Today, I’m offering you a peek behind the curtains of my life and share an interaction with my mum, where she couldn’t understand why, in her words, I “let my period rule my life.” She didn’t get my need to align my social plans with my menstrual cycle. So this podcast is essentially my answer to her, and to any of us, who have felt that our period ‘controls’ us or ruins our plans. Learn how honoring our cycle phases could help you avoid burnout and live more fully. Let’s tap into our inner 'sacred no’s' and 'sacred yes’s,' especially during our premenstrual phase, and lean into the natural ebb and flow of our bodies, for the sake of living a more full, easeful life. It’s not about being ruled by our cycles, but letting them inform our lives for embodied wellness & thriving. If you’ve ever felt societal pressures to be 'on' all the time but crave some downtime when your body calls for it, this episode is for you. Let’s explore living in harmony with our natural rhythms.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

01:05 Cycle Check-In and Personal Reflections

02:55 Story Time: Mum's issue with my cycle-aligned living; navigating social plans and my cycle

05:49 Mother-Daughter Conversations on Menstrual Cycle Awareness

09:47 The Importance of Aligning with Your Menstrual Cycle

18:41 Societal Pressures vs. Natural Rhythms

26:50 Practical Tips for Menstrual Cycle Alignment

35:35 Final Thoughts and Community Engagement

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TRANSCRIPT

Karinda: Let's just see what happens. It's always a great way to start a podcast.

Hello. Welcome back to another episode of, Oh My Menses. I am Karinda. I'm a menstrual cycle educator. I'm a naturopath and I'm a fertility awareness educator. Menstrual cycles are my jam. Thank you for choosing to be. With me here today and in whatever time space you find yourself in when listening to or watching this.

If you're a repeat, uh, viewer, audience member, community member of Oh My Menses, would you consider giving me a follow on Spotify or a subscribe on YouTube or wherever you find yourself engaging with this content because it helps other people find this kind of work. And if you like it, I'm sure there's other people out there who will like it and find benefit in it as [00:01:00] well.

That's new for me to get that done off the top of the episode. Let's start with a cycle check-in as we usually do, I'm pulling up my Read Your Body app, which is the app that I recommend the most for charting your cycle and tracking your symptoms alongside your menstrual cycle. Today is Friday, the 6th of June, and I can't believe it's June, and I find myself on day 17.

If I had to guess, I would've said I was on day 16. Not that far off. I think I am right in my ovulatory phase, as in I can feel, and I'm tracking my body in the process of attempting to ovulate, so I'm in the thick of it and. The challenge of this time for me is staying grounded because I'm in a peak, [00:02:00] or the peak is coming, but actually how I'm feeling is like I'm, I'm resisting the peak a little bit,

this time around. I find it easy to let it carry me away, and for some reason this time I'm, uh, I'm catching myself in muments throughout the day where I'm just like, slow it down. Like almost go as slow as you would if you were premenstrual. You know, will be interesting to see if I experience any other upswing, but for now I am in the thick of the slow.

It's fast and it's slow. And when it's fast, I'm just trying to turn that dial down a little bit. So just be a bit more present with it. Today I'm gonna see, I'm challenging myself actually, to see if I can just whip [00:03:00] out a relatively quick episode. That's just a bit of a story time and a personal share.

And often I ask myself, is there any benefit in just sharing my stories and, and just sharing personal things. And the answer continues to be yes, I, I share stories. I share things about my personal life or just experiences. And time and time again, many of you will tell me that you resonated with it or that it helped you in some way, or it inspired you in some way or that you just enjoyed it and that's good enough for me.

Certainly good enough for ovulating Karinda, that's for sure. The threshold for ovulating Karinda is low, so I am going back. Many, many months ago. Now, this podcast idea has been on my list for a while. I'm going back to, I think early December or late November, so we're about six months [00:04:00] ago now, and it was late in the week and I was premenstrual and I had

a couple of friends invite me to something on that upcoming weekend. And in my calendar, I always have my predicted arrival of my bleed in my calendar, and then I correct it based on when it actually does arrive. But based on my last cycle, I always have a prediction in there just so I can orient myself.

And I can compare my cycle to my expected schedule and change things around where needed. I'll, I'll get into that a lot more 'cause it's the crux of the story pretty much. So that weekend I was due to bleed and a friend had asked me out and then some other friends invited me to this like day festival and I, and it was summer, and I'm like, oh.[00:05:00] 

And I, I told them, I'm like, I'm, I'm keen, like emotionally and socially, I feel like yes, but I, I know I'm gonna be bleeding soon and it might be bang on the day of these events. So I'll keep you posted. You know, I'll let you know the Friday before. And so it's during the week and my mum asks me as she normally does, "oh, do you have any plans this weekend?"

She always wants to know my whereabouts and my movements. such is life when living with a parent, let alone living with a hypervigilant parent. And I told her, I said, "yeah, I've got a couple of things that I do want to go to. Um, this, this friend asked me out and this other friend invited me out.

But I'm expecting my period. So I, so I just told them that I'll let them know. Like, I'll, I'll, I'll wait and see and I'll let them know beforehand." And we were in the kitchen and she's like behind the counter and she just, [00:06:00] she just like slumped her shoulders and kind of shook her head and, and looked at me puzzled like I, and she said, "I don't understand why you let your period rule your life." And the context.

Is that my mum knows a lot about what I do in terms of work. She knows that I record podcasts. She knows, she knows that I'm a naturopath. She knows that I'm into alternative things. She knows how much I love menstrual cycles and how this is like the crux of my work with women. We've had many conversations about periods and PMS and the pill and menopause and sex in general.

These are all topics that are very, um, present [00:07:00] between me and my mum. Uh, we, we talk about a lot. There's not a lot of things that we wouldn't talk about, and I'm noticing as I age and I think a mixture of my age and my living with her, more things just come out of me easily. I am less inclined to maybe conceal things, whereas in the past, I maybe would've, or I just couldn't have been bothered, couldn't, couldn't be bothered to explain.

I'm noticing myself, just, myself, just spills out of me. There's, there's no more like containing, especially when I'm closer to ovulation. I've, I've been noticing. So she knows what I do. She even listened to a podcast episode that I did with Sophie, Kate. On her Optimize podcast where I pretty much go through menstrual cycle awareness as a practice, I go through all the phases and I talk about the importance of, you know, living in alignment with our menstrual [00:08:00] cycles and things that I do differently during my period and why I do it differently.

So even with everything she knows about me and my work, she said, "I don't understand why you let your period rule your life." And because of my premenstrual state at the time, I'm like, uh, them's fighting words mum, to start with. I can't remember my exact, exact reaction in the mument, but I felt.

Pissed off. I felt dumbfounded. I was like, it was these simultaneous thoughts of like, oh my God, my own mum doesn't even know who I am. And then there's grief of, oh my gosh, like, uh, my mum, um, I guess wasn't in alignment with her own rhythm for all her reproductive years and like, you know. And I, I, I think I [00:09:00] just had a mument of grief and compassion for the tension and stress that she feels in her own life. 'cause I'm like, oh my God, she's not tapped into like any feminine kind of flow. She's not tapped into nature's pace, um, in her own physiology or, you know, in, you know, according to nature's clock.

So it was like triggering. Pangs of grief, waves of compassion. But it was, it was all too much in the mument for, for my luteal phase self. I'm just like, I'm not explaining this right now, but I did give her like a brief statement and the brief statement that I want to expand upon in this episode was

I lean into my period to rest and recover and go inward so that for the other times [00:10:00] of my cycle, I'm not playing catch up with myself and I can express myself fully and live fully and experience more energy. And more balance in my life, in my physical health, in my mental health, in my emotional, my spiritual, my social health.

Anyway, I said it really briefly like that to her. Now, I'm not sure how much of that she physically heard, and regardless of what she did actually hear, I'm not sure how much of that she took in. But it definitely got me reflecting on it and I. There's a pressure in me where I'm like, oh,

I feel like I need a really strong elevator pitch for why females would benefit from living in alignment with their cycles. And to be perfectly honest with you, I struggle to convey it [00:11:00] succinctly. This is the crux of my work. This is the seat of my work. This is what I have been practicing and practicing for nearly the last decade of my life.

And I still don't have this nice, quick, easy, breezy, elevator friendly way to explain here's why women should follow their cycle. So. I don't wanna force myself to come up with an elevator pitch for menstrual cycle syncing alignment awareness. But I did want to give myself the space to like explore that more fully and piece it apart a little bit with you and.

If I had, I guess an alternative name for this episode is like, "here's what I would say to my mum if I had the energy", if I had the energy to have this conversation with my mum, and I have no doubt that we will absolutely be having a [00:12:00] conversation like this in some time in the next decade, probably much sooner.

But let's expand on that. Why do I let my period rule my life in her words from, from how she sees it. And, and what's the other thing that has come up with my mum is that she will see me while I'm bleeding, while it's the start of a new cycle for me. And she'll see me with a heat pack and, you know, sitting really still really quiet.

Uh, most, you know, maybe sometimes in and out of sleep on the couch, maybe with the TV on, maybe without the TV on cuddling Laika and she'll walk past where my lounge room is, it's like between her bedroom and the kitchen, and they're like main two places [00:13:00] she finds herself throughout the day if she's home and she sees me like cuddled up and with the heat pack, and she's like, "oh," you know.

"You've got your period" and there's this degree of like sympathy and she thinks I'm in pain because I've got the heat pack or, or because there's a look on my face that's just like withdrawn. And I've also had to explain to her before, I'm like, no, no, I'm not in pain. I'm not in pain. I use a heat pack because that's good for my womb, especially when it's bleeding.

And that's what my womb wants when I'm bleeding and using something like a heat pack prevents pain, and I look out of it. I look like I'm in a shitty mood because this psycho-spiritual, physiological experience is happening in my body and in my being, [00:14:00] and it's pulling me in. That is what the period does.

The period pulls you in. When you have been living externally and going about the world and going about your business and interacting with the outside realm, the period coming from this nearly supernatural place in your body, your womb, pulls you back into yourself, pulls you back into your body. And so I look like I'm out of it, and I look like I'm in a shitty mood because I'm, I'm just with the experience of my body and, and I'm not focused on my outward appearance.

I'm not focused on interacting with etiquette or with social norms in mind. In the outside world, I'm being pulled in and I'm letting myself [00:15:00] be pulled in. So that's another thing that she notices there, there's like a misconception like, oh, period's so bad. You have to, oh, your period's so bad. You, you just have to sit still with heat pack.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I choose to do this 'cause this is, this is how I receive the medicine of my bleed; by slowing down and getting really close with my body and bringing my energy back into my body. And like so much back into my body that I can then more easily let that energy flow back out of me when that part of my cycle arrives, when my bleed finishes, and I'm ready to reenter the world, and I'm ready to reengage and I'm ready to be more outwardly social and creative and extroverted and exert my energy.

[00:16:00] Everywhere in life; one of what I would consider the universal truths of this life we find ourselves in, is that there is always the expansion and there's always the contraction. There is always the inhalation, there is always the exhalation. There is always the ebb, there is always the flow, the in and out.

The push and pull and your menstrual cycle is a reflection of that. And at menstruation, it is this pulling in, it's a contraction, but not in a, not in a bad way. And in fact, I find when I don't resist that contraction, whether that's a literal physical contraction of my uterus and there's some cramping, or whether it's just the energetic contraction of wanting to go inward and protect my energy and cushion myself and just be self-focused.

I find that when I lean into that contraction, when I don't resist it, when I don't put up [00:17:00] obstacles or walls against it, there is actually a beautiful expansion within that. 'cause we've got, and you know, we're always looking at macrocosm and microcosm. So to me it makes sense that within a contraction there's also contraction and expansion and you can just keep like zooming in and then you can zoom out and zoom in.

Just, just like the expansion and contraction, zoom out, expand zoom in contract. That is just, that is just the flow of life and, and I mean practically, if I'm answering her question in a really practical way. I slow down during my bleed. I let my cycle inform my life In that way, she would say, you let your period rule your life.

I would reframe that as, no, I let my cycle inform my life. 'cause I'm a cyclical being. And when I resist that cyclical nature, I usually come up against some tension and it doesn't feel good. [00:18:00] And I've experienced burnout before and chronic fatigue and chronic, uh, immune complications and chronic stress.

And looking back in hindsight to those times in my life, I was living in a way that was not in alignment with my natural rhythm. Why would I resist the flow of this rhythm that I have when I've noticed that when I kind of surrender to this rhythm, everything is easier. There is more of a flow to life.

There is more of a reciprocal equanimity. There is balance, there is a homeostasis; versus letting the outer culture. Versus letting societal norms rule my life. I would've counted her point by saying, you think I let my period rule [00:19:00] my life? Better something beautiful and natural to my physiology rule my life than external societal standards?

'cause it's those external societal standards that have fucked me up time and time again. It's this capitalistic, go, go, go hustle culture that fucks females over, that fucks all of us over, but especially females because we find ourselves in a timeline where we are expected to perform in the same way that, uh, someone in a male body can perform when they're not experiencing the same infradian rhythm that we experience.

And I, I truly believe this is a part of the reason why the rate of autoimmune conditions and the rate of syndromes like chronic fatigue syndrome and [00:20:00] fibromyalgia and just chronic stress and, and symptoms even within the menstrual cycle, whether that's a regular periods heavy, painful periods, PMS or PMDD.

I, I believe the rising incidence and the rising prevalence of those conditions is, at least in part because of the way we as females in the modern world, push ourselves to be constantly on, to be competing with males; to be competing with a different physiology that is not natural to our own.

There is this pressure that is projected onto us that a lot of us take on by default because perhaps we can't see any other way. This is [00:21:00] just the culture or society we were born into. This is how we were brought up, and so we just follow along with it. And this projected expectation is to wear all the hats.

Be the boss babe, be the career woman. Be the best friend. Be the good sister. Be the good daughter. Be the good girlfriend. Be the good wife. Be the good mother. Wear all the hats. Be organized. Keep your shit together. Keep it contained. Do well be a perfectionist. You always have to do well. Don't make mistakes and make sure to look after your body as well because we care about how you look.

And it's just this expectation, like wear all these hats do all these things,

be on a hundred at all, at all times. How do we expect our body to respond to that?

That is not living in a way that's conducive [00:22:00] to health or wellness or balance or thriving.

We can survive through it. We can survive and get by, but that's no way. That's no way to live for a female body to thrive. And so I let myself be with the ebbs and flow of my menstrual cycle. So that I can reach those peaks naturally without having to force myself out of bed on less than seven hours sleep.

So I don't need to rely on caffeine to switch me on to be able to do work and do errands and live my life so that I'm not dragging my feet throughout life so that I'm not forcing myself to do things that I don't wanna do.

Living in alignment with my cycle makes me feel [00:23:00] more like myself. It makes me feel authentic. I lean into it because it's rewarded me time and time again with so many different gifts, with like a well of creativity and abundance. With so many spiritual insights, with so many physical insights and like wisdom about how I need to be with my body, what I need to do to support my body, what I need to give to myself and my physical body, my menstrual cycle offers all that wisdom.

It's like, why would I go against it? She's only supported me. The more I lean in, the more she supports me. Versus this external thing in our culture that just leaves me drained and feeling out of my body and feeling less like [00:24:00] myself. Just 'cause it's the default doesn't mean it's the only way.

You know, and this is where I really feel that grief for my mum. I, I'm just like. Wow. For all those years. She's a year or two into menopause now, but I think for all those years where she did have a menstrual cycle where she was experiencing the ebbs and flows of menstruation and ovulation and the in-betweens, she wasn't tapped into that, and I have no doubt that she experienced

health concerns that came from that. I have no doubt that she experienced unnecessary stress and degrees of fatigue and burnout, and maybe even degrees of like poor mental health from not being tapped into her own rhythm and just letting the external, not even the external natural rhythm, [00:25:00] but letting this external manmade rhythm determine

her pace.

And I feel grief, and I feel compassion for, I mean, I can start to think of all the women in my lineage, all the women who came before me,

who didn't experience that, who weren't connected to their wombs and their menstrual cycles in that way because of, I mean, ultimately, ultimately, ultimately because of patriarchy and capitalism, because of expectations that were projected onto them, mostly by men. And it, it upsets me even more that it's my mum.

It's a, it's a, it's a fellow female who's projecting this expectation onto me.

Who has a judgment towards me when she sees me sitting still and doing nothing when I'm bleeding or when I'm premenstrual, [00:26:00] who criticizes me for letting my period rule my life?

It makes my heart feel tender that we do that to each other as women. Yeah, there's already so much shit society and Men project onto us, like, oh,

let's support ourselves in the slowness. Let's celebrate when we see a woman being slow and taking her time and being on nature's clock. I've loved using the phrase "Bush time" recently, if someone's late or if something's delayed, whoever I'm with, I'm just like, "it's okay, they're on Bush time today. It's one of those days."

Yeah. Better to be on bush time.

So practically I plan for spaciousness. I schedule [00:27:00] spaciousness and slowness when I'm expecting my period,

because my body tells me that's what my body needs, and when I meet my body's needs, I'm happier. I'm a better person. In fact, I can contribute more productively to the society that puts the pressure on us to perform. And I wouldn't say that's the reason to align with your cycle is that, so you can be a better contributor to capitalism.

Not at all. But it's, it's funny that the, the paradox and the, the funniness of it all, the humor of it all is that we could theoretically be more productive if we leaned into those phases of slowness. So I do it 'cause I feel better doing it that [00:28:00] way. And when I give myself that, ah, I can give so much more to my friends and to the events I find myself at and my energy just flows out of me.

Compared to if I really didn't feel like socializing compared to if I did something out of obligation. And I guess this is the other thing, like focusing on the "sacred No" and the "sacred yes." Like how many things we say yes to when we really want to say no, and how many things we say no to when we really want to say yes.

And I feel like especially. In the premenstrual phase, like though, you know, one to three days before the bleeding begins, is such a potent time for practicing that sacred no, it's such a good time for setting boundaries. And if [00:29:00] I pushed past my instinctive "no's" during that time, I would be showing up to social events.

And, and gatherings and events and you know, or, or just even one-on-one meetings with my friends and I, I would be giving from an empty cup and they would feel that and then I would leave feeling shit and they would probably leave the interaction feeling shit. And then that's when resentment builds.

That's when tension builds, and especially when it's a weekend. If I know my body's calling me to rest, how am I gonna feel going into Monday? If I bypass that call for rest, that urge, that instinct for rest and going in and slowing down, how would I feel on Monday? And guess what happens when you bypass that call for rest over and over and over again?

That snowballs into the [00:30:00] rest of your cycle, and then into the next cycle, and then into the next cycle, and then into the next season, an era of your life.

And it's up to you to make that call to pause and slow things down. If you don't make the time to slow down, your body will make the time for you and. I find so often, and I'm sure you can relate to stories of this or you know, people in your life who have experienced this, where you're seeing someone and they're firing all on all cylinders, seemingly, or maybe you think they're burning the candle at both ends.

Maybe they're pushing their boundaries just a little bit too hard, and they crash and burn and maybe there's an injury, an accident, and then they're out of work for however long. Or maybe there's a, a mental breakdown, an emotional breakdown of some kind where the body, just, the body and the mind just shuts down and they can no longer [00:31:00] function at the level they're functioning at.

Like, those outcomes get to really realistically change when we just decide that we'll honor the call to rest. We'll honor the call to go inward instead of saying, no, no, no. When we should be saying yes, yes, yes. And leaning in.

So I say, I don't even see it as like necessarily saying no to external obligations, but it's more of a saying yes to myself. Leaning into myself, and I do that for sustainability as well. My energy, my physical energy, emotional energy, social energy, what I can give to the world, what I can give to you, and to lovers and to friends, and to family members and to clients

and to everything that I pass and weave through in this world, [00:32:00] I can give so much more when I have said yes to myself first. I don't wanna be running on empty. I don't wanna be burning the candle at both ends. I don't wanna keep getting sick all the time or, or experience Dreadful immobilizing, period pain.

I don't wanna do that.

So I listen to my body. I slow down when she tells me to slow down and I push my foot on the accelerator when I know I can push my foot on the accelerator a bit. I,

and I hope that one day in the relationship between me and my mum, there can come a time where she genuinely understands that and I think that will happen. It will be special and it can take time. [00:33:00] I think our generation,

we are definitely doing a lot of swinging of the pendulum. In the other direction and it excites me. We are rebellious and we're in the age of Aquarius and things are changing and I think the invitation, I just wanna leave you with maybe a couple of invitations.

One, just start to notice the expansion and contraction moments of your life, if you're feeling anything, if you're experiencing anything, just take a mument to go, am I in the contraction or the expansion, or am I being called into contraction, or am I being called into expansion? And just see if you can follow that natural flow, that natural urge, whether it's the call to [00:34:00] contraction or whether it's the call to expansion.

My second invitation is to use that really, really potent time in your menstrual cycle, those few days before the bleed. So the late luteal phase, and then the first couple of days of the bleed, the early, early menstrual phase. Use that time to tap into your sacred no and your sacred yes. And I really invite you there to not just look at what you're saying no to.

There is a much deeper potency to look at what you are saying yes to. There will always be a stronger energy when we think about what we are leaning into, what are we turning toward rather than what are we turning away from? But even with that said, practice the sacred no. [00:35:00] Practice the boundary keeping.

Do it for your body. Do it for your future health. Do it for your future fertility. Do it for your future children. Do it for the next generation. Because we know epigenetics is a thing and how we treat ourselves right now is determining the DNA of the generation after us.

Look after yourself. Now. Slow down with your body now so that your body doesn't force you to slow down somewhere down the line.

I hope you've enjoyed this not so tidbit of an episode, but I hope you've enjoyed it nonetheless.

Links to everything in the show notes below. If you would like to stay connected, you can join my Karinda's Corner community. I send out fortnightly emails with cycle check-ins, insights and musings on what I am experiencing and moving through at the time, [00:36:00] usually related to my own menstrual cycle or something that I've noticed about the menstrual cycles of the world or something that I'm finding fascinating about hormones and female health at that given moment.

You can join Karinda's corner list by downloading my free cycle tracking guide,

and I would recommend that as like the best place to start if you're looking to deepen and strengthen your connection with your own menstrual cycle. It's a beautiful free guide giving you the pointers and the first steps to understand what to look out for in your body so you can understand what cycle phase you're in on any given day and week.

Understand what the different phases are all about and be with yourself in that way. Meet yourself in that way so you can better support your body. So you can better support your cyclical body and being. If there's something you'd like to hear me talk about in a future episode, please also let me know.

In the meantime, take care. Check in with your [00:37:00] cycle. Check in with your womb, lean into the sacred yes s lean into those natural contractions and expansions. I promise life will feel easier. Bye.