when awake in the early hours….
journal of reflections by Meng-hu, resident of the Hermitary
Diurnal rhythm by Meng-Hu
From health and psychology magazines to medical journals, the topic of cortisol is well-covered, if not outright popular. The function of the hormone cortisol is to increase standard defenses of the body, to serve as the body’s alarm system, as the website WebMD puts it. These defenses are raised when perceived stress assaults the body, physically or psychologically, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, regulating inflammation and blood glucose, and other mechanisms for providing the impetus to “fight or flight.”
What most commentators neglect is that the cortisol function often serves as a dysfunctional hijack of otherwise normal bodily functions. The organs directed by the flow of cortisol are the most primitive in the human body: hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal. The cortisol function is a remnant of evolution that modern humans do not require for survival. A primitive Paleolithic hunter might need an alert system to gauge whether to fight or flee from a rampaging woolly mammoth. In primitive times cortisol serves a survival function, and marshals the energy needed to execute whichever decision the person elected: to fight or to flee.
But if the historical stressors no longer exist, the body stills responds as if they do. Such overreactions can create hypertension, heart rate concerns, disruption of hormones, and potential damage to organs that such conditions can precipitate. As if the cortisol hijack is not enough concern, modern stressors have come to replace outdated ones. Stress from domestic relations, jobs, commuting, children, neighbors, debts, living conditions, hostility, safety concerns, the daily news — the list can go on. Yet modern stress sources replace ancient stress sources, and multiply them in number and intensity. Further, we cannot fight or flee. These are not options in modern society. The cumulative effect of numerous stressors essentially points to the backdrop of modern existence. And yet the cycle of cortisol continues, unabated by the profound changes of civilization.
If we further identify the cycle of cortisol in the body, the diurnal rhythm, we observe that during sleep the levels of cortisol are minimal, and that they begin to rise around 4 AM and peak at 8 AM. The emergence of cortisol in this pattern suggests that ideally cortisol benignly awakes one with a gentle nudge not at all related to “fight or flight.” It is a natural biorhythm following the course of the dawn, the emergence of light, a natural cycle renewed every day.
Indeed, monastic traditions East and West historically adopted for its adherents a schedule of prayer and meditation that begins about 4 AM and concludes at 8 AM. This is no coincidence but an unspoken, perhaps intuited, insight. Such a universal tradition is addressing the need to capture the cortisol cycle, assign it a practical function, and engage it for as long as practical. Thus the practice of four hours of prayer or meditation at the beginning of the day addresses the power of cortisol, harmonizes its effects, and harnesses the cycle for good.
In the West, the monastic tradition of observing ritual hours of the day (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline) served physiologically to absorb the imprint of all hours, all occasions of fight or flight, superseding subjective ruminations associated with given hours of the day or night. Western traditions varied Matins to midnight or 2 AM, with the rest of the day’s schedule varying by tradition and season. In Eastern traditions, too, hours take on significance. Theravada and Zen Buddhist monks have historically maintained similar schedules, rising at 4 AM to meditate for one hour, then chanting for one hour. At 6 AM, the monks historically went out of the monastery to beg food alms in the villages, returning by 8 AM for breaking their fast, with today’s modern discretion substituting more meditation, chanting, or light work during the latter hours. Hindu monastic routine, too,is nearly identical, further incorporating the seven chakras to address physiology and metabolism into a system of understanding the self. Thus culture, geography, and environment might move the schedule slightly forward or back in winter, or establish slightly different routines within different schedules.
If these grand traditions perceived a necessity to master the cycle we now know as the cortisol cycle, and can pinpoint the time of its rise and fall, then common sense suggests that we,too, should avail ourselves of a significant time of day and make our early daytime hours parallel those of the wisdom traditions.
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