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Weekly Cycle Check In: How to Work With The New Moon · Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to this week's episode on the Healing Her Story Podcast.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Reva Jean-Paul.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a trauma-informed somatic practitioner, coach for women, and host for your show.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are connecting for a weekly cycle check-in.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in this week's weekly cycle check-in, we have the opportunity to talk about a phase of the moon phase that we haven't really explored to the depth that this particular phase of the cycle has to offer.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm really excited to dive into dive into this phase with you today.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Before we begin, we'll take one minute of silence.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, in this minute, you are invited to connect with yourself, to check in with yourself, to have a moment of stillness, perhaps, or calm or just quiet introspection, maybe also sensing into where you might be in your inner rhythm.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: The one minute begins now.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that was about a minute.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: As I'm recording today's cycle check-in, I'm doing it on a day where I normally wouldn't do a cycle check-in, or rather, a recording for the podcast.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have found myself in a really full time in my life, as I know I've spoken to at least once or twice in some of the more recent episodes.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And in that fullness, it can sometimes be challenging to create space for the opportunities that I know that this phase of my cycle offers.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I am coming to you today from my inner summer phase.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And this inner summer phase has been slowly starting to creep in as I've been intending to create more space for the blooming and the pleasure and the beauty and the connection that this inner summer phase has to offer.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is my intention to create a little bit more space for that today, as I've been really inviting in this balance between doing and creating and showing up for the things that are meaningful to me, that are important to me, and also still allowing myself to be who I am without work and without showing up for my clients, without working towards some big vision or plan in my life.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I've been really trying to find that balance and that harmony, I've noticed that this inner summer phase is feeling not quite as full or juicy, as I like to say, as I have felt in inner summers in the past.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And depending on how much I've done during my inner spring phase, I know that can really affect it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had a really full week in conjunction with this full week, this new moon that just happened on Thursday of last week, or excuse me, it didn't happen on Thursday, it happened on Saturday.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So just yesterday, as I am recording this, and by the time you are tuning to into this episode, it will have been a couple of days.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of makes it like a super new moon.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so the energy of the new moon can really be heightened here.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it makes a lot of sense that I may not be feeling the full fullness and juiciness of my inner summer as it's being met with this super new moon.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk a little bit more about the opportunities and the energy that the new moon specifically has to offer.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I will speak to a little bit about the eclipse.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so as the weeks go by, as you continue to track your inner rhythm, you may begin to notice this dance that happens as you navigate your inner rhythm with the larger rhythms and cycles of the natural world that are happening.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It can be quite nuanced, and that's why I haven't really spoken to it much.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I would mention it here today just to share a little bit about my cyclical experience over these last couple of days.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I did yesterday, knowing everything that I've just shared, take the time to get out in nature.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I took a very long walk and I listened to some of my favorite music, and I discovered new music by just kind of wandering around my Spotify algorithm and listening to the things that were calling to me most.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched the birds and the butterflies, and I did a lot of reflecting on this cycle that is being closed out with this eclipse for me.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: This eclipse has been impacting my work and my health and wellness routines.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this has been a big area of change and transformation for me over the last few years.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you may notice something coming to a bit of a close here as well, as this eclipse that just happened was the last chapter in this eclipse cycle that we have been moving through since 2023.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been just reflecting a lot on my rel how my relationships have changed, how my work has changed, how my health and wellness routines have changed.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to get a lot of clarity by taking that time alone, out in nature with myself to really listen to my inner guidance system.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: After my walk, I had intended to do quite a few things and wound up not really doing any of those things as I was really feeling this yin energy that is being brought in with this new moon phase.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I spent most of the day yesterday resting and giving myself time and space to allow the juiciness and the fullness of this inner summer phase to sort of charge itself up in a way.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I find that if I really want to create space for the pleasure and the connection and the juiciness and the fullness and just the yumminess of the inner summer, then it really requires me to slow down.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it requires me to create more space and maybe do a little less and be a little bit more.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my day yesterday.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my intention with that was to really set me up for this rest of my inner summer phase that I'll be in over the next couple of days, really trying to optimize the opportunities that are being offered here.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And all of that in conjunction, like I said, with this new moon that we are in collectively.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: This week we are talking about the week of March 21st.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: We are talking about the new moon phase.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: The new moon phase is associated with the season of winter and the menstruation phase of the menstrual cycle.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Through the lens of traditional Chinese medicine, this is associated with the element of water.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're talking about the yin and the yang energies, or perhaps maybe the masculine or the feminine energies, we are talking about the yin energy.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the yin energy is connected with the feminine energy.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when we speak about this yin feminine energy, we are speaking to an energy that is in nature a little bit slower, a little bit more flowy, a little bit more intuitive, maybe even a little bit softer.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so as we are in this more yin time of the moon cycle, you may notice a call to go inward, much like I felt yesterday, taking that long walk out in nature, listening to music and reflecting.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: You also may notice a dip in your energy or your motivation.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that was something I definitely experienced yesterday afternoon when I had all these ideas about how I wanted to spend my day, and then really listening to my body and realizing that I didn't really have the energy or the motivation to do any of those things.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And even today, as I'm recording, I'm I'm still feeling a bit of that dip and that energy and motivation.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a really yummy cup of coffee here that I made for myself as I'm, again, kind of doing this dance with my inner summer.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: You may notice a bit more of a need for rest, which is something I definitely noticed yesterday after my long walk.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I came home and did a yoga nidra practice and was able to get some of that rest that my body was craving.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: You also may notice a desire to reset or to start something new, perhaps.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this new moon in particular is much like a super new moon.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so there may be an even more amplified desire to reset or to start something new.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny, I noticed it in my husband this morning waking up.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: He went into the kitchen and started taking care of dishes and cleaning up the kitchen.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And his exact words were, I need a reset.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's funny how even when people aren't tracking these things intentionally, they are still affecting us and influencing the choices that we're making.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: I had a wonderful idea that I will probably pursue in the next month or so.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And my husband and I began speaking about um just where we want to take our life's journey and just having some conversation about ideas and things that we hadn't considered before.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is a time to slow down and to reflect and to maybe even call in or sense into a vision for our life.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if a vision for your life sounds really big, because it might, you can also call in a vision for this next cycle.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: What are you wanting to create this cycle?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Where is your creative energy leading you?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: What does your heart truly desire?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: These are all wonderful questions to explore during the new moon phase.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: To support you with this process, I'm offering a new moon breathwork meditation on Insight Timer.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I will leave the link for that in the show notes.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is also a time where you might feel the need to let things die off.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you think of how nature responds to the season of winter, all of the leaves fall off of the trees, those trees go down to the ground, and those leaves begin to slowly deteriorate and get broken down and reabsorbed by the earth's soil.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: This sort of composting process is something that you might notice or something that you might want to explore yourself, especially if you are a bleeding body, or rather a menstruating body.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: As we menstruate, we are literally shedding the old uterine lining, and this is a very physical thing, yes.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a sort of spiritual energetic accompaniment to that process as well.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll probably go deeper into that on another cycle check-in as we get a little bit further down the road of our weekly cycle check-in journey.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing to do during this time is to restore your energy.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: When we allow ourselves to rest and to reflect and to slow down during this time of the cycle, we allow our energy to restore itself in a way that can really benefit us as we get further along in the cycle.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: I find for me, if I really allowed myself time to rest during my bleeding time, that I generally have a little bit more energy in my inner spring phase, in my ovulation phase.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as I'm saying that, I'm reflecting on my last bleed, and I did get a lot of rest, and I also did go out and socialize a bit too.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's something for me to maybe recalibrate a bit in my next bleed because this is the opportunity that's being offered to us, is this beautiful opportunity to rest and to allow our energy to restore itself.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: As we start a new cycle, we are coming into the second half of Venus retrograde.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And for the past cycle, we've been exploring these Venetian themes of reevaluating our relationships, relationships to ourselves, relationships to others, maybe to our children or to the children in our lives.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've also talked a bit about reparenting ourselves.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to continue working with these Venetian themes over the next cycle, this cycle that we're starting today, because we still have a few more weeks left of the Venus retrograde.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we will also go into a Venus retrograde shadow, and we'll talk about that a little bit more when it comes.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: We will be shifting our focus just a little bit with this cycle, though.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: We will be exploring a bit more of the other Venetian themes, such as reproductive health, ancient and indigenous wisdom, and diving deeper, excuse me, diving deeper into cyclical wisdom.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so in this week's solo episode, I'll be starting off this conversation with a topic very near and dear and close to my heart.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I also am very excited to bring you some very special guests this cycle.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't wait to share their wisdom with you.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had such a wonderful experience and have been having an incredible experience recording all of the guest episodes over the last couple of weeks.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I just can't wait for you to hear what we've got in store for you.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: So tune in with us on Wednesday to explore this second half of the Venus retrograde, and we'll keep checking in as the weeks go by and continue to have these conversations that can hopefully support your healing process and journey in some way.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: If there is a friend or a loved one in your life who has been curious about the menstrual cycle or the moon cycles, or how to work with a rhythm or a cycle, if you have women in your life who are wanting to reconnect with their femininity and are wanting to live their lives in a way that really honors their unique rhythm, I would invite you to share this episode with that friend and to perhaps plant a seed for them during this new moon time.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because this can also be a time where we begin to plant new seeds for new beginnings and for new chapters.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this eclipse cycle is really the start of a major new chapter.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for tuning in today and for being here today.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: As always, such an honor to share this cyclical feminine wisdom with you.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: I look forward to connecting with you in our next episode.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, take care of yourself and take care of each other.