(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting holess beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle
(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the
(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the
(02:07) [Music] path I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist P dancer or honorary member of the disinformation doesn’t what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally
(02:46) truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I’m Dr Kelly Broan and I am here with the notorious no I’m just kidding Nicole B Dian and we are going to be chitty chatting all things birth control and holistic hormone balancing
(03:30) is a new friend and Ally actually only learned about her work because of the controversy that you know because of how many people sent me this Washington Post article and we were just chatting beforehand to you know resolve any potential victim stories and to say that there is always so much Beauty in this kind of a smear piece because it brings so many of us who already share this worldview together and my hope is that this conversation grows that field M have two women standing for what is possible so welcome thank you for having
(04:12) me I’m excited to be here amazing so you have been crowned a misinformation agent I am very familiar with this this lovely Accolade and I actually don’t want to spend a ton of our time and energy on you know what’s been up and whose panties are getting in a bunch about what because my Approach after you know a decade and a half in the trenches is kind of like to be as unbothered and uninterested as possible while also you know continuing to tell the story of really you know sounding the alarm on the untold adverse effects of
(04:52) pharmaceuticals and also tell the story of of what is possible when we align with our female biology and I would love for you to have the mic you know because I had an experience of this kind of a bait and switch which you’ll describe with Newsweek actually early on and interestingly it was on the subject of my perspective on HIV AIDS of all things and I just started to get like a little bit of a sense that it wasn’t going to be what they had promised and kind of like how could it be because of how PHA subsidized all of these Outlets are and
(05:27) you know really what their intention is which is to I mean this is not even a theory is to spread propaganda rather than to you know engage in journalistic reporting obviously so none of this comes as a surprise and there really was a dupe right there really was something that you were set up for so I’d love to just give you the mic and for you know this opportunity to be to report on your side of the experience what all went down and then I really want to spend most of our time talking about your work and what you and I both know is possible
(05:59) in in the realm of feminine Health Reclamation so what happened so I was approached by a journalist from The Washington Post back in December or really late November and she just approached me wanting to talk about hormonal birth control and fertility and of course my gut was like oh I’m scared like this could go either way but I had a couple of conversations with her and had some emailing back and forth and even though my gut was still like oh I’m scared like she scares me there was definitely a it seemed like
(06:37) the intention behind the piece was positive and I think that’s where it really gets frustrating because when she had approached me she was very like basic about it but then through our conversation she gave me a little bit of reassurance and then the editor for the piece calls me and wants to set up a photo shoot and that sounds okay cool like why would someone want to set up a photo shoot if they’re going to drag me through the mud so they wanted to set up the photo shoot because the piece was supposed to come out the following week so it was
(07:09) like pretty quick and so I was like okay cool so she sent somebody over the photographer told me that she had read the first draft of the article and said that it was a positive piece and she even used the world trailblazing and it seemed great and then that gave me a lot of reassurance so I was waiting on a little bit of communication the editor calls me again she’s like listen when we don’t know if it’s going to go to print or not but if it does we love to send the print to you so let me know what your address is if
(07:40) it goes to print we’ll send you a couple of copies great that also gave me quite a bit of reassurance because you know why are you gonna drag me through the mud and then send me a print of it even though I still want that print but frame that yeah right and then I don’t hear anything for a while the journalist messages me telling me that after an inquiry with one of the social media companies that one of my Tik toks was taken down and what my response was to it so I sent her a response saying I stand by the Tik Tok
(08:09) here is the research that I presented in that video and that I I do agree with taking down Tik toks that may perpetuate misinformation but she decided to leave out the fact that my video was backed in science and just took the I fully support them taking down any sort of information that may perpetuate misinformation and the worst part about censorship is when it comes back to bite us that’s the trouble with any kind of a takeown of an information so they curated the part where you agreed with your own censorship yeah which I do
(08:46) stand by 100% stand by that comment it’s the omission of the other aspects that shows how skewed it really was and that the piece was like already either written or they decide to change it up within the month that they said that they were going to present it and then I spoke to the photographer and she was like listen I can’t tell you what was written in the previous piece but this isn’t it and that was like oh interesting you’re you’re also duping her that’s cool so it’s been you know insane they wrote three times pretty
(09:21) much how I’m not a medical professional and I don’t claim that I’m a doctor which I do not but they of course left out the multitude of certifications that I have the extensive education that I’ve gotten in women’s health Anatomy cycle tracking nutrition Etc and really just tried to drag me through the mud but the thing is well there’s a couple of things that are interesting here because also never once mentioned anything about politics and then it became a political piece and you know right before it talks
(09:50) about me it says something of the sort of influencers of all political Stripes seeking fame and fortune you know and then right after it talks about me there’s a sub headline of you know a right-wing conservative push or something and it’s like we’ve never talked about politics you have no idea of what my political stance is and if we were to have talked about politics I would have omitted myself from this article because what I do has nothing to do with politics it’s Women’s Health and the fact that they’re politicizing
(10:21) women’s bodies is really grotesk to me so that’s definitely not ideal but you know what the the outpouring of love and support that I’ve gotten since the article has come out the way that they you know so much of what they said was so easy to refute that it was kind of just a joke the article was all over the place it didn’t really have any sort of you know full line going through it it was really scattered and just poorly written so that fact and the fact that the writing was so easy to refute gave me a lot of good content to
(11:00) about how I could refute it absolutely absolutely the political nature of it is something that I’ve also experienced somebody who’s been lumped you know with all sorts of rightwing adjacent I’ve literally never made a political statement I’m an apolitical person in my entire public career ever and this is a strategy that I’ve come to understand in this Arena and this is my perspective you know not necessarily one you must agree with is that as a former you know third wave feminist and somebody who has really devoted a lot of time to
(11:35) understanding the psychology of feminism as it exists I have come to see that it requires especially neoliberal feminism requires the support of anti-depressants so let’s say psychotropics in general and also birth control to substantiate so many of the pillars of feminism which is that we must reject this right we must not be cyclical beings we must not be identified with our female biology because we are mimicking you know the men that I would say we actually fundamentally still terrified of but nonetheless we are mimicking these men
(12:11) and imagining that that is empowering right we are disconnected from our kids we are disconnected from childbirth we’re disconnected from our cycles and menopause and all the things and somehow we’re supposed to feel fantastic and we actually are wired and tired and bitter and sick right absolutely and so it needs to be politicized because it’s all part of this Machinery that the media has really become aligned with and so I’d love to speak about this concept of gaslighting and medical gaslighting because the stories of everyday women
(12:45) okay so let alone you’re being a mouthpiece for these women supporting these women you also have been right that woman that is often our greatest credential is you know the journey we’ve walked home to our own bodies and the gaslighting experience is one that I appreciated as very real in the psychiatrist’s chair right because I would see all of these women who were started on nuing or you know prescribed Depo Pera or started on orthot tricycl and somehow developed Mania like literally Weeks Later somehow developed
(13:21) you know depression or anxiety or you know the mini pill postpartum and and suddenly they’re having ideation of like harming their child literally I saw these cases with my own eyes and I was able to connect the dots right so the system has its set up is set up intentionally non intentionally to prevent dot connecting right so like once you start connecting dots you don’t need that system any longer right so everything in silos is how you have a psychiatrist and a gastroenterologist and a rumatologist and have all your
(13:49) Specialists who know better about your body right and you know women I know women who go back to their prescriber right and say I feel funky something feels off you know my hair is falling out I have brain fog I have joint pain like I all of a sudden like I just don’t feel like myself and they’re told what you know it’s you’re fine it’s not that it’s in your head right go see the psychiatrist right so I was often on the receiving end of that and you know this is where I’m sorry no credentials are required to report on this phenomenon so
(14:24) I wonder you know if you could speak a little bit to your experience and also to what you see and what might be you know some of what you think is at stake here if women believe you know when they are dismissed and told that it’s all in their head you know that nothing’s actually wrong because the medication is safe and effective right yeah I was on birth control for I mean I was on new ring for about seven years and then was on the IUD for two years and it was interesting because I had all of these negative symptoms I had committ bleeding
(14:59) I had terrible gut issues I was puking twice three times a week I could hardly eat anything even though I gained 20 pounds during that time I went to go see four different doctors within three years every single one of them dismissed me I flat out asked if it had anything to do with the birth control they said no I guess victim blaming I should have probably looked at the pan flip that it came with but because all of my symptoms were there and you know it was really disheartening and then once I got my IUD taken out you know some of the symptoms
(15:33) had already subsided which I now recognize is because I went from the new Ving which is an estrogen and progestin to a progestin only so some of the symptoms had subsided my hair changed like crazy it got so much curlier there was a lot of changes and then I got the IUD taken out and I remember even in that last appointment I was like I have really bad anxiety I don’t feel good it shouldn’t be in me and and you know she fully dismissed me and throughout the kind of previous couple of years it was always that thought of I don’t know
(16:08) myself without synthetic hormones right I’ve been on these since pretty much I’ve had a cycle since I was 16 and I don’t know myself without them I know that my hormones are doing stuff to my body I know that they have so many different impacts I was going through my nutrition education so I really started to recognize the importance of hormones and the impact of them and I was like I don’t know myself without synthetic hormones so I decided to go off and started to do a lot of research into the birth controls that I was on and fammed
(16:38) all of my symptoms of course and then also started doing research into Women’s Health and that was the first time that I saw that there was four phases to my menstrual cycle and I was stunned because here I am thinking I’m I’m well educated I’m really into biohacking I’m doing nutrition certifications and I don’t even know the basics of my menstrual cycle this is wild so I started to continue to do more research started to kind of put you know like you’re saying putting the dots together of okay these hormones follow a
(17:13) a predictable pattern and they need to be supported differently they’re impacting me differently so why am I not living in tune with that so I started doing that even before I found out that phase syncing or cycle syncing was a thing and you know then during Co ended up coming out with my practice because I had to leave my other job as a nutrition and culinary director of a startup because that was toxic so decided to come out with this and just the response that I got was really dumbfounding of how little everybody knew and then as I
(17:47) continued with it you know it was very slow growth I had changed my personal Instagram into my business account and so I had a couple of interactions but it wasn’t big and then I went on Tik Tok and then I went viral Within two or three weeks of going on Tik Tok had gone viral and had gained like 400,000 followers within pretty much 72 hours it definitely lifechanging and I was freaking out like I’m an introvert I’m not very out there much so it was pretty difficult to kind of reconcile with that but what I recognized was that the
(18:20) content that I’m creating and the messages that I have in the education that I’m able to provide is so necessary for women that I now have a responsibility to continue this work and having that Baseline has enabled me to continue this after every time that I’ve wanted to give up but it really is that recognition of how important this work is because I have hundreds of women messaging me all the time telling me about their experiences telling me that you know they went to their doctor and they’ve been bleeding for 40 days
(18:51) straight and the doctor was like well I don’t really know so you can go on birth control if you want or see what happens you know and all these other things that women just aren’t given informed consent and that’s really where my Baseline lies I believe in the access of birth control I think it’s essential to have access to it but I don’t think that we’re given informed consent when it comes to going on birth control and that’s really where my frustration lies and it is the gaslighting it is the telling us that
(19:18) we’re crazy or that you know we don’t know what’s going on in our own bodies and it’s very upsetting and this article has been a reflection of that Gaslight right you’re taking my story who I do have credentials and I have experience and you’re taking that and positioning it as misinformation which is exactly what the medical system has been doing to women for so many years of no I I think I know what’s going on in my body and you’re telling me I don’t so either I give up and I don’t seek any more answers and I live with the idea that
(19:57) women are just supposed to suffer or I go against you and I understand my own body and I tune into it and I learn to understand the communication that my body provides to me and learn how to support it which is what I try to help women with so absolutely and that’s that’s why I’m a Believer in that Bucky Fuller quote right that says you don’t fight the existing system you build a new one that renders you know it obsolete because if you are going to the conventional medical system for informed consent literally or expecting that or
(20:29) if you are going there expecting some sort of you know magic pill right or no strings attached solution you just are going to the wrong place right like it’s going to the Butcher and expecting a vegan lentil dish it’s just it’s not for sale there right and so that’s what I I really love about how you have a mast you know broken through the censorship ceiling and and imass this following so quickly I mean it’s extraordinary because I’m not sure we need to get our information any longer from you know the horse’s mouth right if
(21:05) we can Source it people can Source it from you for example then they can make their own decision right well I think there’s a couple of things that we have to look at here because I think for many a years many generations we were told to look to the authorities to give us the right information and the ethical information so just like the medical system we’ve always been taught to look at our doctors like they know what they’re talking about and that they’ve gotten the right education that you know promotes wellness and health care even
(21:40) though that’s really not what it is it’s really unfortunate when you look at the statistics of how many hours of nutritional training doctors have to take and how many actually hit that recommended dose so we look to them for support and that they should know the answers for us the same way that we’ve always looked toward Legacy Media or mainstream media to be able to provide us with information that is factual that is correct that is verified Etc so that we can absorb that and then navigate life through that lens but the
(22:10) unfortunate thing is we got a question why are people now looking toward people on Instagram or on Tik Tok to get our information it’s because we don’t have the trust in those people that we had perceived Authority because they have kind of taken advantage of that they’ve taken advantage of our trust in them and instead of living up to the responsibility that they have they’ve instead used it to manipulate and Gaslight us yeah or you know it wasn’t it’s not broken it was designed that way kind of a thing absolutely and
(22:45) collectively I like to think metaphysically like we are in this maturational moment where we are going from our childlike victim Consciousness like into a more Sovereign relationship to ourselves and of course that requires a relationship to personal responsibility and choices right so there are two reasons that I can think of why someone would ever even think about taking birth control even if they knew you know maybe there were some challenges with it you know one is for contraception and the other is because
(23:16) they have literally any diagnosis related to their hormones endometriosis PCOS PMS just cycle irregular I mean huge La yeah huge laundry list and I want people to leave this conversation with a reframe around why they might consider like the less convenient path because you know I borrow a term from Clarissa pinkola estas which is the poor bargain right this idea that we can trade our cyclical nature our hormones literally for some sort of exit hatch right from our struggle is the poor bargain we make it’s selling our soul to
(24:01) the devil and it should necessarily come with consequences that remind us that like stir us awake so that we consider walking our ourselves home to ourselves right and I would love to start with you know what you see as being because you do have this training you host something called sync Society I’m an alliteration girly I love that and you know that these symptoms whatever they might be are invitations right they’re messages from the body you know from you to you about you I like to say so what do you think would be the reasons that somebody
(24:41) would even consider walking this like more complicated right on some level path when they could just potentially like you know take the edge off their symptoms with this magic pill that even if they know there’s some potential problems with it like why would they working with you versus like just taking putting the ring in you know I think that it is like an instant gratification kind of situation of course when you go on the pill or go on a different type of birth control or whatever it is it’s instant gratification so the symptoms
(25:14) that you wanted to treat have been treated quickly then you have all the other symptoms that then come along with it but because I think for the longterm there’s a lot of long-term impacts that we experience on the pill that most women will experience on the pill of course not all some people love the pill and like good on them but I think that when you come back into yourself and understand how your body works the language of your body how to support it during the different phases of your life and during the different phases of your
(25:45) cycle you have a different level of empowerment that you can really live within that really changes your life because when as cyclical beings when we follow the predictable pattern of our hormones and understand them then we’re able to actually acknowledge the benefits of each of the phases because I think there’s been a lot of mainstream Media or whatever it is of two weeks of my cycle are going to suck and then I’m going to have like a decent two weeks right right but in actuality if you know how your cycle works and you know how to
(26:20) support it and you know how to leverage each phase for its benefits then you can overall increase your productivity your health your Fitness results all of these different aspects of your life and I think not only that you know when I bring women into my programs I always say that it goes against anything that a business coach would ever tell me but I never want you to have to work with me again I want to be able to provide you with the resources the wisdom the knowledge to be able to help yourself now and in any circumstance that you
(26:53) bring that comes about because of course life happens and things are going to happen that your health will likely fluctuate Etc but if you know how to come back into yourself and acknowledge yourself and know how to support it then you’re able to help yourself in the future right and then there’s the whole aspect of what Legacy do we want to lead do we want to leave the legacy of women having to continuously go through this cycle that you know they were on birth control since the age of like 12 to 16 until they were 28 and then they had to
(27:24) go off of birth control because they had all of these symptoms and then they had to figure it out and then they do the same thing with their children and their children like for me the knowledge that I give I want this to become common knowledge like of course I run a business and I have to be able to sustain my life in order to help as many people as possible but in the actuality I hope that my legacy is that this becomes common knowledge and women no longer have to suffer and think that suffering is just part of being a woman
(27:55) right so it’s like what do we also want to bring our children up with what do we want to bring our daughters up with what do we want to bring our sons up with because also there’s been studies done that talking about periods and talking about Cycles can actually Foster solidarity between genders and between groups of people so I think that the broader picture yeah it’s a lot easier to just go on a pill and then hope that you’re going to feel okay but in the broader aspect of things if you’re actually able to support yourself you’re
(28:26) not only able to support yourself but because you’re able to do that and have confidence and stability in yourself that also expands to the people around you and then hopefully for generations to come I love that you’re framing it this way so resonant because I know that our health struggles can be a portal to something so much more profound than simply the remission of symptoms let alone just management of symptoms which is all that you know Pharmaceuticals offer I mean I published a case report of the most severe pmdd premenstrual
(29:02) dysphoric disorder I had ever like encountered I mean it was like it involved psychosis it was really horrific within two cycles this woman had total remission of her symptoms and now is like this huge light in the world I mean she’s like an extraordinary Chang maker and I know that that portal you know which almost squeezed her to her nihilistic end because she was you know experiencing suicidality and all the rest ended up being you know that birth canal and I also love the framing of this as like in intergenerational like stewardship
(29:38) because you know I know when my daughter I was on birth control for 12 years I even continuous cycled so I didn’t even have like a placebo bleed 12 years I Che birth control I never knew my cycle ever and my daughter my eldest when she started her entered menarchy she we had like you know what I call like a first moon ceremon so we had like I gathered all my girlfriends and we had this like beautiful actually you know have a article giving instructions you know on how to do one because I was literally sobbing the entire time I
(30:10) couldn’t even contain myself like it was clearly for me you know and my line to regard this not as like oh my God now I am my period to deal with you know but as this like this incredible initiation into the realm of woman and how profound that is right to orient towards your body in this way so thank you so how do we access our deepest truth I want to share something that has really supported me in this long and twisted wild Journey that I come back to time and time again to tap into my inner wisdom alignment and knowing the Divine
(30:53) truth Elixir from Lotus way helps you to illuminate your greatest purpose through the art of self-healing so you use it to unveil your sacred offering and to clarify your expression you attract community and you magnify your powerful presence so this flower essence dissolves the difficulty in telling and speaking your truth this sense of lack of purpose withdrawal patterns inauthenticity veiled intention secrecy and wanting to run or Abandon Ship when things get hard so imagine tapping into your deepest truth with ease what a gift
(31:31) head to lotus.com and use the code kelly5 for 15% off the link is in show notes for you I would love to talk a little bit about like your perspectives which I’m sure I’ll share on this like cyclical nature right so so you you say on your website that you think of a woman’s cycle as her fifth Vital sign right so this reframing of the cycle as part of your feedback right as far as your balance goes and inner you know Harmony is essential and I wonder if you can depict like what you feel like are some of the most I know that your background
(32:10) is a nutrition what you feel are some of the most important ways to support that right because they’re supporting it so that we are symptom free because there’s no alarms to sound but then there’s also I don’t want to use like biohacking because it’s just such a masculine frame but then there’s how about optimizing right then there’s also optimizing right and and I will do this as well like I know for whatever reason actually like the day or so before I bleed which is literally right now my channel feels very open right and so you know that’s a
(32:42) time when the veil can be thin right and you can sometimes be super irritable and sometimes like be sensitive to what actually is potentially not in optimal alignment and it also is when like I can talk to you and teach you know from my heart in a way that is is powerful and the moment I start bleeding like you will not see me on this computer so knowing that has helped me to literally schedule differently right so I’d love to sort of talk about those two buckets like how do you support the physiology and then how do you optimize you know
(33:16) like even you personally let alone like what you know you teach yeah this is my favorite thing because I am such a nerd for science I love nutrition and Science and Anatomy me and then I’m also always been a very spiritual person so I try to blend both of them in a lot of different aspects but it’s really cool because science naturally blends with spirituality because we have these different things going on in our body that enable us to do different things so one thing that I absolutely love is that during a menstrual cycle you pretty much
(33:52) have four different perspectives that you can view life through and when you know that and when you can tap into each of these different perspectives that you have you’re then able to analyze the different things in your life through all of those different lenses and take a blend of that and make sure that you’re actually like it’s a whole you know what I mean and that I think is something that is specific to women because we have our cycles that impact our brains and impact our vision our hearing our sense like our sense of smell and taste
(34:26) so it’s really cool when we’re able to top into all of those different things and you know put intentional viewership on these different aspects that we want to have different perspectives on and you know when we support our Cycles naturally and use nutrition so for instance during the menstrual phase you’re losing quite a bit of nutrients through your bleed so you have to incorporate more iron and that can be really helpful to mitigate a lot of the fatigue that you might experience or the muscle weakness Etc and then during your
(34:59) follicular phase the second phase in your cycle when estrogen starts to rise this is a great time to start incorporating foods that have estrogen regulating properties so that you don’t experience a lot of PMS symptoms later on and then during in and around ovulation it’s a great time to really support the liver because your liver is the one that’s processing out all this excess estrogen and if it’s not working properly then again you’re going to experience a lot of symptoms later on and then your ludal phase the same you
(35:28) really want to support progesterone through certain foods and you can also navigate this through a relationship perspective or a career perspective because at different times in your cycle you may be more focused or have better memory or verbal fluency or whatever it is that actually has these impacts on our brain changes that enable you to have more productivity long term and if you understand how these things are affecting you then you’re able to communicate that as well well and feel sturdy and confident in your
(36:00) communication with yourself and I think that is a really big thing for women because you know there’s a lot of research with ADHD and how ADHD symptoms present differently in women because you know men or boys usually go outward with their symptoms but women tend to go inward so we get misdiagnosed with anxiety a lot more because we have these anxious tendencies that we want to do better we want to people please we want to do all these things and we don’t recognize why we might be feeling that way and then when we’re able to really
(36:32) understand ourselves we have such a different level of confidence and Assurance in ourselves that I think is really unmatched and you know something that I always say women have about 451 menstrual cycles through their life spanning 38.5 years and it is constantly happening your cycle is impacting you every single day of your reproductive life not just when you have your period during PMS so to view the menstrual cycle or your period through a negative lens imagine how large of a part of yourself you are viewing through a
(37:08) negative lens and how much internalized anxieties and self-esteem issues that that can cause because you don’t know you know I always used to want to control myself I always used to complain that why can’t I just be stable why can’t I just be consistent and what I recognize was because my cycle changes my consistency levels also change and if I can go with those fluctuations then over the span of a full cycle or three Cycles I end up having a lot higher productivity than if I was just trying to push through and end up burning out
(37:45) so much quicker right that’s feminine productivity right so what you were aspiring to is this masculine model it’s energetic exactly emotionally right that linearity is the collapse of Fe biology into write this waveform that was never meant for us and so it’s so powerful what you just said that I I want to like neon sign that because when we respond you know align with ourselves in this way the yield is nonlinear it’s exponential right what can arise it reminds me of when I like started going to bed early so I go to bed at like 9:
(38:23) when I started going to bed early years ago and I thought oh I’m going to lose all these productive hours after my kids go to sleep and how’s that going to work you know and when I started to do that I don’t know I wrote a couple books and created a program like literally like my productivity was off the charts how do you explain that right because I I responded to my biological needs and my channel was opened right so I love that do you literally like obviously you eat differently which is you know your expertise and I imagine you also like
(39:00) exercise differently you also socialize differently and work differently so I’d love to get sort of like a snapshot into how you work with those phases and these different you know behavioral Arenas yeah absolutely and so we’ll start off with Fitness and stuff because when we’re looking at Fitness a huge part of it is just connecting to your body and understanding and listening to your body when you need a little bit of extra time off when you can go a little bit harder but there also is physiological changes
(39:30) in the body that impact your Fitness so for instance when you are in your ludal phase progesterone is higher so progesterone has a thermogenic effect it also increases your heart rate slightly so during that time it might be a little bit harder to perform a lot of high-intensity exercises because the likelihood is that you’re going to get fatigued a little bit faster so keep that more so for your follicular and ovulatory phases the same with ovulation during right before ovulation is when estrogen really hits its peak and this
(40:03) can really impact your joints and ligaments making them a little bit more pliable so research has shown that women could have an 80% higher risk of injury in and around ovulation because of the effects of estrogen and when we’re able to tune into this and we know when we’re supposed to work out a little bit harder or what the best workouts are to do then we’re really able to support our bodies reduce injury improve our fitness goals not mess with our hormones too this is a really big thing that exercise is necessary for health Vitality your
(40:37) hormones Etc but overex exercising for women can be really really detrimental for our hormones because it increases our cortisol response that can then take away from our sex hormones and mess with the cycle it can mess with the HPA axis which is the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis and that can really impact our cycle as well so we want to work with the different phases so that we can actually support our hormones rather than going against them so you know during menstration hormones are at their lowest you’re
(41:08) likely feeling really tired if you don’t feel like working out you don’t have to do a heavy workout right that’s a good time to do more restorative workouts YES Movement can really help with pain and cramps so I would definitely recommend some sort of movement but that could be yoga or stretching or just going for a walk and feel okay with going for a walk because that I think is also a huge thing is giving ourselves Grace because a lot of the time when you know we’ve been in this male dominant Society for so long that we should just be pushing
(41:42) through and working out and grind grind grind but for us that will do the opposite and that will end up messing with our hormones that could then cause us to have more weight retention or water retention or impact our cortisol level or insulin levels and have these cascading impacts that end up doing exactly the opposite of what you want them to do yeah I always say it’s how you can perpetuate exactly what you’re seeking to resolve and that is the psychology of the alpath model it’s like you know when you take this really self-
(42:19) betraying path I mean in the end doesn’t feel like that in the moment but you perpetuate exactly what you’re intending to resolve and complicated right because it’s like a wacko phenomenon where things pop out in new places that they weren’t even emerging before and it’s really upsetting because I have a lot of women come to me specifically with PCOS let’s say right polycystic ovary syndrome and they really struggle to lose weight because they have PCOS and they’ll go to the doctor and the doctor will say yeah you have PCOS if you want
(42:51) to lose weight work out more eat less and you’ll probably lose weight and then your symptoms will go away but the issue with that is that working out OV ex exercising undernutrition will wreak havoc on PCOS and end up making you not able to lose weight so then not only are you starving yourself exhausting yourself but emotionally exhausting because it’s like it’s not just willpower right it’s not just oh I have to go even harder and then I’ll be better it’s actually the opposite and it’s bringing yourselves down and calming down a little bit
(43:26) because half of the time the stress of I need to you know lose weight quickly I need to do this I need to do that that stress response which we have to recognize that stress is a physiological response in the body ends up wreaking so much more Havoc so when we’re able to actually give ourselves Grace and be like okay we’re working on this long term we’re doing what we need to do we’re educating ourselves on how our body works we’re educating ourselves on proper nutrition and how to regulate hormones then we’re able to actually
(44:00) address it it’s that whole thing of you overestimate what you can do in a week but underestimate what you can do in a year so I think that’s really important for women too who have been you know trained by this hustle culture and immediate results to recognize this is a long-term thing you know we have 38.
(44:17) 5 years of of reproductive Health that we need to address so if you start now you can take those small small steps and continue to stack upon them so that in you know a year from now and two years from now you end up really connected to your body and and know exactly how to regulate yourself yeah and like we’ve been saying it’s beyond self- intimacy it’s also really unlocking some of these feminine superpowers right of intuition and you know what I like to call like walking in the dark right this capacity that we have to move in ways that are
(44:52) inexplicably informed by a kind of deep wisdom you know that we can sourc literally from our own bodies and if you don’t know how to read your body right because you’re medicated or you’re just you know living in a way lifestyle wise that is incompatible with your physiology there just so much the sort of signal to noise ratio is such that how could you possibly hear you know that’s what it was for me yeah and often misinformed because when we were looking at health and wellness and all of these different studies so many of these
(45:23) Studies have been done on men and postmenopausal women because our hormones are make such an impact that it’s difficult to include them in research studies because it costs more money and there’s so many more variabilities so we’re just dismissed from these studies and then it’s accepted that they apply to us when they actually don’t so we have these you know fasting is so good for you keto is so good for you yeah it’s good for men and postmenopausal women who don’t have a reproductive cycle but for us it’s a
(45:54) little bit different yes totally agree totally agree so I’d love to talk about the other indication for synthetic hormonal medications which is contraception right so part of this poor bargain is also that we can just shut shut that down until it works for us you know to consider conceiving and I have certainly developed different perspective than I ever thought I would about hookup culture and the entitlement that women have to be able to as men do and that that’s something that we’re supposed to enjoy and relish as
(46:30) part of our hedonistic you know Reclamation here I don’t believe that and I am also aware that establishing effective contraception even if it’s with your own husband and you’re done having kids and whatever the situation is is not something that we learn I mean I literally didn’t learn about this in medical school I didn’t learn about it from my mom you know this is not something that we are discussing and I think most of the time there is this notion that it’s like condoms or birth control and I know that this is isn’t
(47:03) what you’re out there talking about however I imagine you have a perspective because the opportunity that we have to learn our Cycles involves like learning about our fertility Windows you know this the six days and being able to identify the signs so I wonder what you think about contraceptive Alternatives if you think you know if you’re like a fem Tech purely or if there’s other approaches that you have found to be useful or something that you would endorse and for what kind of woman right because I’m even thinking like about my
(47:35) daughter’s like you know am I really going to teach them the Billings method you know like in their late teen years or is there there something else that I would like advocate for obviously not including you know any kind of hormonal birth control so I wonder what you think about that yeah so I actually teach symptothermal method of fertility awareness so the symptothermal method is the only kind of fertility awareness method that I would recommend for avoiding pregnancy naturally purposes because it is the most effective and
(48:04) when used properly it’s 99.6% effective but it is 98 to 99% effective with typical use if you learn it the correct way so that is what I teach and it’s shocking to me because there’s so much backlash when it comes to fertility awareness methods and there’s so much not even misinformation just misguided information because you know it was written in the article as well of how natural birth control is less effective but that’s grouping together all the different types of fertility awareness right you mentioned the
(48:42) Billings method the Rhythm method calendar method standard days method those aren’t nearly as effective because the Billings method a little bit more but you’re not looking at the physical biomarkers that your body is giving you in response to these fluctuating hormones so the symptothermal method is a method of fertility awareness in which you track your cervical mucus your basil body temperature which are the primary biomarkers as well as your cervical position and LH testing for kind of more reassurance and it is super effective
(49:15) not just in avoiding pregnancy naturally but also in improving your chances of conception because you know exactly when you’re most fertile and it gives you so much information about your overall and your hormonal health so earlier you mentioned how I’ve said that you know the cycle is your fifth Vital sign because of all the really important information that it can provide for you and when you’re tracking these biomarkers you have a mapped out version of your hormones pretty much in you know I use paper charts I also use an app
(49:47) that will tell you exactly what your hormones are doing or not exactly but be a reflection of what your hormones are doing and when you use this method you can identify by the onset Peak and end of your fertility and actually confirm once ovulation has taken place because the egg only survives for about 12 to 24 hours after ovulation takes place and then for the rest of your cycle you have available for intercourse whenever you pretty much want and when you’re able to use the symptothermal method effectively
(50:20) you have so much authority over your fertility journey and I think that that is so important to to acknowledge and is really the thing that we should be taught in schools because you know I’ve been teaching for I think about two years now fertility awareness or just under two years and have been using the method myself for almost three years I’ve never had a pregnancy scare and I’ve gotten quite a bit of backlash when I talk about it saying that you shouldn’t be promoting this to teenagers because they’re irresponsible and it’s like why are we
(50:55) first of all diminishing teenagers second of all if a teenager is too irresponsible to track their cycle you don’t think they’re too irresponsible to take a pill every day you know what I mean or perhaps to be having sex or to be having you know so yeah this I definitely think is something that needs to become more mainstream obviously this article is a reflection of how they’re trying to suppress that because that does take away from the Reliance on hormonal birth control and it doesn’t allow them to kind of have control over
(51:33) our fertility because if we know which I was never taught that there was only six days of my cycle that I could get pregnant and I was never taught that there was a method to understand when those six days were and you know using the symptothermal method there are a couple of days on either side because we do have to act with caution if we’re trying to use this to avoid pregnancy just so that we can be really confident but if we’re able to do that we have so much more control and authority over our fertility and our health and when we
(52:04) understand that you know like in my I call it the fundamentals of fan Workshop series I talk about you know how you can use this method not just for avoiding pregnancy naturally increasing chances but also with health and you know during ovulation is usually when women are the friski and we want to have sex more and we want to explore but with the fertility awareness method specifically the symptothermal method we should be abstaining from unprotected genital contact during that time because pregnancy is possible but I provide my
(52:36) students with five pages worth of alternative intimacy practices that actually are able to improve your sexual encounters and to kind of open up your sexual development because we’re taking away the goal Orient of penetration and Climax and I I think that’s really important for women as well because we’ve been conditioned to understand sex as goal oriented of penetration and climax but when we take that away then we’re actually able to discover what we like and to laugh and to explore and to try new things that can really really
(53:16) build intimacy not only with yourself but with your partner as well so I think that’s exciting I absolutely love that reframe and that’s all it takes right is this kind of a reframe my BDSM teacher om Pani would say and has said that that genital yes because everybody needs one of those that genital intercourse is the most boring sensation you can cultivate which you know through a lens is true I mean if you’ve encountered ga’s erotic blueprints you know that there is like so much that we can discover through
(53:48) just basic sensation play and body mapping with our partner and let alone ourselves and I just absolutely love that reframe it’s it strikes me to like you know when I as a a mom of teen girls I had to like jailbreak myself of a lot of basic parenting conditioning around like you know what if my daughter has sex right she’s had this like amazing boyfriend for over a year and I’ve been you know talking about sacred anatomy and all this stuff for years but when I got to that place I was like I’m not supposed to set the conditions you
(54:24) know for that to happen was like why like why either I trust that I have you know passed the torch to this woman this young woman who knows herself knows what’s right for herself or I’m going to create that taboo energy and why would I do it and that’s where this programming around sex and pregnancy comes in oh because you might get pregnant as if that’s all that sex is about like can we please evolve the conversation generationally so that we can you know first of all make sure that coupled with the Let’s Talk About Sex now I mean I
(55:00) had my daughter do I don’t know if you’ve heard of kimami but she has a program called vaginal Kung Fu so I had her do this program to learn about her own you know anatomy and Sensations Etc I should probably have her have a call with you too and you know the idea is that it’s an opportunity for her to deeply align with herself for herself and to make decisions that are right for herself and I actually find that this this generation they’re like way more equipped to self- Advocate than I certainly ever was and most of the
(55:33) women in my generation ever were and so with this kind of a reframe where it’s like you know there’s nothing to be afraid of you have the information and tools that you need you can trust your body you can trust your intuition and your intimate erotic life can include so much more than just this masculinized orgasmic Arc right like there’s so much opportunity here that then reflects on the generation of boys and men that we’re creating because you know it’s unfortunate that you know to speak for myself like I allowed a lot of
(56:08) encounters to be really disappointing and I never said anything and I let those guys continue on doing that exact same thing being selfish and only caring about their pleasure because they also don’t understand women’s pleasure and like unless someone teaches that to them they’re not able to understand that so if we enable and Empower younger people to feel really secure in themselves and be able to advocate for themselves and communicate what they like and how they like it and where they like it and all these different things then that also
(56:41) helps the whole generation experience sex better and not necessarily as a taboo or goal oriented thing or again a male dominant thing of male pleasure first and foremost you know so I think think that that is incredible and you know I used to always fear having daughters when I was younger cuz I grew up with a sister and both of us had a lot of hormonal issues but now it’s like I’m so sad that I used to think that because now I’m so excited and I really pray that I have daughters because I’m able to then teach them these things
(57:18) that I never knew and that will be able to make them feel secure in themselves allow them to be connected to their feminine energy allow them to be beacons of light and femininity and all of these different aspects that I think are beautiful and needed in the world and we all have our places that we need to find and we all have our places that you know some people like having more dominant or masculine energy not that I want to say that dominance and masculine go hand inand but that we do have these different levels of energy that we want
(57:51) to present and that we want to hold within ourselves and I think being able to understand all that vibrant spectrum of energies allows us to then hold that and project that into the world I love that it’s such an opportunity to reclaim ourselves as women from the internalized misogyny that we now carry and as you can see from the women you know who played the antagonistic role in this you know recent piece which is been my experience like my biggest haters have always been women always to a person I can’t even think of a time that I have
(58:28) been maligned by men and I get it I get it because projection is real and whatever it is that we are not ready to own in ourselves the tension of opposites within like we have to play with outside and we are the purveyors of our own oppression at this point so you know to take this opportunity to heal from that you know is so powerful and it feels really good to stand with you as an ally and I’m here I’m in your corner however I can support you including with my very important credentials whatever it is that they
(59:03) feel they want but that’s not actually what they want because they don’t want to listen to me either trust me and I’m just really excited that you’re out there doing this work and yeah happy to play in this arena with you thank you so much Nicole make sure that in show notes are all the ways to get support from you and your offerings and you have amazing presents on Tik Tok and Instagram and so far have a clear Open Mic so I hope that that continues it’s been great to talk to you thank you it’s been really great
(59:37) to connect with you as well
