What is Rhythmic Intelligence?

At work, in family, through leisure or social commitments, everyday life unrolls through an ongoing flow of activities. Such a flow sometimes appears as stable and constant (e.g., routines, habits). Other times, it is lived as unsteady and chaotic (e.g., accidents, feeling of acceleration, stress). Likewise, people’s life unfolds through periods that display regularity, as well as through events that introduce crises or disruptions. Thus, individual and collective existences display temporal features involving the repetition or the disruption of patterns of activity.

Like one learns to play music, people spontaneously develop the capacity to regulate the rhythms of their lives, in order to sustain the way they evolve, grow and transform themselves. Such a capacity of regulation cannot be taken for granted, as the tempo of life always fluctuate, depending on internal and external constraints (e.g., psychological, social, cultural). From an educational perspective, it is relevant to consider that learning to regulate the rhythms of one’s existence can be exercised and trained.

Accordingly, rhythmic intelligence may refer to the individual and collective ability to regulate and critically reflect on (1) the rhythms that shape the everyday life, and (2) the recurring patterns through which people and organizations develop and transform themselves throughout their existence, in order (3) to adjust to internal and external constraints that unfold through time.

Why develop a theory about Rhythmic Intelligence?

Being absorbed by the ongoing flow of the everyday life, it is sometimes difficult for people to “stop and reflect” in order to evaluate how changes unfold throughout their lives. The same is true when a crisis emerges and limits the possibility of critically assessing a situation. Additional challenges appear when life is experienced as fragmented, revolving around heterogeneous activities (e.g., family, work, studies), whose rhythms are not “in sync”, and which perpetuate an ongoing feeling of being “split”. When time scarcity, temporal pressures or the fragmentation of the everyday life hinder the ways people relate to the conduct of change, it becomes particularly critical to consider the role played by the experience of time.

There are many theories investigating how changes and transformations occur and can be facilitated. Nevertheless, very few contributions focus critically on the rhythmic dimensions inherent to processes of change. Moreover, little is known about the ways the rhythms of everyday activities and those constitutive of lifelong development can become a focus of growth and education. The purpose of this site is to provide an open and collaborative space dedicated to the systematic study of rhythmic intelligence and the methods used to foster the experiences, knowledge and skills it involves.

Why a “making of”?

In the current academic context, many students, researchers and scholars struggle with the way they have to produce and share knowledge (e.g., conducting research, writing a dissertation, publishing papers or books). Although they have experience and skills, the researchers involved in the development of this website are no exception. Sharing the “making of a theory” is not about claiming a “best practice”. It is rather about sharing a space and time to critically reflect on the implications of academic writing. It is also about documenting an ongoing process that fluctuates through conflicting temporalities and involves in itself the exercise of rhythmic intelligence. The making of a theory of rhythmic intelligence expresses therefore recursivity, as it involves both the production of scientific knowledge based on the study of rhythms, and the production of specific rhythms inscribed in the contemporary context of the accelerated academia.

For whom is this platform?

This website is not just for scholars interested in rhythm and time studies, or those who favor academic explorations of process oriented, complexity and critical theories. It may touch whoever is concerned by the ways people give meanings to the fluxes that shape everyday activities, as well as change and transformational dynamics that impact their lives. This website is also for practitioners (e.g., educators, therapists, social workers, policy experts, people in position of leadership) who are confronted in their own work, either to the temporal dimensions inherent to the evolution of individuals and collectivities, or questions inherent to developmental and lifelong learning processes. More broadly, it may also be relevant for graduate students or early career researchers who would like to have a better understanding of what constitutes the “backstage” of academic research, in order for instance to develop their own academic skills.

How to use this website?

People who are consulting this website should navigate through the four main sections through which it is organized, based on their interests:

1. Emerging thoughts: A collection of reflections whose aim is to capture insights about rhythmic intelligence and the ways to develop it.

2. Dialogic explorations: A corpus of observations illustrating the exercise of rhythmic intelligence, based on dialogues conducted with learners and researchers in various settings.

3. Resources: A collection of texts, references and links that introduce notions, theories and authors of particular relevance for the study of rhythmic intelligence

4. Research processes: A reflective space whose aim is to highlight the rhythmic dimensions inherent to scientific activity in general, and the elaboration of this research project in particular.

Each section includes categories and tags that are useful to identify specific themes, notions, theories or authors.

What is the Sunkhronos Institute?

The Sunkhronos Institute is a private institution, founded in 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland. Its mission is to help people better understand the ways they experience and lead individual and collective transformations, by developing a critical understanding of everyday personal and professional challenges and promoting multireferential perspectives. The Sunkhronos Institute provides innovative activities of training, coaching and research, as well as public events. It aims to reinforce the development of a critical capacity of analysis and interpretation, the exploration of creative processes and the adoption of ways of thinking that embrace complexity, in order to enable the negotiation of everyday personal and professional challenges. The activities developed by the Institute always articulate the scientific rigor of academic research – especially transdisciplinary ones – with the life experience brought by participants. The Sunkhronos Institute is powered by two research labs (MAPS, TRC) that study transformative processes through innovative lenses.

What is the Temporalities, Rhythms and Complexity Lab?

The Temporalities, Rhythms and Complexity Lab (TRC Lab) is a laboratory of research led by Dr. Michel Alhadeff-Jones. Its mission is to develop and promote a better understanding of the different temporalities which pace and constrain individual and collective lives. Its aim is also to develop new methods of action and training that may facilitate the recognition, the organization and the transformation of the rhythms that shape one's existence, in the everyday life and in a long-term perspective. The study of Rhythmic Intelligence and its development is at the core of the current TRC research agenda.