Inner Seasons Of A Menstrual Cycle Chat

In this episode, I speak with Reenee Khanna about the four inner seasons of the menstrual cycle. You will be familiar with these four seasons if you have taken my course Yoga Following the Menstrual Cycle or seen any of my presentations on the subject. If not, this is a great introduction.

Transcript

Hello Yogi. Welcome to my podcast. I'm Aiko and on this show we explore ways to put spiritual theory into sustainable practice. So welcome Renee to my podcast. I'm very happy you're here. Thank you. Yeah, We finally made it. We're trying to have this podcast in some weeks. And yeah, Renee is a clinical herbalist and purvero of ancient wisdom and medicine. And today she will talk with us about how to work with our fluctuating energies to avoid feelings of fatigue and exhaustion during our inner autumn and how to use simple dietary changes to feel nourished and more energized throughout our menstrual cycle and what ancient medicine teaches about managing pain and PMS. But maybe before starting, Would you like to share something about yourself? How did you get here? And yeah, Of course I will put in the descriptions all the link about you if someone wants to connect with you, But please share something. Sure. So my journey really started in a different way. I used to work in corporate. I used to work in Disney. I had a great job. But I just found myself not feeling like something was off. And then slowly I started having, You know, Panic attacks and nightmares and, And all sorts of things. I used to dance, Dance is my passion. I injured my knees so I could no longer dance. And I just started to have a downward health spiral, Mentally, Emotionally and physically. And it kind of culminated after my second child was born. And he was born via emergency C-section and he was actually born with an infection that I had passed down to him. And he, He met, He went through it fine. He's, He's, You know, Thriving now and healthy. But when I came home with him, I did not, I had an infection that they couldn't identify and they just kept putting me on antibiotics. And I ended up spending nine months out of the first year of his life on antibiotics. And at the end of that, I ended up with pneumonia. And I thought, This is it. I don't want, After this pneumonia is gone, I'm not doing any more antibiotics. I'm done. Something has to change. And after that, I, You know, After the pneumonia, I kind of decided to start to take care of myself a little bit more. And I came across a practitioner who used herbs, Chinese medicine and acupuncture. And I said, I just want to clear this pneumonia out of my system. And I want to clear the infection out of my system. But when we started working together, It was a whole different thing that ended up happening. She, She fixed my knees and I started dancing again. And then I decided that, You know, I had to, I left my career to be a stay at home mom. And I decided that that was not working for me. It was not, It was really draining me mentally. And so I decided to go back to work. And as I went back to work, As I started to do things for myself, I realized that health is connected. Our mental, Emotional wellbeing affects our physical wellbeing. And so I made more changes in my life. I was in a toxic relationship. I decided I had to leave. I had to be myself and find my alignment. And for me, That was entailed one restarting dance and I started my own dance school. So now I can dance eight hours a week. Meanwhile, You know, Doctors had told me to give it up because there was no cure and there was nothing that they could do for me. And now here I am. But herbalism, I decided to go back to school. I stopped working my job. I went back to school because it was something that was in my blood. Like, You know you know, My background is Indian. So we had learned IRV that growing up, We were always making herbal remedies around the house whenever anything happened. So I turned to that and I started studying herbalism at Western herbalism and I started bringing in Eastern principles. I knew a lot about IRV that I started bringing that into my herbal practice as a herbalist. And then I came across this wisdom of moon cycles and I was blown away because you know, No matter what you do for your health, You do your physical, Your mental, Everything I was doing, It was helping. I was a yogi. It was all helping, But something still felt off. And when I learned about our cycle, I was like, Oh, There's a way to apply all of this to me specifically as a woman, Which is so different. Exactly. Because yeah, There is no formula that works for everyone. We are so different from each other and yeah, Like you had your experience and your knee problem and this and that, And also time and circumstances are different. So we have to adapt the teaching to us. We do. And to women, Especially, Because then what I started doing with my clients who were women was I was like, Okay, What if we change your herbal remedy for each phase of your cycle? Because then your body is reacting differently in every phase of your cycle with your remedy. Then I went into diet and I went to other things and I realized that, Wow, If we really start to live by our cycle, Everything changes. Everything we do affects us differently in every phase of our cycle. And then I went on a mission. I was like, Okay, I shut down my clinic and I said, My aim is now to make sure that women around the world are aware on how to live by their cycle. What does that even mean? And so I went down that road. That's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. It's super nice to see that really, Because this is also what I'm trying to teach. And when someone gets that knowledge and start really to turn their life around us, Because you have to start where you are and you are in your body. So if you don't start from there, It's not going to work. So yeah, It's very beautiful to see people like you who really leave the talk and experience that. It's very beautiful. And it's not easy. I have to say, Because we do live in a linear patriarch. This is the reality. You're expected to be consistent. And when you have these ups and downs, So many women say ups and downs. I'm like, These are not ups and downs. You're just a cyclical creature. You don't say that mother nature or the earth is having a down when she's having winter. You just, She's having winter. That's it. There's no, You're not grading it as up or down high or low. But when you come to accept that, Hey, Like I'm cyclical, But I live in a linear world and people expect me to be linear. There's a huge disconnect there. And the only person who can solve that disconnect is me. And so I have to first embrace my cyclical nature before I can expect anyone else to understand. Yeah, Absolutely. Thank you. So please share with us how to work with our fluctuating energies. So I'll start by saying, You know, From a scientific perspective, If you think about this, First of all, Your hormones are fluctuating throughout the month and your hormones are like the control center of your body. They control your digestion, Your sleep, Your energy, Your mood, Everything is controlled by hormones. So these are fluctuating and you are trying to not fluctuate with them. You're creating resistance. Right. And we know that wherever there's resistance, There's pain. So the first thing we want to do is understand, Okay, What are these changing energies? And I think your listeners are familiar with the inner seasons, Right? Yeah. So we have our, Our inner winter. And so what I did was I said, Okay, So if we have inner seasons in Ayurveda, We're very well aware that we should be eating seasonally, But we should also be behaving seasonally. We should also be, You know, Exercising seasonally, Everything we do, We should take into consideration the season. But what if we did that with our inner season? So, You know, Right. And this is why they always talk about rest when you have your period, Of course, Because winter is time for hibernation. It's time for rest. It's time for solitude. So it was a very simple concept that I decided that I was going to adopt was that, Okay, I'm going to do everything based on my own inner seasons. And that's what's going to dictate how I live my life and the decisions and choices I make versus what's expected of me. So we start with the winter where it's, It's like winter, You know, It's time to connect with divine. This is where we receive our seed of inspiration, So to say, Right? In the wintertime, You're hibernating, Your energy's turned inwards. That's like Mother Earth, Her energy's in the roots. It's gone inside. You're in your, You're in your crown chakra and you're moving into your root chakra when you have your period, Right? This is why they had the red tent so that you can take solitude and you can connect with divine and meditate and do all of those things. I like to fast. I like to do juice cleanse when I'm on my period. Right. And then as you come off, Then you'll have more of, More energy. You're going into your inner spring, Right? So this is where you've taken that seed, That inspiration you received from solitude and you're planting it, And you're going to start to have more stamina. You're moving from your root chakra into your sacral. This is all about creation. You're starting to take action. Things, If you think about spring, The seed is sprouting through the dark soil. Then it's taking structure and form is the stems or the trunk or the branches, Whatever you want to call it, The structure is forming, Right? So this is where you're at when you're in your inner spring. So how do you behave? How do you act during this time? You have more stamina, You take more action, You get out into the world a little bit more, Right? Less solitude, More outward focus, Right? It's the time of your masculine energy and masculine energy is all about action. It's about outward focus. It's about, It's kinetic energy. It's about doing things. And then you get into your inner summer ovulation where you're in your heat, Right? You're fully outwardly aligned. So I say you've moved from your solar plexus chakra into your heart chakra. The heart is where you connect with others. Biologically, You are looking to mate, You're ovulating. So you want to be out there. You are like a full moon, Right? Shiny, Bright. You want to be seen. So this is the time to really enjoy like what happens in the summer time. This is the time where you have lots of fruits and everything's in full bloom. Your digestive fires are strong. So eat, Enjoy, Be out there. You also have a lot of, You know, You're focused, You have your mental fires are strong too, Right? So you can process things a lot better. I always tell my clients, Like, If you've been struggling to learn or understand something or read something that you were like, I want to read that, But it's complicated. This is the time to do it because you're, You're astute, Right? You're there. And then as you come off, This is where I think a lot of women have the most trouble is you come off of ovulation and you go into your inner autumn is a time of release. You're releasing, You're, You're letting go of what no longer serves you. You planted your seed. It took form and shape. It was in full bloom in the summer, But now you're looking at it and you, Your inner critic turns on, You become emotional. If you manifest at all, You understand that emotions are your guidance system. So when you're triggered and you're angry and you're sad, It's because you're aware of something that needs to change. Right? And so we get all of this energy hitting us. We're in our throat chakra. We're trying to communicate it outwards. We're finding our truth. Really. We believe that's about projecting outwards, But really it's about turning inwards and finding our truth. So you're in your throat, You're in your third eye, You're intuitive, You're emotional. Your dreams might come alive during this time. So this is a time to really turn inwards, Take solitude, Pay attention, And be in your feminine energy, Be in that mode of receiving rather than doing of attracting and just being and prepare for hibernation. Really. Yeah. That's very nice explained. So what are your suggestions in terms of herbs and food diet? So the first thing I would really recommend anyone do is first understand your body type, Your Ayurvedic body type. And for those who don't know, There's three body types, Right? Combined of the five elements, Which is earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether. So you have the kapha body type, Which is earth and water, Pitta, Which is fire and water, And then vata, Which is air and ether. Because once you know your body type, You tend to know where you'll go off balance. And you'll tend to know where in your cycle, Those energies are stronger. So for example, In the beginning part of your cycle, Your kapha energies are stronger. And so if you have a kapha body type, This is likely where you can most, Most likely go off balance. And this is where when clients come to me, I say, This is where we want to focus your changes first. So the first thing you want to do is align in the phase of your cycle that's the same as your body type. Because normally when you have a body type when you have imbalances, Because you end up with excess of that element that you already that already dominates, Right? So once you know your body type, And you know, Okay, Where in the cycle is it most likely so pit does, For example, It's ovulation. I have many clients who are pitta body types, Who actually feel pain during ovulation. And so this is where you want to focus. So the herbs that you take are highly dependent on what's your body type? And when do you take them, You take them during that time of your cycle. So for example, Let's take the example of pitta, You want to make sure that in ovulation, You're not overheating. And this means one, Don't overwork, Make time for joy, Right? This is the heart chakra, You want to make sure that you're doing the things that feel passionate, Because if you're not passionate, You're going to become angry, And that's going to become the heat that destroys you. You want to be cooling during ovulation. So have the cooling herbs, Go for the mint, Go for the rose, Go for aloe, And then even the foods, Cooling foods, Cucumbers, Even if they're not in season, This is the kind of time where you're going to say like, Hey, Like, I really need to cool down. So making those teas taking the dried herb and making the tea out of it is a really good idea during that phase of your cycle. If you're vata, For example, You're going to feel that PMS phase of your cycle, Even more strongly, Especially with things like anxiety, You know, Gas, Bloating, All of those things can really turn up during that phase. So you want to ground. So grounding herbs are going to be like, You know, My one of my favorites is, Oh, It's escaping me right now. Milky Oats. That's my that's one of my favorite herbs for grounding, Right? So anything grounding, I like nutmeg as well is a good one for that that phase of your cycle. Anything warming as well is great for vata's anything. The way the best way to think about this is anything that in the fall when you think about herbs in the autumn, What are the herbs that come to mind your cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Clove, All of those, Those are the good ones to take during that phase of your cycle. And then same thing with kaffa. So these are times if you have excess kaffa, You want to really focus in that phase of your cycle and take those stimulating pungent herbs, Right? The only one that's coming to mind all of a sudden was wasabi for some reason, But you know, Mustard seed, Wasabi, Cayenne, Those are great. Those can be heating. So make sure you know your body type. This is where it's so important. Because if you're kaffa pitta, You want to avoid the heating and go more for just stimulating. I have a ritual. When I come off my period, And I'm in that phase of my cycle, I like to enjoy coffee during that time because it's motivating. It gets me going. It's like a, It's also signifies to your body that, Hey, Like, Or your mind, Sorry, And brings that harmony. I love rituals because it brings harmony between the mind, The body, The emotions, And the intention, Right? So here's my intention. I'm coming out of winter. I'm in spring now. And I'm setting that intention by doing this ritual. Yeah. That's very nice. And yeah, It's very, Very interesting for me, You know, Because I also teach how to do yoga following your menstrual cycle. And I follow all these Ayurvedic principles with the dosas and the herbs. Like I didn't put herbs in the course I'm selling because I'm not so knowledgeable about it, But it just makes so much sense, Like in all sense. And now I was just going to to a friend who is herbalist and also does agopuncture and yeah, And he gave me some, Some herbs and I saw how much effect they do in the body. So it's it's very powerful. Yeah. And when you start to take them at that phase in your cycle it's even more potent. So that same herb is going to affect you differently depending on where you are at in your cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Very strong. So can you tell me maybe, Can you share with us like some of the very strong changes that came in your life after you start following all these cycles knowledge and the principles? I think the one I would love to share is the biggest unexpected change was that I learned how to set boundaries for myself in my relationships. And that also changed my emotional reaction to others. And it helped me, It changed the way I saw PMS. Right. So I started to say, Okay, So starting with the boundaries, Once I understood, Hey, I'm cyclical, There's certain things that I'm not going to do. And there's certain points in my cycle, Like when I'm ovulating, I want to be giving and nurturing and I want to be out there and I want to do things for others and also receive from others. But when I'm in PMS, I need to take my solitude. And I would really schedule that in. Like if I know I'm going to be getting my period or PMSing, I'm not making social commitments, I'm not making social plans. And the more I started talking to women about this, The more, You know, Like I'm a huge advocate of community. So if you have your period, Let the women around you know so that they can take care of you. And you can do the same for them when they have theirs. Maybe they do do a carpool and somebody else drives the kids when you have your period and you drive there. Like it's little things like that, That you start to set these boundaries that are serving who you are rather than serving the needs of other people. And it sounds a little bit selfish, But at the end of the day, When you serve who you are, Then you're able to really serve humanity in the way that you were meant to show up. That's more self-love than selfishness. Yeah. Because when you have self-love, You find your purpose. And when you're in your purpose, You're serving humanity the way that you wanted to when you came here. So that was huge. That was a huge change that happened for me. And I think the other thing was the way I saw my cycle. So I started to see my cycle from this perspective of when I talked about the seasons is also manifestation. So you get your ideas when you have your period. So I started a period journal and I started writing down whatever ideas, How crazy they sounded didn't matter. These are my seeds. And I'm going to plant these seeds in this cycle. And then I started focusing that first half of my cycle on taking action. So what are the actions I need to take to bring these ideas into manifestation? And when I'm ovulating, That's when I'm seeing that full bloom, Whatever action I've taken, I'm seeing that result of that action. And when I'm PMSing, I am actually reflecting on what I have created to see how I want to improve that creation for the next cycle. And when you do that, Then you become, Then you're open to receiving the ideas, The new ideas again, When you're on your period. And when I started to see it this way, It just changed the way I felt about my PMS emotions. It changed how I dealt with people because I was like, Oh, This isn't that how I'm not angry at this person. I'm triggered by a pattern that I'm holding that isn't serving me. And I need to release because it's interfering with my process of creation or, You know, There's three buckets, Actually, There's three buckets of emotions. So you have anger, Which is, You know, Cause you're holding a pattern that's not serving you. You have sadness because you're holding a belief about yourself. That's not true, Right? This is like profound structural, It's kapha, Profound structural change needed in your belief system. And then there's, You know, The vata emotions that you feel, The anxiety, The worry, The excitement. And those are all because you're anticipating something to happen that's out of alignment from the reality that you want to create. So your emotions are literally telling you, Hey, Like, You know, People say, I'm feeling anxiety. Why are you feeling anxiety? Because you're thinking something that's true that may not actually happen. And then you want it to happen. So when you start to see your emotions, I think that was another big change. I started to see those PMS emotions differently. And instead of having mood swings, I certainly had intuitive insight. I had ideas. I had a better understanding of myself. I had an ability to release things from my childhood, Like all those childhood wounds that, You know, I was like, Okay, This is just a release process. This isn't like the end of the world. Because oftentimes PMS feels like despair and hopelessness. Right. So that was another huge change that came about from this. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing it. Yeah. Thank you. What we were saying, Like what ancient medicine teaches, Like as a teaching about managing pain in PMS. Yeah. I would say that like the biggest thing, First of all, Like what we have to look at ancient medicine is a holistic approach to health and Ayurveda itself. It's not even about medicine. It's more about balance versus imbalance. Knowing who you are, Knowing, You know, Your body type, Which is what the combination of the five elements, You know, During your conception, What is your ideal? Right. So the first premise of ancient medicine is what is the individual person's ideal health? And we call that balance. When you're in balance, You're in your ideal health. And when you move away from that, You're who you are, You have imbalance. And when you have imbalance, Then eventually that will manifest into emotional, Mental, And then physical disease. Right. So if you think about pain, I kind of see it as pain is a sign that you're out of balance. And that's all it is. And so as women, We are taught from a very young age, Your period is a curse, You have to medicate it away, You have to take birth control to regulate it. If we stopped for a second and said, Hey, Like, Maybe we're feeling this pain, Because we're out of balance, Because we're moving away from who we are. And instead of moving back towards who we are, We're trying to create this new person and this new persona and then fit into that, Which only creates more pain. So I think for me, That was the biggest thing that ancient medicine teaches us to know who we are, Align with it and stay in balance. And for women, It really came down to if you're going to be rejecting your cycle, Distancing yourself from it, Detaching from it, Seeing it as a curse, You're creating more pain for yourself. And the more the women that I worked with embraced their cycle, The less pain they had. It just it's just, You know, It's sometimes it's there's no scientific explanation here, But at the end of the day, It's like you embrace something and then you kind of the pain dissipates. Yeah. To me, It's like now I have only painless periods. Like it's incredible. Nothing. Not even, You know, Sometimes I had this kind of pressure down there. Nothing. Just nothing. It's so beautiful. Nothing. And I do too for the most part, But when I do have pain, So this is another thing I do with my clients is it's I call it decoding PMS because your PMS symptoms can immediately also tell you which one of your elements are off balance. So for example, If you're experiencing swelling, Right, You right away, You know, Okay, Kapha is off balance is excess kapha in the body. Your emotions are also telling you the same thing. If you have a lot of anger, Then okay, There's excess heat in the body, We got to cool that down. So having PMS is actually, It's not a bad thing because right away I know if I get a symptom for the most part, It's a painless period. I'm like, Oh, Okay, Maybe I need to watch what I'm eating. Maybe I need to move more. Maybe I need to move less, Whatever it is. I know right away from the PMS symptom, What it is I need to do for the next cycle, Right? This is a release, A reflection. Your whole body is reflecting and saying, Hey, Like we've got too much heat. So we're going to have to find a way to remove this because it's taking us off balance. And that's all that that pain is. Yeah. That's super beautiful. Thank you. Do you have anything else that you would like to share? Like as maybe as a help, As a suggestion or a tip for our audience today? Yeah. I think like I like to share, Because I know one of the main pains most women complain about is cramps that are coming up around the period, Especially the younger women that, You know, They're adjusting their bodies, Adjusting. You know, I would recommend like doing castor oil packs. If you can even look into some herbs. My favorites are Jamaican dogwood and cramp bar. It's called cramp bar for a reason. Obviously consult with a professional or, You know, A practitioner before taking it. But I wanted to put that out there because it is the number one question that I get asked from women is what can I do for cramps? Because at the end of the day, And this is something I tell my clients too, Is that all of what we talked about today with the mental and the emotional, It's all fine and good. But when you're in physical pain, It's very hard to get there and you have to eliminate the physical pain first because then your mind can settle and really focus and go deeper into the root of the problem. So yeah, Do what you need to do to ease the physical pain and then start delving into more of this. And I think what you teach is great for that too. Yoga, Right? I always tell my clients and there's different ways of practicing yoga for different phases of the cycle and different pains that are coming up in the body. Right? Yeah. And it's so important because for yoga practice practitioners, Like you really can't do like Avinyas, Super hard sequence in your inner summer. You will just explode. You know, Like you said before, I always teach your inner summer, Do yoga at your 75% of strength because you need to cool down. You have to, I mean, You also cannot do, But then you will have consequences, You know? So yeah, It's very important. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting you said that too, Because the biggest risk I see with the Pitta body type is burnout because there's a tendency to overwork and be workaholic. And same thing in yoga, You're going to, You have that tendency during ovulation to overwork yourself, Push yourself too hard and burnout. Yes. And you keep attracting this and in your inner autumn, When you actually have to go inward and, But you are just coming from the inner summer. So you want to push more. And then you ask yourself why I can do the same thing I was doing yesterday, You know? So it's definitely so important. Yeah, It is. I see this all the time with clients too. It's like they're in ovulation and they're making all of these commitments because they have so much energy. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. And then next week comes and they have PMS in the inner autumn and they're like, So tired. I can't keep up. What's wrong with me? What happened? And all these, You know, Excuses, I'm not eating properly, I'm not exercising, But really the truth is you just needed to slow down. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So I'm very happy about our talk. I'm really, Really glad you are here with me. And as mentioned, I will leave in the description some links about Renee, If someone wants to contact you and yeah. Do you also sell some programs, Right? Like online? Yeah, I do. So I have what I call how to stop painful periods and PMS, Where I will guide women through all of this step by step, Because it can be a lot of overwhelming, Right? Like a whole, How do I change my whole life? So I take women through that step by step. It's a 90 day program, How to really start to live according to your cycle. Thank you. So I hope to talk to you again. And yeah. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. You too. I hope this episode fulfilled its purpose of inspiring you. If you like it, Feel free to share it, Give a review or a rating, Subscribe. 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