Join me as I read an excerpt from one of my Karinda's Corner emails, discussing the importance of taking time to rest during menstruation and how it’s a key to your wellbeing as a female. I make my case that what may seem like 'doing nothing' is actually a vital period for conserving energy and preparing for the upcoming phases of the menstrual cycle or life season. Neglecting this rest can lead to so many symptoms, unnecessary stress & health problems… we must start to challenge societal pressures that discourage this sacred rest.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:13 Karinda's Corner and Community

01:27 Personal Reflections on Absence

02:28 The Power of Rest During Menstruation

04:40 Nature's Wisdom: Embracing Inner Winter

09:23 The Ripple Effect of Neglecting Rest

11:48 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

12:48 Acknowledgements and Farewell

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back to a mini episode of Oh My Menses, I'm your host Karinda. Today I am reading an excerpt from one of my Karinda's Corner emails. These are the fortnightly ish emails that I send out to my lovely, lovely community. And I also have a growing collection of different like vlogs and blogs and naturopathic insights on a whole wide range of topics, inside of an exclusive area on my website called Karinda's Corner.

[00:00:39] All you have to do to get access to that is join my email list for free. You can do that by signing up with the link below, "join Karinda's Corner", or you can download my free cycle tracking guide and you'll automatically be put on the list that way.

[00:00:54] It's been really nourishing for me to write and send these emails and hear the [00:01:00] responses from all of you.

[00:01:01] And I wrote this email yesterday on day three of my cycle, and I'm on day four today 'cause that's how time works. And I really felt the call to read this out and, and share this, in podcast format as well. If you like what you hear, please feel welcome to join the Karinda's Corner community. Download my free cycle tracking guide. Let's see where it takes you.

[00:01:27] I've been thinking a lot about my absence from the internet, my business, and emailing you. Picture me if you will, tail between my legs as I coily, offer you these words for your inbox, hoping that you're still interested in anything I have to say.

[00:01:44] A lot of my internal dialogue around this has been along the lines of, you've done nothing for your business in six weeks. You are lazy, you have to get a grip and do something. Please just send a goddamn email. And by the way, if you've ever struggled at all [00:02:00] with procrastination, chronic illness, or fatigue, my thoughts are probably sounding familiar to you, and rest assured that you're not alone.

[00:02:09] Then during a morning meditation on day one of my bleed a time when I try my best to actively and actually do nothing. An insight landed and boy oh boy, I immediately knew what my next email to you was going to be about.

[00:02:24] And so let me delve into said insight. Okay. While I create tailored treatment plans for my patients, experiencing all sorts of menstrual complaints, one piece of advice remains universal. No matter who my patient is, no matter who's sitting in front of me digitally: "please take time to actually rest during your period,

[00:02:48] it's important for your healing" or, "embrace the being part of you instead of the doing part of you" or, "lean into the [00:03:00] power of nothing." Funnily enough, these seem to be the recommendations that people struggle with the most. It probably comes down to the nature of modernity and capitalism, depending on where you find yourself in the world As you are listening to these words.

[00:03:17] There's constant pressure to perform, show up, work, and hustle to make ends meet.

[00:03:23] Our innate anchor, the original inner compass is our cyclical body, but this gets overtaken unfortunately by these external demands and societal pressures. I think some women, and let me know if you relate, are resistant to nothing from a place of fear or a limiting belief

[00:03:42] that might sound something like, "people will think I'm lazy if I do less or slow down." "I'll seem selfish if I take time for myself." "I can't ask for help if I stop." "What happens to X, Y, or Z?" "If I stop, what happens to the [00:04:00] house? What happens to the bills? What happens to the kids? What happens to my husband, my partner, my girlfriend?

[00:04:06] What happens to my job? What happens to my business?"

[00:04:10] You may even have niggling fears about what emotions, memories, or insights from deep within your psyche could arise if you stopped. After all, when we stop the rushing and busyness, our body and mind take that as their opportunity to bring to the surface things they want addressed or attended to, and they don't always do that gently.

[00:04:32] Anyway.

[00:04:33] I want to make my case for the power of nothing and why nothing isn't ever really nothing.

[00:04:40] Consider the season of winter. You may also like to consider your bleeding time as an inner winter of sorts. Things are darker, quieter. Branches of bear, fruiting plants seem barren. There are lots of browns and grays in the plant world, and less bright greens, [00:05:00] yellows, pinks, and purples. After their autumnal layers have shed,

[00:05:05] honestly, it can look a bit like death has got the better of them.

[00:05:08] It looks like they're doing nothing, but here's a reframe. Are they really doing nothing when their branches are bare, no colorful flowers blossoming, no seeds to be sown?

[00:05:21] No, of course not. That's not how the natural world works. They're not doing nothing. They are sensing, conserving, preparing.

[00:05:33] They are responding to their environment accordingly. It's not an ideal time to blossom or to bear fruit during winter. There are less resources. There's change in the air, and so it's time to conserve energy. To prepare for the next season that is coming. To cultivate an energy that maybe isn't so obvious.

[00:05:53] Yes, they may seem quiet and still on the outside, but what is unseen is the [00:06:00] conserving of energy, drawing and preserving nutrients from the soil, working with what's been composting since autumn, collaborating with their nearby kin, other plants, trees, insects, birds, and fungi, and recharging however they can with the resources they have. Is that nothing?

[00:06:20] They haven't spent all winter in an uphill battle against cold temperatures, frost, excess water, and limited sunshine. They've sensed their environment, they've adapted accordingly, and as a result, they haven't burnt themselves out. So when spring inevitably rolls around, those trees are ready to grow and those flowers are ready to unfurl.

[00:06:43] Plants are intelligent and they've been doing this for... uh, you have an idea of how long they've been doing this for, right?

[00:06:50] This is how we should approach our own inner winters, that is, the time of menstruation. Now, I'm not usually a fan of [00:07:00] using the word should, but in this case I see so much imbalance, disharmony, and ultimately disease arise from too many women

[00:07:09] neglecting rest during menstruation. Pushing through at this sacred time, a time designed for restoration, I believe perpetuates the culture that we currently witness of female burnout. Women trying to wear all the hats, please, all the people, do all the things, at all times without missing a beat.

[00:07:33] Ignoring the seasons, dismissing their changing internal and external resources, neglecting their cyclical selves with ever changing needs every single week, or even day, of the month.

[00:07:46] When what could be happening is a pause, a breather. Stillness and sure, it might seem like nothing on the [00:08:00] outside. It may even feel like nothing to you. And yes, if you're not used to slowing down or resting, prepare to sit with some perfectionist and people pleaser guilt. But you are giving your body a chance to recover, replenish, renew; to release what it no longer needs,

[00:08:17] the uterine lining of your last cycle, and to reflect on what it wants to call in for the cycle ahead. Can you view what feels like nothing, not as nothing, but instead, as a sacred gift to yourself?

[00:08:32] So that you and your body can wisely and intelligently use your resources for the oncoming seasons. Enabling the perfect balance of being and doing, creating and cultivating, recharging and exerting. And certainly if you do experience chronic fatigue, any kind of invisible illness, depression, or battle with procrastination, I invite you to apply [00:09:00] this reframe to yourself as well,

[00:09:01] not just that menstruation. Are you really doing nothing or is your body trying to recoup from something? Is your body trying to cultivate and or conserve resources for the next season? If that's not enough for your brain to chew on, I have a little more.

[00:09:21] Consider this. How one menstrual cycle starts, your period, informs the rest of your cycle.

[00:09:29] That whole cycle then informs the next period, which informs the rest of the cycle, which impacts the next cycle and so on. If we're neglecting rest during our bleeding time, our inner winter, we are running behind for the remaining three-ish weeks, the non bleeding time of our cycle, the spring, summer, and autumn of our cyclical selves.

[00:09:52] If we spend a whole menstrual cycle behind, running on empty or taking from our future self, so to [00:10:00] speak, that then rolls into our next period and our next cycle.

[00:10:04] This is no sustainable or wise way to live as a cyclical being. This pattern paves the way for creating more physical, mental, and emotional tension, period pain, heavier bleeding, inflammation in the body, lower energy, lower libido, less resilience, compromised immunity, greater stress, skin breakouts, unhelpful, unnecessary sugar cravings, and more dopamine seeking behaviors like increased screen time, poorer attention span, and focus.

[00:10:37] which one of those symptoms jumps out at you? Perhaps there's one or a few that you are currently dealing with, or one that almost has a sting to it when you hear it, just because of how much it's impacted you in the past.

[00:10:51] Now, consider how any one of those symptoms could have a ripple effect onto the quality of your whole life, your relationships, your [00:11:00] sense of self, your ability to do good work and to create.

[00:11:03] Your ability to show up as your best self,

[00:11:06] And when you consider that all these things add up as brush strokes on the canvas that is your entire life, you can see how tending to yourself during your period can quite literally influence your whole life.

[00:11:24] You are a cyclical being and you matter.

[00:11:27] And rest menstruation matters too.

[00:11:31] There is a power in the nothing. And now you know: it's never really nothing.

[00:11:37] I hope I've done a decent job at convincing you of this. Feel free to let me know. Leave me a comment, message me on Instagram, email me.

[00:11:48] So please, dear listener, for a day or maybe just an hour or maybe even just a few minutes during [00:12:00] your next period, do nothing.

[00:12:03] And you can tell your boss that your naturopath ordered it, and you can give him that kiss from me. No, maybe don't kiss your boss.

[00:12:13] I hope you enjoyed this little excerpt from a Karinda's Corner email. Once again, you can join the community for absolutely no cost using the link below. Or you can download my free 25 page PDF Cycle Tracking Guide to understand your own menstrual cycle phases and how to expand your body literacy horizons and feel more empowered in this seemingly confusing cyclical body of yours.

[00:12:41] But once you get the hang of it, she's pretty bloody great.

[00:12:46] Until next time, take care.

[00:12:48] Thank you for joining me for another episode of Oh My Menses. If you have a special request of something you'd like to hear me talk about or you have any questions that you wanna ask me, please drop me a line at

[00:13:00] hello@karindawholistix.com.au au. I would like to acknowledge the land and country on which I live, work, and create that of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

[00:13:10] I honor their connection to land, sea, flora, and fauna across this country. I pay my respects to the elders of these communities past, present, and forthcoming.