In the inner summer of the cycle (the ovulation or or full moon phase), life can tend to feel more simple. You may find yourself feeling more robust, you may have more energy and therefore feel more buffered, which tends to make you feel more resilient, strong and capable.
This all means that you can live the life that this culture deems to be "normal". Your awareness of your own needs tends to be quieter in this cycle phase, so it's much easier to put yourself aside and go above and beyond for others.
(Women especially are celebrated for this kind of inner summer power; giving, multitasking, caretaking. And, for a time, this is all good – we do need useful, conflict-free time in the cycle, where we're in the groove and have built up reserves!)
But then bam, around day 19 or 20 (or whenever you feel your inner ‘leaves’ starting to turn), the inner autumn enters the scene, reminding us that we can’t be all things to all people all the time. It's simply not sustainable, personally or collectively.
This is why the crossover into autumn can feel like a slap in the face, a wobble or feeling like you've hit a wall.
Today we want to honour and dignify what is going on with this inner autumn ‘gear change’, and how it is evolving us individually and within the culture at large.
We Feel Ourselves
In inner autumn, our internal life becomes illuminated - more of us comes ‘online’. We become aware of the parts of ourselves that we haven't been tending to, particularly the parts that have been too difficult to face, or too hard to listen to.
We See Ourselves
A new kind of embodied intelligence and insight becomes available to us, a sense of knowing, without knowing how. It's animal in nature, like we are tracking something with our instincts. An inner compass can be activated that knows who we are, what we're about and what we're for.
As an Italian woman said in one of our workshops "I know without knowing what I know".
(This can help make sense of painful premenstrual symptoms - something is calling from deep within us for our attention. The less we acknowledge the knowings, the louder the messages get, and they can be so darn uncompromising.)
We Re-Sensitise Ourselves
We believe the core purpose of the premenstrum is to bring us into contact with our vulnerability. It re-sensitises us and calls us home to our humanness. We recover more of ourselves, and in doing so our hearts open more to the world.
(As I’m sure you’ve noticed - this level of sensitivity can feel incredibly challenging, which is why we’re offering this recontextualisation and honouring. If you find yourself bursting into tears on day 24, or feeling easily overwhelmed, or like you can't tolerate the same amount of noise or little things upset you, do not shame yourself. And do not diminish what you're experiencing. This sensitivity is restoring you to your connection to the world and to life.)
We Understand Ourselves (and our responsibility in the world)
The second half of the cycle wakes us up to the fact that we are more than our little old selves. We connect to the world around us in a different way, and to our responsibility to it (this has the great benefit of ensuring that we don't become narcissistic sh*ts!).
Would You Like Support in Your Inner Autumn?
If inner autumn is a hot spot in the cycle for you, or your inner autumn challenges are amplifying in your 40s, we invite you to join us for our upcoming live round of Cycle Power.
You’ll be guided to honour and dignify your premenstrual rage, tenderness, frustration and grief, so that little by little you can feel more rooted into yourself and skilled in how to wield your power wisely.
Find out more about Cycle Power here (doors open soon).
We’re also hosting a free intro event on April 1st called How to Awaken Your Cycle Power - and you can register to join us here.
