Just like nature, our bodies move in seasons.

In this conversation, our muses Eliza and Maya of @soulsinsync share their grounded approach to cycle syncing. 

Their words remind us to honour each phase, soften expectations, and to work with your body rather than against it.

Cycle syncing is the practice of adjusting how you live, work and care for yourself throughout each phase of your menstrual cycle. Our hormones naturally fluctuate across the cycle, influencing our energy, productivity, hunger, libido, emotions and capacity for others. Cycle syncing invites us to understand these shifts so we can nurture, support and honour every version of ourselves.

Each hormonal phase brings its own strengths. Higher estrogen levels in the Follicular and Ovulatory phases often support expression, motivation, confidence and co-ordination. In contrast, the higher progesterone levels of the Luteal phase encourage us to slow down, reflect, rest and nurture our lives more deeply.

Every phase has its own beauty. Cycle syncing is not about fixing the lows or chasing the highs, but about learning to appreciate the unique gifts of each stage and responding to them with compassion rather than pressure.

We believe it’s important for women to know about cycle syncing because knowledge creates awareness.

We are big believers that Cycle Syncing shouldn’t be another ‘chore’ or ‘trend’ to follow. It should come from the innate intelligence led by your body. For us, cycle syncing became empowering once we dropped all expectations of what cycle syncing ‘should’ look like, and simply started to listen to our bodies more. This came to us through tracking our own cycles, we track with a written tracker and this provided us with detailed patterns and information that we could use to empower ourselves in our daily life.

Our Menstrual cycle is at the core of our beings as Women, it’s a process that we go through regardless if we’re aware of it or not and tapping into that breeds empowerment naturally.

Cycle syncing is about finding balance and accepting your body's polarity. Our hormones are different every day, so you could say we are a different person each day of the month. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend planning your life around your cycle, because life happens. We would recommend tracking your cycle so you have context as to why you feel the way you do and therefore you are kinder and more compassionate with yourself. Cycle syncing should be the ultimate form of liberation and understanding, not feeling like it’s another thing you ‘have to do’.

The only thing we change throughout our cycle is our expectation of ourselves. We love movement, our bodies love movement but some days can feel harder than others, and that’s okay. We still show up for ourselves at the gym, a walk or a yoga class, but if we don’t perform the same as we did the week before we know not to be hard on ourselves.

There is no expansion without contraction.

When we think of the term ‘In sync’ we find it easiest to come back to nature. Feeling in sync in real life looks like nature holding up a mirror to ourselves. We wear warmer clothes in winter, we stay out later in summer - feeling in sync in real life looks like honouring each phase of our cycle for what it is, not wishing it was something else. Knowing that our body is moving through cycles just as nature does and accepting that each phase comes with different characteristics.

The only way to feel in sync with yourself is to track your cycle, your mood and energy to really get to know your body and how each phase feels for you.

If we are completely honest, we are yet to nail this. Our biggest weeks always seem to land in the parts of our cycle where we have more inward energy. However, the understanding of our cycle has given us context as to why we feel the way that we do and it gives us answers as to how to help ourselves through it.

Our non-negotiable isn’t planning work around our cycle, but how we take care of ourselves after we have finished for the day or when we wake up in the morning. Understanding our cycle has allowed to be more pro-active as opposed to re-active.

Cycle tracking! We love tracking every day with a written tracker to notice patterns in our energy, mood, libido, cravings and so much more. All it takes is 2 minutes a day to reflect on how you felt and over time you will have so much information about your body. Cycle tracking is the first thing we touch on with anybody we work with.

Probably what their period looks like and how much blood they are losing. This can give us key insights into hormonal health but because many women feel ashamed, embarrassed or like society has told them to ‘be quiet’ the knowledge of this is not as popular as it should be. If we all knew what extreme clotting, heavy bleeding or light bleeding meant we would be more educated to make changes in our lifestyle that could positively impact our overall health.

Anything that is a stress-relieving practice; meditation, yoga, dancing, singing, journalling, lounging in the sun. Our bodies are so sensitive to stress and they love feeling calm & safe. Anything we can do to enhance those feelings in our body will positively impact our cycle. We struggled for years with painful periods and wishing our periods away, but lowering stress has made our cycles feel so beautiful.

Thank you, Eliza and Maya, for reminding us to move towards intuition and compassion, and for helping to redefine what it really means to feel “in sync."

You can follow them for more cycle syncing advice at @soulsinsync. ♡