4 Phases Of Intentional Living Through Your Cycles

“An intentional life embraces only the things that will add to the mission of significance”

Intentional Living – how grand does that sound? Imagine the skill of living every day with intention at work, at home and for yourself. You would glide through everyday living in full bloom as you lived your life in alignment to your priorities, your values and your goals.

Before we started living intentionally through our own cycles, we thought that we had a good grasp of living everyday in alignment to our priorities. Both of us were corporate escapees, leaving stability and monotony behind as we wanted to be more present, more connected to ourselves and more emotionally available for our families. We were living the textbook definition of intentional living by deciding what we wanted from life and going for it!

It wasn’t until we started learning more about our menstrual cycles that we realised there is another level of intentional living that us women get to enjoy, but very few are using to their advantage. We have become so accustomed to being busy. We literally can fly through the minutes and hours without ever stopping to notice our thoughts, our feelings or the world around us. We spend days chasing our tails, rushing through life to really end up going nowhere. And then we wake up the next morning to do it all again.

For us women, the added challenge we have is that our biological clock tries to keep up with our fast paced lifestyle and then when it doesn’t we fall into a heap. We wonder why one day we feel energised and full of life and then the next we feel flat and fatigued. We take a brief moment to think about what is going on to then pick up where we left off – another day finishes, another day of true intentional living missed.

So, what does Intentional Living through your cycles look like?

The key fundamentals is that we transition through our own inner seasons every 28 days: Winter (Menstrual), Spring (Follicular), Summer (Ovulation) and Autumn (Luteal). Much like the seasons across a calendar year, we experience the highs and lows of each and every season over our entire cycles.

Have we peaked your curiosity yet?

You see with each season we can tap into our own internal world of strengths, opportunities, challenges and delicacies. This beautiful skill and learning enables you to open your eyes to what you need at any given time, empower you to tune into your intuition and of course live each day with intention.

The Winter phase is definitely the season for rest and rejuvenation. But just as you are using this time to go slow, it is also an amazing time to call on your inner knowing and see yourself for who you truly are and want to be. Consider this phase your monthly check in and use it to stop and assess your life, your health or any part of you that you feel needs it. The more self care you bring in now, the more you’ll get out of your winter – how you care for yourself here sets the tone for the rest of your cycle. Gentle exercise, journalling and rest are the perfect intentional activities during this phase.

Spring is the gentle rebirth of yourself. You will almost feel like you are coming out of a state of hibernation whilst feeling bright and light. Your physical energy is at your highest in this phase and with the renewed energy you may want to do everything on your list. Focusing your attention on one idea or activity is important here for continued productivity into the rest of your cycle. Take the time to evaluate your priorities and give your body and mind the energised attention it craves.

Summer is go go go! This is your greatest expressive phase. This is where you will naturally let your spirit and soul fly. Here you take action! You are full of energy, power and passion. You are progressing forward and you are brimming with fullness. You really are unstoppable within this phase! You will find taking action towards your goals or working on those work projects becomes a lot easier. You will feel more confident at work, you will have heightened social skills in your relationships and you will naturally gravitate to things that you have considered challenging in the previous two phases.

Autumn is the beginning of your less glamorous phase, but it is also a beautiful and calming part of your cycle. Here you become self orientated as you actively have a desire to get things done. You will move from the outward focus of Spring and Summer into the inward focus that is Autumn and Winter. Autumn is the perfect time to finish off projects and get tasks done, but be sure to match your task to the time.

The beautiful life advantage us women have is that we have the innate opportunity to live intentionally by coming back to our roots. Through self awareness and knowing the natural rhythm of your body you can feel connected, empowered, energised and intentional.

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