Latest / Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul / Moon Phases & Feminine Power: Your Weekly Cycle Sync | How to Work With Waxing Moon Energy for Your Creative Practice & Menstrual Cycle

Transcript

Moon Phases & Feminine Power: Your Weekly Cycle Sync | How to Work With Waxing Moon Energy for Your Creative Practice & Menstrual Cycle · 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 and moon phases episode.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this week we're going to be exploring all things waxing moon and follicular phase, specifically when it comes to working with these phases in regards to your creativity as we are slowly approaching Leo season.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's such an honor and a privilege to be able to share this space with you.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are returning, welcome back.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really thank you for your presence, for your continued attention, and for the way you choose to show up for yourself.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Really thank you for having the courage and the commitment to do this work.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: As I sometimes like to remind the audience here, our community here, I did in our last episode.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: The work that we're doing here is about so much more than just working with the cycles.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's really about embodying a new way of being in our patriarchal world, a way of being that truly honors your ups and your downs, your highs and your lows, your ebbs and your flows, and the very real physiological changes that are happening in the female body.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a world that does not honor the ebb and the flow.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe it's really up to us, the women who are choosing to walk this path and do this work to help pave the way for this new world.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: There is a great amount of crumbling and destruction and falling apart right now collectively.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I get it, it can be a lot, it can be really scary, it can bring up a lot of feelings of uncertainty, of fear, of worry.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that is valid and very wise responses to the world in which we are living in.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, we have an opportunity to create something new, to create something different, and that new and that different way.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into the energy and the opportunities of the waxing moon, I'm gonna invite us into a minute of silence and perhaps a minute of stillness.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in this space, you are invited to come into a place of more presence with yourself, whatever that may look like for you today.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And as you bring more presence to the moment that you find yourself in, I'm gonna invite you to also bring more presence to your inner experience as well.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Noticing where your energy is at, noticing how your body is feeling, noticing how your emotions, how your heart, how your spirit may be feeling, and also starting to sense into where you might be in your own rhythm as well, because you also have your own unique rhythm and expression that is unfolding within you.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you a minute to do that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put one minute on my timer, and I'll also put my mic on mute, and we'll take a little bit of space here to pause to look within and yeah, really meet ourselves where we are.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Our one minute will begin now.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Taking a moment here to note anything that may have stood out to you.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: For myself, that's Liz, that you may have heard there, my little cat who most of the time likes to pop in and say hello.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So she's doing that right now.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: For me today, I am cycle day 10.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the sort of middle-ish stages of my inner spring.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been a couple of days of pretty big amounts of output.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm definitely noticing the tax on my system today.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first indicators of my level of fatigue often shows up in my eyes.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so when my eyelids start to feel a little heavy, that's when I know I'm starting to teeter on that point of reaching my capacity, my physical energetic capacity.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So as I'm noticing that today, I'm adjusting my expectations a bit and also offering myself some grace, knowing that I'm not going to be able to do as much as I would, as much as my mind would maybe like me to accomplish today.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that there does need to be a bit of a slowing down here to really honor my body and to give myself that time to rebuild and re-energize, especially as I'm making my way to uh another few weeks here of a fuller schedule, managing the last three weeks of the summer camp program that I've been supporting here where I live in Sacramento, California.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely knowing that I need to do some preparing and some, yeah, sort of setting myself up for success, if you will, over the next few days.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a little bit about me cyclically.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna weave in some more shares about my experience as well as we are moving through this week's lunar energy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: This week we are tuning to the energy of the waxing moon.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as we slowly make our way into Leo season, starting about midweek, we are continuing our mini-series on creativity.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: This cycle, our focus is on how we can use the lunar and the menstrual cycle to inform the way we create, the things we choose to focus on, and the energy we harness along the way.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't had the chance to listen to last week's episode, I'd invite you to go back and give it a listen so you can get a sense of where we started this cycle and where we're headed.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I did invite you to choose one particular aspect of your creativity to focus on this month, whether that's a specific project, a desire, or a particular creative focus.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: For myself, I've chosen to recommit to my creative practice.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going through this process right alongside with you.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Each week I'll be sharing my own reflections on how I'm working with the energy as well.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: This time of the cycle is associated with the season of spring.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I feel into spring, I can feel into this sense of rebirth, of life returning, of new beginnings, and a fresh start energy coming through.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is something we can explore and play with in our creative practice right now as well.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: To give you some practical things to work with this week, I'm offering what I'm calling the three P's for your creative practice.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: The first P is planning.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: With that fresh spring energy coming in, this is a time to begin planning.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And planning can look different depending on your project.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: For me, planning often means blocking out time on my schedule.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It might also mean sketching or designing something that I've been wanting to create.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: It could also be gathering supplies or maybe just getting clearer on what you actually want to make.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you're working with collaborators, this also might be a time for planning meetings.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: You might also want to map out the rest of your month, looking ahead, knowing what's coming, and thinking about how you want to set yourself up.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second P is protection.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this one came up for me in a really personal way last week.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not even last week, like just the other day.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: As I've been recommitting to my creative practice, and I have many creative practices, if you haven't noticed, one of them is my dance practice, which was actually the first creative practice I developed in my adult years.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's also what I teach in my work as an art educator and teaching artist.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And although that's where my creative practice started, my creative practice has evolved a lot.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it can sometimes be challenging to make time to stay engaged with all of my various practices.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And lately I've had this deep desire to reconnect and reinvigorate my dance practice, especially looking ahead.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: There I go, looking ahead, knowing that I'm going to be returning to my work, teaching dance in August, September.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So this week I had some space to really drop, drop in and have a really juicy practice.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was so invigorated afterwards that I decided to share a video on social media, on my art account, which I'll link in the show notes.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't shared that here before.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: But within a day of posting, I noticed my inner critic start to come up.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she got judgmental about what I had created and shared.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that was such good information.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it was an indicator that maybe I shared my practice with other people a little too soon.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because spring is still such a new, young, fresh energy, there is a tenderness here.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if we share something too soon, there's a potential for it to not land in the way that we had hoped, or for our inner critic to come rushing in before the thing had a chance to really take root.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've had this happen in a previous cycle too.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I got excited, um, I was excited about an idea.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I shared it with someone who didn't quite get it, and when it wasn't received well, it kind of squashed the idea before it had the chance to sprout.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to be thoughtful about who we're sharing our creative projects with and when during this early stage.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: The third P is pacing.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably one of my biggest challenges and something I see a lot in the women I work with.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: During the follicular phase and just after the new moon, we can sometimes find ourselves doing too much too soon.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: As estrogen rises and that energy starts building, we can feel this surge and we want to work with it, and we have to pace ourselves because if we let it, it will really take us off.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And before we know it, we're overwhelmed, exhausted, and burnt out before the cycle even reached its peak.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, as I mentioned, I'm in my inner spring and I've just gotten back from traveling.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, the last few days have been pretty high output.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Getting back into the swing of things with work and working with clients and also hosting our monthly women's circle.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm definitely feeling it today.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it was such a clear reminder to pace myself, to give myself time to come back to my center to nourish and re-energize before continuing forward.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's going to be my focus over the next day or two, especially as I'm about to make that transition into my inner summer, which brings me to a little seed I want to plant for you now.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: By the time we get to our next cycle sync episode, you're going to be invited to choose one thing, one particular aspect of what's been emerging for you to really drop into.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I've got a few possibilities.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've been wanting to do one of my favorite choreographers uh tutorials online.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been on my list for a while.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've also got a painting idea and some big canvases that have been waiting for me.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also working on a new song right now and having some early conversations happening around music collaboration.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is also part of the magic of the inner spring, the waxing moon, the follicular fades as well.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many options.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's this sense of infinite possibility and potential.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I invite you, if that's resonating, to follow that childlike curiosity.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what excites you most.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Notice where you're being pulled.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: That pool is really good information for what might be the right thing to sink into as we move into the next phase.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: To support you this week, I'm including a trauma-informed somatic meditation for you in the show notes.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can use it as a tool specifically around pacing if you're someone who tends to do too much too soon during this phase.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to mention something I forgot to bring up when we were talking about protection, and that's accountability.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes having some form of accountability is one of the best ways to protect the time you need for your creative work.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: For myself, I'm going to be joining a writing circle hosted by Dr.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tavina Lynn, who was on the podcast not too long ago, helping us close out Gemini season.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is a free offering she's making available to the community.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a writing circle that meets every second Sunday.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I've linked for you in the show notes if it's resonating, and if you'd like that layer of support in your own creative product.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is everything for you this week.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wishing you a wonderful rest of your week ahead, and I look forward to connecting with you in the next episode.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.