The Rhythm That Runs Backwards

What the Research Actually Says About Tired-but-Wired

Start with the reframe, because it changes everything you do next. If you are worn out all day and then wide awake at night, it is tempting to conclude that you have no energy, that something has drained you dry. But look at the shape of it. You clearly have energy, because it shows up, wired and restless, at eleven at night when you want to sleep. The trouble is not the amount. It is the timing. Your alertness is arriving at the wrong end of the day.

That is because human energy is not really a quantity you spend down like money in an account. It is a rhythm. Through the day your body runs a daily wave of alertness, driven in large part by cortisol, which is meant to rise to a peak in the morning, giving you your lift, and then decline steadily across the day to a low point at night, letting you settle and sleep. When that wave is crisp, you feel awake by day and sleepy at night. When it flattens, or slides late, the whole thing smears: you are under-lifted in the morning, so you drag, and still too switched on at night, so you lie there wired. Researchers who pooled eighty studies found that a flatter daily cortisol rhythm is linked to worse health across almost every outcome they measured, and, tellingly, that ongoing fatigue tends to go with a slower daily decline (Adam et al., 2017). Tired all day and wired at night is, in other words, close to the textbook picture of a flattened rhythm.

The good news hidden in that is enormous. A rhythm can be sharpened. And the single most powerful tool for sharpening it is one you already have free access to every morning: light. Light is the main signal your internal clock uses to know what time it is, and getting bright, circadian-effective light early in the day pulls the whole rhythm forward and makes it steeper. When researchers tracked office workers, those who received more of that morning light fell asleep faster, slept better and reported better mood than those who sat in dim indoor light, and the effect ran through better circadian entrainment, a better-anchored clock (Figueiro et al., 2017). Most of us now spend our days in light too dim to set the clock and our evenings in screen light bright enough to confuse it, which is a recipe for exactly the flattening you are living.

The last piece is regularity. Your clock does not only want a strong morning signal, it wants a predictable one. When researchers measured how regular people's sleep-wake timing was, apart from how long they slept, they found that irregular timing went with delayed sleep, more daytime sleepiness, and less daylight exposure, along with worse markers of health and mood (Lunsford-Avery et al., 2018). The ragged schedule that a backward rhythm produces, sleeping in to recover, dozing by day, staying up wired at night, is not only a symptom. It feeds the very flattening that caused it. Which is why the way out is not more rest thrown at a tired body. It is a rhythm re-anchored at both ends.

What Perukua Says About Waking and Energy

Perukua has spent more than thirty years teaching women to come back into the body, and she is unusually precise about the morning, which turns out to be exactly where a backward rhythm is won or lost. First the boundaries, because they matter: she is a vocalist and a women's facilitator whose work has reached women in more than 63 countries, and she is not a doctor. Nothing here is medical advice, and persistent exhaustion deserves one. What she offers is a way of meeting the morning that happens to line up closely with what the science says re-anchors the clock. Morning, she says, is the foundation of the day. However you tune yourself in the morning, that is how the day will go, both your general state and your energy.

She treats waking as a threshold, not a switch. The passage from sleep to waking, she teaches, is the point of crossing from the world of dreams, the world of the mind, into the world of the body, into real life, and it is far more important than we treat it. Her first instruction is the one almost no one follows. If you do not want to pour away the energy you gathered while you rested, she says, do not grab your phone; keep it in airplane mode for at least the first hour after waking. The feeds are a provocation of your emotional reaction, and every emotion spends energy; fall into them first thing and you pour away all your rest and feel empty before the day has begun. In her terms, waking into the phone is how you throw away the morning lift your body was trying to give you.

Then comes the distinction at the heart of her method, and it maps almost eerily onto the tired-but-wired problem. The mind, she says, is a digital device, easy to switch on. The body is analog, slower; it warms up first and only then works. Do not skip that warming, she warns, or you fly off into the mind and the day passes in thoughts and worries, and you lose the sensual connection with the body. And then the line that names the whole trap: the charge of energy you are looking for in the morning is in the body, not in the mind. Give the body a chance to switch on before running off into the mind. This is what a person with a flattened rhythm does wrong every single morning. Under-lifted, they reach for the phone and the coffee to force the mind awake, skip the body's slow warming, and spend the day buzzing in the head while the body never truly comes online, which is why the real energy never arrives when it should.

Her alternative is a body-first waking that doubles as a rhythm anchor. Put your right palm on the center of your chest and your left a little below the navel, she says, take five soft gentle breaths, feeling the palms rise and fall, and say to yourself, hello my body, I love you. Then, when you get up, drink a glass of water that is not cold, which signals the body that the day has begun, that its systems are moving from the mode of restoration into the mode of activity. And let the energy move: in sleep the body saved energy, almost in a state of paralysis, she says, so watch how cats do it, the moment they wake they stretch. Do the same. Even five or ten minutes of a short stretch lets the energy begin to flow through the body, and you feel it rise. A body met with breath, water and gentle movement, in the light of the new day, is a body being told, clearly, that it is morning. That is the whole task of turning a backward rhythm around, and it is the ground her guided practice, From Stress and Anxiety to Inner Harmony in 15 Minutes, is built on.

Why the Rhythm Flattens in Midlife

To turn the rhythm back around, it helps to see exactly what flattened it, because none of it is a moral failing and all of it is workable. Picture the day your body wants: a clear rise into a morning peak, then a long steady decline into a quiet, sleepy night. Four ordinary features of modern midlife life smear that clean wave into a flat line. The first is a weak morning signal. We wake in dim bedrooms and move into dim indoor light that is nowhere near bright enough to tell the clock it is day, so the morning peak never gets its cue and stays low (Figueiro et al., 2017). The lift you are missing was supposed to be triggered by light you are not getting.

The second is a false night signal. In the evening, when the body is trying to wind down, we sit in the bright light of screens and overhead bulbs, which the clock can read as ongoing daylight, keeping alertness propped up when it should be falling. The third is the habit of waking into the mind, Perukua's territory: reaching first thing for the phone spikes stress and emotional reaction before the body has warmed up, so the nervous system is switched on in the head all day yet the body's own energy never comes fully online. And the fourth is stillness. A body that barely moves through the day gives the clock little to distinguish day from night, and daytime inactivity is one of the things that goes with a flatter rhythm and more daytime sleepiness (Lunsford-Avery et al., 2018).

Layer the menopausal transition on top of all four and the flattening deepens. The hormonal shifts of midlife destabilize sleep and mood directly, fragment the night, and add hot flashes and 3 a.m. wakings, all of which push a woman toward sleeping in, dozing by day and lying wired at night, the ragged schedule that the research shows feeds the problem further (Lunsford-Avery et al., 2018). This is why the tired-but-wired pattern shows up so often, and so newly, in the forties and fifties. It is not that you have suddenly become lazy or fragile. It is that a rhythm which used to hold itself together is now getting weaker signals at both ends, at the same time as your biology is more sensitive to them.

Put it together and the picture is clear, and hopeful. You are not out of energy. Your daily wave has gone flat: too little lift in the morning, too little fall at night, held there by dim days, bright nights, a mind switched on before the body, and too little movement, with midlife turning up the volume on all of it. And read that way, the repair is obvious. You do not fix a timing problem by resting more, any more than you fix a watch by giving it a nap. You sharpen the wave at both ends. You give the morning a strong, bright, body-first 'on', and the night a real, dim, quiet 'off', and you keep the edges regular so the clock can trust them (Adam et al., 2017).

A Way to Turn the Rhythm Back Around

If you are exhausted all day and wired all night, here is a way to turn the rhythm around, drawn from what the research shows and from the way Perukua meets the morning. It is not about forcing sleep at night or hunting for more rest. It is about giving your body a clear 'on' and a clear 'off', in that order, and keeping them steady enough that your clock learns them.

First, rename it. Stop telling yourself you have no energy. You have energy, it is simply arriving at the wrong time. That one change matters, because it stops you chasing rest, which cannot fix a timing problem, and points you at the rhythm instead. What you are going to do is sharpen the wave, lift the morning and lower the night, not top up an empty tank (Adam et al., 2017).

Second, give the morning a real 'on'. This is the biggest lever, so give it the first fifteen minutes. Do not wake into the phone; leave it in airplane mode, as Perukua urges, so you do not pour the day's energy away before it starts. Instead, meet the body first: right palm on the center of the chest, left hand a little below the navel, five slow breaths, hello my body. Then get light into your eyes as early as you can, open the curtains wide, and if you can, step outside for even a few minutes, because bright morning light is what actually pulls the rhythm forward (Figueiro et al., 2017). Drink a glass of water that is not cold, and let the body move the way a cat stretches on waking, a few minutes of easy movement to let the energy begin to flow. This morning minute is the heart of Perukua's guided practice, From Stress and Anxiety to Inner Harmony in 15 Minutes.

Third, keep the edges regular. Your clock trusts a predictable schedule more than a long one. Pick a wake time and hold it every day, including weekends, and especially after a bad night, when the instinct to sleep in is strongest and most damaging. It is the regularity, more than the exact hours, that anchors the rhythm and cuts daytime sleepiness (Lunsford-Avery et al., 2018). Anchor the morning first; the night tends to follow the morning, not the other way around. And resist the long daytime nap and the late-afternoon caffeine that feel like relief but flatten the coming night.

Fourth, give the night a real 'off'. In the last hour, dim the world. Lower the overhead lights, put the screens down, and let the evening actually signal night to the clock instead of counterfeiting day. This is also where you stop, in Perukua's phrase, replacing hard stress with soft stress: scrolling, news and sugar keep the system switched on when it is trying to power down. Meet the body again as you did in the morning, but toward rest this time: hand on the chest and belly, a few long, slow exhales with a soft Huuu, warmth, low light. You are telling the same body, in the same language, that it is now the other end of the day.

Fifth, move by day, and know the red flags. A body that moves in daylight gives the clock a clear day, so build in some gentle movement earlier rather than late. Then a few boundaries, because a flat rhythm is not the only thing that makes a woman tired all day. If your exhaustion is new, severe, or comes with other symptoms, breathlessness, a racing heart, weight or hair changes, feeling cold, or loud snoring and gasping in the night, please see your doctor, because a thyroid problem, anemia, low B12 or D, sleep apnea, a heart issue or depression can all wear this same face. If your sleep has been broken for weeks, ask your doctor about CBT-I, the most effective treatment for insomnia. If your mood has been flat and low for two weeks or more, talk to your doctor. And menopausal changes, hormone therapy or sleep medication are all conversations for your doctor, not something to adjust on your own. Perukua is an artist and facilitator, not a doctor, and these practices are meant to sit alongside proper care.

In Closing

Being exhausted all day and then wide awake at night can feel like a body that has simply given out, or turned against you. It has not. In almost every case it is a rhythm that has gone flat, too little lift in the morning, too little fall at night, and rhythms can be turned back around. You do it not by resting more, which a timing problem ignores, but by giving your body an unmistakable morning: light in your eyes, breath and water and gentle movement, the phone left alone, the body met before the mind. Keep the edges steady, let the night go genuinely dim and quiet, and your clock, which has only been getting confused signals, starts to trust the day again. The energy you have been missing was never gone. It was arriving at the wrong hour, and you can teach it, morning by morning, to come back when you need it.

This piece is general information about wellbeing, not medical advice, and Perukua is an artist and facilitator, not a doctor. Exhaustion that is new, severe, or accompanied by other symptoms such as breathlessness, a racing heart, weight or hair changes, feeling cold, or loud snoring and gasping in your sleep, deserves a doctor's assessment, because thyroid problems, anemia, low B12 or D, sleep apnea, heart conditions and depression can all cause it. Insomnia lasting weeks is worth raising with your doctor, who can point you to CBT-I. Menopausal changes, hormone therapy and sleep medication are conversations for your doctor, not something to change on your own. If your mood has been flat and low for two weeks or more, or you have thoughts of not wanting to be here, please reach out to your doctor or, in the United States, call or text 988. These practices are meant to sit alongside proper care, never instead of it.

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