Simple Self-Care Tips for the Inner Autumn Season of your Cycle
Exercise, Emotional Self-Care & Food Energetics
Disintegration - dissolving - my focus floats. Buried emotions rise, making their way to the surface of my awareness, where they linger - waiting for me; to stop - to put down my tools of work. They want quiet. Stillness to revel in - a moment to sink beneath the surface of daily matter, to a dark, mysterious and earthy place where an intelligence pulsates within every molecule of my body; saying something profound, simple and necessary, while saying nothing at all.
I thought it was about time for the final season of ‘Self-Care Tips for your Inner (cycle season)’ series. It’s late autumn in nature’s season here in Scotland, which brings me to reflect on the inner autumn1 season of our menstrual cycles.
If you missed the previous seasons, start with The Dark & Light Inner Seasons of Your Menstrual Cycle, for the big picture on all four inner seasons. If you’re currently in your ‘inner winter’, read ‘Simple Self-Care Tips for the Inner Winter of your Menstrual Cycle'. For ‘inner spring’, you’ll benefit from ‘Simple Self-Care Tips for the Inner Spring Season of your Cycle’, and if you’re in your ‘inner summer’, explore ‘Simple Self-Care Tips for the Inner Summer Season of your Menstrual Cycle’.
And so, we arrive at the final inner season - one that holds immense wild and creative power, edginess, boldness and the simmering of every emotion felt throughout that month, now rising to the surface of psyche, body and soul.
WELCOME TO THE EDGE DWELLER PHASE.
Inner autumn is the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, the season before menstruation returns and when the womb lining thickens in preparation for possible pregnancy. And, like the menstrual phase, I find that this phase can be divided into two halves which we’ll explore in each section below.
Inner autumn can be the most challenging inner season for many women, yet much like nature’s autumn, the falling and wilting leaves which turn to mulch, just as we can feel our bodies and brains ‘mulching’, is the fecund ground from which fertile new beginnings spring again.
Rather than fight against this natural cycle of energy - let’s explore a few simple self-care tips to mirror and align with it through exercise, emotional self-care and food energetics for the inner season of autumn.