This is for people working in offices or home offices who are trying to live healthy! You may be going to gym, eating well and doing a great job at managing your stress. Maybe you aren’t but would like to understand more about managing your energy throughout the day.
Have you ever wondered why your energy levels fluctuate and your moods change during the day? It’s not just what we eat and how we feel or hormone and brain chemical fluctuations, there’s something else going on. From my training in oriental medicine and experience working in high-pressure work environments, I’ve put together an idiot’s guide to organising work around this energetic clock.
There is a time in the day when each organ gets the most energy (and the least energy). The energy cycles of the organs associated with daily activity are elimination (lungs, large intestine), digestion (stomach, spleen) and circulation (heart and small intestine). In office environments, many decisions are made for us: decisions about the environment, what air we breathe, when we can eat and people we spend time with.
It may seem impossible to even contemplate we have a say in aligning our work day with these natural biorhythms. But blessed with a chronic health condition, I have had a go and I’ve kept at it and with flexibility and practice, it is possible.
There’s a lot of information on-line about the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clock in relation to its use diagnostically. Let’s get practical and design your schedule with natural body clock rhythms in mind as much as we can. This is not medical advice, I’m sharing what works for me and what you may want to try out.
I’ve broken down the day into the main activities. For a full break down by time clocks, see https://wellness.mcuniverse.com/2011/the-chinese-body-clock-why-do-i-feel-differently-at-different-hours-of-the-day/
Food: It is suggested to eat breakfast, the biggest meal of the day, between 7 and 9am to optimize digestion and absorption. Eating larger meals of the day early means the digested food will be in the small intestine when absorption and assimilation is strong.
For lunch, energy moves to the small Intestines from 1pm-3pm. Take time to eat and be relaxed. It sounds so simple but it’s not easy. It’s too automatic to eat at our desks….and bragplain (combination of bragging and complaining). Sure, sometimes it is necessary but it if happens every day, there is something amiss in your workflow system. Some people like to eat with others, others like solitude. Know your style and make it happen. Look at the clock, eating a meal (i.e. chewing, not hoovering takes an easy 10–15 minutes. For dinner, eat moderately and by 7pm to give the body ample time to digest.
Exercise: This is best first thing in the morning when the body is primed to eliminate what we don’t need — through the breath and bowel movements. Slow gentle exercise is best at this time. You want to let go of it all — physically, mentally and emotionally and start the day fresh. More strenuous exercise is better in the evening to release the build-up of our over-yang work environment and turn your attention inward.
The TCM clock cautions us to not overtax our heart with exercise in the middle of the day (11am-1pm). You may sometimes notice a rapid heartbeat, double beats or skipping beats during this time. Research shows that seventy percent of heart attacks occur during this time frame. Doing anything heat inducing during this time is not good for optimal heart health as the heart has an aversion to heat.
Heavy lifting: both physical and mental cardio find their mojo from 9–11am. This parallels the coaching suggestion to do the hardest thing first. It could have something do with the release of enzymes for food digestion. The hard stuff is whatever is hard for you — whether that will be a difficult phone call, writing a sensitive email, checking your finances. By doing this first, I notice later in the day I’m less weighed down and enjoy others’ company more.
Administration and housekeeping (1–3pm). This is the corporate equivalent to siesta. An eyes-wide open siesta! Automized and routine tasks that don’t take much thought or engagement can be enjoyable at this time. It also means we are letting our physiology get on with the business of digesting food and anything else that has gone on in the day before the second run. If most of this type of work is outsourced to staff, the message here is to consciously reduce effort as a general rule. If you ‘don’t have time’, use the heavy lifting time to contemplate why or chew through the extra load.
Meetings and social butterflying: meetings that have a purpose of connection and sharing information are best placed between 3 and 5pm. Include in here phone calls primarily about working with others and understanding their working worlds. Meetings that require problem-solving and deep diving should be scheduled in the ‘heavy lifting’ time of the day. Instead of sugar-infected standard corporate catering options, I have water with a sprinkle of salt or miso soup. In ‘kidney’ time (5–7pm) our energy comes from our natural inbuilt reserves. If your kidney energy is weak, you will feel it. Slowing down through listening to classical music or taking nutritional supplements can help you move through the energetic sludge.
The second winds: If you haven’t done what you need to do, the second run time is the best time to have that last minute hour of power. If you have a young family, you’ll try to sling me off my unicorn but bare with! Even if it is an interrupted patch quilt of 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there — this is the best time to ‘bring home’ (as in, complete to a satisfactory level) what has to be done by the end of the day.
7–9pm is the time for the pericardium channel — associated with our endocrine and circulatory systems. The body energy is in the mode of reorganisation and reassembly. What does that mean? We perform under disruption better during this time. It’s a time to set up for the next day, problem-solve or write about anything that may have fallen off the wheels earlier. Otherwise, the TCM dictate is to get out there and socialise, flirt and live it up!
If the body clock approach resonates with you and you are the real McCoy with getting your energy right, you best remodel your day to get to bed soon after 9pm. I can’t say I do this perfectly but I know that if I’m travelling rough, I know the medicine and I’m not taking it.
I’d love to hear from anyone that practices this — it needs social proof. Don’t believe me — try it yourself!
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