Menstrual Cycle: An Embodied Teacher
For most of my life, my menstrual cycle felt like an obstacle. When I was bleeding, I couldn't exercise the way I wanted to. I had cramps. I felt less energetic and couldn't just do what I wanted to do.
In college, I actually lost my period from over-exercising, under-sleeping, and under-eating while managing intense anxiety.
When it disappeared, I remember feeling relieved - one less problem to worry about. I was in full masculine mode, focused on achievement and progress, and not bleeding fit perfectly with that lifestyle.
When I finally got my period back years later, I was happy - it felt like a sign of health returning.
For a few years, my cycle was regular and relatively painless. Then in 2020, everything changed. Suddenly, I was experiencing excruciating cramps and debilitating pain that left me unable to move.
That's when my real journey with my cycle began - but not the one you might expect.
From Enemy to Ally: The Great Reframe
After months of feeling scared, lonely, and betrayed by my body, I had a breakthrough in 2022.
I realized how toxic it was to see my cycle as punishment. Instead, I began to ask: What if my body is trying to tell me something? What if my cycle is actually giving me signals?
This shift - from "my body is punishing me" to "my body is talking to me" changed everything.
I started learning about the cycles of life, seasons, and the menstrual cycle.
I began eating, exercising, working, and living in alignment with my hormonal states and energy in each phase.
Instead of seeing my period as an obstacle, I reframed it as a two-day rest and retreat time each month - sacred time to focus totally on myself and my body.
What I discovered transformed not just my relationship with my cycle, but my entire way of being in the world.
The Wisdom Each Phase Offers
Once I started listening, I realized each phase of my cycle was offering me something specific:
Menstruation is when we're most sensitive and can see and feel more than usual. This is prime time for rest, connecting with myself, and asking big questions: What do I want from life? What does my work need? How do I want to feel in the coming month?
Follicular phase brings rising estrogen, making me feel creative and confident. This is perfect for experimenting with new ways of being, new ideas, new routines. We're naturally more open to possibility.
Ovulation is our peak fertility time, which comes with more energy and social confidence. It's easier to be public, share our opinions and work, perform, and nurture our relationships. We're naturally more radiant and relational.
Luteal phase is defined by rising progesterone, making us more tired, relaxed, and intuitive. What society frames as "PMS" is more accurately described as "no bullshit time" - we're more connected to our needs, our personal space, and our limited capacity.
This is a natural invitation to complete projects, wind down activity, and prepare for the bleed. It teaches us how to slow down in a world that expects us to feel and perform the same every day. It teaches us how to set boundaries.
If we don't listen to these signals, that's when anger, irritability, and mood swings arise - not as symptoms to suppress, but as messages that we need to attend more to what we need and offer ourselves what would be nourishing.
Turning Hardship into Meaning
This reframe doesn't minimise real struggles with painful periods, irregular cycles, or conditions like endometriosis.
I was eventually diagnosed with endometriosis myself. It feels unfair, it brings up uncertainty about whether I will be able to have children and it significantly reduces quality of life. It sucks and yet fighting with it does not help.
Relating to it as a burden or a sign that we are lesser than or abnormal does not help. I think of body as a responsive being - something I can talk to, be with, care for. And I have seen that the more I started relating to my body in reverential and accepting ways, the more meaning and less suffering entered my experience.
We cannot take away the difficult, but we can add in the comfortable, the soothing, the loving as a counterbalance. I believe this is all that we can do in the face of reality that is inherently unfair and unpredictable. We can choose how we relate to it. That is where our freedom lies.
When we start seeing symptoms as signals, we can ask: What is my body trying to tell me? Maybe there are ways I could change how I eat or move that would help. Maybe there's unprocessed trauma that needs attention. Maybe I need to examine my relationship with stress, rest, or boundaries.
There's practical wisdom here - simple changes in diet, movement, stress management, and cycle awareness that can create more easeful experiences. But there's also something deeper available.
For those drawn to it, cycle work becomes a feminine path to embodied wisdom - a practice of connecting with your sensitivity, your source of feminine guidance and power that lives in the body.
It can transform what feels like struggle into devotion to something larger, something mysterious.
Instead of trying to control or eliminate our cyclic nature, we learn surrender - and many women find that in that surrendering, they actually experience more ease and pleasure.
You're Already More Intuitive Than You Think
When I work with women one-on-one, they're often surprised by how much they've already been in tune with their bodies. Once we start putting words to the energetic shifts they've been feeling, they recognize the patterns immediately.
They realize why they feel more creative and excited in the first half of their cycle, and why they hit lower, more emotional energy in the second half.
They start to understand that the things they thought made them "crazy" or "not normal" actually have a reason.
For example, when they're more angry or irritable during their luteal phase, they realise this happens because they haven't protected their need for more personal space and slowing down.
The anger isn't random - it's their body's way of defending their boundaries when they haven't set them consciously.
Women often discover they have more fights with their partners during this time, and suddenly it makes sense - this is when we become more attuned to what's not working in our lives.
Instead of seeing this as a problem, we can use it as guidance about what needs attention when we're menstruating and have access to deeper visions and ideas for our lives.
It's like the cycle is giving us tips about what could be better, and we can turn that into a source of wisdom for the next month.
Each phase has its gifts and challenges, and once you become aware of them, your experience starts to make sense. That awareness alone is already empowering.
The Healing Power of Cycling in Community
One of the most transformative aspects of cycle work is sharing it with other women. When we track our cycles together and witness each other's patterns, several powerful things happen:
We feel normal again. Instead of feeling defective or problematic, we realize we're part of a larger pattern. We're not broken - we're cyclical beings living in a linear world.
We develop compassion for ourselves. When we see our friends struggling with the same things we do, we naturally feel compassion for them. Then when the same thing happens to us, it becomes easier to treat ourselves like we would a dear friend.
We remember the nature of cycles. When I'm menstruating and in pain or grief, and my friend is ovulating and feeling alive with possibility, she becomes a living reminder that in two weeks, I'll be where she is. When we're struggling, it's easy to forget that better times are coming.
We heal our relationships with other women. Many of us carry wounds from relationships with mothers, sisters, friends from our teenage years. Sharing our cycles creates space to learn to love women again, to feel safe around each other, and to share both our vulnerability and our expansion without judgment.
Getting Started with Menstrual Work
You don't need a mystery school or complicated system to begin this relationship with your cycle. You can start simply:
Track your cycle for a few months and notice the patterns in your energy, creativity, and emotions (you can get my Menstrual Workbook for a self-paced source of support)
Ask yourself which phase of the cycle seems to be the most difficult for you and think about what it might be trying to tell you
During your luteal phase, pay attention to what feels "off" in your life - these are signals, not problems
Use your menstrual time for rest and reflection rather than pushing through
Notice how you feel about slowing down and what resistance arises
Read books like Wild Power or Flow if you’d like to dive deeper
This isn't about perfection or getting it right. It's about curiosity, compassion, and beginning to see your cycle as an intelligent system offering you guidance.
Your cycle isn't an inconvenience to manage or an obstacle to overcome.
It's a source of wisdom, creativity, and power that's always with you - a monthly invitation to come home to yourself and remember what really matters.
When we reclaim our cycles as guidance rather than suffer through them as punishment, we don't just transform our own lives.
We contribute to a larger healing - helping restore the cyclical, intuitive wisdom our world desperately needs.
