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TRANSCRIPT:

00:00:05] Welcome to a very different episode of, Oh My Menses. I am your host Karinda. Thank you for clicking or tapping on this episode today. Wherever you are listening or watching.

[00:00:23] I am a women's health naturopath. I'm a menstrual cycle educator and fertility awareness educator. I love menstrual cycles. I love hormones. I love anything related to the female body and the female experience, and especially the experience of being cyclical. Today I am going to explore with you one of the things I see come up the most frequently amongst my clients. The thing that I think is the most easily changed, but the thing that I find so many women that I [00:01:00] work with struggle with the most, and it's this idea about how you start one cycle, how you start a new menstrual cycle, informs the rest of that cycle. And I'm coming to you from a very specific energy.

[00:01:13] I'm in a tent and. I have some real life examples and things that I wanna share with you that I think might be able to help you understand how your patterns can be playing out, quite obviously, and how you may be keeping yourself stuck in symptom driven cycles and keeping yourself from experiencing more balance or ease within your cyclical nature,

[00:01:39] just because of this thing that I see so many women struggling with. To start us off, a cycle check-in. I am on cycle day two. It's my heaviest day of bleeding. And as I've said before, I don't usually record episodes on like at this phase, uh, during my menstruation ' cause it's just a lot.

[00:01:59] [00:02:00] This is the specific energy that I would like to share from, today. And Laika might come in and she might change the camera angle. Gentle. Hey, Bubba, you've made some recent, you've made a few appearances on the Oh My Menses podcast recently, hey?

[00:02:17] Laika is amused, but equally not interested in the tent setup that I have right now. So day two, let me tell you, this morning I was feeling so on edge and so much resistance. And I was crying and now I am feeling so at ease. Blissed out almost so ugh,

[00:02:47] dissolving. I can, I can feel myself dissolving. I can feel the things within me shedding that need to be shed with this menstruation. It's a full moon that's [00:03:00] peaking tomorrow, so that's, it's interesting how the full moon energy, in Libra, no less. I have lots of Libra in my chart. it's interesting how the full moon energy overlays with the menstrual cycle energy, and that's a whole other topic that is very fascinating to delve into.

[00:03:16] So. If you haven't already done so today, I invite you to check in with your own cycle. What cycle day are you on? What phase of your menstrual cycle are you in? And if you're not sure where to start, I do have a free cycle tracking guide. It's 25 page PDF. I walk you through exactly what to track, how to track it.

[00:03:37] So that you can be in tuned with what your body and what your hormones are communicating to you every single day of your cycle. Because your cycle is so much more than just your period, and there's so much happening between one period and another period. So the link to download that is below.

[00:03:54] So the difference between how I was feeling this morning and how I'm feeling now all comes [00:04:00] down to resisting your cyclical energy versus going along with your cyclical energy. Now, yesterday, for day one, I had it actually a really like gentle, soft day. I had the house to myself. I didn't have any work scheduled.

[00:04:14] There were a couple of admin things that just had to be done yesterday, that sort of took me out of that surrendering energy a bit. That menstruation usually calls on, and that definitely activated my mind a bit more. And that is a personal challenge for me that menstruation is trying to call me into the body, but it's very easy for me to go back up into the mind and mental functions.

[00:04:40] And it can be so easy for me to see an open day in my calendar that I have a blocked out specifically for menstruation. And I'm like, oh, there's no like pressure to do any work. Um, uh, yeah, I'm feeling pretty good. Let's do a bunch of work. That's, that's definitely one of my challenges. But yesterday I was able to lean [00:05:00] into it a fair bit,

[00:05:01] which I was really grateful for. But then last night I had a social event for a performance that my sister was doing. And so there was traveling into the city and there was socializing. And then there was sleeping in the van with my partner, and then there was waking up in suburbia and starting the day with errands and

[00:05:24] things to do and interacting with people and lots of stimulation and lots of stimuli in enclosed spaces and just lots of noise from traffic and busyness and people, and it was entirely, it was entirely overwhelming. And just because of logistics, I, I also felt like a lot of resistance because I would've loved to have like stayed out in nature with my partner all day, but my dog was back at home and I had to go back home for her and[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] knew that I just overall did not wanna be out in public, not on day two. So waking up to day two, which ended up being my heaviest day of bleeding, and it usually is, that was just like too much logistics, too much travel, too many errands. It was so much. And I had a bit of a cry this morning. And I almost, I didn't even have the energy to cry, like my partner just said, you know, like, how, how's your energy at like, now your day two? And I just started crying 'cause I'm like, oh, I'm actually like feeling a bit low. And I think it was just this culmination of looking at the errands I had to do, looking at the capacity of my personal tank, my physical tank.

[00:06:37] You know, feeling where my capacity was like drawn down on and how I could replenish it. You know, either just like staying out in nature with him or going home and just like leaning into the nothingness. But like, there was either way, there was an in-between bit to get there. So, I, I wanted to rush through these errands so I could get home sooner so I could [00:07:00] zen out sooner.

[00:07:01] It's an interesting thing during menstruation when you need to like muster up energy and, you know, that was just me running on my own time, a little bit of like external obligation to meet other people's needs, but mostly like running on my own clock and having been mostly self-employed for the last, you know, two to three years. I mostly run on my own clock, but I remember the days where I, you know, you would have scheduled work, you would have a shift on, or you had a full-time job and you, you got your period

[00:07:35] in the middle of the week and you just had to go to work. And that pressure of like the external demand, the external obligation, and I mean for me personally, that generated so much more tension in my body, so much more unease. And I, I truly believe it created more physical pain. This period, for example, um, while I was feeling all that mental resistance,

[00:07:59] [00:08:00] and facing the things that I had to do that did not at all match the energy that I was in. I could face it and go, okay, yeah, I see what I have to do. And I wasn't in any pain. I, I felt myself bleeding heavily. And the more I was pushing through, I, the more heaviness I felt like actually flowing out of me.

[00:08:20] I was passing more clots, larger clots than usual, and I was like holding onto my body and I was like, "yes. Like I, I hear you. I hear you. We're getting through it. We're getting through it." And then I came home and it's a big week in my house at the moment. Um, family coming to stay, Easter weekend coming up.

[00:08:39] And you know, between me and my mom. Two very sensitive nervous systems that operate in two entirely different ways. And, you know, she's no longer menstruating, so she's not kind of running on that cyclical template, uh, that I'm running on, uh, and can sometimes have less empathy towards it.

[00:08:59] And [00:09:00] she's just, you know, like firing on all cylinders. And I got home. I thought I would have the house to myself, uh, but my mum was home and she was in her energy and I was in mind and I just said, "mum, I just got my period. I'm on day two. I've got work to do tomorrow. I'm tired from last night and today.

[00:09:25] I am tapping out. Okay. Today, I, I'm not available." She asked for my opinion on something that was entirely her decision, and I just said, "I have, I, I have nothing to offer the situation." And this felt different to kind of like the. A premenstrual irritability where it can really feel like other people are getting on your nerves.

[00:09:47] But for me, I, it was just a full acknowledgement of like, nah, people, people are who they usually are. People are people. I do not have the capacity for people at this point in time. [00:10:00] And all I wanted to do was collapse, but I said, what would be so nourishing? Is creating a private space for myself out of the house with all the things that would nourish me in exactly the way that I need and in exactly the way that would serve me right now.

[00:10:17] And so I told her, I said, "I've set up the tent outside. I'm bringing all my stuff out there. Like, if you need me, text me. But otherwise, like, I want you to pretend that I'm not here, I'm not here, I'm not available. I've got work to do tomorrow. And so today I am zoning out" and yeah, didn't get a lot of pushback, which was excellent.

[00:10:39] Which was so welcomed. Um, she was just like, okay. And then just asked questions about where I set up the tent and. And, you know, kind of rolled her eyes at me in a, in a loving way of, you know, the tone that she rolls her eyes in is just like, "oh my God, who is, who is my daughter?"

[00:10:56] I set up the tent. I've got blankets in here. [00:11:00] I've got my diaries. I've got books to read. I've got my tongue drum to play. I've got dried herbs and candles to burn. I've got tea. I've got things. I've got my laptop, my headphones to do some meditation, and I love listening to binaural beats. I've recently learned.

[00:11:19] I got some snacks. I had some Dubai chocolate. Oh my God. $7 from Aldi. Shout out. And I've just been lying here like, this is so nice. I'm so glad I gave this to myself. I'm so glad I gave this to myself. And that leads me to the wider point that I would like to really hone in on with you today.

[00:11:42] In my world, in my understanding of the female body, menstrual cycles, hormones, female physiology, rest and slowing down is crucial, hands down. But it is especially [00:12:00] important based on where we are at in our menstrual cycle; based on what our female physiology is doing, at a certain point within our cycle, within a month, however you want to look at it, in relation to when your last period was, when your next period's gonna be; however you can best relate to it.

[00:12:16] In short, your hormonal landscape has at least four, four different templates. Four different blueprints that it follows across one single menstrual cycle from one period until the next period. And those different, those four different hormonal templates

[00:12:37] change your physiology. Those hormonal templates change what is happening in your body at a cellular level, how your hormones are interacting with other hormones, your sex hormones are interacting differently with your stress hormones. Your sex hormones are interacting differently with your mental health and what your brain's doing. Um, your nervous system [00:13:00] changes a little, a little bit in each phase of your cycle. Your immune system is a little bit different in each phase of your cycle and all of these things together, and so, so many other things that I haven't mentioned.

[00:13:11] your metabolism and blood sugar regulation being a big one, actually. How all of these things are different in each phase changes your capacity. It changes what you feel better at. It determines what you feel as more challenging. It changes how you perceive and experience things, including people, relationships, certain scenarios, work tasks, external demands.

[00:13:34] You know, so many things And so the thing I often recommend is when you get to the winding down phase of your cycle leading into your next period. So, you know, looking at mostly the one week before your next bleed comes, that's where we really start, start slowing down, right.

[00:13:53] You sort of slow down and then you come to a nice spaciousness, like surrendering energy [00:14:00] when you get into your bleed. This is what I recommend. This is what I see changing lives of women that I work with. This is what has changed my own life in how I keep my energy sustainable in how I prevent

[00:14:19] burnout. In how I keep myself well and functioning as best as I can. And I have done something quite dramatic. I've done, you could argue, I've done two things quite dramatic that I'm very privileged to be able to do. The first thing is that I blocked out these dates in advanced in my calendar, so that I would not be open to bookings.

[00:14:42] I would not be open to collaborative work, one-on-one work. And that any work that I did on the first two days of my bleed if when they fall on weekdays where I work, it's totally up to me in terms of what I want to do. But I encourage myself to just minimize work and mental load as much as possible.

[00:14:59] Two days of a [00:15:00] cycle, that's what I do. To some people that can feel quite dramatic, that can feel too much, that can feel unattainable, unachievable, depending on what sort of work you do, what your life looks like now, your employment arrangements. But it's something that I highly, highly encourage is if it is within your realm to block out a day or two or even a half day if you can,

[00:15:24] for the first few days of bleeding or whichever day feels the heaviest or the most draining for you currently, prioritizing more space on that day. So acknowledging, yeah, that's, that, that's dramatic for some people taking a whole full two days off work. once a ish. And the other dramatic thing I've done is I've

[00:15:45] I put up a tent and I literally used a wheelbarrow. I dumped all this stuff outside from like the door that's at the front of the property and I got my wheelbarrow and I wheeled it around and I loaded my stuff up [00:16:00] and I did two or three trips to this tent and filled it up and made it the space that I wanted it to be.

[00:16:06] And it's a weekday in the middle of the week. Granted, you know, we're approaching Easter, so you know, people are preparing for holidays and stuff, but like, I can't tell you how still outrageous it feels a little bit somewhere in my body, the fact that I'm doing this on a weekday, um, and I work and I make money, and I'm okay, still freaks me out, because it is so not embedded in our culture.

[00:16:35] Normalization of menstrual rest is not at all embedded in our culture, and that's a problem. Yeah, these two things may be quite dramatic, but what I encourage you to do, and what I encourage most of my clients to do is to find your version of this that works for you. Now, the book that, uh, one of the books that my phone camera is actually leaning on right now [00:17:00] is Wild Power by, the Founders of the Red School, Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo w one of their suggestions, that, that I really, really like is, I don't know if they call it the 1% rule or

[00:17:14] it's just referenced as like this, this 1% framework, where it's acknowledged as a default, in this world of menstrual cycle awareness, it's acknowledged as a default, that slowing down to some degree, to any degree, is beneficial around menstruation. And using this 1% framework that they've created, I encourage women who work with me to,

[00:17:44] visualize, imagine, plan out what their most restful period could look like, what it would look like to do exactly what you want to do when you were bleeding, what obligations would be out the window, what things would come [00:18:00] in, what would be filling your cup, what would be draining your cup that you can just like throw out?

[00:18:05] What would your schedule look like? You know, what does the week look like? What are your responsibilities? What are shared responsibilities with your partner or friends or housemates or family that you live with? You know, really, really fleshing it out. And then looking at that picture, looking at how they currently experience the days of their period and sort of go, okay, how can you shift the current version of how you do your period,

[00:18:36] to be 1%, or one degree, closer to that ideal version that you know will fill your cup? That you know will replenish you? And this sometimes, surprisingly to me; surprisingly to me, only because I've have spent years and years practicing [00:19:00] rest, um, sometimes, against my will, against my mental will sometimes just because of sheer burnout and just physical lack of capacity.

[00:19:13] And, you know, experiencing chronic, I would say chronic invisible illness for most of my, upbringing and, and teenage years and early twenties. I've had a lot of forced rest and then I learned how to, how to make it, um, chosen rest. So I've got a lot of practice at this, right? So it still surprises me when I'm making these like little micro suggestions and helping the women I work with like try and see how they could just slow down a little bit.

[00:19:40] And there is so much resistance and, and I get it. And I get it. Because if we are used to. Being in one mode. If our nervous systems are used to being in the mobilized fight or flight mode, or if we are used to being in shutdown down [00:20:00] that isn't actual rest, but it's more of like a dissociation, when we find any kind of middle ground that is outside of those realms where, you know,

[00:20:10] when we are doing anything that doesn't look like running around like a headless chook or pleasing others or doing everything for everyone else or, you know, getting even busier at work,

[00:20:21] I'm losing track of my words. This. This will also come with recording a podcast on cycle day two. Yes. When you slow down to any degree, if that is your default, if running around like a headless chook is your default, it will feel like a challenge to the nervous system. It will create space for discomfort to arise.

[00:20:42] Sometimes busyness and nervous system activation is your body's way, is your coping mechanism of sorts of ignoring or avoiding uncomfortable feelings, uncomfortable beliefs, scary beliefs that you might have about yourself or your life. Scary [00:21:00] thoughts that you might have. Scary, big emotions that you haven't processed or you haven't integrated in your day-to-day life, and they're kind of just like welling beneath the surface. And as long as you are busy and as long as your calendar's full, and as long as you've got heaps of responsibilities and have to meet everyone else's needs, well, from a survival perspective, it feels good because you don't have to deal with that uncomfortable stuff.

[00:21:26] So I can really, really appreciate that slowing down can create a pathway for that discomfort to arise and make itself known to you. And I would argue that. The discomfort of that process, not understating how hard it is or how uncomfortable it may be, and that it may open up pathways to more healing experience that, that you are being invited into.

[00:21:58] But I would argue that that [00:22:00] discomfort, and feeling the feels and being present with the things that maybe you'd rather avoid or maybe some part of you would rather avoid, is so much more worth it than continuing the cycle of pushing yourself, pushing yourself, pushing yourself, and then burning out.

[00:22:27] Feeling always overwhelmed, feeling always anxious. Feeling like you never catch a break, feeling like you barely have a chance to catch your breath between when one day ends and the next day of responsibilities begins. And this is important to me, and I would in invite you to see how it's important to you because of how, I mean the mental health impact seems obvious.

[00:22:53] You know, when those feelings accumulate over time and direct your life over time, it can increase [00:23:00] reactivity. It, it can keep you shut away from your intuition. It can keep you shut out from your deeper knowing, your higher knowing. It can, it can lead you astray, you know, when you're running off anxiety and overwhelm.

[00:23:13] That's, that's the groundwork for poor decision making and being disconnected from what is most true for you and what is ready to serve you in this life. And so you might find that you make decisions that aren't actually in your highest good. And so, so that's the mental health impact. And obviously it can lead to things like depression.

[00:23:34] I mean, you, you run like that for long enough, you know, the body will, the body will start to shut down and, and that includes depression and feelings of dissociation and, and numbness to the pulse of your own life and your own being. But then physically, I mean physically, your female physiology cannot sustain that.

[00:23:56] Your female physiology was never designed to sustain that, [00:24:00] that way of being: constantly go, go, go, constantly hustling. We weren't designed like that. When you push past your design, I guess you could say, and what your body is wired for, the body will start to show cracks and symptoms will start to arise. From a menstrual cycle perspective, your periods may start to get more painful or more heavy. I feel like not listening to our needs on some level, uh, paves the way for endometriosis and adenomyosis to proliferate.

[00:24:38] You might notice that you get more like IBS-like symptoms more like constipation or diarrhea, or a mix of the two, more bloating. You may feel fatigued like you have never felt before. And yeah, I can't help but, you know, reac acknowledge just the, the emotional distress that you might feel from pushing past your own boundaries and, and staying [00:25:00] on the hamster wheel.

[00:25:01] You may experience, uh, back pain, breast pain breakouts, on your face or chest or, or back. You may experience worse PMS symptoms or even getting towards the territory of PMDD.

[00:25:19] And it's not, it's not your body breaking down, it's, it's your body responding to its environment. It's environment, including, you know, how often your body gets to rest, the quality of that rest, what your feeding that body, what you're watering your body with, what you're exposing that body to. All of those things your body will respond to.

[00:25:42] And so these symptoms aren't your body breaking down. It's your body just responding to the environment. It's your body going, "Ooh, we haven't had our cup filled up in this way. Um, we've had to process this stuff that we've been exposed to. We've had to deal with like, um, [00:26:00] these extra carbs that have come in or these like processed foods that we didn't have the capacity for," da, da da.

[00:26:07] And you can see how the bucket like starts to get filled, like your body, the bucket of your body's capacity, let's say. And symptoms will just naturally arise because you haven't paved the way for optimal functioning. And often I will ask women, in, in consults in online sessions, I will ask them to just like, take a moment to drop in, tune in, shut out the noise for a bit and like, make some contact with your body.

[00:26:35] Like place a hand over your womb or over your heart and. And I'll say, ask your womb. Like, what do you need right now? Don't, don't think about it. Don't create a mental answer. Don't justify it. Don't counter the answer, like, just however it comes to you. What is your womb asking for right now?

[00:26:56] And it it, it is astonishing. It is astonishing how often the [00:27:00] answer is rest, quiet, stillness. Slow down, take a breath, more water like. It's really, really simple wisdom that is coming from your own body. But if we've had more time and experience practicing the patterns that haven't been serving us, and if we've been, if we are more familiar with playing out those patterns, that helps us avoid rest or avoid slowing down, you can see how it would be easier that even though we have the, the knowing of, oh yeah, it could feel good to slow down, um, it could serve my health to slow down.

[00:27:40] I, I still default to this pattern of like just getting overwhelmed and like finding more things to do and filling up my books with responsibility and obligations, and then resenting everyone for it, you know? And something that came to me today, like as I was putting up this tent and I shared a little bit about it on Instagram is like [00:28:00] no one was coming to put up this tent for me.

[00:28:03] No one came to me. And said, make sure you block out those two days of your cycle so that you don't get bookings when you're in the middle of like your heaviest days of bleeding, when your consciousness is different. You know when your capacity is totally different. No one has told me to do that. People don't even encourage me to do that.

[00:28:26] It's something that can feel really edgy to talk about because it's not normalized. This is something that only you can do for yourself. And you may be so blessed, you may be so blessed with beautiful people around you, partners, friends, family, who can really witness you on this journey and really want to support you.

[00:28:53] And whether that's in big ways or small ways, but ultimately only you can make that [00:29:00] first decision of like, "yes, I need to do something differently, and maybe that involves changing my output based on where I'm at in my cycle, based on how my capacity changes throughout my cycle, based on the fact, based on the biological fact that my wiring and female physiology is not

[00:29:31] capable of the same level of output and the same level of function at every different stage of the menstrual cycle." And then the hard parts come in where you may need to set boundaries. You may need to say no. You may need to say yes. You may need to ask for help or accept help. You may need to work a little bit to make that room in your schedule.[00:30:00]

[00:30:01] And again, I'm gonna pull you back to the 1%. It does not have to be a dramatic overhaul. Now, for some of you, I imagine you are intense, determined people, and you might make it a dramatic overhaul, and that might be beautiful and that might work for you. But for others, you may really need to go a low and slow approach, and you may need to build up to this ideal over months and months

[00:30:27] of practicing these micro moments of rest, practicing the, okay, I usually work full time regardless of whether I'm on my period. When I'm on my period, I just pop a Panadol, put a tampon in, pack tampons in my bag, and just go about my day as normal and everything is the same. And maybe that looks like, okay, on the days that I'm bleeding, I'm going to bring a ginger tea to work,

[00:30:52] to give my body warmth and nourishment, more than I usually would. And, and, or maybe [00:31:00] I will include five minutes of silent meditation with a blindfold on, on my work break. Or maybe you'll start the day that way. Maybe you are able to go to bed 15 minutes earlier, half an hour earlier, an hour earlier.

[00:31:15] Maybe you can ask a friend or a family member or a partner to make you one meal that you would, if you were normally making all your meals, maybe you can ask them to make one meal for one of those days on your menstrual cycle. Maybe instead of you get home from work and then you just spend time watching TV or scrolling, which isn't true rest.

[00:31:41] It's not actual rest. Your nervous system isn't getting safety cues from that. Uh, maybe you switch it for spending time out outdoors, going for a walk that you normally wouldn't go on. If you would normally exercise really intensely, maybe you bring it back to a bit of [00:32:00] yin yoga or gentle stretching, or some Qigong or a slow walk. Make it work for you.

[00:32:07] I, I won't have the exact answer for what's going to work best for your life and where you are at, right? But, but what I can tell you, you know, based on what I know, based on my experience in my own body and based on my experience in guiding other women through their, their cyclical selves, through their cyclicity, is that how you start one cycle informs the rest of the cycle.

[00:32:37] And so if you start your cycle, uh, running on empty, but you keep running. You can't just then rely on your follicular phase and ovulation and estrogen to like fill you up and like keep you sustained the rest of the cycle. Your body will try its hardest and you know that that hormonal rhythm will happen, but,

[00:32:58] over time, if you [00:33:00] keep running on empty, that's not good for the engine, right? And, and you will start to feel it, be it fatigue, headaches, brain fog, joint pain, you know, any, any number of symptoms, um, your body could, could decide are the best to communicate to you, you know? But when we start our off cycle from a filled cup, when we choose to slow down and get quiet enough,

[00:33:26] and surrender enough to be able to actually feel what our needs are and follow through on action that would best meet our needs, you are giving yourself and your body the best opportunity for a nice, strong ovulation, for a nice, strong estrogen buildup and cells that can actually respond to that estrogen optimally.

[00:33:54] And then when you have a strong ovulation, you have a better progesterone output in your luteal phase, [00:34:00] and that supports your mental health, that supports your sleep, that supports your nervous system and your immune system for less premenstrual symptoms, less PMDD intensity.

[00:34:11] And you start to get into this pattern of tuning into your own cycle and when it's best and most right for you to start slowing down and when on what days is most important for you to make the most space for yourself and give yourself the most grace. And you get into that rhythm. And then each cycle gets stronger and stronger.

[00:34:33] And your intuition also through this process of quieting down, slowing down, gets stronger and stronger. And through that answers will come to you more easily. You'll get pangs of wisdom that say, we need an extra liter of water today. Oh, okay. Can you add salt to one of your servings of water today?

[00:34:51] Oh, okay. We need to start our day with meat, or we need to start our day with a protein packed meal. Or we need more sunlight today. Or [00:35:00] like, oh, we, too much screen time. The intuition will get louder. And when you are just following your, your genuine intuition, not the voice of anxiety that a lot of us have mistaken for intuition, that's how you support your health.

[00:35:16] You have everything you need if you are truly, truly connected to your intuition. You have absolutely everything you need. But it develops over time and it also develops in response to initiating that first change, even if it's just 1% of change.

[00:35:37] So I invite you: maybe you want to journal it or maybe you just wanna think about it, or maybe you wanna record a voice note to yourself. I love doing that. And just speak out loud or write or think about what your current bleeding days look like, how your days are spent, when you have your period.

[00:35:56] Even start to track, like download the cycle tracking guide and then start [00:36:00] to track how your needs change during menstruation, even if it's really subtle. Do you need an extra bit of sleep? Do you notice that you might naturally sleep for a bit longer or go to bed earlier, or naturally you eat a little bit more before your period or naturally you are a little bit more closed off or less social or,

[00:36:19] you might feel more compassionate, more sensitive, you know, track those subtleties. Start to track like how your needs actually change during menstruation. 'cause it's not gonna be, it's not gonna look exactly the same for every woman, right? So become aware and then visualize, okay, based on what your current reality is, visualize like what your best,

[00:36:43] most restful bleed, most nourishing period could look like. And visualize it. Write it down, speak it out loud, and then look at those two pictures of like what's present for you, what's current, what's imagined, what your ideal [00:37:00] vision is, and just write. Write a list, or again, speak it out loud of 1% changes.

[00:37:11] And next period, pick one of those 1% changes and try it for one day and see how that changes things. And I promise you it gets to be more life changing than it sounds like. A micro change that you're able to sustain and repeat consistently is gonna be way more impactful than setting yourself up with a whole bunch of change that you are absolutely unfamiliar with and not used to practicing, and then seeing how good that could look on paper.

[00:37:45] You know? Start small. Get as

[00:37:50] consistent as you can and like let it be life changing. Let the power of those micro changes, let the power of that 1% [00:38:00] rule change your life and change how you do life in your female cyclical body.

[00:38:08] Thanks for spending a little bit of time in my red tent with me today. I know it's different.

[00:38:14] I hope the audio quality was okay. I hope you can put up with the camera quality and my, this is my day two messy hair, literally not brushed. It's feeling like a little bit of a sauna in here. I think I need to get some fresh air. Drink more coconut water.

[00:38:31] And truly, truly, I wish for your next bleed that it is so blissful. That you get to experience the bliss that I promise is possible for you.

[00:38:46] If you would like to connect more deeply with your cycle, please download the free Cycle Tracking Guide. It is full of tips and wisdom and things that I have developed over the last 13 years [00:39:00] of tracking and charting my own cycles, including confirming ovulation.

[00:39:06] And if you feel like, "I need more support with this." If you have been struggling with period problems or cyclical hormonal issues for a long time, maybe it's months, maybe it's years, you are not alone. 'cause most women who start to work with me have been experiencing what they're experiencing for at least a year, usually a lot longer.

[00:39:31] And if you feel like you would like some tailored support, that actually finally gets to the root of what's causing the symptoms in the first place, rather than just putting another bandaid on top of a symptom and just suppressing it. And then you take the bandaid off and then the symptom's still there.

[00:39:44] And you know, rinse and repeat. If you know, if you've been on that journey with doctors and gynos, you know, I don't have to tell you. But if you would like some tailored support and guidance from me, Harmonized Hormones my three or six month journey [00:40:00] is currently available to new patients. It is also at the lowest price that it will ever be until the end of this month, until April 30th.

[00:40:12] Lots of things will change as of May 1st. There's gonna be a few more inclusions, but the price is also going to go up. So if you have been considering this for months or years, if you've been following me for a long time, truly, now is the best time to start the journey.

[00:40:30] It's the lowest investment that it's gonna be. Payment plans always available, and you can just start off with a free connection call, get to know me. Let me in on your health story a little bit and what's been going on for you and how you've been moving through things. And I'll paint a picture of how I may be able to support you through that using naturopathic medicine and so many tools that I have in my toolbox,

[00:40:51] Over nearly a decade of practicing as a naturopath and working with women on their fertility, their health, their hormones, their periods. So I would love to support [00:41:00] you. And so throughout the month of April before the price rise, my calendar will be open for those 15 minute free connection calls to get to meet some of you and see if the Harmonized Hormones journey is right for you.

[00:41:12] So I'd love to digitally meet you. You can book in using the link in the description, wherever you're watching or listening to this. And if you liked this episode, please do follow or subscribe wherever I am, I'm with you in the digital world, whether that's YouTube, Spotify or Apple. I am also on Instagram, but, uh, less present there these days.

[00:41:33] And when you download the free Cycle Tracking guide, you will also opt into my weekly Karinda's Corner newsletters, if that is your cup of tea,

[00:41:42] with more stories, personal shares, insights, and things that I'm learning every day about hormones and the nature of being a woman in, in a cyclical body with cyclical DNA. And how wild and crazy that gets sometimes. [00:42:00] Anyway, so I'll catch you in your inbox. Hopefully I'll catch some of you on some connection calls for Harmonized Hormones, and if not, I will see you in the next episode of Oh My Menses.

[00:42:10] Thank you. Blessed bleeding.

[00:42:13] 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 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.

[00:42:35] 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.