Biorhythms: Syncing Your Creative Cycle
Creativity is a delicate dance blending inspiration, energy, and emotion. If you’re an artist, you’ve probably experienced those magical moments when everything just flows and those frustrating times when nothing seems to work. What if there was a way to predict and even harness those creative highs and lows? Enter biorhythms—natural cycles that influence our physical, emotional, and intellectual states. By tuning into these rhythms, artists can optimise their creative practice, making the most of their natural energy patterns.
©Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 (printed 2017), Three gelatin silver prints, 148 x 121 cm each
What Are Biorhythms?
Biorhythms are biological cycles that affect our daily lives in various ways. They typically fall into three main categories: the physical cycle (23 days), which affects your strength, coordination, and overall physical energy; the emotional cycle (28 days), which influences your mood, sensitivity, and emotional balance; and the intellectual cycle (33 days), which governs your cognitive abilities, such as thinking, reasoning, and creativity. These cycles ebb and flow, creating high and low phases. Understanding when you’re at your peak and when you might be in a slump can help you plan your artistic endeavours more effectively.
How to Use Biorhythms in Your Artistic Practice
Here are some ways you can integrate the concept of biorhythms into your creative process:
Plan Around Your Peaks and Troughs: You can schedule demanding or innovative tasks during your intellectual and emotional highs by tracking your biorhythms. For example, if you’re a painter, you might save intricate work for days when your intellectual energy is at its peak.
Tap Into Emotional Highs: Emotional peaks are perfect for projects that require deep feeling and expression. If you’re a writer, you might find that your best character development or most poignant scenes come during these times.
Manage Physical Energy: If your art involves physical activity—like sculpture or performance—knowing your physical peaks can help you avoid burnout and injury. You’ll be able to push harder when your energy is high and take it easier when it’s low.
Addressing Procrastination
Procrastination is a common hurdle for many artists, often stemming from a mismatch between tasks and the artist's current biorhythmic state. By understanding and tracking your biorhythms, you can schedule your creative tasks during your intellectual and emotional highs when you're naturally more motivated and focused. This can help mitigate procrastination by aligning your most challenging work with times of peak cognitive function.
When you find yourself in a low phase, it's important to acknowledge that pushing through might not always be the most effective strategy. Instead, use this time for less demanding tasks or for rest and rejuvenation. This approach respects your natural cycles and reduces the guilt and stress associated with procrastination, ultimately leading to more consistent and sustainable productivity.
©Marina Abramović
Neurodiversity and Biorhythms
For neurodiverse artists—those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, or other neurological variations—biorhythms can offer valuable insights into managing creative work. Neurodiverse individuals often experience unique patterns of energy, focus, and creativity, which can sometimes clash with conventional schedules. Individuals with ADHD might find their intellectual and physical energy levels fluctuate more unpredictably, so understanding biorhythms can help in planning work during high-energy phases and using low-energy times for less stimulating tasks, reducing the frustration of inattentiveness. Artists on the autism spectrum might have specific times when their focus and creativity are heightened, allowing them to organize work that requires deep concentration or intricate detail. For dyslexic artists, intellectual peaks can be used for tasks requiring heavy cognitive processing, such as reading and writing, while emotional and physical peaks can be reserved for more intuitive or hands-on creative work.
Artist Examples
Yayoi Kusama, renowned for her immersive installations and signature polka dot patterns, utilises her art to manage her mental health. Kusama has openly discussed how her creative practice helps her cope with obsessive thoughts and hallucinations. Her meticulous approach to art aligns with her natural rhythms, allowing her to channel her unique energy into creating mesmerising works. Her autobiography, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, delves into her methods and how she aligns her work with her mental states.
Marina Abramović, the pioneering performance artist, is acutely aware of her physical and emotional states. She strategically plans her performances and preparations around her biorhythms to ensure she delivers compelling and impactful art. Abramović's memoir, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, offers an in-depth look at how she manages her energy to sustain her demanding art form.
Olafur Eliasson, known for his large-scale installations that often incorporate natural elements aligns his creative process with natural cycles, reflecting his own biorhythms. His work highlights how he integrates natural rhythms into his creative practice, emphasising the importance of aligning with one's environment and internal cycles.
Ai Weiwei, a multidisciplinary artist and activist, aligns his creative efforts with his emotional and intellectual peaks. Weiwei's projects often require deep intellectual engagement and emotional investment, and his creative process is carefully tuned to his natural rhythms. The book Ai Weiwei Speaks: With Hans Ulrich Obrist offers insights into how he manages his biorhythms to optimise his creative output.
Tips for Artists
Track Your Biorhythms: There are various apps and calculators available that can help you monitor your cycles. Use them to get a sense of your peaks and troughs.
Reflect on Your Work: Look back at past projects and note any patterns in your productivity and quality of work. Did your best pieces happen during high intellectual phases? Were your most emotive works created during emotional peaks?
Adjust Your Schedule: Once you understand your cycles, you can plan your day-to-day activities to match. Reserve high-energy times for creative work and use low-energy periods for administrative tasks or rest.
Stay Flexible: While biorhythms can provide a helpful framework, remember that creativity is unpredictable. Sometimes, inspiration strikes outside of your peaks, and that’s okay too.
By embracing your natural rhythms and understanding your unique neurodiverse patterns, you can create a more harmonious and productive artistic practice. So next time you feel a creative block or a burst of inspiration, consider how your biorhythms might be playing a role. Who knows? You might just find that perfect alignment between your art and your natural cycles.
