Put your hand on your chest.
Not to check your heart rate or to measure anything. Just to feel the pulse beneath your palm. That rhythm has been going since before you were born. It continued through every meeting, every deadline, every argument, every scroll through your phone at midnight. It did not speed up when your mind panicked. It did not stop when you forgot to notice it.
It is, in a sense, the oldest thing about you.
Manufactured Urgency vs. Natural Rhythm
We live in a world that has replaced natural rhythm with manufactured urgency. Notifications arrive at random intervals specifically designed to disrupt your attention. Work culture rewards constant availability. Even entertainment is optimized for binge consumption — one episode flows into the next without pause because pausing is where you might lose the customer.
But underneath all of this, your body continues to operate on cycles that are hundreds of thousands of years old. Circadian rhythms. Ultradian rhythms — the 90-minute cycles of alertness and rest that your brain naturally follows throughout the day. The rhythm of your breath. The cadence of your gait.
None of these rhythms move at the speed of Wi-Fi.
Entrainment
In mindfulness practice, we use a concept called entrainment — the tendency of biological rhythms to synchronize with rhythms in the environment. When your environment is all notifications and deadlines, your nervous system entrains to that. But when you deliberately expose yourself to slower rhythms — your own breath, your own heartbeat, the pace of the natural world — your nervous system entrains to that instead.
This is not metaphorical. Research on heart rate variability (HRV) consistently shows that deliberate attention to slow, natural rhythms measurably improves nervous system regulation within minutes.
Ten Heartbeats
A simple practice: twice a day, place your hand on your chest and count ten heartbeats. That is all. Ten heartbeats of deliberate attention to the rhythm that has been carrying you. You will notice something shift — a small softening, a slight drop in the shoulders. That is your nervous system recognizing a tempo it trusts.
The session The Rhythm Beneath the Rush expands this practice into 27 minutes of guided heartbeat meditation, breath awareness, and spacious silence.