Welcome to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katie Rose, and this podcast is this to help illuminate the path ahead of you. With expert interviews, clinical pearls, and real client success stories, my intention is to bring you hope for what's possible on this journey, and to give you tools and resources to navigate the ups and downs on the road before you. If you find this podcast helpful, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And I have a big request. If you have a minute, can you leave us a five-star review? And let us know what did you learn, what did you come away with? Did you leave with that spark of hope? This helps more people like you find the podcast. My mission is to support as many humans as possible on their path to become parents. And by you sharing and subscribing, you're part of that mission too. And I'm so grateful for you for being here. And my brain is just like, can we not do things? And so I have the perfect guest for that conversation. And uh so we have today with us Renee Feck. Renee is a mother of three, a feminine leadership coach, a cycle syncing expert, which is why I'm so glad she's here for my luteal brain, and a business strategist. She is the author of Cycle Sync Your Business, which I have my copy right here, front and center, the founder of your Cycle Advantage and the Flow Collective. And she teaches how to women or teaches women how to align business with their body's natural rhythm so they can work less and make more and lead with confidence. And my experience having done some sessions with Renee and doing breath work and having conversations around business is that there is so much missed opportunity for breaking out of this hustle culture, which I say hell yes to doing too. Thank you for being here, Renee. Thank you so much. I want to start off with just a question of like, what brought you into this world? Like, how did you come into this career space?

Um, necessity. It was not where I thought I would be, honestly. Like, if you if I was to rewind to the version of me 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you know, at all, I would never in my wildest dreams have been the person who thought I would be sitting here talking about periods and cycles. Like, absolutely not. Like, I even even some days now, I'm like, how do I talk about this? Like, this is a weird conversation and a weird topic. And how am I the one that's doing this? You know? But I really came out of a sense of necessity that it was back about 10 years ago that my husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My I got my dream job at the children's hospital here in San Diego, and then my I was got pregnant with my third baby. And so we had so much happen in one year between all three of those things. And one, like in that, you're faced with this reality of like life doesn't guarantee you tomorrow. Like you do not know if you're gonna wake up tomorrow. We have no idea what tomorrow is going to hold, like, just this stark reality of like life or death sort of environment and situation. And so it really brought me to this place of like, I want to make sure that we're living today, every single day, as best as we possibly can. There's so much information out there about like one day, someday down the road. But and so there's this like goals of sacrificing now, sacrificing today for the goal of the future and all these things. Like, that was what I felt like I had grown up with. And I realized very quickly I was losing out on the now. I was losing out on that present moment because I was so forward-thinking, I was so future-oriented. And so that was what kind of pushed me into creating a business. And at the time it was a network marketing business, and I remember just putting everything into it, like every free moment, every spare moment. I was pumping, I was eating everything on my I'd be on my lunch break at the hospital, typing and like getting my my notes done, my charting done while pumping, while eating, and then messaging, like literally the multitasking queen of everything and just pushing and pushing and pushing, and a couple years in wasn't getting the results that I really felt like I was getting. And my mentor or should be getting, and my mentor at the time was like, Well, business is just a numbers game. So if you're not getting that those results, you just got to do more. I was like, There's there's nowhere to do more. Like, where do you expect me to get more from? Like, I just can't, like, there's nothing left. And so there was kind of that moment where I had two kind of questions. Either A, it was something I just didn't have. Maybe there's something certain people have that make them successful in business, and I just wasn't one of those people. Or B, I really could make it happen, but I needed to find a different way. And so I dove into all kinds of different productivity strategies, did some neuroscience research, like coming from a medical background space, like that was a big part. It's like I understand the body and the physiology of it. So it was like looking at all of these things about habits and routines and neuroscience and all the things, and somewhere in there discovered how women are different with our bodies and our hormones and how they impact our brains. And the research is just not a ton, like we just don't know that much about it at this point in time, and sort of dove into that world and started sharing it with my clients that I had at the time. And they were like, This is life-changing. Like, why did we not know this decades ago? And so that was kind of the starting point for me of really diving into really helping women learn how to use their body and learn how to embrace a different way and just really understand our bodies are built differently than men's. Our brains are different, our energy is different, like everything's different. And when we lean into it, rather than trying to force it, we create so much more impact.

Amen. And it's so interesting because I think it was like 1992 that women really started to be included in clinical trials because previously they were considered messy because of their hormones, because of the shifts in hormones. So, you know, big science, of course, rather than say, well, how interesting. Let's embrace that, let's find out more, was just like, ugh, we're scared of the hormones. And it's like that has created such this like cultural stigma around even talking about our cycles, talking about how that might impact us, and and then just put us on this, you know, 24-7 hustle where you know we're expected to operate the same way as a man's brain does, yeah, nine to five, five days a week. And that can really tax us and prevent us from finding a lot of the creativity and magic. Totally.

Even, I mean, I know that your podcast and like your world is in the vein of fertility, but it's like it overlaps so much. And when we expand out, oh, it makes so much sense why today we're likely dealing with so much more infertility issues than we were decades ago, because we have so many more women now that are pushing and going and career and driven and all like the demands that so many women are carrying today. And what we know about the woman's body is that a woman's body needs safety. Like it needs, if it doesn't feel safe to ovulate, it's it's not going to, because it's like, how can I bring a baby into a world that's unsafe? And so by forcing ourselves to work against where our menstrual cycle's at, it tells our body, hey, something's not right. We're like, we're pushing harder, we're going harder, we're having to like fight for what we need, we're having to push, you know, all of those sorts of energies. And then it tells our body, like, okay, turn off any sort of baby-making hormone because we need to stay safe in this environment. And then it shuts all that stuff down. And so it's like, it has so many factors and layers. Like you said, it's like, yes, it helps us our with our brain function, but it is so much to how we operate as women, is like our bodies rely on feeling safe in order to function at their optimum. And when we're working in resistance to what our bodies are normally naturally supposed to be doing, that's creating a level of stress and physiological stress, whether good or bad, is telling our bodies, like, hey, it's not safe. We're we're under stress, we're under attack. Like, let's pause everything else.

And that was absolutely true for my body. Um, and I was, I've I've told this story briefly on the podcast. Like, I was on birth control for nine years and I didn't know what was happening with my body. Of course, I had a monthly bleed because of the you know, seven-day placebo part of the pill pack, but I was not in sync with my body. And at a certain point when I was like, this is weird. I wonder what my body is like without birth control. And I stopped it and I wasn't ovulating. And it was, you know, the middle of medical school. I had just gone through a really rough breakup. I was, you know, working a little bit here and there as a personal trainer. And our med school hours were so crazy because they were essentially trying to cram like five and a half years of curriculum into four years with like the naturopathic and you know, Western approaches. And so we were pulling like, you know, 14 to 16 hour days in our program. And and then I and it was working out and I was maybe sleeping like six hours a night, which I thought was pretty good. Yeah. And it was like I was just pushing so hard the entire month. And then, you know, I'd get like my random spring breaks or whatever. And my body was absolutely screaming for help. But even in a holistic program, like I wasn't given the keys to understanding like what it was screaming for help about. And it wasn't really until I realized, like, man, I might need to like slow down a little bit and learn how to listen to my body that I was able to start regaining some sense of a normal cycle. Like, it didn't matter how much I supplemented with all the fancy designer supplements, it really took slowing down.

Yeah.

It's probably the biggest factor.

I'm like so curious for you because this has been something I've just been observing. I was I was at a couple of events recently and just like listening and observing people. And I know I know how much this like hustle go kind of culture is so ingrained in just the our way of being that, but yet at the same time, you and I are probably both function in this more holistic sort of world that we're like two worlds completely separate that kind of overlap at some point. When you did step into that place of slowing down, how do you feel like it was received?

Um so it's interesting. There's a bit of pushback from friends who were used to me go, go, going all the time because it would often be like, okay, school, do whatever work I needed to do, and then we know we'd got and party. And so it started with pulling back from the partying. And that was it was interesting because that's actually when the breakup happened was like I had said, like, hey, I need to pull back from like the level of like, like, I can't go out every night of every weekend. Like, I need to put myself to bed at a normal hour, yeah, and like really start to understand like what my body is asking for. And it's so interesting. Like, it was like that was a trigger. Um, really changed a lot in life. And so it it changed friendships, it changed relationships. I would say, like, the people who there were really, really true, genuine relationships with stuck around and were like, oh, interesting, doing things differently. So I guess we're staying in and watching a movie together instead of going on partying. All right. And the people who, you know, it was maybe more of a shallow relationship in the first place were like, oh, we're not partying, then whatever. And so it was just kind of an interesting exploration of like, oh gosh, what are even my true friendships? And so that that was true for like, you know, the 25-year-old version of me. As I moved back home after medical school, um, back to my hometown and had met my whose now husband, he was like all about a slower-down, slowed down life, right? And so that was really nice to know like, okay, there are there are people who are like cool with this and are cool with me talking about my period and like how I'm noticing that showing up. But you know, 13, 14 years ago, cycle syncing wasn't something anyone was really talking about still.

No, yeah.

I I don't think I started hearing about it until maybe 10 years ago. And then it's really more within the last like five, six years that it's started, like the conversation's expanding. It's becoming, I wouldn't say mainstream, but maybe more normal to have conversations around.

It feels like it. And that's like there's those, that's where I was like in my world, I feel like it's all the time, right? Like you probably see the same thing on your social media feed. There's probably like hormones up the wazoo, like or you know, fertility. Like we get in this little bubble and we think that the very entire world is in the same vein, and then you get outside of that bubble and you realize, like, wow, this is still a topic that's really wildly important for people to be talking about. Like, this is still something that really needs to be educated. Like, and I think even right now, politically, like what we see is it almost amplifies, and we see, oh, there's a stark contrast of people seeing the world and feeling different things about the world, and like we're all living in such unique perspectives of the world, and that for me, it's some, like you said, it's like it feels sometimes like it's so mainstream that we understand this about a woman's body. But I don't think it is. I think it's still one of those topics that women's research is just not really well done, and the conversation is not out there, and it's not being widely accepted yet. Even like there was a study that was done, not like a medical study, but like a research study that was asking people if they felt like it was appropriate for women to talk in their corporate like medical or workplaces about their cycle, like where they were at with their cycle. And 50% of people said that it was inappropriate to talk about. And even now, like for me, when I post things, I've had a few things go viral, and man, the trolls come out about cycles and women's bodies when the when it goes viral. Like people will give you their entire mind and what they believe about women's bodies. But a lot of what I get is this messaging around it's inappropriate, we need to keep it under wraps. Like it's it's a bodily function that doesn't need to be talked about, and yet it impacts everything about a way the woman shows up, every single day. It's not just this like bleed that happens once a month. It's literally the way your brain thinks, it's the amount of energy you have, it's your libido, it's how you communicate, it's how you get things done in your job, it's how you how you parent, how you communicate with your partner. Literally everything is impacted by our menstrual cycles. And so I think it's one of those things we just need to do much better education talking about.

Yeah, absolutely. I have no shame about talking about it around my children, which I know I I have some acquaintances who think that's like, oh my God, your your sons know if you're on your period. And I'm like, well, I think it's really helpful for everyone in the house to know what phase of the cycle mom is in. And not with graphic inappropriate details, like age-appropriate sharing, but it changes everything. Like I know that when I'm in my luteal phase, like it would be preferable for me to essentially be in some form of hibernation. I'm already, I think we've uh, you know, in with our mentorships, we've talked about like the differences between like introverts, ambiverts, and extroverts. And like I am definitely an ambivert. I can socialize, but I have to recharge solo. And that is especially true in my luteal phase. And, you know, the the brain power is so different that I'm sure some listeners out there can relate, like in the luteal phase, you're everything just feels like it's wrong and you want to burn it down. And it's like if you're not fully aware of where you are in that, then like you might do something rather drastic. But if you can pause and just say, like, hey, ooh, okay, I know where I am in my cycle. This is gonna wash over in a couple days. What can I do for myself? What resource do I need to help stay balanced, recharge, and know that in a few days, this is gonna feel different.

Yeah.

That helps everything versus like just spiraling and being like, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with him? What's wrong with life? Why why can't my body do what my body's supposed to do? And I think in the fertility journey, like all of that becomes so much more heightened because it's already a roller coaster. So my intention is to bring in more conversations that are not just fertility, because when we are so, so hyper-focused that we start to get obsessive around something, then we're also missing a lot of opportunities for how we can be supported and the ripple effects that can happen from that that will then also circle back to support your fertility. So yeah. Yeah. So this conversation, right? Yeah, this conversation, then your work is so important because I wonder like the ripple effects of the work that you do. I wonder how many babies that's resulted in, just because women were able to really lean into their body and listen to their body and learn from their body and therefore optimize their health and well-being and their work-life integration and therefore expand their family in the way that aligned for them. Yeah.

I mean, like currently I know, like of my clients, a majority of them have already had kids. And so that's partly why they come to me is like, how do I run a business and build a life that I want when I'm tapped out on time? Like there's very little time. How do I become more effective? But I do have a client who got pregnant almost immediately because she was like, she'd been tracking, she knew where her body was for years, right? Like we'd been working together for a really long time. And so she knew where her body was and what was happening and what was going on. And she was supporting it with food, she was supporting it with nutrition. And so she'd been doing all of that work to really make sure her body was optimized and like running really well. That I remember her sending me, she's like, I got pregnant the first month we were trying. Because it was like, hey, I'm actually, I mean, I don't think it was that she was just that was the first month she was trying. It was just the first month we're saying, like, hey, we're ready to hake a baby. But like prior to that, she was doing all of this work to really support her mental status, her physical status, her emotional status. Like, she was doing so much to make sure her body was at its optimum. So a hundred percent. Like, I know it does make a difference. It's like we're not, and I think that that's one of the things is I maybe even then the conversation you're talking about, is like getting outside the box of looking at us our periods is just being about making babies. And if we get outside of that conversation and look at like it, you know, now it's being talked about as like the fifth vital sign for women and really start leaning into that and looking at hey, when you are a woman and you're not ovulating, that's that's and you're in that window of time, like age when you should be ovulating, we need to figure out what's going on. Like, why is that not happening? If your cycle is really long, if it's really short, if you have any, if your progesterone's not rising, your estrogen's not right, like if there's something, that's those are indicative that there's something going on in your body. And I think it's just really one of those things that it's a it's one of those cues, one of those metrics to help us really understand how do we optimize and support our health. I think I love like more women I see every day. Like, I was actually thinking about this this morning with my aura ring. I remember when the aura ring first came out years ago, and it was kind of one of those things that was like for the elite, you know, like it was a very expensive tool for most people to buy and to have and to use. And now I see the checker at the grocery store wearing one, and I see, you know, the restaurant, the server wearing one. Like I see so many people wearing them. I think we're in this day and age where we're realizing that there's so many different metrics and there's so many different pieces to how our bodies operate, that it's not just about eating food, it's not just about exercise, it's not just about water. It's like this combination of how we show up every single day and how can we really support it? Like, how can we get back to, like you said, even the sense of like this hustle, go produce all the time energy is what we've been conditioned into for so many years. And I think we're realizing now like that that does not work. When we look at the way the world works, we look at the way Mother Nature works, we look at all these things like the sun is in a rhythm, the moon is in a rhythm, we've got, you know, the seasons are in a rhythm, like the the earth spins, like we have so many dynamic rhythm of rest and producing and honoring and reaping and like nourishment and all these things that it makes sense that us as human beings operate in that same pattern and that same rhythm as well. But we've been so conditioned just to go and push and hustle and go and push and hustle and like be little energizer bunnies. Even the world, like our nutrients, like you probably talk about this too, of like the soil and the nutrient density of our soils, like the plants and the food. Even an apple right now does not have the same nutritional value that it did 20, 30 years ago. Like, we've lost so much nutrition for a variety of factors, but I think a big part of it is this essence of produce and produce and produce and just like get more out of it, get more out of it. We've like squeezed the juice out of our soils that they're like, Mother Nature's like, F you. I can't do this anymore, right? Like, and I think that that's what we've done. It's feeling a bit that way. Yep. Yeah. We we've done that to I think women in general too, right? We see more women today experiencing anxiety, more women today experiencing depression. We see more women today experiencing burnout. I I don't know, but you probably know. But I'm guessing the stats of postpartum depression, anxiety, and bipolar, like all those things probably have increased as well. And some of it may be that we're doing a better job of actually diagnosing it, but there's also probably a big factor of it of that that the women today are under so much more demand than they were 50, 60 years ago. 50, 60 years ago, if a woman had a baby, that was probably all she was doing was staying at home and taking care of a baby. And now we're pushing women to get back to work, back to life at five, six weeks postpartum. Like it's just, it's a very different environment. And I think we're seeing that in its ripple, in its fullest sense of the push and the go and the hustle and the produce all the time and be productive all the time. It's got this cascade that's crumbling in many different ways.

Yes. Not to say, anyone out there that we are pushing for like 1950s, like be a stay-at-home mother. No, no, no. No, we are pushing for we're not pushing for anything, but in making the invitation for there is a way of doing things differently that allows you to live in alignment with your cycle, be able to show up with your gifts in whatever capacity that looks like for you in the career that you desire, and have a family. Like it the idea of like actually having it all can sound like a pipe dream, but it is actually possible when you can honor your body and your rhythms. Yes, as part of that. Um, and I do I do think it's interesting. Like in other countries, you know, I have several friends who are expats who are living abroad in like Copenhagen, um, Paris, Spain, Portugal. And it there's a lot of differences there having the support of a government who helps families have a true parental leave. And there's there's a lot to be said for the support being different and looking at how are other places do supporting mothers and supporting children, you know, having subsidized child care is like like not only do we have the pressures of getting back to work, but then figuring out how do we pay for child care? Yeah, which is often more than people's mortgages here in the United States. It's wild. There's a there's a whole thing. But I I want to circle back to the different phases of the cycle because I think people might be already like, okay, like what does this alignment look like? Like I know I feel maybe overwhelmed when I'm in my luteal phase, but like, what is the rest of this? Like, how does that actually manifest in our productivity and how our brain works? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So there are the four phases of our cycle. People tend to know like the menstrual phase, that's our period phase. That is the phase. I actually, when I first started doing this work, started calling it the recharge phase. I now kind of blend it and talk about it being like the visionary phase because it's this time of the month when women, it's the most important for us to slow down. It's the most important for us to tune inward and really cast that vision of what is my intuition telling me? Where do I want to go? What's the intention for this month? How do I really just honor and nourish me and listen to me in this phase? And then really cast that vision of what I want to do and what I want to create and how I want to show up this month. And then as that estrogen picks up in the next phase, it's the follicular phase, it feels like you're got your energy back. You feel like you're ready to go. And so I kind of coined that the accelerate phase of like, let's accelerate, let's get things going, let's check the boxes, let's get everything done. The time of the month when I will like schedule a doctor's appointment, I'll schedule the vet appointments, I'll schedule everything off. If you give me a to-do list, chances are it's gonna be checked off by the end of the day. Like everything is gonna be done because you're just gonna feel in that go, go, go, go, go, get it all done. It's very like more of a linear thinking, more much more of a check everything, let's go, let's start creating, let's start getting big things out there, let's get new ideas out there. And then as we get to that top of the estrogen curve is the ovulation phase. It's when you're the most magnetic, you're the most relatable, you're the most you communicate the best, you're the most glowing, you're the most beautiful. You're so all of those types of things, whether it's social hours, date nights, buying new clothes, taking photos, anything that requires you to feel really confident and beautiful and amazing and like communicate, having hard questions. You want to ask for a raise at work, this is a great time to do it. Our brain is so focused in this, like, yes, I feel good, I feel amazing, I feel ready, like energy. And then as the estrogen dips off, then progesterone picks up, and then that luteal phase is when we start to feel like you described earlier, those heavy emotions maybe come in. We might feel a little bit more fear, we might feel a little bit more doubt, maybe overwhelm, a little bit more frustrated. Like all of those things kind of populate to the surface. It can be a really, really, really great time for us to process and move through and let go of any of the fears and beliefs and limiting those emotions that come up. Like I 100% believe that it becomes one of our strongest, like most advantageous sorts of phases to grow and expand into new versions of ourselves because we're letting go and releasing and diving into those things. They're there to teach us, they're there to help illuminate what's not working, what's what's what's not longer fitting for me. Instead of just trying to stuff it down and say, Oh, I don't want to go there, I don't want to feel that, I don't want to be that. It's more in the sense of how do I embrace it and process it and feel into it instead of letting it fester and then explode. So that's one element of the luteal phase, but the luteal phase is also kind of that nesting phase, right? It's the pregnancy hormone, the hormone that like supports us towards the end. And you think, okay, what is pregnancy at the end? Most women are doing, is like nesting and getting ready for preparing preparing. For that baby to come. And so it becomes kind of that same energy. It's a dot your T's, cross your I's, get everything together. If you've ever had one of those days when you're just, I want to clean out my entire closet or my entire refrigerator, and I'm going to just declutter the whole thing. And you get into it and you're like, what the hell did I just do? But it's just the energy of, I just, I want to clean it all. I want to, or you're like for me, it's like sometimes my downloads folder, my email inbox, I'm like, I'm just gonna go through. I need to sort this, I need to clear it out, I need to clean it out. And it's like that's our natural body's response to getting everything tidied up, getting everything ready so that when you enter into that next menstrual phase, you actually can take the rest. You can actually step away, you can actually put things on pause and know, okay, I already took care of all those things. So our cycle actually works, you know, it's like when you're fully rested, you go the farthest and the fastest when you're when you come back, right? So you're full that accelerate comes right after you've rested, and that nesting phase comes right after or right before your rest period. Like it all makes total sense. And when you talked about balance in the beginning, it's yes, it's not how do women balance and hold everything all at the same time, but how do we create a rhythm that allows for this balance of this ecosystem, this rhythm of all of the things, all the parts of us getting nourishment? And there's this flow to how we perform and how we show up so that we're not just grinding all the time. We're not just checking out and going with the flow and not doing anything all the time. We're not, there's this rhythm and this dance to how we live and how we show up that's honoring all those parts of us that allow us to feel, wow, I still do feel really balanced. I know that this task is something that is not optimized for where I'm at in my cycle right now. So I'm gonna pause it and I'm gonna wait and I'm gonna do it in two weeks. And when it's more optimized, instead of feeling guilty about, I have to get it done, it has to get done. We're just we're honoring where the body's at and where we're at and how we can really support it. And knowing like you're in your Luteal phase, like I'm my cycle was is crazy long this month. Like, I I don't even one, I don't know if I 100% ovulated, like based on my my temperatures, I'm like, I think I did, but it was way late, way later than it should have been. And so this week, I was looking at my calendar, should have been that accelerate ovulatory phase. And so I had I have like five podcasts booked this week, and I'm pretty sure I'm like in the tail end of my luteal phase here. And so it's like it's gonna be a a week, right? Like my schedule didn't line where I wanted it to be or how I wanted it to be.

Yeah.

So it's like, how then do we be aware of that? How do we know that and also make sure that we're honoring, hey, I'm gonna make sure I after I do these podcasts, I'm like giving myself some breaks, or hey, I'm gonna make sure I go to bed early, or I'm gonna, you know, like there's this awareness of we can we can take care of ourselves and still meet the demands of our lives. It's just understanding where we are and how we need to adjust and how we need to accommodate that versus feeling like our cycles are now this thing that we just don't have to do anything with.

Yes. And I'm so glad you brought up like the possibility that you can have an irregular cycle and still have awareness. And yes, in the ideal world, like when you're in your follicular phase and you're just like I'm so productive and like everything feels amazing, and like I'm gonna book all these things. Like, you know, what's the joke is like my luteal phase really regrets my follicular phase decisions to book all of these things. Yeah. It's like it's it's awareness, right? And it's a practice, and there's no perfection required here, but it's it's certainly just starting to build upon itself over time. And, you know, as I have like advanced in years, like my cycle is getting more irregular again. It was wildly irregular after I came off birth control. It got very, very regular after having my first son, like crazy that that would be the first time in my life that I'd have regular periods. Same with me. And yeah, and so it's so interesting. Like now I'm just starting to experience some irregularity again. Like, yay, perimenopause. But it's like I can relate to so many of my patients because a lot of the fertility folks I work with are in like the 38 to 42 age range. And so they are trying to conceive while in perimenopause, while actively working. And I have a lot of patients who are entrepreneurs and I have a lot of them who are simultaneously like working in corporate jobs, but have this passion project that they'd really love to make their main thing, yeah, and they're ready to have a baby. And and they've been trained to operate the same way every single day. So just having this awareness, like, oh, like I can start to learn, and this embracing of what my body is doing can actually be a key to bringing some quote unquote balance.

100%. And I hear people all the time say, like, balance doesn't exist, balance, and I'm like, I think the way that we think of balance doesn't exist. I think balance in the sense of like everything being equal, and then we have to do everything all the time, that is a fallacy. Like that doesn't exist. But when we look at mother nature, there is a balance, there is an ebb in the flow, there is a rhythm, there's this homeostasis that I think we need to just lean, lean into and learn from. Like it's there for us. Yes.

And even in like traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, like, I mean, these have been like thousands year old principles that we can look to to inform us as well. But I did want to ask you a question, see if you've observed this uh before I forget, because it's on my mind. I have had a number of clients recently just have like much more intense luteal phase emotional symptoms than they've ever been used to before. And I I really paused to listen to how this was coming through for one of my patients last week. And I was like, what's what's your gut feeling about where this is coming from? Like, why, why now? Right. And she paused too, and she started to tear up and she was like, I just part of me feels like I just can't tolerate. There are things that I would just cannot tolerate anymore. And it's like I no longer have a filter during that phase. And I was like, Well, if if there were no consequences to that, like what would that give you to be able to just unleash, not have the filter, not put up with things that you probably shouldn't have been tolerating in the first place? She was like, Well, I think I'd be really free. And it was just very, very interesting because I'm seeing it more than ever. And I mean, I've been in practice for like almost 13 years at this point. And it my patient population hasn't changed in terms of like the age. So it's like, why now are we hearing more and more women just say, like, I I just can't, like, I there's just more that I'm like no longer willing to tolerate. And it's like coming through in that pre-menstrual phase more than I've seen ever. What's your experience or insight into that?

Oh, I don't, I mean, I don't know. Like, it was it's definitely something that you want, like, I know for me personally, age-wise, has made a huge difference. Like, as I've aged and as I've got older, I am like, I just I don't care. Like, I don't care. I want to live more in alignment with where I am and what's feeling right for me. And I think the other thing that that Ludial phase does is it really honors and highlights like what you need, right? And I think for so many women, that's important to really understand like what it is that you need and what do you value and what's working for you and what's not working for you. And I think that that's something that many of us haven't been really processing, we don't really process that a ton until I feel like for me, like I said, as I've aged or gone on this personal growth journey, but I do find that physiologically, like biologically, the women who are actually really honoring where their cycles are at, the ludeal phase symptoms tend to diminish. So the more that women are actually really honoring where their cycles are at and like moving through it, they tend to experience less of those crazy wild emotions and symptoms and things like that. And so sometimes I find, like personally, even those months when I feel really extreme are generally times where I know I've been out of congruence. I've been out of alignment with where I and what I needed throughout the whole month, not just in that phase, but like the whole month, or maybe not even just that one month, but like months prior. So I really look at like when your cycle is when you feel those feelings, it's a signal to you. It's a it's a sign to you, like there's something out of congruence for you. And it's your opportunity to really look at that. Like, what is that out of incongruence, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's speaking up relational, like whatever it might be, there's something that's out of congruence for what you really want or what you really need, and that it's coming up for you to be able to see that.

Yeah. Yeah. I that's something I would agree with and have been witness to um for myself included. And it's it's definitely like over the whole month, if I accumulate like weeks of not putting myself to bed on time, weeks of not getting enough fiber, uh, then it it will tell me in those like three to five days before my period starts. Like, hey, remember 9 p.m. bedtime? Like that feels really good at this phase of the cycle, not just for these days, but like that entire runway and and beyond. And this is why I talk to my fertility clients like realistically, like, I want three months to set foundations for what your hormones are doing. Like, I don't expect to see results before that point. Now, if we really get into alignment quickly with what your body needs, it might happen sooner. You might have like the next cycle is like night and day. But most people, I would say it takes a few months to really start to hit a stride and notice a difference.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's true. And like your body, well, they say too, and I mean, you're probably more of the expert than I am, but the that what you see in your symptoms of your cycle can it goes back three to four months. Like it's not just the that one week. So, like if you have a really high stress month, you may not see the impacts of that on your cycle and for a couple of months later, it's not just directly because of the way the eggs grow and the follicles release and things like that. Like to give yourself that time and space to allow those changes to happen. Yeah. Yeah.

I I would absolutely say that's true. Yeah. Um, so since you work with a lot of women who have their own businesses, like what are you observant to in how the menstrual cycle can help scale? Or maybe if people are really, you know, not aware of where they are in the cycle, maybe even keep them stuck in their business.

Yeah. So I think the biggest thing with your cycle is understanding like how your brain functions. And so when you're forcing yourself to show up on social media or you're forcing yourself to write an email, or you're forcing yourself to do any of the tasks that you need to do in your business, then one, it's gonna take you usually twice as long to get it done. And then two, it's gonna feel so much harder. Three, it's not gonna resonate as well. It's not gonna feel like it flows and connects with your audience or your people as best. But on the other side of that, we can keep ourselves stuck in the sense of like self-sabotage, right? Where we know we need to get something done, but we're bot we're not feeling it. And so we're just like forcing and we have these shoulds and we're pressuring ourselves, like we have to do it, we don't want to do it. So either A, we don't do it, or B, we do, and then we don't do it very well, and then we reinforce, like, hey, I didn't do it really well, and so that therefore it proves like I wasn't, shouldn't have done that. And so we have all these perpetual cycles. So it's one, understanding where you're at, what's happening in your brain, what's happening in your body, and then knowing what tasks do I really need to match up with that so that I'm not sabotaging myself. Like I am operating at my peak, I am moving forward in alignment, I'm giving myself grace when I need to take a break and when I need to put things on pause, or I'm moving this project forward at a time when I know is gonna be my best time to actually do that and being okay with like stepping away from it in a few weeks rather than feeling like we have to focus on the same thing. There's a lot in our space and a lot of in our industry that focuses on consistency and routine and habits. And there's something beautiful about routine and habits, but the sense of like we as women have to do the same thing every day consistently over and over and over again is what puts a lot of women into a box of feeling like they're not doing a good enough job. They're not enough, they should be doing it differently, like there's things that aren't working. I remember recently going to uh an event and I was on my way and I was like, I'm gonna or the night before, I was like, I want to get up and work out before I go because I know I'm gonna be sitting and I'm not gonna be up moving all day, and I want to make sure I do that. And I woke up in the morning and my alarm went off, and I was like, no, I really need to sleep. And I like slept in. And on my way there, I had that thought go back and forth of like, in the past, I probably would have self-doubted myself and I would have shutted myself and been like, you should have got up, you weren't being consistent, you're trying to, you know, work out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in that moment, I knew that sleep trumped the need to work out. Like my body needed sleep more than it needed to work out. And that awareness of being able to honor that and know that, I think is what comes when you start to realize where your body's at and what your cycle needs and where you're where you are and how you're showing up in your business.

Yeah, absolutely. 25-year-old me would have been like, You're such a lazy POS. You should have gotten up and worked out. And I'm very much with you now. I'm like, oh, where are we in this? Yeah. That extra sleep is gonna take you miles further. Um, one time you used a metaphor with me that I loved about the slingshot. Can you, and you I think you alluded to it a little bit when you were talking about the different phases of the cycle with regenerative and acceleration, but like, can you talk about that metaphor? Because I want people to have that.

Um, yes. So the slingshot was this like I remember being with my dad and my boys and stuff, and they were throwing these rocks, and like my son, my dad gave them all slingshots. And so my son and my nephew were like pulling the rock back just a little bit, and the rock is just flying a little bit, right? Like when you pull the slingshot. But the farther they would pull back the slingshot, the farther the rock would fly. And then after a while, I was like, okay, they need to get out of this RV park. They're gonna hit a thousand dollar windshield and I'm gonna have to replace it. But I really started to see that that's how the menstrual cycle works too, right? That menstrual phase is your slingshot moment. That's your moment of your body pulling back so that you can shoot really far and go really far. When you don't allow yourself to actually pull that slingshot back, when you don't pull that rubber band back, the rock doesn't fly as far. It doesn't go as far. And so what happens is you really, really like it changes the lens, it changes the scape of the way we look at the recharge, the way we look at rest. Because no longer is it this lazy thing that you just sit back and don't do anything, or it's like a weakness thing. It's like that is your power move. That is the move that allows you to operate at your peak, to be at your prime, to operate at your best, versus just if we only were like, no, I gotta keep pushing through and I gotta keep going. I'm just gonna pull the rubber band a little bit, the rock is just gonna fly right in front of you. But if you really allow yourself that rest and recharge, it flies really far.

I love that. That's such a good moment to end on. Renee, thank you so much for being with us. How do people get in contact with you?

I would say Instagram's my favorite place to hang out. So find me over at Renee Fick over there. And I'm sure that I would be happy to provide your audience with a link to sign to grab a free copy of the book that you just pay for shipping and handling, and I'll send it to you. So I'll make sure that that you have that link. You can hook it up in the show notes and things like that. But those are probably the two best places to kind of connect with me.

That is awesome. Thank you so much for being here, having this conversation, for doing this work and spreading this far and wide so that more people have this awareness.

Thanks so much. Thank you for being here.