Tea Time with Jo|Cyclical Living

I’m going to get straight to it on this one….

Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot expect that what worked for your body in your 20s is going to work for your body in your 30s. Similarly, you can’t expect for what worked in your 30s, to work in your 40s. For the ladies…you cannot expect what worked when you were in your menstruating years to work in your menopausal years. 

Why am I saying this?

The age range of my patients spans the womb continuum. I may see young ladies who have just started menstruating as well as ladies all the way at the other end of the continuum who haven’t had a menstrual cycle in years. I also see everyone in between, including those who have had partial or total hysterectomies. 

The vast majority of these ladies are coming to see me to address hormone related issues, whether it be menstrual pain, fertility concerns, hot flashes, etc. The single, most common denominator in all of them is that they live out of alignment with their cyclical nature. 

If, as a teenager, you participated in competitive sports, chances are you were burning the wick at both ends before you graduated high school. Especially if you were trying to make an impressive application for colleges/universities. 

If you pursued a career and climbed the corporate ladder, chances are you were feeling the pressures to outperform your colleagues. Possibly even more so if you were in a male dominated industry. 

If you became a mother, chances are you had to balance work life with home life, often feeling overwhelmed. Most moms often are responsible for handling the majority of household matters despite also having a job outside of the house. 

In each of these stages, women are often prioritizing others and not themselves. It could be their teammates, the company they work for or their children. This is without even taking into consideration the societal pressure to look a certain way. 

Doesn’t that already sound stressful? 

With all of that going on in the foreground of life, how do most women feel when, on top of everything they have going on, they start menstruating? 

Commercials for menstrual pads have us believing that we can continue our lives as usual if we get a product that can handle all of our bleeding. Tampon companies go even further by insinuating that you don’t even have to see your blood to begin with. “Anything you can do, you can do while bleeding”, the ads promote. Feeling some cramps, headache or back ache? No worries, they have painkillers marketed specifically to women to handle these cycle related complaints. 

Are your menstrual bleeds painful, excessively heavy or irregular? “No worries” the doctors say. “Birth control can solve your problems; you don’t even need a period unless you want to have kids” they add. 

So we spend decades suppressing dysfunctional bleeds and doing our best to live as if periods don’t exist. We make zero adjustments to our lifestyles whenever that time of the month comes around. We continue our workouts, we meet the deadlines, we under-sleep and under-nourish ourselves; and then we ask why?

Why am I struggling to conceive? Why am I gaining this weight? Why are my bleeds so heavy? Why am I so tired? Why is my hair falling out? Why can’t I stop these hot flashes? Etc. 

The oversimplified answer is: because you are a cyclical being and you were lied to about how important it really is to honor those cycles. This goes for men too!

Women have menstrual cycles. Menstrual cycles have phases (4 of them), each with their own unique needs and attributes. Interplaying with those phases is the Circadian Rhythm. On top of that, according to Chinese medicine, women also have 7 year cycles in which major allocation of our essence takes place. These are called Cycles of Jing. 

Men have the Circadian Rhythm as well, and 8 year Cycles of Jing. Their bodies undergo major allocation of essence a little more spread out than women do. 

Even once menstruation ends and reproductive years have passed, we are still part of nature; and nature also moves in cycles. We have seasons and we have phases of the moon. 

How much of this do you take into account when planning your meals or your workouts? Are you allowing your body to rest when it is bleeding? Are you adjusting your meals to make sure you have enough nourishment for each different phase/season? 

How conscious are you in slowing down and taking account of what feels good in your body and what doesn’t? Or are you just running on auto-pilot: waking up, following the same routine, going to sleep, wake up, repeat? 

Optimizing your health gets much more manageable when you live your life cyclically. When you understand that there is a natural ebb and flow to life that you are not meant to fight, but rather dance with. 

I’m looking to start hosting virtual workshops this year and I’m starting things off from the basics: Menstrual Re-education. 

I’m teaching anyone who is interested in learning all about the phases of the menstrual cycle, how to properly track menstruation and ovulation, why apps don’t do the best job at this, how to honor your body’s cycle for more peaceful bleeds and more. Future workshop topics include Breast Self Care, Pelvic Hydrotherapy and all things Peri-menopause and Menopause. If you are interested in attending one of these workshops, you can check out my Events Calendar  to see if any are scheduled. You can also sign up for my newsletter and I’ll keep you updated right in your inbox. 



If you want to read more about the Cycles of Jing (Essence), I wrote about these a bit more in this blog post. 

If you are a man, I highly encourage you to get acquainted with these cycles. Having this understanding makes you a more conscious father, husband and employer. Women make up 1/2 of the population, wouldn’t you like to understand them better? Have better tools to support your daughter or wife? Be more compassionate to the women on your team at work? Don’t worry, I have a workshop specifically in the works for men too, I just need y’all to show up! For yourselves, your families and your communities. 

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, LOL! Catch you in the next post :)