Understanding my infradian rhythm and adding in into my schedule is an ongoing project. One that’s affected my life profoundly so far and I feel may be the missing piece underlying so many of the underlying health and wellbeing issues I have been experiencing that led me to start this blog in the first place. It seems right to talk about my journey here. I’m now in my menstrual phase which is an ideal time for reflection: cue post about my previous phase, the luteal phase. Tears included.
I’m no expert so I talk very generally and expect my understanding to develop over the time. I certainly haven’t got any of this down to a t yet. But a little explanation may go a long way if you’ve no idea yet about this yet so I’ll include my understanding to date. Luteal is the phase between ovulating (social queen, sex goddess, creatively overflowing, energy powerhouse) and your menstrual phase (time alone, napping, nourishing, reflecting, honouring the slow). This is a long phase, up to two weeks, during which hormones that impact your cycle are generally decreasing (with a little boost of oestrogen and progesterone part way through, but still lower than when you’re ovulating), and with that so are your energy levels, and what activities you excel at changes.
I’m a few months in to this project now, so I’ve started to schedule my social life, exercise and to some extent my diet to optimise my hormone balance in each phase. I started just with exercise and its grown from there. I think gradual is key.
Exercise
Slower strength work is said to be queen here (see @riannakate on insta who absolutely bosses exercising in line with her cycle). I love to run so this doesn’t come naturally to me. Over the coming months I may try to incorporate some kettlebells or the odd strength class into this phase, but with the sunshine I haven’t been able to resist being out in the fells. Having done a 10k race at the start of this phase, I planned to taper off the intensity but was surprised when I felt energised enough to do a (small) fell run just three days before my period started, but looking at the hormone graphs in In the Flo (now my bible) this might have been the day of my oestrogen/ progesterone boost! Since then, exercise has consisted of very slow jogs which mostly turned into walks, and taking rest days from running.
Diet
I put a few veggies in my trolley last week that are said to be good for this phase, and I’ve been adding millet to my porridge occasionally, enjoying pears and apples instead of bananas and trying (not that successfully) to reduce caffeine intake. I’ve had less raw veg salads at lunch, replacing them with left over cooked food like roasted potatoes and veggies. I think the main goal here is to help my body metabolise oestrogen efficiently, but I haven’t paid this element lots of attention yet. There’s definitely lots more I can do diet-wise.
Work
I put this in even though I’m not focussing on my cycle at work, because I’ve still been aware of changes in what I’m good at. From the ovulatory phase, through luteal to the menstrual phase, our brain’s strengths move from creative, energy-abundant brainstorming sessions, to an eye for detail and getting shit finished, and onto reflecting and taking a step back from the action. I really noticed my luteal focus during this last week at work, working methodically through my to do list, getting things done and getting the details right.
Social
This is where shit hit the fan for me a bit this month. I’m not gonna lie. A relatively empty week spanned ahead of me which I thought would be good as my energy levels decrease, allowing room for spontaneous plans if I felt like it. Only those plans didn’t happen. Some of it was out of my control, but also when I thought about arranging activities, things it just didn’t feel right, so I didn’t make them in an attempt to honour my intuition. Then what happened was my brain took hold and started making me feel like I didn’t have enough hobbies, enough friends or enough in my life. Combine this with my shared house being bustling and noisy with housemates’ guests all week, I thought I might cry (I did). I was irritable and felt totally out of alignment and flat for a few days. And then my period started a few days earlier than I expected which explained a lot. I’d like to get to the point where I don’t feel totally out of alignment, but it offered some comfort as I could understand why this was happening to me so intensely at the time.
Part of how I was feeling was due to my hormone levels bottoming out. So my body was asking me to slow down, yet with everything opening back up in the UK, half term meaning the lakes is jam packed with people with jam packed schedules, my social media streaming with people out socialising in the sunshine, my head felt like I should be in action mode. Cue the discomfort and lack I felt as my head, stuck in comparison to other people’s lives and wanting to be busy, tussled with my body who wanted to slow down. Fortunately I think the universe was looking out for me by giving me an empty week, because once I accepted that I was a few days ahead in my cycle to what I thought, suddenly I gave myself permission to be alone and relax and I had an empty calendar to do so. I remembered how much I enjoy it and thrive from time alone, the last few weeks of plans had just erased all that from my memory.
Lesson? Your body always knows. More often than not, your mind does not.
Life changing
Learning about my cyclical nature is changing my life before my eyes. I’m tapping in to my feminine nature and my infradian rhythm, which I’d largely ignored as an inconvenience rather than totally awe-inspiring, due to the masculine way our society operates. I’m restraining here from a feminist rant, but I will point out that WordPress has currently red underlined “infradian” as it mustn’t think its a word. I can confirm, it is in fact a word. And one we should all add to our dictionaries and our calendars because adding this rhythm to our calendar as well as the circadian rhythm (note: circadian not red underlined) will allow us to feel more energised, more connected and more joy throughout our cycle. The power is in the knowledge.
Let me know if you enjoyed and I might do a few more documenting posts like this, talking about what I’ve noticed and changes I make to sync with my cycle.
My favourite resources so far are @riannakate and @thefemalemethod on Instagram, In the Flo by Alisa Vitti, and my own body.
oaklake.uk 