This episode is a little different as it is being sent to you from a beach in Devon.
Hello Addy and a very warm womb felt welcome to you. I am so pleased to have you here.
This is a virtual space where we can chat about all the Womb things and share where we are in our womb story.
I would love to start by asking where you are in the many cycles we are constantly moving within? (E.g menstrual, life, moon, 24 hour!).
Hello! Very happy to be here at womb chat ✨
Right now I’ve just crossed over into my premenstrual phase. I’ve come from Australian winter to European summer on the back of a nasty flu and the weather shock has been quite an adjustment. Though I’m sitting by the sea at time of writing this, so I can’t complain 🤭
On day 21 I’m starting to feel the effects of 40kms of hiking over the past few days and I’m feeling quite inward and tired, which can always be a tricky thing to feel when travelling with others, but I’m making it work by taking lil moments to myself, such a writing to you all here!
I’m 28 years old meaning I’ve hit the summer of my life and the mother years as we refer to them in cycle awareness (I’ve not yet had the urge to become a mother to a child), so I’m very much deep in the growing and nurturing of other aspects in life like my business, my home and relationships.
I know language is powerful and that the words we use to describe female anatomy can be loaded. I would love to ask you how you feel about the word womb?
Mmm I certainly can resonate with certain words feeling loaded to do with female anatomy but the word womb really just makes me think of a warm, nurturing and incredibly rich in nourishment place for us to grow, rest, develop and become.
I think we are all need a little womb time in our lives where we feel completely supported and taken care of.
From here BIG growth can start and without it, we remain stagnant and unable to reach our full potential.
So I suppose in a way I think of it as a metaphor for growth and becoming. A necessary part of life if we want to really enjoy it.
Can I invite you to describe your current relationship with your womb?
My current relationship with my womb looks like caring for my body in a way that really honours my womb as the wisdom holder and the one who knows best.
So essentially where the menstrual cycle begins and ends is within the womb and I listen to the ebs and flows, emotional fluctuations and physical changes that come from this place and honour them best I can (working with resilience and flexibility rather than towards perfection - which I’ve unhelpfully done in the past).
As someone who goes through mental health challenges regularly, the wisdom and insights my cycle and womb have delivered over years and years of tapping in and listening - allow me to trust the process of the ups and downs of my mental health and know how to cope and actually continue to flourish through them all. Because I’m constantly cycling through changes and emotional fluctuations I’ve learnt to trust the process of a cycle and actually realise this is the way my mental health operates too - This has probably been the most invaluable lesson and way of thinking that being in contact with my womb has given me - it’s given me a confidence to handle anything life throws my way, because change is in my biology, I know I can get through it ✨
I am really interested to know if your relationship with your womb has changed? And if so how?
I would say yes - obviously from my late teens my womb wasn’t paid much attention to and as I’ve gotten older I’ve been in contact more with my womb and developed practices to connect and honour that space.
I’d say when I was first starting our developing a relationship with my womb, it looked very practice heavy - so daily check-ins, meditations, specific self-care practices. I’d really lean on those to create a relationship and maintain it too.
These days I’m a little more casual. I suppose it’s like starting a new relationship with someone vs having a well estaiblished connection, like a best friend or long term partner. You don’t stop trying or put in less effort, it just becomes more natural and casual and free. So I’d say I can connect to my wombs intuition, wisdom and needs almost without the middle man of the practices (though I do the practices more out of enjoyment).
It’s an ongoing conversation we have going on and we call each other up anytime we need to talk 🥰
Is there anything else you feel called to share about your womb story?
For anyone reading, I’d like to say that all this “womb talk” can sound a bit woo-woo if you haven’t worked much with it. I just want to say if you’re feeling that resistance or “what is she talking about” thoughts are popping up… I used to feel the same. I absolutely did not expect my womb and it’s wisdom to be the support system I desperately needed to support my mental health.
Don’t underestimate the potential and strength you hold within that magical life creating and truth revealing space we call the womb 🪄
As a cycle coach and mental health practitioner how do you share womb wisdom with your clients?
When I work with clients to help them understand and support their mental health, I encourage clients to really tune into their menstrual cycle to find insights, build trust with themselves and rewire their thinking around the continuous ups and downs they might go through.
It’s my mission to really help clients deeply understand and even more importantly trust their menstrual cycle - this work we do with the cycle, then becomes the foundation from which they view, understand and move through mental health challenges.
So that they can go from:
Feeling guilt, shame and frustration about a recurring mental health challenge (eg - anxiety, depression, etc)
Fearing their own dark times and lingering in the happy/good times just to avoid their own darkness (not allowing them to grow or learn OR heal)
Letting mental health challenges totally derail their life (eg hold back in their career, avoid new experiences like travel or dating and loose sight of the everyday glimmers that make this one life special and wonderful)
And use their newfound womb wisdom, cyclic insight and awareness to be able to:
Feel confident to support themselves through it all - their womb and cycle holds the wisdom about their mental health as a cycle, and they no longer need to feel ashamed and victimised by their own mind, BUT instead resilient as hell in the face of it all
Trusting themselves to navigate anything life throws at them - they learn to roll with the punches and live a more balanced life where they don’t catastrophise the down times, because they know, they got this 😉
The challenges they go through take the back seat while they continue to live and love the lives they lead ✨
And this transformation all begins with connecting in with the wisdom filled centre of our bodies - the womb. We go on a journey to discover what’s there for each unique individual - it’s such an honour to witness this transformation happen 🥹
You work at the intersection of mental and menstrual health, what drew you to this and what ignites your passions in this area?
Love this Q!
Since my teens I’ve struggled with my own mental health and the extreme ups and downs I went through really inspired me to want to help others through the tough times they were going through. So I enrolled in a Psychology degree.
But towards the end of my degree, I really felt like there was something missing. The kind of message I was hearing was - you go through something, you seek help, you get better… end of story.
And for me I continued to fall back into hard times over and over.
That’s when I discovered cycle awareness and had a 💡lightbulb moment💡 ~ women’s mental health wasn’t like this linear process of healing I’d be taught, it was CYCLIC!
And so the integration of the mental health and cycle awareness intersection filled the gaps of what I felt other was missing.
It was a huge relief for me personally to realise this, but also something I felt an obligation to share with other women.
It changed my life, changed how I showed up for myself and now I feel so liberated from the heaviness that mental health challenges can bring.
Whilst they never truely go away, but ebb and flow in and out of intensity - looking to my cycle as my number 1 support - made living with fluctuating mental health, that much freer and easier.
And this is what I help other women achieve too 🥰
It would be wonderful if you could share your top three tips for menstruators to reconnect with their womb wisdom?
My top tips…
#️⃣ 1
It takes time. We’ve been brought up in a society that doesn’t talk about wombs much let alone the wisdom they hold. Be patient, don’t give up on the process. You innately hold wisdom inside, it just takes time.
#️⃣ 2
Practice, practice, practice. Having a connection with your womb wisdom is a constant practice. Sometimes it’s nice to have a structure or physical practice to start you off, but when I say it’s a practice, I mean it’s a life time of working on the relationship - like any relationship is. I’d encourage you to tune in to your natural wisdom in all situations to upkeep the practice (eg - yes even choosing what you want for lunch - she knows 😉)
#️⃣ 3
When you’re going through a hard time, ALWAYS ask yourself what the wisdom of the cycles would have to say about it? Always refer back to cycle awareness as your foundation. Eg, If you’re feeling like you’re spiraling again, what cycle phase does this remind you of and what do you do to care for yourself in the phase that would help you now? And what might this spiral be trying to tell you?
Thank you so much for being here in the chat womb with me. ♥️ I really appreciate your time and energy.
Before you go, please let readers know how they can get in touch with you.
You can find me on Instagram @addy.innerrhythm or through my website innerrhythmcycles.com
I’ve got a special (and free) offering coming up so if you enjoyed anything I chatted about there, stay tuned for the sign-up in September 🕺🌈
Thanks for having me gorgeous Han! Appreciate you for helping us break barriers to talk all things womby xxx
Thanks for taking the time to read, if you want to join me in the chat womb please let me know, I would love to welcome you.
Warmly
Hannah
CEO @ Womb Wisdom
Coming to your from Brixham in Devon
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