This is gender nautral so if you are a uterus haver or have quasi cyclical periods, this might be a cool experiment for you too. This is also a short intro to the idea, and I will break into more in depth posts of each season.
What if the world worked around the cycles of the season and the uterus rather than the sun and… not the uterus? Would you work differently? What would your days look like, or your month? That’s what I endeavor to understand. So far I have for tracked my menstrual cycle for three months and worked with it, instead of against it, which seems to be what the whole capitalists system is all about – making menstruation fucking impossible… I had the privilege of taking a course which sadly had ended and was taken off the internet for all eternity and I thought it would be a cheeky little thing to do to put what I have learned and tried here, for others and myself to see. Okay, let’s break down the process.
Inner Cycles
For the inner cycles we have Follicular, Ovulation, Luteal, and Menstruation. Each part of the cycle we are going through a wax an wane of different types of hormones and processes within the body but I don’t want to get into that, maybe for another day or find a doctor (with a uterus) who will explain that whole part. But we are simply stating that there are phases our body goes through and it happens cyclically throughout our life and in each moment we are feeling different things.
Relating the seasons to our inner cycle
It’s cool to connect the inner cycles with seasons because they seem to connect really well. Instead of four seasons though there are 5: spring, summer, late summer, autumn, winter. Summer and Winter are the shorter parts of the phases and that is because in the summer we are ovulating and the winter we are menstruating.
We can’t always be in summer, there will always be a time where our leaves fall or where all we can do is to shut down and hide in a hole. Sometimes when you check in with yourself and realize you are in your inner winter season and you try to be all peppy and energetic you might end up feeling like you are fighting against yourself and nothing seems to be going right. This disconnect is common and I feel like if we just learned to connect with the seasons and work with them in the capacities we can, then it could help us out in a myriad of ways.
Here is a short list of all the seasons and what I do in each of them, I will be creating separate posts for each season because it feels like it’s too long to put in one place.
inner winter – Water
Menstruation – Planting the Seed, Dreaming, Bare, Cold, Dormant
This is time to get off the screen, stop talking to people and slow down enough to allow your creative little brain to think of what it wants to do for the next cycle. This is the Seed planting time, the time for gestation, germination, to fill the creative cup and plan what needs to happen from the beginning to end of the project journey.
Winter solstice time
inner spring – Wood/Air
Follicular – The Little Sprout
This time is when the creative juices beginning to flow. If you spent your period time well then this time you will start to be feeling more energetic and want to get going on the little seed you planted during that time. I personally have the most creative energy during this time so I like to pack these days up with as much art and concept drawing as possible. I feel like after ovulation the creative energy falls away.
inner summer – Fire
Ovulation – The Flower
course correction, commit and push. This is a great time for socializing and taking meetings. Here we are at the summer solstice of our cycle. We’re bright, energetic, and social. We will begin to dive into our shadow self more after this so this is the last time to take care of the creative tasks. It will start to be more about finishing the non creative tasks and back end bits to complete the project. Now is perfect for recording videos and taking care of the social media marketing parts of the project. Ask questions that you can try to accomplish during late summer: What’s standing in the way? What’s blocking? Long steady strokes of creation, meetings and presentations, bring them earth side.
inner late summer – Earth
Post Ovulation – preparing to seed
break remaining tasks into smaller tasks, cultivate devotion, de clutter, gratitude. This is a good time to clear out your calendar, book meetings and client facing tasks for after your inner winter. Now we are taking care of back end parts of the project like video editing, and writing, layout design, website updates.
inner autumn – Metal/Sprit
Luteal – Harvest, Leaves Falling
tie off loose ends, no social media no drinking. Bring tasks to completion where you can. Make a list of what needs tended to when you’re back in inner spring energy. Edit, Refine, Distill. This is also a great time to make decisions because intuition and instinct are heightened.
So that’s it. Each inner winter I go and plan out what to do during each seasons and I find that I am more organized, more in connection with my creative process, and also I give myself the courage to say no to things that don’t align with my inner season. And I love that. Hopefully if you read this it will help you with your own insight and can help with your inner and earth side processes.
Again, I will have more in depth posts about each season later, and with that I will bid you cya later ~
Nina.
