The 4 Season Solution. Dallas Hartwig
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organized this book to make it as easy as possible to understand our premodern bodies and to try on new behaviors. The first chapter builds on the behavioral theory of health I’ve sketched out, detailing several key concepts that will help us understand our collective and problematic disconnection from our bodies. The following four chapters present my model, arguing that for optimal human health the four basic needs—sleep, food, movement, meaningful connection—must align with one another, and that they must oscillate. I’ve used the phrase “coordinate then oscillate” to succinctly express how to bring these four areas of health behaviors back into harmony with each other. Match, then move. Each of these chapters draws on the latest science to examine our bodies’ natural patterns in one of these areas. Comparing these patterns with the demands of modern life, I identify areas of mismatch and explain how they lead to dysfunction, disease, and a general feeling of being “stuck.” Chapters 6, 7, and 8 explore how our natural rhythms in the four areas interact during the course of three time periods, respectively: the day, the year, and your entire lifetime. Here I’ll help you assess where your daily habits might be going astray from your body’s needs, and I’ll suggest some behavior change experiments to try. I’ll close the book by evoking the “endgame” that long-term dedication can yield: a life of deeper peace, enrichment, and fulfillment beyond the usual bodily cravings that occupy us.
My own health has improved dramatically since I started realigning my behaviors and habits with my internal rhythms. After a decade of experimenting, I understand that my previous ways of sleeping, eating, moving, and connecting left a lot to be desired. At certain times of the year, I now spend less time exercising and more time sleeping. At all times, I eat food seasonally that helps support my exercise program. I’ve become adept at slowing down and turning inward at certain times, and accelerating and expanding outward at others. Best of all, I’ve learned to apply rhythmic principles to my social relationships. That means, for example, that I don’t throw myself headlong into “holiday party season,” since the intense stimulation of parties with coworkers or friends is at odds with our natural autumnal desire to hunker down for the coming winter, to withdraw, to rest. When healing after a painful divorce, I took solace in an extended, symbolic winter season, using it to introspect, develop my self-awareness, and restore my sapped energy.
I’ve also put sensible limits on my social media use and our always-on culture. While I maintain a large and growing social media following, and enjoy interacting with followers all over the world, I now spend more time connecting deeply with just a few close friends and family members, as well as with myself. My social way of being varies seasonally as well, with more boisterous social engagements in the summertime, and far fewer in the winter. My life is far more satisfying and, in all senses of the word, healthier.
Just as Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would imply, healthier tends to beget happier. Meeting foundational needs such as enough nourishing food and proper synchronization with intrinsic circadian rhythms allows humans to spontaneously and meaningfully address other, higher-order needs, such as those of cognitive and emotional growth, appreciation of beauty and wonderment, and inspiration to impart a legacy to future generations. That is, a sense of contribution and meaning outside one’s self. When I do choose to behave in ways that run contrary to my intuitive rhythms, which isn’t often, I make that choice consciously and purposefully, aware of both the potential benefits and known costs.
We don’t have to part with the comforts of civilization to realize the full, rich, beautiful potential of our existence. Although civilization remains starkly at odds with what we might regard as a “natural state,” most of us enjoy more latitude than we might think in acknowledging natural patterns and living in concert with them. Imagine what you might achieve if you broke free of modern life in your thinking, reexamined all of your behaviors and habits looking for those biological mismatches, and began the gradual process of tuning in to your body’s innate inclinations. Imagine how you’d grow as you came to cut through all the noise and understand what your body really wants at specific times throughout your day and year (and life). Imagine not having to run interference on your cravings and intuitions, understanding and honoring them instead of suppressing and ignoring them, or helplessly caving to them. Imagine how fulfilling it would be to experiment with small behavior tweaks—and to see sustained, quantitative results. It’s an incredible adventure, and it’s yours for the taking. The solution is upon you.
Kim, a woman in her midthirties, consulted with me to discuss her health and how she might improve it. Like so many mothers, her daily schedule was hectic, as she juggled part-time work with family and household demands. Prioritizing helping her children and husband in the morning, she gave little thought to her own breakfast and lunch, and then battled to fit what was effectively a full-time job into her part-time day. Even as we sat down to focus on Kim’s own needs, her phone beeped and buzzed with seemingly endless messages from work, her husband, and reminders about events for the kids.
Kim’s evenings mirrored her mornings. Dinner needed to be cooked, and the kids wrangled for homework, dinner, and, eventually, bed. If she did manage to get the kids settled and asleep at a reasonable time, she usually spent the remainder of her nights on the couch, engaged in a vague and shifting combination of television watching, messaging friends on her phone, scrolling through Facebook, answering work-related emails, or “window shopping” for items she didn’t really need. Her husband sometimes sat with her, engaged in similar activities of his own, but more often lingered on his computer elsewhere in the house catching up on his own work.
Kim thought of the relationships in her life as “good,” but not great. She and her husband both felt committed to their marriage and tried to schedule some sort of a “date night” once a week, although the kids and their general lack of energy and enthusiasm often undermined that plan. Struggling to meet everyday demands, Kim and her husband didn’t connect deeply with each other much. Their sex life was mediocre, mostly because neither of them felt particularly energetic in the evening once the kids had finally settled into bed, and because they were essentially in survival mode much of the time.
Their relationship with the kids, like their relationship with each other, was not terrible, but not great, either. They faithfully attended parent-teacher conferences and looked after their kids’ academic needs and social lives, but they weren’t truly connecting. Case in point: Kim and her husband made it a priority to eat dinner most nights together as a family, but found it was such a battle to get the kids off their electronic devices that they eventually abandoned their no devices at dinner policy altogether. It just wasn’t worth the arguments and stress it caused everyone.
Physically, Kim wasn’t in terrible shape, but she’d lost the healthy, glowing “athlete’s body” she had maintained earlier in life. As she told me, she suffered from “the usual” back and knee aches, tension headaches, and her main concern, crashing energy levels. She felt physically and emotionally “fragile,” she said, and believed the answer (and her reason for seeking my advice) was to go to the gym three times per week and start exercising. She imagined doing some cardio on the bike and treadmill. When I inquired as to when she might fit this in, she said she thought she could do it over the winter months, after 8:30 p.m., once the kids were settled in bed. Kim was looking for help, but her perceptions about where to begin shifting were mismatched to what