Latest / Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul / Moon Phases & Feminine Power | Your Weekly Cycle Sync | The Most Overlooked Phase of the Cycle (And Why It Matters)

Transcript

Moon Phases & Feminine Power | Your Weekly Cycle Sync | The Most Overlooked Phase of the Cycle (And Why It Matters) · 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, as always, so delighted to be here with you today.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is such a joy and a privilege to have you and to share this space with you today.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are returning, welcome back.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful that you choose to spend your time with me in this way each week.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This work truly does mean so much to me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just, before I began today, took some extra time, some extra care to really connect with the heart of my work in a deep way.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so incredibly moved to know how this work is continuing to ripple out as I've been receiving feedback from so many of you.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you locally here where I live in Sacramento.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as this work continues to expand, I trust that it will continue to reach women outside of Sacramento as well.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to say thank you for being here.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for walking this path with me.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for trusting me to be a guide for you in this work.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that this work, as it continues to ripple out, will truly impact the women who have yet to come for our future daughters, for those of us who choose to have them, for our daughters' daughters, for our sisters' daughters, for our sisters' sisters' daughters.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I really hold great hope for a world in which there is a deep value of women, of feminine values, and may that world create opportunities for women to be more empowered, to be more connected to their bodies, to their agency, to their truth.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I really look forward, really look forward to that world, even though I will likely not be here to see the full impact of it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: This week we are tuning to the energy of the waning moon.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as we continue to move through airy season, I've been creating more space for the things that truly fire me up.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: The things that activate that inner warrior within me.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The part that wants to stand for what is right for what is true.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do, let's come into a moment of stillness, a moment of silence.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in this moment, in this minute, you are invited to come into a place of more presence with yourself, whatever that may look like for you today, whether you're working or if you got something going on in the background, or you're driving, or doing some chores, seeing if you can slow down, even if it's just one or two percent.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe if you're doing two things, can you just do one for a moment?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you're driving or doing something with your hands, can you bring more awareness into the sensation of your hands either on the steering wheel or your hands making contact with whatever you might be touching?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're sitting, noticing the parts of the body that are touching the chair.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe we could just take a couple of breaths here together, breathing in through the nose, and maybe audibly sighing out through the mouth.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Inhaling through the nose.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Audible sigh out through the mouth.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And after this third one, here we'll go into our minute of silence, breathing in, and audibly sighing out through the mouth.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am today cycle day fourteen, and I've been using my Mira app for the past few weeks, and I'm starting to get well, two weeks.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's been two weeks I've been using it because I'm cycle day fourteen and I started using it on cycle day one.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm starting to get almost half of the picture of my menstrual cycle, which feels very empowering to not only understand biologically and energetically what's happening within me, but also to have data that can confirm what I'm sensing and can also clarify, which is where which is what has happened uh today when I took my test this morning and it confirmed that I ovulated yesterday.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was under the impression that my ovulation day was much later in the cycle, and that's not to say that in the past it hasn't been, it very well could have been, because ovulation day can fluctuate.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just interesting to see how much different that data was than what I was actually planning for and what I was expecting and anticipating.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really just a friendly, loving reminder how not in control I am of the intelligence that lives within me.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: We can track and we can learn and we can plan and we can prepare.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And to a degree, there always will be this wild nature that is going to do what it does in its own right time and way, and it makes perfect sense, although it may not be something that our minds can intellectually understand, which is a perfect segue into our focus today.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are focused on the waning moon.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: When I think about the word waning, it invites in a lessening of energy, it's a decreasing, a softening, a working its way to an ending.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the phase that, in my experience, is not talked about enough.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we think about waning and things decreasing, fading, coming to a close, we're brought into a relationship with other things in our lives that we also tend to avoid.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those being trigger warning, death.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe just hearing that word, you may have felt something, a reaction, a sensation, a feeling arise within the body.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if there is a bit of contraction or discomfort here, if there's fear here, or maybe an emotion here, that's okay.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: This might be a good time to check in and discern whether this is the right time to listen to this conversation.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's not, that's okay.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're very welcome to press pause and come back when and if you feel ready to continue this conversation.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I do also really want to normalize that potential fear, discomfort, a contraction, because in many ways this is how our society has been conditioned, specifically within Western culture, where death is often hidden, avoided, or treated as something to fear rather than something to understand.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: death is not separate from life, it is a part of life.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Research in psychology and existential therapy shows that when we avoid the reality of death, it actually increases our anxiety, our control patterns, and our disconnection from meaning.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas consciously engaging with morality, what's sometimes called death awareness, it can deepen presence, clarity, and purpose.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be wondering, why are we talking about death as we are moving into spring?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't this a time of rebirth?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly why this conversation matters.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because growth does require death.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Something must end.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Something must be released.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Something must fall away.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: In order for something new to emerge, think about what's been happening in nature here in the northern hemisphere.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The trees are now starting to bud and have new life for me.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's only because of the death that occurred in the season before.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: As we have moved out of eclipse season, it's been a couple of weeks now.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: This might be a moment to reflect.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed themes of endings in your own life over the last few months?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, it's always here.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that it's something that we need to fear.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it can be a beautiful reminder of how precious and uncertain life really is.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes we can forget that.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the space between cycles, the space where something has ended, but the new beginning hasn't fully arrived yet.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just the beginning of spring, y'all.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we're still just barely getting into the season.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this space of the unknown, it can feel so uncomfortable to so many.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because it does ask us to let go of control.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds us that we aren't as certain as we maybe would like to be.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just as we resist death, we also resist slowing down.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: We resist endings.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we also resist aging, many of us.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: We try to optimize, biohack, preserve, maintain through various beauty treatments, Botox per one.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Different episode, different conversation.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: But aging, like death, is not a problem to solve.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And without it, there would be no wisdom, no death, no lived experience.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: There would be no urgency to really be here.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this week under the waning moon, the invitation is simple and not always easy.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you this week to get curious about your relationship to endings, to slowing down, to a loss of energy, to death, to aging.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are these things that you resist, something that you fight, something that you avoid?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or are these things that you explore?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or are these things that you are maybe ready to explore in a deeper way?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And not necessarily from a place of fear, but rather from a place of awareness.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because the more we can bring acceptance, the more we can bring curiosity, the more we can allow more meaning for our lives to emerge, the more whole life becomes.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because death is not separate from life, it is half of it.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when we can make space for that truth, we can really deepen, deepen in life, deeping, deepen in greater meaning.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So to support you in exploring this space, I've actually created a new meditation.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yay! I've got some plans for lots more this spring, so stay tuned for that.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you are unfamiliar with Insight Timer, it's a free meditation app.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the number one meditation app.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great app.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I use it myself.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: I use the free version, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I do have lots of free meditations.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I will likely be creating some more primary um uh meditations here in the coming months, and I'll still be offering lots of free ones as well.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you're very welcome to download the app and follow me over there on Insight Timer.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And once you'll get there, you see that all you will see that I have uh a new meditation.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a guided imaginative journey to meet your inner crone.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: The crone is the wise woman, the one who has lived, the one who has experienced loss, change, endings, and has gained wisdom because of it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in a culture that often devalues aging, that fears the unknown, that avoids death, we can lose access to this deep lived inner wisdom that lives within.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: So this practice is here to help you connect with it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: This meditation is also a little preview of something I'll be creating this spring: a series of four imaginative journeys, each one connected to a different phase of the cycle, designed to help you access the wisdom of your body in a deeper, more embodied way.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So for now, this is your entry point, a place to begin.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll find the meditation linked for you in the show notes.