3 Reasons Why the Practice of Aligning Cycles is for Every Body
image via Unsplash
image via Unsplash
Every body moves through cycles that align with nature, regardless of gender identity.
A body’s natural flow shifts daily, along the lunation cycle, seasonally, and internally along with the reproductive, digestive, and lymphatic systems.
Human bodies are living systems that mirror external systems of nature in the ways that they flow. They need nourishment, rest, release, expression, support as it grows, and repetition that has space space for evolution along the way. There are variations in bodies in general - from assigned gender identity, to size, shape, ethnicity, preferences, needs, allergies, and the ways in which they feel good in expression, play, pleasure, and rest.
I’ve discovered many resources, tools, communities, and specialists who center and focus expanding education, knowledge, and the benefits of learning what it is to cycle around a monthly menstrual flow. Many of which center language towards a predominantly cis-female audience and provide materials that don’t hold space for expansion, variations or intersections in identity to be centered.
What isn’t considered in the spaces that limit identity are the roots of where our cycles, our body awareness, and many stories of our cultural practices connected to how we honor, respect, align with, and mirror nature were born. Body, earth, and nature practices are highly indigenous - rooting back to the beginnings of time no matter where the origin or translations of each practice. Studying individually, in community, and in mentorship has helped me to uncover a multitude of ways in which we can better understand, explore, personalize, and expand our whole-body-wellness by aligning cycles with our body flow. Although the mainstream literature, courses, and educators leading these conversations often focus on women, I hold a belief that cycle syncing is for every body.
Cycle syncing is defined as the is the practice of eating, exercising and aligning with the different phases of your monthly menstrual cycle. That way, you give your body the support it needs, rather than pushing it to perform at the same high level at all times.
My expansions in connection, visibility, relationship with gender, identity, culture, and understandings deeper truths. These truths factor into the varying limitations in accessibility, eco-exposure, intersectionalities in identity, and possibilities of reproductive care centering autonomous, intentional, harmonious, and communal healing that has lead me to expand what inclusive cycle syncing means.
When considering whole-body-wellness, intersectionality, ecopsychology, and the impact of the elements within the universe, cycle-body-flow is an expansion of cycle syncing that includes all bodies.
Cycle Body Flow can be defined as the alignment of rituals that center nature, seasons, and internal body systems and how they flow daily, monthly, and seasonally. The act of cycle body flow teaches any body to recreate the way they work, rest, play, release, and create to mirror the flow and seasons in nature, the monthly lunation cycle, and the changing in the bodies reproductive, digestion, and lymphatic systems. (defined by euni)
If you’re curious why this way of living is worth investing time, re-writing your current routines, expanding beliefs, and recalibrating your internal clock to follow the timeline of nature, here are
3 Reasons Why the Practice of Aligning Cycles is for Every Body
1. We are nature. We are living beings and living beings cycle every day and over time
image: Mathieu Stern via Unsplash
“I am a body on the body of earth.”
-Jeanine M. Canty
In Oppression and the Body, I discovered the terminology that assisted in my ability to explain how we relate to the earth and universe that is easier to explain to a wider range of people. Ecopsychology explores the emotional bond between humans and the earth. It emphasizes experiencing the earth through our bodies as a way to wake up to our authentic selves and be in relationship with our true home [the earth]. This embodied experience of the living world reminds us that we are nature too - we are animals who are dependent upon and have responsibility to living systems. We awaken to the wildness of this world, including the wildness of our bodies. Both ecopsychology and deep ecology movement address the concept of the ecological self, which is, in essence, the extension of our identity to include the living being with whom we are in relationship…. Within a somatic framing, ecological self is about contact with nature through our bodies.
Laura Sewall identifies “the ecological self as a permeability and fluidity of boundaries where division between inner and outer world become an arbitrary and historical distinction. Sewall states, “The Earth speaks to us through our bodies and psyches.”
This relational view of the individual self, coming into feeling with the earth, pervades ecopsychology. It is not simply about connecting to nature for personal healing, it extends to listening to the earth to gain wisdom for many purposes, including planetary healing. (chapter 3, Oppression and the Body)
When considering all the types of living bodies in nature, it’s easy to find examples of how every body cycles daily, monthly, and seasonally.
2. Cycling allows you to maximize your productivity, rest, reflection, clarity, and creativity
image via Unsplash
Every system needs balance between production and rest. And all living systems need space for reflection, clarity, and creation.
Understanding and connecting with your body as a system within a system that is also run by systems opens space for curiosity, exploration, and flexibility. This openness re-trains our minds to mirror the messages from the systems that rule our bodies and allows us to truly flow with greater ease through life.
When we move with and mirror the cycles of the moon, our internal system’s natural cycles, and the seasons in nature, we begin to identify what it feels like to be in flow-over-force with productivity, rest, reflection, clarity, and creativity. When we are in flow, we are able to be the best versions of ourselves and express with fluidly and with ease repeatedly over time.
3. Cycling teaches you how to create rituals that work for your whole body-mind-soul-space
image via Unsplash
Most of my life I deeply repulsed routines although everything in my life-charting says that in order for me to be in the most alignment, routines are best for me.
Routines have always felt like punishment. Like something that I had to to in order to appease rules, obligations, or to conform to fit into boxes designed by society.
A few years ago mid-way into the entry of my healing journey, I began dipping my toes into the waters of what it feels like to repeat things that feel good or supported me feeling better daily.
I did this in no particular order. With no hard boundaries (the times of day, length of each activity, and way in which I did them varied often) but the commitment, the “routine” was in the dedication to doing something daily. Through this, I began viewing things that were called routines as rooted rituals.
Rooted Rituals ground you into present through 1-5 minute practices that guide you to connecting deeper with yourself so you can connect deeper with your the elements, events, creations, and people in your life. They shift with the seasons, your internal cycles, and the changes in your environment.
Rooted Rituals help you connect to your whole body-mind-soul-space and demand the release of rigidity. This way of committing to self care allows any body to design practices of care that align with all the pieces, emotions, and needs within their individual lives. When we are allowed to center fluidity, our bodies can have space to naturally heal, rest, recover, and thrive which allows us to be in alignment personally and professionally.
I write this to share pieces of my truth that may evoke exploration, invitation, and intentional chosen action. For me, the commitment to expanding my connection to myself, my body, and my story includes reconnecting deeper in ways that feel true to my ancestry, indigenous to being a living being and authentic to the ways in which my body-mind-soul-space vary in expressions over time. This is something I’ve only learned to listen to by laying the foundation for my truths, actions, and rituals upon being in alignment with and remembering how I am an element of nature too.
IF YOU HAVE THE MEANS TO INVEST AND ARE LOOKING FOR MORE SUPPORT, CONSIDER WORKING WITH EUNI.
I WORK WITH CLIENTS 1:1 and in small groups that build community and support them in aligning their visions and recreating the way they work, create, and take action personally and professionally.
