Latest / Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul / Moon Phases & Feminine Power: Your Weekly Cycle Sync | The Waning Moon & the Art of Letting Go (Without Forcing It)

Transcript

Moon Phases & Feminine Power: Your Weekly Cycle Sync | The Waning Moon & the Art of Letting Go (Without Forcing It) · Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul

• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Healing Her Story Podcast.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Riva Jean-Paul, and I am so delighted to be here with you today on another Monday, at least the day the episode is airing.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am so honored and so grateful to have you in this space, to invite you into this community and to help you remember the feminine wisdom that I believe already lives within you.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: If this is not your first time here, if you are returning, welcome back.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I truly do not take your time and your energy and your focus for granted.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many choices that we have in this DNA, things we could be streaming, watching, consuming, reading.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels very special that you chose this as part of your day today, and maybe as part of your week.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I do hope, as we're kind of reaching the end of our first season here, that these episodes have been supportive for you.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I first began working with my menstrual cycle and the moon, and I had so much curiosity and I did so much research on the different phases, and eventually, of course, Mommy brought me back to menstrual cycle awareness.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really creating these episodes as something that I wish I would have had during that process.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been so lovely to have a space where I could drop in every week to really attune to this cyclical wisdom, this seasonal lunar wisdom, this feminine wisdom.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do hope that that's what this has been for you as we're reaching a little over a year now.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our one-year anniversary on the show was, I believe it was the 29th of January.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as we slowly approach the lunar new year coming up in just a couple of weeks here, it felt like a wonderful time to close out this first year, a little over a year, and to create space for season two.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really looking forward to that.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the weeks to come, you can consider this the very last episode of season one.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly enough, it's right on time, as always, y'all, with this week's lunar rhythm as well, which we'll explore here in a moment.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Before we begin, I do want to invite you into a place of presence, even if it's just a little bit more presence than maybe where you started before you pressed play.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that means stopping what you're doing and taking a moment to just be still.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's just bringing more awareness to your senses, being aware of things that you are hearing in the background, things that you might be smelling, things that you might be feeling.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when we tap into our senses, this can help bring us into the present moment.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as you come more into this present moment, noticing what's here, noticing what you're coming to this time with, especially as we've just had a very intense full moon.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really talk about astrology too much in these episodes, and it is something that I track.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that there's a lot happening with yader planets moving into Aries over this month, and we've got a Mercury retrograde coming up at the end of this month.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've also got an eclipse happening with the lunar new year, which means it's also a new moon.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there's just a lot, right?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Astrologically in the cosmos and also just collectively, too.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know I can really feel and sense these old systems and ways of being collapsing, crumbling.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I can experience this within myself and also within the world.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to witness.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, we, you know, we might be feeling a lot.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so just giving yourself a moment here to pause and check in and notice how you're doing, notice how you're feeling, noticing what you're experiencing here in this place and time.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as you tune in, perhaps you may want to sense where you might be in your unique rhythm, sensing whether you're more in a winter, more of a spring, or maybe more of a summer or a fall.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you some time to do that now.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our one minute will begin.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've listened to this episode earlier in the day and have maybe come back to the video to find that there is now audio to the second half of the episode, uh, welcome back.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually re-recording the second half of this episode because when I went to tune in this morning, as something I always do just to ensure that the messages that I'm sharing are coming across in a way that um truly lands for people.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I discovered that after our minute of silence, I forgot to turn off the mute button.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of trust in the timing and all of that to say that my cycle check-in today will be um a little bit different.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It won't be exactly where I was when I first recorded the first half.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually a little bit later in the cycle now.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am cycle day 29 today.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And my bleed will be arriving any minute now.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've had the fortune, uh, it's been fortunate today to have a bit more space to really prepare myself to rest and to slowly start um kind of preparing not just my body, but my mind too, because something that I've been really working on since the year has started is this tendency to cause more stress than is really necessary.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that sometimes I think shows up at this end of the cycle where I'm maybe still carrying a lot of that go, go, go, do, do, do more masculine energy as I'm transitioning into this more feminine, receptive being energy.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been, like I said, really grateful for the sector space today to really support myself through that process so that I can ease more into that receptive, that more being energy in the coming days.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, cycle check-in will be a little shorter today because, like I said, I mostly wanted to get you uh this week's lunar rhythm.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go ahead and dive in.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: This week we're tuning to the energy of the waning moon and more specifically the last quarter moon, sometimes also called the third quarter moon.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very brief moment in the lunar cycle, and because of that, I don't always speak to it unless the timing is just right.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this week it just so happened to land perfectly, at least that the day the episode is airing.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited to explore this particular phase with you today.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you've spent any time learning about moon cycles, you've probably heard that the full moon is a time for release.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And while that's not wrong, I tend to experience the full moon more as a time as, uh, or a time of, excuse me, of expression.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that release is more about releasing through expression.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've also come to experience this as a time of culmination and a moment where things really begin to come into focus.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we explored that in our episode last week.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're shifting into this waning moon, to me, true letting go belongs more in this particular phase, especially with this last quarter phase.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think about this in seasonal terms.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: The full moon is a summer energy.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're maybe socializing more, traveling more, going on adventures, there's more movement happening, there's more of this outward expression of life in general.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: While the waning moon is more associated with the season of autumn, and autumn is where things begin to fall away.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Think of a tree in the fall.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: The leaves don't just drop the moment the season changes.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: First, they shift color, and we can visibly see that with our eyes.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And only when the timing is just right do the leaves finally let go and return to the earth.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the energy we're in right now.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is the exhale of the cycle.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And from a nervous system perspective, this makes a lot of sense.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Research on stress and emotional processing shows that the body doesn't release through force or urgency.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've tried this and experienced how much this does not work.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it releases when there is enough safety in the body.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in the mind as well.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Without the need to fix it, rush it, or make it go away, which I know is much easier said than done for many of us.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're feeling tender right now, if last week stirred a lot for you, this is where I really want to invite you into self-compassion.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because something I see often, something that I used to experience a lot myself, and something that I see a lot in my work with my clients is that when we notice something isn't wrong for us, we then get upset for ourselves for having the problem in the first place.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now there are two problems.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Research on self-compassion shows that when we meet ourselves with kindness rather than self-criticism, the nervous system settles and emotional processing becomes easier, and we begin to create this place of safety that is required for our bodies to truly let go in their own right time and way.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Gentleness, it's not avoiding, it's actually what allows change to happen.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're realizing that a certain way of being, a habit or a relationship no longer fits.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this realization isn't a failure.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's good information.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we can look at it in that way, we can maintain this place of neutrality.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: We can stay in this place of the observer.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when judgment enters, when we add pressure to be different, to move faster, or to get it right, we create so much more friction than is necessary, especially in a phase that's already asking for release.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: What would it feel like to soften even just a little bit right now?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: As I was sharing earlier, I've been noticing this in myself, how much stress I create through the stories I tell, the urgency I place on things, the pressure to hold it all together, even as I was getting ready to re-record this episode today, the rush to, oh, oh, okay, I gotta hurry up and fix it because I fucked up.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I've consciously made a quiet yet powerful decision to stop doing this to myself, or at least being more aware of it and to catch myself when I do do that from a place of love and compassion, because I've done the deep work to really understand where these patterns come from, and I can see how innocent they are, and I can see how many of them were never even mine to begin with, but rather things that were placed upon me by society.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: As we release what no longer fits lovingly and gently, we don't need to also punish ourselves for having carried it in the first place, because I would say all of the time we are doing these things in order to keep ourselves safe.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are doing these things to protect ourselves.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And while they may not be functional anymore, they were functional at one point.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so through this more gentle approach, we begin to just simply make room.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what this particular phase of the moon is offering us.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're really feeling this energy right now and would like some support moving through it, I've shared a few gentle donation-based, trauma-informed, somatic meditations on Insight Timer this week that are designed to help you slow down, to soften some of that pressure, and to support your nervous system through this waning phase.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the links in the show notes, and you're welcome to choose one that feels right and most supportive for where you are right now.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this week there's nothing you need to force.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe just a gentle and loving invitation to be with yourself and to allow and support the natural exhale.