what’s your evening routine?

What’s Your Eventing Rou­tine?

Re­set­ting Cir­ca­di­an Rhythms

Since I wrote about “Morn­ing Rou­tine” it seems only fair to in­clude evening as

well. Be­cause what we do in the evening so much af­fects how we are go­ing to re­late

to the next day. What makes for a per­fect evening for you?

I would say as a gen­er­al rule, we de­vel­op morn­ing rou­tines through ne­ces­si­ty, and

the evenings flow ca­su­al­ly ac­cord­ing to our mood and cir­cum­stance. Giv­en the bom-

bard­ment of stim­uli, digi­tal, so­cial, carbs and sub­stances, most of us have be­come un-

aware of how all that af­fects our to­tal well-be­ing. I find that most of my friends are in

‘cop­ing mode’...mean­ing that their bod­ies are young enough, healthy enough, that

they sim­ple adapt. Rather than cre­at­ing an in­ten­tion­al process for il­lu­mi­nat­ing the

body-mind, we just ‘get by’ with the help of ex­er­cise, so­cial ap­proval, trib­al bond­ing,

sleep, sex, spliffs or what­ev­er it takes.

There is ac­tu­al­ly noth­ing wrong with just ‘get­ting by’..... I would say ul­ti­mate­ly we

may just be here for ex­pe­ri­ence and to learn what we can. How­ev­er, what hap­pens

when the body goes through meta­mor­phic changes with ag­ing, and things are just

not feel­ing right? When just cop­ing is no longer suf­fi­cient?

A few months ago I put my­self through a dopamine detox / cir­ca­di­an rhythm re-

set. I no­ticed my body was hav­ing a hard time ad­just­ing to be­ing back in the USo­fA,

re­turn­ing from win­ter in Mex­i­co. I felt scram­bled, like my mind was in a blender and

emo­tions on edge. Hav­ing come from the so­lar rhythms of sun­rise / sun­set, starlight,

moon­light & no wifi..... to our more struc­tured world was throw­ing me into con­fu­sion.

Be­ing back home in Ashe­ville, stay­ing up late and be­ing over­stim­u­lat­ed had led

me to be­com­ing de­pen­dent on herbs to sleep: mela­tonin, mush­rooms, GABA. I had

got­ten in the habit of wear­ing blue-block tint­ed glass­es most of the time. In spite of

that, liv­ing in a house­hold (7 peo­ple) with plen­ty of de­vices, 24 hour WiFi, bright halo-

gen lights, and live­ly con­ver­sa­tion had got­ten me back into a cy­cle of stay­ing up late

nights and sleep­ing in late morn­ings.

For a few days I did an ex­per­i­ment. I found it easy to turn off all de­vices, bright

lights in the evening and al­low my body to ad­just to a nat­ur­al cy­cle of slow­ing down

as the sun­light di­min­ished. If we were to turn off elec­tric­i­ty, 8 - 9 pm be­comes ‘coun­try

mid­night’, when one is re­liant on can­dle­light, torch­es or head­lamps. It’s one rea­son

why the al­lure of camp­ing is still there. I’ve also no­ticed how the brain re­lax­es when it’s

present to the flick­er of can­dles and sit­ting around a fire. A sim­i­lar ef­fect oc­curs when

watch­ing starlight. They pulse.

One prac­tice is to turn off any bright lights (in­clud­ing blue & white charg­ing lights

on de­vices that are plugged in), and only let­ting your eyes re­ceive yel­low or red light.

It’s amaz­ing­ly re­lax­ing.

My bed­room in the airstream has ad­justable lights, so I can set them to the warm-

est and dimmest col­or....a warm red. For about 10 years I’ve used a free pro­gram

called f.lux that al­lows me to sched­ule the lap­top to warm yel­low, even for movies.

Since I’ve be­come ac­cus­tomed to that set­ting, I don’t ever turn my de­vices to blue

light un­less there is a lot of glare out­side where it re­quires more bright­ness.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the phones can be sched­uled to ad­just to warm light what­ev­er hours

you wish. On my phone and iPad, it's set to that tem­per­a­ture all the time.

I was sur­prised to feel my body re­set­ting its cir­ca­di­an rhythm so quick­ly un­der this

pro­to­col, in just a cou­ple days. I got off the mela­tonin, al­low­ing my hor­mones to re­turn

to their nat­ur­al cy­cle. (Still tak­ing OM sleep herbs). I now want to be in bed by 11 pm,

even though I’m of­ten up lat­er read­ing. If I’m read­ing a book, it's un­der a yel­low light.

As I’m of­ten read­ing on Kin­dle, it's not con­nect­ed to WiFi, and the screen has a

soft, warm glow that I can dim, and though I’m a vo­ra­cious read­er, it usu­al­ly my brain

to sleep.

Since we al­ready in the midst of sum­mer heat and long days, I’m get­ting a lot of

ex­er­cise. I’m find­ing that by 10 pm, I’m tired. Of course, every­one is go­ing to have dif-

fer­ent needs for sleep, rest or qui­et time. I’m prob­a­bly high on the scale of re­quir­ing a

lot of med­i­ta­tive and re­flec­tive time in my day. That’s bal­anced by hours of in­tense ac-

tiv­i­ty.

Just like the rest of you, there are days when I’m up all night, or ac­tive till 2 am. But

I find with ag­ing those are far less fre­quent!

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Here’s a brief out­line of evening rou­tine. What’s yours?

In­ter­mit­tent fast­ing: eat­ing cy­cle be­tween 2-10 pm. Some days 4 pm to 9 pm. That

gives my sys­tem about 14-16 hours of rest be­tween meals and break­ing fast the next

day mid af­ter­noon. I’ve found this is a prac­tice that re­al­ly helps with me­tabolism and

ag­ing, will speak about it in an­oth­er blog.

First meal, 2-4 pm

If I didn’t go to gym in the morn­ing, af­ter­noon good time to work­out.

Late af­ter­noon. Cat­nap, qui­et time. Yoga Ni­dra

Phone in air­plane mode, in an­oth­er room.

Evening. Writ­ing. So­cial time. En­ter­tain­ment.

Din­ner, 8 pm.

Bath or Hot Tub?

“Mid­night” carb snack, yo­gurt, gra­nola, berries, 9:30 -10 pm

10 pm, wind­ing down. Lap­top/TV/Phone off.

Read­ing for plea­sure (non-tech), nov­els, es­o­ter­i­ca, study.

Evening so­mat­ic or theta med­i­ta­tion

In­ten­tion & grat­i­tude med­i­ta­tion: What is hap­pen­ing to­mor­row?

De­pend­ing on time of year, and amount of ex­er­cise, I’m usu­al­ly fall­ing asleep be-

tween 11 pm - 1 am

I wake up around 7:30 am, again de­pend­ing on time of year and lo­ca­tion. I tend

to sleep about 8 hours. Of­ten wak­ing up ear­ly morn­ing around 4 am, when I like to go

out­side briefly to feel na­ture. Some­times read­ing if I can’t fall back asleep. It’s been

said that el­ders need less sleep, but I must en­joy sleep too much. It’s one of my fa-

vorite parts of the day!