The Body is the Teacher

Photo by Manuwan Peramunugama on Unsplash

“The wisdom of the body is a good place to start

rethinking and re-feeling our conception of nature.”

~~ Starhawk

 

Greetings to all my precious people!!

The Fire Horse year is here. It arrived four days ago on February 17th and you can feel it—the quickening, the intensity, the demand for authentic expression.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been preparing:

Week 1: INTUITION – You learned to trust your body’s knowing before your mind can prove it. You practiced listening to your three centers: head, heart, gut.

Week 2: OBSERVATION – You learned to see clearly, to discern YOUR truth from the conditioning you inherited. To recognize when you’re seeing through someone else’s eyes.

This week, we go deeper into the body itself.

Not the body as culture sees it (something to control, judge, fix, optimize).
Not the body as you were taught to see it (object, problem, liability, betrayal).

But the body as TEACHER. As wisdom keeper. As sacred text.

And specifically—because this is the territory most women have been taught to dismiss, pathologize, and override—we’re honoring your cycles.

Your monthly rhythms. Your hormonal intelligence. Your body’s constant conversation with Earth, moon, seasons, life, death, renewal.

What if your cycle was never a problem? What if it was a teaching you were meant to receive?

 

What We Were Taught About Our Cycles (The Lies)

Let’s name what most of us absorbed, often without anyone saying it directly:

Your period is:

• An inconvenience
• Something to hide
• A liability in professional settings
• Proof that women are “too emotional” to be trusted
• A medical problem to be managed (preferably suppressed)
• The reason you can’t do certain things

PMS means:

• You’re irrational
• You’re “hormonal” (said dismissively)
• You can’t trust your feelings
• You need to apologize for existing

Menopause means:

• You’re declining
• You’re no longer valuable (especially if value = fertility)
• You’re becoming invisible
• Your best years are behind you
• You should suffer quietly (hot flashes are a punchline)

The monthly cycle in general:

• Is something men don’t have to deal with (lucky them)
• Makes you weaker
• Is nature’s cruel joke on women
• Should be controlled, regulated, possibly eliminated

This is what we absorbed. This is the water we’ve been swimming in.

And most of us believed it. Even those of us who intellectually knew better; we still internalized the shame, the dismissal, the sense that our bodies were working AGAINST us instead of FOR us.

But what if every single one of these beliefs is backward?

What if your cycle – in all its phases, including the challenging ones – has been trying to teach you something essential all along?

What if you’ve been ignoring your wisest teacher?

 

The Body as Sacred Text: What Your Cycle Actually Is

Every month (or moon cycle, because it’s no accident that the average cycle is 28-29 days), your body moves through the same pattern that the Earth moves through over a year:

Menstruation = Winter (Death, release, composting, rest)
Follicular Phase = Spring (New growth, rising energy, fresh beginnings)
Ovulation = Summer (Peak aliveness, outward expression, fullness)
Luteal Phase = Autumn (Harvest, slowing, turning inward, preparing for release)

You are living the Earth’s wisdom in your own body. Every. Single. Month.

This is not metaphor. This is biological reality mirroring cosmic pattern.

Your hormones rise and fall like tides. Your energy waxes and wanes like the moon. Your body knows death and rebirth intimately—not as abstract concepts, but as lived experience.

And this terrifies patriarchal culture. Because if women trust this knowing—if we honor these rhythms instead of fighting them—we become ungovernable.

We stop performing constant productivity. We stop pretending we’re linear beings in a linear world. We stop overriding our body’s wisdom to fit into systems designed for people who don’t bleed.

We remember: we are cyclic. We are lunar. We are tidal. We are Earth.

And that changes everything.

 

Chinese Medicine: The Wisdom of Blood and Cycles

In Classical Chinese Medicine, menstrual blood is called “Tian Gui”—Heavenly Water. Not a curse. Not waste. Heavenly.

The menstrual cycle is understood as a profound expression of the body’s health, balance, and spiritual alignment. The quality of your blood, the timing of your cycle, the symptoms you experience—all of this is information. Your body speaking.

The organs most intimately involved in the cycle:

Liver (Wood element):

Governs the smooth flow of Qi and Blood

When Liver Qi is stuck (from stress, anger, living against your nature), you experience: PMS, breast tenderness, irritability, cramping

The teaching: Your anger is trying to move. Your boundaries need expressing. Your life force wants to FLOW, not be dammed up.

Kidneys (Water element):

Hold your Jing (essence, deep reserves, reproductive capacity)

Govern the menstrual cycle’s timing and regularity

When Kidney Jing is depleted, cycles become irregular, fertility decreases, menopause arrives early

The teaching: Are you living off your reserves? Have you forgotten to replenish? Your body is asking you to RESTORE, not just produce.

Heart (Fire element):

Houses Shen (your spirit, consciousness)

Governs Blood (which becomes menstrual blood)

When Heart and Shen are disturbed, cycles become chaotic, sleep suffers, anxiety rises

The teaching: Is your spirit at home in your body? Are you living aligned with what matters to your soul? Your blood is asking for COHERENCE.

Spleen (Earth element):

Transforms food into Qi and Blood

Holds Blood in the vessels

When Spleen is weak, bleeding is heavy, energy crashes, digestion suffers

The teaching: Are you nourished? Not just with food—but with rest, sweetness, being held? Your body is asking to be TENDED.

Every symptom—every discomfort, every irregularity—is your body SPEAKING.

Not malfunctioning. Teaching.

And the question is: Are you listening? Or are you just trying to silence the teacher with medication, suppression, override?

 

Jean Shinoda Bolen: The Goddess Archetypes in Your Cycle

Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Jungian analyst and author of Goddesses in Everywoman, teaches that different goddess archetypes live within each woman—and they become more or less active depending on life circumstances, developmental stages, and yes, where you are in your cycle.

Your menstrual cycle is not just hormonal. It’s archetypal. Each phase calls forth different energies, different aspects of your psyche, different goddess presences.

Persephone energy (Maiden, innocence, receptivity) is strongest in the follicular phase—new beginnings, openness to what wants to emerge, the virgin in the archetypal sense (complete unto herself, not needing external validation).

Aphrodite energy (Goddess of love, beauty, creative force) peaks at ovulation—magnetic, generative, overflow of creative and sexual energy, the desire to connect and create.

Demeter energy (Mother, nurturer, fierce protector) rises in the luteal phase—the urge to tend, to protect, to set boundaries around what matters. This is also when the protective mama bear comes out—the irritability that says “Do NOT mess with what I’m protecting.”

Hecate energy (Crone, wise woman, keeper of mysteries) governs menstruation—the crossroads, the liminal space, the dark moon wisdom, the capacity to see what others can’t, to speak truth, to guide souls through transitions.

When you understand your cycle as archetypal movement, you stop pathologizing the shifts.

You’re not “unstable” because you feel different in week 1 vs. week 3. You’re honoring the full spectrum of feminine energy. You’re allowing each goddess her turn, her expression, her medicine.

And this makes you MORE whole, not less.

 

Clarissa Pinkola Estés: Reclaiming the Wild Woman

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in her groundbreaking work Women Who Run With The Wolves, speaks about the Wild Woman archetype—the instinctual, untamed, deeply knowing feminine that has been “civilized” out of most women.

Wild Woman is not savage. Wild Woman is instinctually WISE.

She knows:

• When to rest and when to run
• What nourishes and what depletes
• Who to trust and who to avoid
• When to say yes and when to say NO
• When to create and when to destroy
• When to speak and when to be silent

Your menstrual cycle is Wild Woman speaking.

The culture that taught you to override your cycle, to medicate your “mood swings,” to push through exhaustion, to apologize for bleeding—that same culture is terrified of Wild Woman.

Because Wild Woman is ungovernable. She doesn’t perform. She doesn’t pretend. She doesn’t smile when she’s raging. She doesn’t stay small to make others comfortable.

She trusts her body. And that makes her dangerous.

Estés writes about how fairy tales and myths encode this wisdom—how the wild, instinctual feminine was systematically hunted, tamed, domesticated. How women learned to mistrust their own knowing. How we scissored off parts of ourselves to fit into culture’s narrow definitions.

But Wild Woman cannot be killed. She goes underground. She waits.

And in midlife—when the old conditioning starts breaking down, when you can no longer perform the “good girl,” when your body refuses to be silent—Wild Woman rises.

Your luteal phase irritability? That’s Wild Woman saying: “This is not sustainable. Something must change.”

Your menstrual dreams and visions? That’s Wild Woman showing you truths your waking mind has been avoiding.

Your perimenopausal rage? That’s Wild Woman burning away everything that was never yours.

This is not pathology. This is RETURN.

Return to your instinctual wisdom. Return to your body’s knowing. Return to the wild, untamed, fiercely alive feminine that you were born as—before you were taught to be civilized, compliant, quiet, small.

Your cycle is calling you back to Wild Woman. Will you answer?

The Four Phases: What Each Part of Your Cycle Is Teaching

Let’s go deeper into each phase and the specific wisdom it holds:

MENSTRUATION (Days 1-5ish): Winter / Death / Composting

What’s happening physically:
Hormone levels drop. The uterine lining sheds. Blood flows. Energy is at its lowest.

What culture says:
Hide it. Power through. Don’t let anyone know. Apologize for being “off.”

What it’s actually teaching:

This is the phase of death and release. Not literal death—but the death of what didn’t serve, what wasn’t needed, what this cycle tried to create but didn’t.

Your body is composting. Turning what was into fertile ground for what will be.

This is the time when the veil between conscious and subconscious is thinnest. Your dreams are most vivid. Your intuition is sharpest. Your bullshit detector is unparalleled.

The teaching: What needs to die so something new can live? What are you still carrying that you need to release? What truth is rising that you’ve been avoiding?

The invitation: REST. Bleed. Dream. Listen to what wants to be released. Honor the death. Trust the composting.

The Wisdom Keeper practice: Journal your dreams. Notice what irritates you (it’s showing you what needs to change). Slow down instead of pushing through.

FOLLICULAR PHASE (Days 6-13ish): Spring / New Growth / Fresh Beginnings

What’s happening physically:
Estrogen rises. Energy returns. Follicles mature in ovaries. The uterine lining rebuilds.

What culture says:
Now you’re “back to normal.” Use this energy to catch up on everything you “couldn’t” do during your period.

What it’s actually teaching:

This is the phase of new beginnings. Fresh ideas. Creative sparks. The sense that anything is possible.

Your body is literally rebuilding. Creating new tissue. Preparing for potential creation.

The teaching: What wants to be born in you? What new project, insight, direction is germinating? What fresh perspective is available now that you’ve composted the old?

The invitation: START things. Plant seeds (literal or metaphorical). Try new approaches. Play. Experiment. Your energy is rising—use it for creation, not just catching up on tasks.

The Wisdom Keeper practice: Notice what excites you. What ideas are bubbling up? What wants to begin? Don’t dismiss them as fantasy—they’re the seeds your body is ready to plant.

OVULATION (Days 14-17ish): Summer / Peak / Fullness

What’s happening physically:
Estrogen and testosterone peak. An egg releases. Energy, confidence, and outward expression are at their highest.

What culture says:
This is when you’re “at your best”—most attractive, most social, most productive. (Subtext: this is the only phase that matters.)

What it’s actually teaching:

This is the phase of fullness and overflow. You have energy to GIVE. To connect. To express. To be seen.

Your body is at peak fertility—not just reproductively, but creatively, relationally, spiritually.

The teaching: What wants to be expressed through you? What do you have to offer the world right now? Who do you want to connect with? What part of you is ready to be SEEN?

The invitation: SHARE. Speak. Create. Connect. Lead. This is your moment of maximum visibility and impact. Use it.

The Wisdom Keeper practice: Notice where you want to hide your light even now, at peak energy. That’s old conditioning. What would it feel like to be FULLY expressed, fully alive, fully seen?

LUTEAL PHASE (Days 18-28ish): Autumn / Harvest / Turning Inward

What’s happening physically:
Progesterone rises. Energy begins to wane. Body temperature increases. Mood shifts. The infamous “PMS” window.

What culture says:
You’re “hormonal.” Irrational. Too sensitive. A problem. (This is when women are most dismissed, pathologized, medicated.)

What it’s actually teaching:

This is the phase of truth-telling. Your bullshit tolerance drops to zero. What you could tolerate during follicular and ovulation—what you could smile through, accommodate, override—you cannot tolerate now.

This is not a bug. This is a FEATURE.

Your progesterone is literally making you more sensitive—to toxins, to stress, to relationships that don’t serve you, to work that drains you, to living out of alignment.

The teaching: What is TRUE that you’ve been avoiding? What boundaries need to be set? What is no longer sustainable? What anger has been brewing that needs to be SPOKEN?

The invitation: HONOR the anger. The irritability is not random—it’s discernment. It’s your body saying: “This isn’t working. This needs to change. I will not pretend anymore.”

The Wisdom Keeper practice: Instead of medicating or apologizing for PMS, ask: “What is my body trying to tell me?” Write it down. The luteal phase is when your TRUTH speaks loudest. Listen.

 

Perimenopause and Menopause: The Initiation Culture Fears

If the monthly cycle is a microcosm of Earth’s yearly journey, perimenopause and menopause are the Great Turning.

Culture presents menopause as:

• Loss (of fertility, youth, value)
• Decline (you’re “past your prime”)
• Medical problem (hot flashes, hormones, treatments)
• The beginning of invisibility

But in wisdom traditions—Celtic, Indigenous, Daoist—menopause is recognized as INITIATION.

You are no longer bleeding out. Your blood—your life force, your wisdom—now stays IN.

This is why post-menopausal women in traditional cultures become:

• Wisdom Keepers
• Healers
• Council members
• The ones consulted for important decisions

Because your blood wisdom is no longer cycling outward. It’s accumulating. Deepening. Becoming MEDICINE.

 

Jean Shinoda Bolen: Crones Don’t Whine

In her book Crones Don’t Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women, Jean Shinoda Bolen reclaims the archetype of the Crone—not as the withered, bitter old woman of patriarchal fairy tales, but as the empowered, truth-speaking, wise woman who has earned her authority through lived experience.

Bolen writes that becoming a Crone is not about age. It’s about claiming your wisdom, speaking your truth, and refusing to diminish yourself to make others comfortable.

Crones:

• Trust their intuition completely
• Say what needs to be said (without apology)
• Set fierce boundaries (without guilt)
• Choose quality over quantity in relationships
• Laugh at the games they used to play
• Prioritize meaning over achievement
• Know their worth (it’s not up for negotiation)

The Crone archetype embodies the goddess Hecate (keeper of crossroads, guide of souls, holder of mysteries) and the Sophia (wisdom personified).

Post-menopausal women who claim their Crone power become:

• The truth-tellers who see through bullshit
• The wisdom-keepers who counsel from deep knowing
• The fierce protectors of what matters
• The ones who refuse to be silenced, diminished, or erased

This is not bitterness. This is EMPOWERMENT.

And culture fears it—because Crones cannot be manipulated. They’ve seen too much. They know too much. They give zero fucks about performing niceness at the expense of truth.

Bolen teaches: You don’t wait to become a Crone. You CLAIM it.

And when you do—when you stop apologizing, stop performing, stop shrinking—you become dangerous in the best possible way.

The hot flashes? Your inner fire burning away what no longer serves.
The sleep disruption? Your consciousness being initiated into new territory.
The irritability? Your truth demanding to be spoken after decades of accommodation.
The body changes? Your form shifting to match your essence—you are becoming the Crone, the Wise Woman, the one who knows.

This is not decline. This is BECOMING.

And culture fears it because post-menopausal women who claim their power are ungovernable. They stop performing. They stop apologizing. They speak truth. They laugh at the games they used to play.

They become dangerous. In the best possible way.

 

The Celtic Understanding: Honoring the Dark

Celtic tradition never pathologized the dark parts of the cycle—menstruation, autumn, death, winter.

They understood that death feeds life. That composting creates fertility. That the dark is as sacred as the light.

The Cailleach—the Celtic Crone goddess—is not soft or nurturing. She is fierce. Winter. Stone. The force that breaks down what needs to die so new life can emerge.

She governs the dark half of the year (Samhain to Beltane). She is the necessary destruction that precedes creation.

And she lives in every woman’s luteal phase. In every menstrual bleed. In every perimenopausal rage.

We are Cailleach when we:

• Stop pretending we’re fine when we’re not
• Set boundaries that feel harsh but are necessary
• Withdraw our energy from what doesn’t deserve it
• Let relationships, projects, identities die that need to die
• Speak the truth even when it’s uncomfortable
• Refuse to perform niceness at the expense of our wellbeing

The culture that pathologizes women’s cycles is the same culture that fears the Cailleach.

Because if women trusted our dark wisdom—if we honored our need to rest, to rage, to release, to say NO—the systems built on our compliance would collapse.

This is why reclaiming your cycle as teacher is revolutionary.

 

This Week’s Practice: Cycle Mapping

This week, you’re going to begin tracking your cycle as information rather than inconvenience.

Even if you’re post-menopausal, you can track the moon cycle as proxy (new moon = menstruation, full moon = ovulation). Your body still responds to lunar rhythms.

What you’ll need:

• Journal or cycle-tracking app
• 5 minutes daily
• Curiosity instead of judgment

The Practice:

Each day, note:

Where you are in your cycle (day 1 = first day of bleeding, or track moon phases)

Energy level (1-10 scale: 1 = exhausted, 10 = vibrant)

Mood/emotional quality (not good/bad, but WHAT: irritable, creative, anxious, calm, sad, joyful, etc.)

Physical sensations (cramping, breast tenderness, energy surges, headaches, hunger, etc.)

What your body seems to WANT (rest, movement, solitude, connection, creation, release)

What your cycle might be teaching (What truth is trying to emerge? What needs to change? What wants to be created/released?)

Do this for at least one full cycle (28-30 days, or one moon cycle).

Then, at the end, LOOK FOR PATTERNS:

• When is your energy naturally highest? (Use this time for big projects, visibility, connection)
• When is your energy naturally lowest? (Honor this as COMPOSTING time, not failure)
• When does your bullshit detector activate? (This is your TRUTH phase—listen to it)
• When are you most creative? (This is your PLANTING phase—start things here)
• When do you most need solitude? (Your body is processing—give it space)
• When do you most want connection? (Your energy has overflow to share)

The goal is not to “fix” your cycle. The goal is to LEARN FROM IT.

To stop fighting your natural rhythms and start FLOWING WITH THEM.

To recognize that you are not broken.

You are cyclic. Tidal. Lunar. Earth-wise.

And when you honor that instead of pathologizing it, everything changes.

 

What Changes When You Honor Your Cycles

Here’s what I’ve witnessed in myself and women I work with:

When you stop treating your cycle as a problem and start receiving it as teaching:

You stop apologizing for being human. Your energy isn’t constant? Good. You’re not a machine. You’re a living, breathing, cyclic being connected to Earth and Moon.

You plan your life differently. You stop scheduling important meetings, big decisions, or high-visibility work during your menstrual phase. You use that time for dreaming, releasing, deep listening instead.

You trust your luteal-phase anger. Instead of medicating it or dismissing it as “PMS,” you recognize: this is DISCERNMENT. My body is showing me what needs to change. And you CHANGE IT.

You reclaim your power. Because you realize: the culture that taught you to dismiss your cycle is the same culture that fears women’s power. Your cycle IS your power. It’s your connection to Earth wisdom, to death and rebirth, to truth-telling.

You become the Wisdom Keeper.

Not despite your cycles—menstrual, seasonal, life stages—but BECAUSE of them.

Because you’ve learned to listen. To honor the dark as well as the light. To trust the composting as much as the creating. To know that death feeds life, that release creates space, that winter prepares for spring.

This is body wisdom. This is what your cycles have been teaching all along.

 

The Fire Horse Demands Embodied Truth

The Fire Horse year is intense. Passionate. Demanding.

It will not let you live in your head. It will not let you override your body. It will not tolerate disconnection between what you say and what you feel, between who you perform and who you are.

Fire Horse demands: LIVE FROM YOUR BODY. TRUST YOUR CYCLES. HONOR YOUR RHYTHMS.

And for women—who have been taught our entire lives to override our bodies, to pathologize our cycles, to live according to linear, masculine time instead of our own tidal, lunar wisdom—this is the initiation.

Week 1: You learned to trust your intuition (your body knows first).
Week 2: You learned to see clearly (discerning truth from conditioning).
Week 3: You’re learning to honor your body as teacher (your cycles hold wisdom).

Next week (the final week): We’ll explore what it means to LIVE FROM SOURCE—to trust the larger intelligence moving through you, to build community around this embodied knowing, to fully step into Wisdom Keeper presence.

But it all comes back to this: Your body is not the problem. Your body is the TEACHER.

Your cycles—menstrual, seasonal, life stages—are not inconveniences to be managed.

They are the sacred curriculum. And you are finally learning to read it.

Practice this week. Track your cycle. Listen to what it’s teaching. Stop apologizing. Start honoring.

The Fire Horse is here. And it’s calling you back into your body. Back into your rhythms. Back into your power.

Answer the call.

 

P.S. If you’re recognizing that you’ve spent decades overriding your body’s wisdom, pathologizing your cycles, trying to be linear in a world that demands it—and you want support in reclaiming your body as teacher, in honoring your rhythms instead of fighting them, in trusting what your monthly cycle (or moon cycle) has been trying to teach you—I’m here.

This is core work of the C.O.A.C.H. Method: learning to listen to your body’s intelligence, to honor your cycles as wisdom rather than inconvenience, to live FROM your body instead of in spite of it.

I have space for 1:1 work. If this is your time to reclaim your body as sacred teacher, let’s talk. Email me and we will set aside a time for a conversation.

For now: Track your cycle this month. Listen to what each phase is teaching. Honor the dark as much as the light. Your body has been speaking all along. It’s time to finally listen.