Your body knows something is wrong. That tight chest during family dinners. The exhaustion no sleep can cure. The desperate need to escape from people you love.
You're not broken. You're recognizing rhythm violations in every group you're part of.
After twenty years observing human groups, organizational psychologist Dr. Matthew C. Dunn has documented a consistent truth:
groups have forgotten they're human.
We treat ourselves like machines that should run continuously. Always gathering, never dispersing. Always rising, never falling. Always creating, never completing.
THE RHYTHM OF US
reveals three fundamental movements every human group needs to thrive:
BREATH
-gathering and dispersing, like lungs filling and emptying
PULSE
-rising and falling, like waves building and breaking
TIDE
-creating and dissolving, like seasons turning
Your exhaustion isn't personal failure. It's data.
Accurate information about rhythm violations-violations that often begin in workplaces, then spread to every other gathering.
This book provides
language for what your body already knows, pattern recognition tools to diagnose stuck rhythms, five-minute practices that create cascading change,
and
honest examination of who has power to set rhythms-and who must follow them.
This isn't another wellness framework telling you to optimize yourself.
It's recognition of patterns already present in every human gathering.
Some groups transform through recognition alone. Others reveal you lack power to change rhythms.
The book addresses this honestly:
not everyone has equal access to rhythm restoration.
For readers of
Burnout, Emergent Strategy,
My Grandmother's Hands,
this book reveals the group-level patterns underneath individual exhaustion.
Not perfect rhythm. Human rhythm.
Recognition alone often restores rhythm.