Befriending Your Rhythms: Midlife & Beyond

Sep 16

We women are wired with magnificently calibrated rhythms. They’ve been with us all along—whispering through our bodies, guiding our energy, shaping our days and seasons.

As a woman over 40, your body follows natural patterns that influence your energy, focus, and well-being. These rhythms—circadian (daily cycles), ultradian (shorter 90–120 minute cycles), and infradian (longer seasonal or lunar cycles)—don’t vanish in midlife. They evolve with you.

Instead of pushing against them, what if we befriended them? Honored them? Flowed with them?

Doing so allows us to create a life aligned with our body’s changing needs, enhancing sleep, productivity, creativity, and resilience.

Culture vs. Nature

Here’s the problem: most of us have been trained to ignore these rhythms. We’ve been culturally conditioned to prize unrelenting productivity—the “I’ll rest when I’m dead” mantra that gets rewarded in workplaces and families alike.

If you charted that expectation, it would look like one long, flat line: wake up, grind urgently all day, collapse into bed. (See the Culturally Rewarded Pattern chart.)

But our bodies aren’t designed that way. In fact, pushing ourselves to perform like machines—ignoring breaks, overriding cues, caffeinating or distracting our way past fatigue—leads to exhaustion, inflammation, and eventual burnout.

By contrast, when we honor our ultradian rhythms, our natural 90–120 minute cycles of effort and recovery, the chart looks more like a wave: rising with focus and energy, then pausing to recover before rising again. (See the Wiring Friendly Pattern chart.)

The difference is striking. One burns us out. The other sustains us.

The Ultradian Key

Our ultradian rhythms are embedded in our DNA. Every day, we cycle through multiple 90–120 minute phases of high energy and focus, followed by dips when our body and brain need to reset.

If you’ve ever found yourself:

in the zone, deeply focused for about an hour,
then suddenly fidgety, distracted, or craving a snack,

…you’ve felt an ultradian rhythm at work. That dip isn’t failure. It’s biology.

Most of us push past it—training ourselves to ignore bathroom breaks, skip meals, or keep typing through brain fog. But here’s the truth: those dips are your body asking for renewal. Honoring them is how we stay vibrant.

Practical Ways to Work With Your Rhythms

Here are a few ways to begin befriending your rhythms in midlife and beyond:

Practice a Morning Minute.
Before leaping out of bed, take one quiet minute to visualize how you’d like your day to flow. Picture yourself alternating between effort and recovery, showing love to your body and brain.
Follow the 90-Minute Rule.
Focus for about an hour. If you’re still energized, keep going for another 30-45 minutes. After that—whether you’re “in the zone” or not—take a break.
Listen to Your Body’s Cues.
Hunger, drooping eyelids, restlessness, even random daydreams are signs your cycle is shifting. Instead of muscling through, step back with compassion.
Take an Ultradian Break.
Ideally, 20 minutes. At minimum, five. Step away from screens. Shift gears. If you’ve been sitting, move. If you’ve been rushing, sit down & breathe. Replenish with water. Give your brain and body the reset they’re asking for.

When you return, you’ll find focus restored and creativity unlocked.

Why It Matters in Midlife

For many of us, midlife means reckoning with decades of pushing against our natural wiring. Our bodies keep the score. We carry fatigue, brain fog, or the stubborn memory of years spent “powering through.”

But here’s the invitation: to shift from resistance into flow.

Working with your rhythms is like learning to sail with the wind instead of against it. You move farther, with less strain, and with a surprising amount of joy.

And in this second half of life, isn’t that exactly what we’re after? Not grinding ourselves down, but flowing into a sustainable, creative, well-seasoned way of living.