…on working with phase 2 in a cycle

I wrote a post where I scratched the surface of this earlier this year, but since then I’ve dived much deeper into the world of #cyclicalliving. Over the next few weeks I’m going to chronicle out what living in alignment with my hormones/the moon has looked like for me. This is post 2/4, go ahead and click back to post 1 if you haven’t caught it yet!

Let’s jam today on what I’ll call the second phase of working with cycles: emergence.

The moon is peeking its way into lighting up the sky, it starts to light up a little more of the sky every night! Spring is starting to break through the ground as the sun shows itself more often, and in the world of female hormones, it’s the follicular phase which means as estrogen and testosterone lifting (and they just might bring your mood along with them). This is where an idea might start to take shape. Think – just like spring, things are starting to peek out. Energy is building, things are starting to blossom and bloom. You might notice a little shift, when you start to tune in – or you might notice a marked change in your feelings around self-sufficiency and belief in yourself. And after a dark winter season, this is almost always welcome.

This is where I am sitting in the season where I am right now (the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations – also knows today as Vancouver, Canada – but that’s a post for a different day). As I write this, I’ve just walked home from dropping my kid at school and I got noticeably sweaty on the 12 minute walk. There are a few significant markers of the season fully shifting here for me. Constantly feeling like I’m overdressed. Wanting to go and sit in the backyard when I’m working, but absolutely finding it too cold when I do. Waking up before my alarm because the sun is peaking between the blinds. This tension between what I’m envisioning coming, and what is true, right now in this moment.

For me, this is the phase I feel most hope in. Hope feels like something that’s worth it’s weight in gold these days doesn’t it? I’d love to hear your experience, once you start tuning in - leave me a comment below if this rings true for you too.

I also want to add my own personal nature analogy that I have found to hold true in this phase too. I think sometimes we – or at the very least, I personally have fallen into this trap – can get caught up in thinking “well I just did nothing for a while so I’d better be EXTRA productive now and do EVERYTHING! GO GO GO!” And while this stage can often have lots of ideas and plans floating around, it also comes with the need to prune. See, where I live in the pacific northwest (and from a quick interwebs search, actually this is true in much of the world), late winter/early spring is actually the ideal time for pruning. Choose the few things that you are most excited about and will have the most impact, so you can do them well AND have fun doing them. Almost zero people enjoy feeling spread too thin and burnt out before they even start something! Imagine this is the time when your ideas pop up like buds on the trees, and it takes your tending and planning to have them grow into what you’re envisioning.

What might it look like to adapt your life to this phase? Well, given that some have labelled it the “Superstar” phase (anyone else so ingrained with late 90s SNL that all you can think of is Mary Catherine Gallagher?? Maybe just me. I did go as her for Halloween one year), think that this is your time to be most creative and do your best planning. You’re ready for new things, new challenges, even learning a new thing. If you have a job that requires being outward or public facing, try and plan the bulk of that work right now, if you have control over it. If you don’t, use this time to do that extra load of laundry, or meal plan or prep for the weeks to come (if you actually implement this, please let me know. I’ve had it as a goal for about one million days and have not made it happen….. yet). In terms of foods and fitness, this is the time to get those extra long runs in, try something new, or challenge your PR at the gym. It’s also the time to eat fermented foods and NOT to skimp on fibre. Side note – did you know that NINETY-FIVE percent of people don’t eat enough fibre?? Yes, 95%! Not a typo! This is my absolute favourite way to remember to add and not be a statistic (please holler at me if I can help hook you up #igotyouboo).

If you’re following the lead of the moon rather than a hormone cycle (remember – this is absolutely not just for those with a typical hormone cycle – all bodies and gender expressions can follow this same pathway using the moon as an anchor), this season is the waxing moon. The various phases of the waxing and waning moon were a little hard for me to wrap my head around at first, so here’s an overview or reminder if this isn’t new. The waxing moon can be divided into 3 phases: waxing crescent (looks like an inverted letter “C” and precedes the half moon), half moon first quarter (looks like a capital letter “D”), and waxing gibbous (after the half moon, it moves to becoming a whole circle, so it looks like a cross between the capital letter “D” and a circle)

These are all considered “waxing” phases and everything I’ve talked about so far applies here too. I love this connection back to Spring energy too – March has a very different energy than June, even if it’s similar! Same same here.

Basically, if you’re in this phase - go get it!

Tune in next week when we get sexy with the energy of summer, full moon, and ovulation #bowchickawowwow