Wisdom of Rhythm

 

Wisdom isn’t knowing more.  It’s knowing with more of you.

Cynthia Bourgeault

 

I recently heard an interview with the writer Michael Pollan where he talks about how we become more habitual as we age.  He described this with the image of tracks made by the steel blades of a sled running over a snowy hill.  Overtime, the sled will be pulled into these ruts, unable to make new ones unless a force pushes the blades in a different direction.  Pollan wrote about this in his book on psychedelics where they are likened to a fresh snow that fills-up all the ruts.  LSD, psilocybin, and other consciousness altering drugs, Pollan instructs, can help us see and do things in a fresh way, even as, especially as, we age. 

 

I do find myself doing things more habitually as I age.  At least it feels that way.  But I can’t be sure if it is aging, life’s circumstances, or the pandemic which keeps me in the grooves.  It may just be that I have found a rhythm to my days and weeks that is deeply nourishing and uplifting and have the freedom to follow this rhythm.  I know each day will start early with hot tea, contemplative reading, and journaling as the sun rises and birds commence their morning song. Yoga practice follows before a start to the work of the day, a midday walk by the river, more tea with sugar in the afternoon.  This rhythm gives my days a structure that supports a flow of energy into the tasks and activities I have set out to attend to rather than being dispersed and unfocused.  There are regular intervals of rest where I know I will have a chance to reset, let go, and gather myself up again.  Because of this rhythm, my days are full and purposeful even when nothing goes as planned.  I am blessedly tired at the end of them most nights sleeping deeply and soundly the whole night through.   Pollan acknowledges that there are benefits to doing things habitually when we find nourishing rhythms that preserves energy, create ease, reduce stress, and thus open possibilities for creativity.  At the same time, Pollan emphases that habits can close us into a smaller circles of friends, activities, exploration.

 

I think that Pollan overemphasizes the negative when it comes to habits related to aging buying into the negative stereotype of older people as repetitive, unimaginative, and boring.  What he misses is the potential for a devoted and committed rhythm of life to overtime deepen and awaken us. To develop skill requires devoted daily practice.  Whether it is yoga, art, learning a language, making bread, the artistry is developed over a long period of sustained and regular practice.  Rhythm in service of what is nourishing is not redundancy but deepening.

 

Newness for newness sake can lack meaning and focus. With practice, one is able to bring more and more of oneself into the practice, involving the deeper layers of the embodiment with the art. Paradoxically, the more we practice the less it seems we know  as we become aware of just how much there is yet to learn.  This inspires humility and ignites the mind for more learning.  This has been my experience of yoga.  What at first seemed an ordinary and straightforward asana pose has thirty years later become a study of the infinite complexity of the body, the way the different parts from the toes, ribs and  lungs connect and interact, the unique intertwining flow of consciousness and breath, the particular expression of the soul through each asana.  

 

And when I walk along the river where I have walked for thirty years, it is not a rut that I feel but wonder at the purple, brown, and silver unfolding of the water’s skin, the intricate pattern of silvery gold light reflected off of the surface, an owl’s distant call.  During a recent winter’s ski by the river, fresh sweet air fills my lungs, the sky a perfect periwinkle blue, the hemlock’s light blue-green blades were dappled by sunlight.  How fast my skies glide over the cold hard snow! So much tenderness in the quiet solitude of the familiar winter forest known intimately and new again.