Cycle Syncing Series, Ep 1: Why do it? What's the benefit? | Ep. 40

Have you heard about cycle syncing but aren't sure what's the point? This episode is for you. Today you'll hear about the benefits of cycle syncing and how it can enhance your experience and relationship to self.

Download my free cycle syncing guide to get more familiar with how you can incorporate this practice into your routine. CLICK HERE.

This is the first episode in a series, the "Cycle Syncing Series," which consists of the following topics:
1. Why cycle sync? What's the benefit?
2. How to prepare for cycle syncing
3. Why your hormones should be balanced before cycle syncing
4. Workshop: Mapping your cycle to sync it effectively
5. Why ovulation is important for cycle syncing

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Chapters

• 0:05 Cycle Syncing Explained With Bridget Walton
• 3:42 Understanding the Benefits of Cycle Syncing
• 14:38 Sharing the Cycle Syncing Series

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? On today's show, we are going to cover the topic of cycle syncing and why you might want to try cycle syncing. This is the first in a series that I'm doing on. You guessed it cycle syncing. So if you are somebody who is curious about it maybe your friends have talked about cycle syncing you're like okay, my ears are perked up. What does that actually mean? What do I do? How do I make this work? Why do I care about it? Then this series will be great for you. You can look forward to hearing more on this topic for the next couple of weeks here, and by the end of the series, you will know what's up, know why to consider it, how to optimize cycle syncing and really be able to benefit from all of the good things that cycle syncing can give to you. So we will get into that in just a moment here.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Before we do so, I want to say welcome, thanks for listening, thanks for spending time with me. I know you have a million other podcast options that you could listen to or other audio that you could have in your ears, so that's not lost on me. My name is Bridget and I am really excited to have you here because I care a lot about sharing with women information about how our bodies work, or people in female bodies, menstruators like how can we feel better? How can we understand the signals that our body is sending us? So, really, that's why I'm here, separate from the podcast. I do work one-on-one with menstruators to understand and overcome their hormone imbalances. So I work with folks who have challenges as it relates to their menstrual cycle, as it relates to fertility, when it comes to perimenopause too, trying to understand what's going on. So if you're somebody who's looking for any sort of one-on-one support to regulate your cycle, get a handle on your PMS, then maybe I'm your girl. Check out the link in the show notes. You can set up a free consult call with me. We can talk more about what's going on with you and talk about if we would be a good match together and how hormone coaching can help you get to your goals. I named this podcast I'm hormonal because I really think it's about time we get to destigmatizing hormones and blaming them for all of our problems. We can make our hormones work with us, and there's a lot of stuff that you can do. Before we get to that, though, I want to give you a quick reminder, as always, that the information I share with you today is for educational purposes only. It shouldn't be used as a replacement for any sort of one-on-one support from a certified practitioner or from your healthcare provider. But again, if you're looking for that support, you can reach out to me to check out working together one-on-one Without further ado. Let's go ahead and dive in.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Psychosyncing has been becoming increasingly popular over the last couple of years. I know I'm a little bit biased, because while the circles that I run in, I'm the period friend who's talking about cycles, but when I am doing events at wellness festivals or in other health and wellness spaces, I'm getting a lot of questions about what is cycle syncing? Or gals saying, yeah, I've heard of cycle syncing. This is familiar to me, but I don't know how to actually do it or what's the real benefit. So let's take a look at that. What is the reason why you might want to consider cycle syncing? What's the point of it?

Speaker 1: 4:21

Now, when I think about cycle syncing, one of the top benefits, top reasons to cycle sync for me is to really get to know my body, or for you, it's so you can get to understand your body, your cycle. It's a good reminder to be, you know, introspective and reflect upon how you feel, which I think can really pay dividends, especially if you build this habit now. You start growing this awareness of what your cycle is like, what your energy levels are like, how your moods shift throughout your cycle, and you have that, you know, moving forward, like going through perimenopause, for example. Right, if we're all lucky enough to live so long as to go through perimenopause into menopause, you'll be able to better understand and recognize those changes that are happening in your own body. So that's the first thing I like to focus on is getting to know your body and getting to understand and recognize when there are changes in your body.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Now, another thing that's a good focus, a main focus for cycle syncing is really being able to honor your body's needs as we go through the menstrual cycle, through the four phases. Right, if you're new here, let me just give you a quick rundown on the four phases, because as our body goes through the cycle of being in like during our period, then the period of estrogen growing so that we can ovulate in the middle of our cycle, and then going finally through the luteal phase, which is where our progesterone is dominant and grows and falls, there are those four different and distinct phases and those different hormonal landscapes can lend to strengths or weaknesses as it relates to our body's movement, our nutritional requirements, our need for rest and our need for social interaction, or maybe lack thereof. So, coming back to what I was saying initially, we're really understanding how to honor our body's needs, nourish our body's needs, by saying okay, bridget, you know that you're going to be on your period next week. Like for me personally, I don't want to do it on the stuff when I'm on my period, I want to relax, I don't want to be overburdened, I know I'm going to get burned out a little bit more quickly, and so it's me having this insight into myself so that I can really plan ahead for my best schedule or my just overall best feeling for my body. If you're a weirdo like me who loves to plan, then you will love incorporating that aspect of cycle syncing into your life and taking a look at the weeks ahead as you go to put things on your calendar and just try to align your cycle with your social calendar or work calendar. But let me give you another example of how we can make this more practical and applicable to you. One example is becoming more aware of our energy needs and how that relates to our exercise.

Speaker 1: 7:35

So are you somebody who you do the same workout every day and you push yourself through workouts even when you're feeling really tired, and do you not let yourself take a little break when you're on your cycle or when you're just feeling like, okay, I'm smoked today? Well, I just want to be really clear. If that's what you love to do, girl, follow your heart, do that thing. If you want to cycle sync which I suspect you might if you're listening to this episode, then it can help you to recognize that, okay, sometimes less can be more. I don't need to push myself the same every single day of the month because my hormones aren't the every single day of the month. Because my hormones aren't the same every day of the month, they're going to fluctuate. My desires, my thoughts, my ability to move my body is going to be different and with that, at different times of the month a workout has a different or has a greater benefit to my body than other times of the month when maybe it'll just stress me out. So that's another way to look at it.

Speaker 1: 8:41

A third example that I'll give you, because this one is pretty I don't know practical and tactical. When it comes to nutrition and cycling your nourishment to your body with different phases of your cycle, that can be really helpful because you're really providing your body those nutrients that it needs to help you ovulate and get ready for ovulation right, moving up to that part of your cycle. Then, after ovulation, before your period starts, you're really focusing on giving your body the nutrients and components that it needs in order to help detox and rid those estrogen metabolites from your body, and that can help with preventing or reducing or just supporting ideal levels of discomfort with PMS if you have discomfort with PMS at all. I know it might sound like I'm coming up with a bunch of random examples, like just pulling from random places in the air. So I'm doing that so that you can get an idea of what are the areas that you can tweak. Do know, though, that in a couple of episodes here I think it'll be three episodes from now it'll really be a workshop-style episode. There will be a PDF to go along with it that you can download, so you can sit down, listen to this podcast, and you can pause me and really put in the thought to. You know how do you want to plan out your month, or what are the meals that you like and want to plan to make in certain phases of your cycle. So we're talking higher level today, but in the future, in a couple episodes here, we will get more practical with it and how you can apply this to your life and how you can understand when to do certain things and which phases of your cycle fall and which days of the calendar for your particular body. So if you're thinking, bridget, give me something specific. Just know that that's coming for you soon, so just bear with me. So, in addition to this gift of cycle awareness, body literacy, understanding and learning how to honor your body's needs, nourish your body properly, if nothing else.

Speaker 1: 11:06

A benefit of cycle syncing that I stand strongly by is having some change right. Variety is the spice of life. Let's change things around. If you want to do the same thing every day, the same workout again, follow your heart. But if you want to have some variety, then it's a really good reminder to switch things up and, let's say, adjust different priorities that you might put in your schedule With that. I'll quickly mention that.

Speaker 1: 11:39

If you are a listener who is currently not having a regular cycle because you're pregnant, because you are menopausal, for any other number of reasons, as you wait for your cycle to regulate, if you want to still follow along with this cycle syncing series and apply this to your lifestyle, then you could always follow with the phases of the moon and see how, as the moon changes, you can align to those four phases if you don't have your own body's signals to go off of quite yet Again something that we'll go into in greater depth in a future episode. I just wanted to mention that now because if you are somebody who doesn't have a regular menstrual cycle right now for one of any number of reasons, then you can still follow along with these cycle changes, but naturally, if you aren't having a regular menstrual cycle, your body isn't going to be going through these specific hormonal changes that we talked about that make up these four different phases I mentioned earlier, and so the benefit that you could get from like, really, I guess, capitalizing on that hormonal situation and one quick example would be when estrogen is high, right, estrogen is the hormone that helps us to feel social and want to get out and about and communicate and try new things. So it might not align as perfectly with you but, again, it's all about learning your body and even for somebody who has a regular menstrual cycle, maybe during their ovulatory phase, they're like nah, dog, I don't want to get out there and be social either. So it's all just about adapting it for you and your body. But we'll talk more about some of those disclaimers as well. But we'll talk more about some of those disclaimers as well.

Speaker 1: 13:34

The TLDR here is that psychosyncing is for you and yes, I'm talking to you, but psychosyncing is for you if you want to be more in touch with your body, if you have that regular cycle and you wanna play to the strengths of those hormones. Now, that being said, it will not actually help you to balance your hormones. If something is truly off, kilter right. If there's something going on that's imbalanced, there are other areas that you'll need to address, but getting to know your body through cycle syncing could be a good first step on that journey as well. If this sounds like something that you are up for, then stick with me through this series.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Next week I will be talking about how to prepare for cycle syncing and basically what is the initial set of information that you need that you should start being curious about in your own body in order to get started and make sure that you are cycle syncing effectively and so that you can understand where are the different phases of your cycle starting and ending and be able to make those transitions.

Speaker 1: 14:38

So if you found this conversation to be helpful today, if you like the sounds of this cycle syncing series, then I would be so grateful if you would consider sending this episode to a friend or a sister, somebody who can learn along with you. That would be really amazing if you would help me to grow the I'm Hormonal community in that way. Also consider subscribing to I'm Hormonal if you want to get these episodes to show up automatically in your feed and if you really loved it, then consider rating and reviewing the show. Thank you so much for listening today. Again, my name is Bridget Walton and I'm especially grateful for you because you've made it all the way to the end here. Thank you so much, and I will see you in the next one.