What's Your Chronotype? Early Bird, Night Owl, or Fox for Shades of Gray
- Laura A. Weber
- 5 minutes ago
- 6 min read
What's a Chronotype? Our Chronotype reflects our internal clock that governs rhythms for sleeping and waking. Some are Larks, some are Owls, and others are somewhere on a spectrum, like Wolf, Lion or Bear. Perhaps Dolphin. How does our Chronotype affect our health, wellness, creative energy, and relationships? How does it influence our life's work? And more - how does it reflect the rhythm of our Soul?
It's that time of year again when daylight peeps over the horizon just as deep sleep enfolds us, and dusk seems to arrive with afternoon tea. Daylight is rare these days, and it can feel like a monstrous betrayal for the sun-worshippers among us. Oh, it hurts, all right - even for the Night Owls whose hooting animates the nocturnal shadowscape.
Autumn is a "Falling Back" time, when "Springing Forward" feels like a distant dream. When Daylight Savings Time ends each year, it often brings on the anguished howls and SAD-saturated depression even for the Early Birds whose day begins with the circadian acuity of the perky robin foraging for worms. We just feel "off" until our internal Bio-clock resets.
And this time-shifting clock-shock happens TWICE. Each. Year. No wonder we feel a bit disoriented.
We suffer a circadian dyspepsia keenly in the Fall and Spring. It messes with our psyche, our relationships, and our physical wellness. We dread it. It's right up there with anticipated colonoscopies and root canals. It's why many have called for Daylight Savings Time to cease and desist. Still, the sun god Helios in his fiery chariot, growing brighter and dimmer, means our experience of seasonal change will inevitably shift our perception of our world, and unsettle our sense of self. Our Chronotype holds us steady.
For the Larks among us, morning may be the best time of the day to get things done, when we feel fresh and sharp, full of energy and creative verve. But school beginning at 7 a.m. for teens? Many have experienced difficulties as adolescents or adults forced by cultural norms to adhere to early hour schedules. For some, sunrise starting times are barbaric and counter-productive for energy-infused enthusiasm, learning capacity, and creativity. Even an hour later start might help them. Night-Owls may love the feeling of aliveness when the sun sets, a fresh set of dark hours for productivity, exercise, or entertainment in a bath of artificial light. Others may loathe after-work "required appearance" social events that feel like Kryptonite for dawn-loving Clark Kents. Set a meeting with the office team for 7 a.m., 10 a.m., or 3 p.m., and see who's on board with which slot. Chronotypes will become quite apparent.
Chronotypes vary based on our internal Timescape. Knowing our chronotype might include a test for "Morningness vs. Eveningness." It turns out that many will already know, even before answering the questionnaire, whether we lean toward being an Early Bird or a Night Owl. What matters is that we have the self awareness to assess our interior Timescape, when we thrum with energy, and when we must nestle into rest.
What if Lark or Owl isn't quite right? Have you ever considered you might be more of a Bear, a Lion, a Wolf, or a Dolphin? You might be someone who rises and goes to sleep with the sun, and you feel most productive between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. - a Bear. Or if you just cannot lift yourself from the pillow before noon, and you tend to flourish after dark, you may be a Wolf. Lions are early risers who sputter after noon, and crave sleep by 9 or 10 at night. Roar-yawning.
And then there are the Dolphins - those who just cannot follow a routine sleep schedule. They are prone to insomnia, skipping over waves of exhaustion and refreshment with intermittent naps. They are attuned to environmental factors of noise and light, and swim into productivity between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Dolphins don't "go to bed" early or late as a rule. They float. And work routines might be challenging.
Why is Chronotype primarily associated with work habits? Because we pay attention to linear time when we're on the clock. It's a symptom of our post-Industrial preoccupation with productivity as an indication of value and identity. It's like being at a party and someone asks, "What do you do?" as an attempt to reveal our identity markers, as though our occupation defines us.
We are Sooo much more.
What if we could go deeper? How does Timescape affect who we really are, apart from our jobs, apart from our productive lives. What about our inner landscape - our "Soulscape?" For that, we need a different concept of Time for a totally different beast.
For Soulscaping, what we need is a creature who knows how to live at the margins, the edges, the liminal spaces between light and dark, the gray shades. We need a Crepuscular - an animal most active at twilight and dusk. We need a Fox as a type for the Soul. The Fox is more of a Kairos-type than a Chronotype, the kind who pays attention to the critical moment, a deeper Time. In ancient Greek understandings, Kairos time designated a moment of opportunity, a perfect moment. That's what a Fox knows: the perfect moment to be awake.
There's a reason that many who are invested in the spiritual life - the inner landscape of the soul - pay attention, pray, or meditate at dawn and dusk. For centuries, across spiritual traditions and cultures, soul-work thrives at dawn and dusk, when morning and evening prayer or meditation coincides with Nature's own thresholds, promoting balance and harmony, and celebrating transitions as sacred spaces.
These are the times of heightened awareness of natural transformation that can be especially cathartic for recalibrating our senses and orienting us toward the whole. Nature's primordial Love language of slowly awakening and lulling into sleep helps us navigate change with grace, and cultivates our capacity for resilient adaptation, like rocking a baby. We have time for perking up our energy and for letting go of what no longer serves, for living and for dying. Sunrise, Sunset. It's Nature's sway.
The Fox Kairos-type intuits this cadence, and imitates Nature's rhythm at dawn and dusk. It's as though Nature is teaching us: "Pay attention to right now, to what is." Breathe into the shift, into that center-point that is morphing, the convergence of Darkness and Light, when it might be one or the other, Day or Night, or both. Notice each nuance of the transition from Light to Darkness or Darkness to Light. Sensitize perception to the in-between phases, and learn to be comfortable somewhere in the middle.
Shadow-play is a Soul-Friend, sculpting our sensory acuity. Gray-scape is a portal, illuminating places and movements that are invisible in total Darkness, and bleached in the glare of saturated Light. Soul-work needs fluidity and flow, perception that is attuned to becoming, to being fully present in the moment. This is when we learn to pay attention to Kairos time. Those perfect moments.
If our Kairos-type is the Fox, we know the edgy moments of Soul-work are bathed in the unexpected, in dynamism and adventure. Our sensory awareness and our embodied perception calms and sparks when horizons shift and fuse. We find our equilibrium in the middle, when apparent murkiness, dappled sunlight, dancing shadows, and prickles of light bring the poignancy of clarity, focus, and insight that evades perfunctory productivity, and plunges us into the heart of Mystery and invitation.
What does the Fox know? Dawn and Dusk - Light in Shadow - contemplation in action - yields generativity, insight and wisdom.
Dawn is a way to welcome breath and life gradually, take in the nuances of gathering energy. It's time to embrace the shift, to light the primordial Fire. It's an invitation to welcome the slow climb of the sunrise in the sky, letting the subtle hues glow, tinge, coalesce, and pervade the horizon before saturating our vision and blinding us to what's important this day - not getting everything done, but Loving as best we can, as fully as possible, no matter the outcome. Dawn sparks creativity, forgiveness, kindness, generosity, patience, understanding, and hope. Let there be Light.
And don't neglect Holy Darkness. Dusk is the aperture to reflection, to vital rest, to going deeper, to allowing ourselves to yield control, to succumb to Life, or Energy, or Love beyond our limited perception that seeks to comfort and console us in our confusion, pain, or fear. It is that moment of profound gratitude for the gifts of the living day fusing with the Mystery of the great unknown, the final frontier, that beckons us all to just come home. It offers us a liminal space to join the cosmic assent of a one-and-only unique day - the Great Amen that lifts us from despair and anguish into silent reverence and awe.
The Fox is nigh. A Kairos-type for the Deepening Soul.