We experience rhythm in everything around us
Summary
- We experience rhythm in our own bodies, the seasons and day around us
Details
- Our heartbeat, and breath
- Sunrise/sunset, seasons
- moonrise, tides, wash of the waves on the beach
- our own body clock or circadian rhythm
References
Quotes
Rhythm is something we experience within our own bodies, as we hear or feel our heartbeats or breath. We identify it in other biological processes, such as our circadian rhythm. We see rhythm in the changing seasons or the pattern of sunrise and sunset—things with which to mark the passage of time. The rhythm of the moon gives us tides. There are rhythms found in the hours of our workday, the flow of transportation, and the activity in a town or city. Margaret Mary Barela argues, “The experience of meter, and rhythm as well, is kinetic. It is organic. We experience flow if we allow ourselves to focus on the kinetic aspect of the musical experience.”[16] Identifying and feeling the multiple rhythms in our day helps us appreciate the kinetic reality of rhythm.
Rhythm is thus a fundamental part of all living creatures. Sunlight may modify, or entrain, our circadian rhythm as the periods of darkness and light vary throughout the year. But light does not tell us when to get up. Our bodies are already beginning the process of waking up and being ready to start the day before our eyes register the sun through our lids. “Much of the behaviour of living organisms is anticipatory of regular and predictable daily environmental changes,” write Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman in their book Rhythms of Life, “rather than reactive.”[17] Foster and Kreitzman cover years of research showing that biological clocks still operate in plants and animals, even if they are separated from external calibration sources.