Latest / Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul / Moon Phases & Feminine Power: Your Weekly Cycle Sync | Pre-Ovulation & the Waxing Gibbous Moon: Three Ways to Create Balance Before the Full Moon

Transcript

Moon Phases & Feminine Power: Your Weekly Cycle Sync | Pre-Ovulation & the Waxing Gibbous Moon: Three Ways to Create Balance Before the Full Moon · Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul

• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Healing Her Story Podcast.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are gathering for our weekly cycle sync episode where we'll be exploring this week's lunar energy.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I trust that you have found your way to today's episode in your perfect right time and way.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are returning, welcome back.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's an honor and a joy to share this time with you this week.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go ahead and jump right in today.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Before we explore this week's lunar energy, I want to invite us into a minute of silence.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: You also might decide to make this a minute of stillness.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you want to take a pause and stop doing something.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want to close your eyes and come to a comfortable seated position.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you might want to just slow down and bring a little bit more awareness into whatever it is you might be doing.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: We all live such busy and full lives, and sometimes even just giving ourselves a minute can make a significant difference for our systems, especially for those of us who are living in a female body that requires those exhalations.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got one minute on the timer here, and I'm gonna go ahead and mute my mic, and our one minute will begin now.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Taking a moment to notice what you may have noticed, and also maybe you notice where you are in your unique rhythm.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am, I believe, cycle day 17 or 18 today, and it's been a really interesting cycle so far.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of moving through something during my bleeding time, and it took a while for my body to bounce back from that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like whatever I was experiencing in my menstrual cycle during my bleeding time, which I suspect was probably just fatigue and maybe a little touch of burnout, especially right at the end of summer.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I had a really busy summer.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I worked a lot, I also traveled a lot, I had a lot of adventures with friends and late nights and all of that kind of adds up.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that all kind of showed up in my bleed this cycle.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So today, on cycle day 17 or 18, today is one of the first days where I feel like myself.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's definitely internally and not so much physically, and it's enough that it's not impacting the way that I'm experiencing my life at all, which was much different from what I experienced this last ovulation.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually going to be weaving that experience into our episode today because I think it ties in really nicely with our themes for this week.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: This week we are attuning to the energy of the waxing gibbous moon.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is actually the first time I've done an episode specifically on this phase.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to orient us a little bit.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you're unfamiliar with the terms waxing and waning, waxing simply means the energy is building.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can think of this as wax on.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: We are in this continued period of momentum gathering, much like we talked about last week.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The waxing gibbous phase is that last stretch between the first quarter moon when the moon is perfectly lit and half, or rather, half is perfectly lit, and the full moon, which is going to be happening this weekend.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this phase, the waxing gibbous phase, where the moon is not quite full but looking pretty full.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: This carries its own specific quality and opportunities.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're moving through Libra season, this phase presents a really interesting opening for creating more balance and more harmony.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to connect this phase with the menstrual cycle, I would place it in the days leading up to ovulation, that anticipatory energy right before the peak.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been tracking your menstrual cycle and have started paying attention to your ovulation time, then you might already know that there are usually signs and signals that let you know she's coming.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: For me, around cycle day 12, I start checking my cervical mucus.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Each day it gets a little stickier and a little more wet until I reach that point where it's the stickiest and the most wet mucus I've seen in the last several days.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's usually when I know that ovulation is close.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I also sometimes feel a sharp stabbing sensation on my side.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's really brief, it's not especially strong, and it is very recognizable.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is what I would consider an ovulation paint.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So these are my personal indicators, and yours might look completely different, but that's the kind of attunement we're building toward.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: If we think about this in terms of season, this is the energy of the days leading up to the summer solstice.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know the summer solstice doesn't quite match with when school gets out for most places, but I kind of want to bring in this metaphor because if you think about like the days leading up to when school getting out, there's this big anticipation, knowing that something is about to reach its peak or its sort of release, if you will.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the quality that we're working with here in the waxing Gibbis phase.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that as our foundation, here are three ways to use this week's energy to create more balance and more harmony.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, these apply to both the lunar cycle and the menstrual cycle.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: The first is to notice.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Just as I begin paying closer attention to my cervical mucus as I build towards ovulation, this is a time to start paying more attention to your body, to your inner world, and to what's unfolding in the world around you, what's arising in the world around you.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Look, our bodies, they're always talking to us.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're always offering us information in any given moment.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: However, most of the time, we're too busy and too disconnected to actually hear it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: One of the simplest ways to begin listening is to just slow down and be more present in the moment you're actually in.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: When we're living in our heads, we're not often aware of what's happening in our bodies.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: But when we can drop into the present moment, even just for a few minutes, we can start to notice things that would otherwise move right past.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: This can also extend to what's arising in your day-to-day life as you approach the full moon.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: As we reach that illumination point, there can be signs, little breadcrumbs from life hinting what might be coming down the road.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a personal example.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been here for a while, then you know I've been on this hormonal health exploration for the greater part of this year, really trying to understand what's happening in this particular phase of my cycle, actually.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had reached a point where I felt like I had kind of hit a wall with Western medicine's approach to what I was experiencing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was speaking with my menstrual psycho coach and supervisor, and she mentioned a kinesiologist.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they do many things, but apparently they also do this muscle testing where they can just test your muscles and they can find out what's happening without having to go through all of the blood work and the urine samples, etc.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when she had mentioned that to me, I realized, I noticed that this was the second time this word had come up from someone that I trust and someone that is further down the road than I am and who I really admire and look up to.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So as I noticed that that was the second time that I had heard this word come up, I got online and I did a little research and I found a functional medicine doctor who is also a kinesiologist.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now I've got an appointment booked with this functional medicine doctor, and hopefully I'm gonna get some muscle testing done, which honestly sounds so much more manageable and less invasive than one of the other tests that one of the many specialists I've seen have suggested.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just an example of noticing, really paying attention to what keeps coming.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes that can really lead us to our next best step.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, interestingly enough, I think I found this really interesting.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's research that speaks to this.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, there are psychologists who study what's called serendipity and opportunity recognition, and they have found that people who are more present and more observant are significantly more likely to notice and act on meaningful coincidences and unexpected pathways.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So notice what you notice this week, both in your inner world and in the world around you.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: The second is to take it in as good information.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: The things that happen to us, the things that we experience, are at their core just information.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: When we can approach life, our healing, our growth, our manifestation from a place of the observer, from a place of neutrality, there is nothing inherently good or bad.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: It simply is what it is.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we get to take that in as information.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've been living with this in a very real way lately.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I had made a lot of progress hormonally and was on the mend.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: However, this last week I was hit with headaches, dizziness, nausea, and some pretty significant GI issues over the course of several days.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I could have spiraled, I could have gotten really down about it and made it mean that something was deeply wrong, and started getting all worked up about what I needed to fix.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to go there, right?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, I kept coming back to this.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: What if I just take this in as good information?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of me freaking out and spiraling, being like, oh my god, I need to fix this.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is happening?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It became, huh.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed I've been having GI issues most days this week.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if they change if I don't eat this or if I eat this.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Huh, I've been having headaches every day.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if I drink more water, if that might help.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what my body might be trying to tell me.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can you feel how different that energy is?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about bypassing or pretending everything's fine, it's about meeting what's happening in the moment with curiosity and an openness instead of fear.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what all of that information told me was I'm not quite where I thought I was yet.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: My body is still not getting the support it needs in this area.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually really useful because now I get to ask, hmm, what else might be more supportive?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Research on stress and perception supports this shift in a meaningful way.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Studies show that when we interpret a challenge as information rather than as a threat, our cortisol levels are significantly lower, and our capacity for problem solving and decision making remains intact.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: The third is calibration.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Think about a flower bud that's right on the edge of opening.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever had a blooming plant on your front porch, I have a few.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: You might know that there's these moments when you walk by and you can see that the bud is almost there, but you don't quite know when she's gonna open.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly where we are right now.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are approaching the full bloom of this cycle, and there is still time to readjust, to recalibrate, and to make refinements before we get there.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'll continue using my own experience as an example.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: As I was noticing and taking in this information during my last inner summer about what was happening in my body, I could feel that I needed to make an adjustment.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, the next couple days were gonna be really hard.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: One night the symptoms were quite severe and it was difficult to get comfortable.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been exploring histamine issues, then you might know that antihistamines can help.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I made a decision to take a benadry that night.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something I often do, and please do not take this as medical advice for your histamine issues.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: This was just the choice that felt most supportive for me in that moment, so that I could take the edge off and get to sleep.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: A real time adjustment based on information that I had gathered.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the outer world, calibration might look like readjusting a routine, especially relevant as we come out of Virgo season.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It also might look like shifting a relationship dynamic after you've received some good information.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: It might look like changing the way you show up somewhere in your life in a way that feels more aligned with where you actually are now.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is the week to make those adjustments.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is the week the flower is about to bloom.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: To support you this week, I'm leaving a donation-based trauma-informed somatic meditation for you over on Insight Timer.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the link for that in the show notes.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if today's episode was helpful or meaningful for you in some way, the best way to support the show is to leave a rating and a review.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It honestly makes a huge difference in helping this work reach more women.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So please support the show.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Get the word out.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because we all need to know how this cyclical wisdom works.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back on Monday with our full moon episode, and I will see you on Friday for a solo episode continuing to weave through the themes of Libra season.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.