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I Teach Cyclical Living… So, Why Did I Lose My Period? · The Good Girl Rebellion

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have lost my period.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm supposed to be a menstrual cycle educator.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm supposed to be able to help women live in alignment with their cyclical nature.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: To embrace what it means to be a cyclical being, to live in divine connection to your inner seasons, to embrace the beauty of your cycle, to embrace the sacredness of your bleed.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I've lost it.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've lost all of it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Good Girl Rebellion Podcast.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Izzy, the founder of Cyclica, and I'm so glad to have you here on another episode.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Good Girl Rebellion is all about reclaiming your rhythm in mind, body, and spirit.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Each week we are unraveling years of conditioning to reclaim our wild, rebellious, and intuitive truth.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready to reclaim your power, reconnect with your wildest self and rise as the woman you were never taught to be, you are in the right place.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the rebellion.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm supposed to be a mental cycle educator and I've lost my period.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: This has just mind fucked me, like and truly mind fucked me.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: To give you a bit of background about my birth control, hormonal birth control, non-hormonal birth control journey.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the pill from about age 14.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the pill for, oh, I would say about eight years.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I then went back and forth between the pill and the implant.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: The implant was horrible.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just basically bled for six months that I had it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I decided that I didn't like the pill and I wanted to go on the coil.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to get the coil, the hormonal core, because I was told that having the coil meant that my hormones were going to be concentrated in one area in my uterus.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Which I know now is just absolute fucking rubbish because your hormones circulate throughout your bloodstream, so they go throughout your whole body.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're not concentrated in one area.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I had the hormonal IUD, the coil, but it gave me recurrent thrush every single month.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I got that taken out and I wanted no hormonal control.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I got the copper IUD, the copper coil, which was, oh my fucking god, horrific.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, having the coil is a horrific experience as it is.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: All the other women out there who have had the coil put in with no anesthetic, they just shove it in, will understand.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is a pain like I have never felt it before.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I had the copper coil, had that in for three years, and I started to get the most excruciating ovulation pain, which is not normal.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it was actually I went and joined a workshop in Kopenyang in Thailand with my teacher now, Jamie, who is Cyclical Living for Women on Instagram.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was my menstrual cycle educator teacher.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: She taught me to do what I'm doing now.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I sat in a class with her, my very first like step into this world, and I asked her, is that normal?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, It's not normal.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Go and I would recommend going, getting checked.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I went home and I went to the doctors and they did ultrasounds and they were like, Oh, you have adenomiosis.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've said that wrong, but it's basically where your uterine lining grows into the wall of your uterus, which I instantly was like, that's from the coil.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is from the coil.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The coil, the copper coil keeps you infertile because it creates such a hostile environment within your uterus that a baby like just could not grow.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: The copper also kills the sperm, but it's toxic.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: That level of copper in your body is toxic.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's creating a toxic environment, which means you're not going to have implantation because it's such a such a hostile environment that it's just not gonna happen.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I got the copper coil taken out because I knew I just had this voice inside my mind that my adiosis had come from that.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I had the copper coil taken out, and 18 months on I've lost my period.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: My periods came back fine.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have had regular cycles throughout my whole life.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, throughout my whole life.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've had regular cycles in the 18 months since I've been on no form of birth control.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had an issue with my cycles, like it's always been absolutely fine.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, I've had a 28 to 32-day cycle, normal bleed, and I have loved being licyclical being.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love my favorite season of my cycle is menstruation, is being on my bleed because it makes me feel like this witchy, intuitive, empowered badass.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't really know how else to put it.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes me feel like an incredibly powerful witchy woman, and I just fucking love it.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my last bleed was January 9th.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had a normal cycle, and I haven't ovulated since.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I ovulated just before New Year's Eve and it just dropped off of a cliff.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, just to make sure everything was fine, I went to the doctors and I got full blood work done.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: They tested all my thyroids, everything like that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: That everything they covered, no abnormalities.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went and had an ultrasound because they were concerned that it might be PCOS.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, when you have things like this and you've never had any form of a regular cycle before, you start to spiral.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, oh gosh, what if something is seriously wrong?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But went and had an ultrasound, everything was absolutely fine.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: My adenomiosis is now gone, which the doctor told me wasn't going to be possible because adeniosis is something that you have for life.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And a little voice inside my mind was like, no, no, that was caused from the copper coil.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was because it's now gone.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So she was like, No, your womb, your uterus, your ovaries, everything looked absolutely fine.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everything looks really healthy.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are, back at square one.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've gone through all the potential, what it could be, is there something seriously wrong with me?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we've come back to no, it's environmental factors, most likely.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's been a journey.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a real journey.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, in reflection, I came back to the UK in December.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, right, I'm gonna be here for Christmas, and then I'll be here until like my birthday, which was in April, and then I will head to Australia.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it got to the point where when you come back, somebody said this to me recently, and it's so true.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Being in the UK in December is like not living in the real world.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's like almost you're living in like a daydream state where everybody's getting ready for Christmas, nothing really feels real.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's having Christmas parties at work, some people, their work is like wrapping up for the Christmas break and the Christmas shutdown.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't really feel like real life.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So coming back from living in Indonesia for eight months to this kind of Christmas whirlwind was really quite fantastic.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then Christmas hit and New Year's hit, and I got this like slap in the face, shit.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do now?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I can now see that I just put my life under a microscope in every way, shape, and form.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just grabbed hold of everything I could and tried to control every aspect of my life and myself that I could because I feel so out of control because I have no purpose here.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have no purpose in the UK, in my opinion.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not happy here.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't thrive, I don't like it, I don't want to be here.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here for circumstance.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was here to save some money, be here with my mum for her 60th birthday, be here with my friends and family for my 30th birthday, because I know that potentially I'm going to go to Australia.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if I like it, I don't have to come home.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can stay for up to three years.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So where I've been traveling on and off, it's always been a case of, okay, when the money runs out, I come home.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in Australia, when the money comes out, I just get a job and I can stay and I can maintain a life there.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, on one hand, I can see that me losing my period is potentially a byproduct of having no set structure, no set foundations, no home, no safe space, no grounded essence and roots anywhere in the world that I feel wholly comfortable and happy with.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And also it the scrutiny of myself in every single aspect of my life and putting myself under such a magnifying glass to be perfect when perfect doesn't exist.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't exist, and it's been really hard.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been through obviously, I've not really wanted to pay too much attention to it.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've just wanted to like flow and just see if it was going to come back on its own, see if I had to make any kind of like major big changes.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I did do is I started researching obviously why you lose your period, and majority of people lose their period because of energy out versus energy in is higher.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I read that you should eat more and stop exercising.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that, and now I've just gained weight, which is not helpful.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm now on a journey to try and find a way that I can get my cycle back in a way that feels right and balanced for me.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing things like ensuring I'm keeping my nervous system regulated and keeping myself grounded, noticing if I feel overstimulated or stressed or overwhelmed and checking in with myself, making sure I protect my energy, making sure I surround myself with people who are nourishing to me, not draining, making sure I nourish my body in a way that feels right for me.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am checking in with my womb every day.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I am making sure that I sit in meditation or in silence with my womb space for five minutes minimum every day, just to check in to connect to myself, connect to my body and see what she needs, if there's anything she wants to bring to the surface, because your body is so clever.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your body can help you heal yourself if you understand how to listen to her and you understand how to allow her to guide you.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I'm trying to do.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to drop into my body and allow her to guide me.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm following my morning routine, which I've been doing for years anyway, but I usually go outside and drink a glass of water first thing in the morning and kind of say hello to the world.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I then will journal, meditate, EFT tapping, like movement, or do a little bit of a morning practice.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I usually have an hour and I do maybe 20 minutes of journaling, 20 minutes of EFT tapping or meditation, and then like 20 minutes of movement.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's like my perfect balance.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I need a little bit of each thing, and I need to switch it up.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like some days I might journal for 40 minutes, and then some days I might meditate for a half an hour or an hour.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can't.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a life path five.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So if I need a routine, but then if I have a routine that's too strict, I rebel.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I need flow with my routines.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: As long as I have a set pattern on what I'm doing, then it's fine.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also moving my body in ways that make me happy rather than working out for punishment or working out to be a certain type of way.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm moving my body in ways that make me feel happy, in ways that set my soul on fire.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than punishing myself, I'm moving in ways that nourish me and intentional rest.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, this is something.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: As an Aries, I can't like rot on the sofa.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't do it.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do nothing.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have to do things, I have to keep myself busy, but intentionally.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't just go and spend my day doing loads of mindless activity and a load of mindless stuff without intention behind it.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have to think about what I'm doing and act with intention.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of just doing what everybody else wants me to do, or rotting on the sofa or just scrolling and making sure that I'm setting time for intentional rest.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Things like a longer sravasana at the end of my yoga flow, stretching after a gym workout, a walk in nature with no distraction and nothing, time to sit on the bench at the end of my walk and just admire the view, or time to make a drink and sit outside in the sunshine with the sun on my face and just sit and be.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just time to be.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Things that I can bring into every day to just check back in with myself and bring more slowness and more calm into my life.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, there are a few of the things I'm doing, but this is a journey.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not there yet.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: My aura ring tracks my temperature, so it tracks my ovulation, and I have not yet ovulated.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So once I ovulate, we will see because ovulation is the star of the show.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Even though we call it our menstrual cycle, it's actually our ovulation cycle because without ovulation, you won't bleed.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So once I've ovulated, we know that the bleed is hopefully on its way.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, watch this space.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I am obviously doing those things that I've mentioned.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm playing around with a few other things, making sure I'm nourished, making sure I'm eating the nutrient-dense foods that my body needs, making sure that I'm not over-exerting myself, making sure I'm keeping my nervous system calm and regulated, and prioritizing happiness, prioritizing play and joyfulness, and also recognizing that I am in a major transitional point of my life where I have been in this moment at home of pause and it's been a like a moment of hibernation.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I came home for winter intentionally to hibernate, to go into this kind of inner cocoon to birth new ideas and create things.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also been a time of resistance.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't wanted to be here.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't, if it was my choice, I wouldn't be here.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would have left already.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's understanding that that resistance is probably also playing a part.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, I'm going to Australia in May.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's going to be scary, and yes, it's going to be the unknown.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But a part of me weirdly thrives in the unknown.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So watch this space and I will keep updated on my journey.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that is, yeah, a little update on me, menstrual cycle educator, that's lost their period.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sharing this because lots of you expressed an interest in knowing what's going on.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And also I know that I'm not alone in this journey.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know that so many of us experience periods of our life where we lose our cycle and we lose our anchor.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: My cycle has been my anchor and it will come back.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know it will, but it's just a journey.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure to share this with anybody you know in your life who maybe has lost their cycle, who's lost their period, who feels lost and feels alone, just so that they know that I'm here with them alongside them on this journey.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening along on Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts, make sure to follow the Good Girl Rebellion to make sure you catch all of my juicy weekly episodes.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me on another episode of the Good Girl Rebellion Podcast.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this resonated and I hope that this can help as many people as possible who have lost their period as well.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: So join me on the journey.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to follow along and yeah, I will update you as and when things happen and things change with my cycle journey.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you again so much for listening, and I will see you again on the podcast next week.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: All my love, as always.