October’s issue: Patterns and cycles–from sleep to food, to self-sabotage and more

By Danielle Rose

There are patterns and cycles in every life–Whether patterns a person can commit to, or cycles we feel the need to break away from. What do you think of when you think of the word patterns?  Is the connotation different from those around the word cycle?  Are patterns and cycles good, bad or neutral? How do we fall into patterns, and how can cycles offer us an opportunity to begin again each time? Do patterns and cycles help us grow, or hinder us?  Perhaps a little of both?

This issue our writers did their best to study the depth and breadth of patterns and cycles. Cycles are simply a part of life. There are cycles involved in yoga, spiritual rebirth, or movement in the heavens. Sleep cycles, menstrual cycles, how our hormones cycle throughout the day—even age is cyclical in the need to be cared for during the later years of our lives.

The sun sets, the sun rises, the seasons come and go, as does the moon and its tides–all in predictable cycles that we live by on a daily basis.

This Month . . .

There’s no better time to discuss cycles than in the autumn (except perhaps in the spring) when we so clearly see the earth cycling back into a period of rest.  This month we’ll focus on articles to help you find better patterns that work with your body’s natural rhythms, ways to make a new habit stick, how we sabotage ourselves by allowing patterns that no longer serve us to continue running.  We’ll discuss our eating patterns and how we can often get stuck in a cycle of thinking something is healthy because we’ve been told it is.   

We’ll also talk about sleep, bedtime routines and dreams, including the patterns we see in both the dreamworld and our waking world. We hope that through our articles you’ll begin to get a clearer picture of the cycles and patterns in your own life, and how they might be holding you back or moving you forward.

What do you find to be a recurring pattern in your life, or a cycle that you feel in groove with?