A particular scene on a science program has stayed with me for years. A group of lab rats was placed in a big stainless steel bowl, and then stressed by a loud noise at two different times of the day. The first time, the sound startled them, but didn’t otherwise faze them much. The second time, many of them keeled over from the shock of the noise, and did not recover.

This drastic difference in stress response seems to be related to the workings of our circadian rhythms — those roughly 24 hour cycles of our physiology that are tied in to the movement of the sun. Evidently, as this rat study and others have indicated, there are some rather significant variations in what the same nervous system is able to handle at different phases of the cycle. And I don’t think the rodents are alone in this.

I’m thinking about all this because autumn always gets me thinking about cycles, and because the events of this autumn seem especially stressful.

Let’s see, there’s the continuing conflict and unfinished business in Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s the food shortage in many parts of the world, there’s the financial crisis and its worldwide ripples and aftershocks, there’s the increasingly negative presidential campaign, there’s the prospect of high energy prices for the coming winter — all against a background of evidence pouring in daily of climate change-driven disruptions in the ecosphere. Are you stressed yet?

Even under ordinary conditions, fall can be emotionally and physically challenging: A time of transition and reckoning, it is a time of sorting out the past year’s efforts and achievements. A time both of harvests and endings and of preparing to go forward into winter’s very different conditions and requirements.

Keeping our balance on that fine line between the past and the future can be difficult.

Recognizing that we all need support in this balancing act, a friend from down the block and I held a “fall renewal” retreat for the women of our neighborhood last weekend. A group of us spent several hours together in this friend’s partially finished garage, doing yoga, meditation, visualizations and other energy balancing techniques. Then we shared a fantastic potluck lunch and had a chance to express many of our concerns and fears, before returning to the garage tor a few more restorative activities.

“This is making me realize how little time I’ve been taking for myself, how little quiet time I’ve had, and how much I need it,” was a comment from one participant, and I think she spoke for many of us. In my Energy Medicine practice as well as in daily conversation, I hear more and more people comment on how difficult they find it to relax, even in their leisure time. If, indeed, they have any of that.

I routinely ask clients what they do as “restorative activities” and many are at a loss to answer, or have a list of things they used to do, but no longer seem to have the time. We feel driven to get things done, to be productive, to stay on top of things, in both our domestic and working lives. Driven by an impossible — because absolutely unnatural — standard of efficiency.

I was expressing this one day to my mindfulness meditation teacher. It seemed, I told her, that I could never get things “together” all at one time: the indoor and outdoor aspects of my home, the upstairs and the downstairs rooms, even the members of my family. If some of us seemed to be on an even keel, invariably, others were in the grip of one or another phase or issue. She smiled, and said, simply, “That is an organism. Everything in nature is constantly going in and out of equilibrium.” How true, and how hard we make it for ourselves by expecting otherwise.

When we push through, attempting to ignore the natural peaks and valleys of our existence as natural organisms within a larger natural system, we risk our physical health and emotional well-being (not to mention making choices that impact the planet’s health, as well). No wonder doctors estimate that up to 80 percent of patients come in with stress-related illnesses. As a culture, we overlook the wisdom the ancients identified in the yin yang symbol: that the world is an unending play of fluctuating states. Daylight and darkness, ebb and flow, order and disorder, growth and decay.

Our energies are like the tides, with their highs and lows. Our nervous systems and their related hormonal activities are finely calibrated cycles that we ignore at our hazard. We need time to retreat from the stresses, to repair the damage done to us by our society’s unsustainable pressure for constant productivity.

When we return to ourselves in this way, we may be surprised, not just by how long we have been away, as the retreat participant noted, but also by how little it takes to replenish our well.

For the intelligence of the mind-body-spirit system is always working toward homeostasis — toward rebalancing health. Breathing practices, stretches, self-massage, work with the chakras and with the meridian points used in acupuncture: All of these simple, self-care techniques can boost inner resources and unleash energetic reserves we may be astonished to learn we have.

If we can accept and respect our low points, and learn to work with our energy to maximize our high points, we can be in harmony with natural rhythms, and live more sustainably. We don’t have to live like rats in a bowl, never knowing when the next stress will knock us out.

I’d like to leave us with an image shared by John Seed, the Australian rainforest activist, as a counterpoint to that rat experiment. He describes how, in working to restore destroyed ecosystems, the tendency is to want to go into the worst areas first and try to change them. What actually works best, he found, is to go into the areas that still have some vitality, and work to remove impediments to the spread of that vitality. By this process, the landscape gains in health and vibrancy, to the point that by the time new growth reaches the devastated gully, it is easily able to take it in stride.

When we take the time to rest, to gather with friends, to share food with neighbors, to sit quietly and breathe, to stretch our limbs and move our muscles, we are acknowledging our native vitality, heeding our natural cycles and, by doing so, removing impediments to the energy of healing in our lives. So simple, but so challenging. We need all the help we can give each other.

About the author: Ruth Ann Smalley, Ph.D., is an educator and a certified Eden Energy medicine practitioner with a practice in Albany. She’s also an Honest Weight Coop member worker, and writes a monthly column for the coop’s newsletter.