Personal Growth/Individuation

“If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.”

I was reminded of this saying once again the other day. It comes from my old Harley motorcycle days. In my journey through life and all the “strange” things I’ve done and do, I have often been asked, “Why do you do that?” Or its variation, “Why would anyone want to do something like that?” Been here before. Done that. So, here’s the story…

An old biker getting off his Harley and dressed in full black leather riding gear was approached by a little old lady, obliviously mainstream and well to do. She asked, “Why do you ride those things? They’re noisy and just look at the type of people who ride them.” He looked at her and politely said, “Mam, if I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand,” and he walked off, leaving her standing there.

Now, this is not a post about Harleys, although I sometimes miss them. It is a post about my current life and a course I’m just finishing teaching. I have been teaching an OLLIE course through Clemson University. OLLIE for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute presents short courses for retired folks, usually taught by retired faculty from Clemson, that be me in this case. Twenty-five plus years ago I had taught one on recombinant DNA for what was then OLLIE and while I was still a faculty at Clemson. It had been fun. Retired folks signup and take these courses because they’re interested in the topics and enjoy learning new stuff. They are lifelong learners. It is a great program.

The topic of my course, based on my new Guru book, was ” Medicine Wheels, Vision Quests, and Jungian Archetypes.” It was three lectures and one experiential where I will give participants an opportunity to meet one of their own personal archetypes, face-to-face, so to speak. All lectures are done via Zoom.

The course was one of my forays to see if there was interest out there for some of the stuff in which I am interested and to potentially give myself an avenue for a new path as I walk away from my current job from burnout and into the unknown at this point. Not sure where I’m going, but I’ll know when I get there.

In the first lecture, at the end of it, one of the participants asked me, “Why would you want to do something like that?” I smiled, and told her and the very small class, first the old Harley riders response, and then a story of a physician I had been working with many years ago. However, this being a class and all, I took a deep breath and gave her a partial explanation, on which I went much more into detail at the beginning of the next lecture. Then, in the spirit of learning, weaved in my answer over the next two lectures for good measure.

As for the physician story, I had just come back from the vision quest that I wrote about in Guru. Several of the staff had gathered round me when I came back, curious about where I had been and what I had been doing, and all sorts of questions about my experience. Somewhere toward the end of that telling, the physician had walked up and was listening. When I had finished he asked me,

“Why would you want to do anything like that?” Although he had done work with medical intuitive, Carolyn Myss, and was himself pretty good at it, as well as certified in acupuncture. he was pretty arrogant and cocky, and I had bit my tongue with him more than once in our pas in one of his smart ass remarks. It was Payback” time: I looked at him and said, “Well, Bobby, if I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand,” and like the old biker, just left him standing there as I walked off to see my first patient. He never asked me again. Okay, back to my story.

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Dancing with Our Natural Circadian Bio-Rhythms

I am a big believer in working with one’s body and its natural bio-cycles, genes, physiology, etc., as well as the biorhythms of nature in general. I am using “bio-cycles” here as a broad category of natural biologically-driven cycles, including, but not limited to, our daily circadian and ultradian, the subject of today’s blog, female minstrel, developmental, aging, Kreb’s citric acid cycle (from biochemistry), cell division, etc. And, more from Nature, the daily diurnal light-dark cycle, the yearly cycle of the seasons and months, lunar, solar, the nitrogen, carbon and other elemental cycles, ecosystems, and so forth. As I write in my Guru book, Turquoise Woman is my archetypal symbol for these cycles in her role as Navaho’s, Changing Woman.

We have two types of natural bio-rhythms I wand to address: circadian and ultradian (see figure below). Circadian refers our 24-hr wake-sleep cycle. Ultradian refers to the 90-120 minute rest-activity cycles that we go through within our circadian cycles. In this post, I am focusing on the circadian cycle, In a later blog, I will write about ultradian cycles, which are also very important.

This post was inspired in one of my early morning awakening periods and my recurrent question of, “instead of fighting it, how can I work with it,” which goes back to my Guru story’s vision quest’s ending of “how do I dance with it?”

For decades I have had what is known as Early Morning Awakening: no matter what time I go to bed, I awake somewhere usually around 3:00a.m. I have tried all kinds of ways to deal with this, including melatonin and many other informed recommendations, but not medications, prescribed or OTC’s. I wanted to find a more natural way to work with this issue.

On top of this, is that as we age, we need less sleep. For years (decades), I wake up after sleeping for five hours. Very aggravating! With only five hours sleep, I feel sleep deprived and drag through my day with low energy. With six hours sleep, I feel pretty okay. With seven hours, I feel great! Usually, I just lay there trying to go back to sleep, or, more accurately, hope that I will go back to sleep, often giving up and getting up around 6:00a.m. My body’s circadian cycle is from about 3:00a.m. to 3:00p.m., and I want to come back to this below.

I compensate for lack of sleep, and also just to take rests when I feel tired, or in between projects, or, actually, any excuse for 20-minute power naps. I’ve done the power nap thing ever since I got out of graduate school back in the Stone Age (1975). And, no, skipping the naps doesn’t effect the five-hour/early morning awakenings. That is, except of Sundays when I often take a longer nap, especially after a long bike ride. These longer naps sometimes can affect my ability to get to sleep, which is countered by the intense exercise I got that day. Sundays are kind of my days off. I usually do a lot of cooking on Sunday’s too.

My natural circadian rhythm is from 3:00am-3:00pm. My cycle is common for day-owls. Plus, I am an early morning person. I do my best writing, thinking, creativity, etc. in the early mornings. By 10:00am, I can feel my efficiency at these dropping off. By around 3:00pm, it is like the bottom drops out of my energy level. I grow tired and more fuzzy-thinking. This is when I try to turn my attention and efforts into doing more mindless type of activities, e.g. house or shop cleaning, bringing in firewood in the winter, or going for a walk with the dogs or a bicycle ride, etc.

At about 3:00am for us “normal” people, our body/brain starts making the transition from its sleep cycle to its wake cycle. At about 3:00 pm it shifts to making the transition for our upcoming sleep cycle.

Unfortunately, when I wake up around 3:00a.m., my mind starts cranking up. The downside of it cranking up is that I jump from topic to topic. The upside is that it is often a very creative period. I come up some of better ideas during this time–like this morning. It is sort of the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. The “Good” is the creativity that often comes up. The “Bad” is feeling sleep deprived if I don’t get enough sleep. The “Ugly” is that this is also often my Shadow time.

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