really should.  In Japan, where biorhythm theory is increasingly popular, critical days are often called "bad days," a term which  is even more ominous and misleading.  The critical days are those days in any of the three biorhythmic cycles when the cycle switches from discharge to recharge or vice versa.  They are often called zero-energy days, but the term "critical days" is the one most commonly used.

A dictionary definition of "critical" is "full of danger or difficulty."  And yet it must be stressed that the critical days are not, in and of themselves, dangerous.  Biorhythm theory does not and cannot predict that on a particular critical day something bad will happen.

What biorhythm theory does do, however, is pinpoint those days in which one's energies, be they physical, emotional, or intellectual, are at their weakest and most uncertain.  Therefore, one is less likely to be able to cope effectively with whatever difficulties might arise.

Pioneer biorhythm researchers found that people tended to have more accidents on days in which either they physical or emotional cycles were passing through the zero point -- in short, on critical days in either of these cycles.

Even today, the primary reason that many industries have displayed a great interest in biorhythms is that they have been able to relate the critical days to employee accidents.  Avoiding accidents is simply good business.

The great attraction of biorhythms is that they are simple and practical.  You can look at a chart and say, "This is where my energy levels stand today."

Practicality is what has attracted so many industries to biorhythms.  If on-the-job accidents can be reduced, even by a few percentage points, that more than justifies whatever modest expense is involved in calculating the biorhythm of employees.  It is from industries that some of the more interesting recent statistics on biorhythms come.

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The previous are excerpts from Biorhythms In Your Life by Daniel Cohen, copyright 1976 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.  If you can pick up a copy, please do because it is very informative and even gives a breakdown on how to plot your own chart with pencil and paper.

For the last 7 years of my teaching career, I used my BioRhythm program to plot the compatibility between my students and me.  The results were surprisingly accurate and allowed me, as an adult teacher, to re-assess my teaching methods for those students who tended to rub me the wrong way.  It enabled me to back up and go that extra mile for those students.

I also ran a compatibility analysis for one of my friends and his son.  Unfortunately it was too late for the dad to make an extra effort to understand his son to make a difference.  The son was in his 20's and had sold his dad's car and used the money to leave home.  He and his dad did not get along at all throughout their relationship.  I was not surprised when the compatibility average was "zero" percent.

For a long time, my wife would place individual printouts side by side on our bedroom closet door.  This was a great help whenever we would start to have a difference of agreement in our marriage.  By looking at the chart, we could back up and look a little more closely at the issues on which we were headed toward conflict or disagreement.  I kind of miss those charts, but they became unnecessary as we grew to understand each other more and more. -- George A. Lee April 24, 1999

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