EP 25: Vianney Leigh on Disrupting the Status Quo of Menstrual Cycles

In this episode, Vianney invites us to be brave, to let go of the shame, taboo and stigma that surrounds menstruation, and step into a space of curiosity.

She believes that understanding our cycle provides an opportunity for us to grow and discover who we are. She shares her thoughts on birth control, and how to eat in flow with your cycle to best support your body.

If you want to learn more about how to embrace your cycle and all the wisdom that it offers, this episode is for you.

“We’re not supposed to be everything for everyone during every single phase of our cycle. And for our partners in our lives, summer is a time for us to have sex. Be really adventurous in the bedroom. It’s about planning, hot dates. It’s about having really great conversations, dressing up, feeling confident.”-Vianney Leigh

The Brave Woman Podcast Episode 24

Vianney is the founder of Status Flow Collective, an education, empowerment, and coaching business that transforms and elevates your life through the power of your period. The brand’s mission is to challenge and disrupt the status quo of menstrual cycles. Vianney is a certified life & success coach, menstrual cycle alignment expert, and host of the Periods & Power Moves Podcast. Vianney shares about her hormone based mood disorder and gives us insight to see our period as something that is our period, our cycle, as something that is there to support us and something that we can use as a roadmap or like an inner guidance system.

Vianney talks about periods, menstruation and about helping women to empower themselves through their menstrual cycles.

Five months after being diagnosed, all of Vianney’s symptoms of PMDD suddenly started to disappear because of some of the things that she was trying and the techniques that she was doing and she shares that on this episode.

“A way for you to really be taken seriously was to start tracking your cycle. Track your cycle. Write everything down and bring it to the doctors.” -Vianney Leigh

Listen to Episode 25 as Vianney uncovers:

[03:39] The Woman Who is All About Corrupting the Status Quo Around Our Menstrual Cycles.

All of the shame and the taboo and the stigma that is involved around menstruation.
A hormonal breakdown in 2018, that was undiagnosed within her.
Diagnosed with something called PMDD, hormone based mood disorder.
PMDD thing, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder and affects one in 20 women.
Five months after being diagnosed, all of her symptoms of PMDD suddenly started to disappear because of some of the things that she was trying and the techniques that she was doing.
There’s something here with our menstrual cycles that has been hidden from us.

[12:05] The Heroine’s Journey

The rage is real because it really is for some people who have problematic periods.
Periods as a tool or a resource that would help her be more impactful, have more balance, have more harmony and flow.
Start tracking your cycles.
Write down one word a day of how you’re feeling, and then look back at that the next month and see if that word matches up to the next month.
Opening the door that kind of like curiosity awareness door to what could be possible for her there.

[17:53] What Do We Say to Our Men? How Can They Support?

Talking about periods to my husband and he knows all of the phases, where I am, what I’m up to, why I feel the ways that I feel
Where we can start by talking to the men in our lives is by taking it back to basics and reminding them that we are all connected to nature.
Menstrual cycle has four phases.
Winter is where we’re bleeding, the superpower of wisdom and heightened situation.
Spring is like new beginnings is a detox, it’s a fresh start. It’s playful. It’s curious. This is when we’ve just finished our periods.
Winter is the superpower of wisdom and heightened intuition.
In the summer, which is our relationship time. This is like the big event of the menstrual cycle experience, even though it’s the shortest time. This is a time for sharing and ultimate magnetism and power. This is how I see it is like your superhero time.
We have more energy to do more during our summer. We’re thinking about confidence, being seen, being able to communicate better, being able to show up for more people in your life.
We’re able to manoeuvre and navigate our lives with more joy and fun and ease and flow by using these seasons to our advantage.

[24:55] The rage phase where we’re falling down

Autumn is the longest phase of our cycle: go snap a little bit, going to stop hanging out so much, going to spend a bit more time with myself.
PMs are common during this time, 80% of people experienced PMs, but it doesn’t have to be reality like the reason why people are experienced in PMs is because they have an imbalance of or the mic. They probably have too much estrogen in their system.
Estrogen is great. During the first half of your cycle, it makes you feel good and makes you read confident. It gives you your curves. It makes your face more symmetrical with all of these incredible things.
When we have too much estrogen, when we go into the latter part of our cycle, that’s what triggers PMs. That’s what triggers the irritability and the cravings and the mood swings and the headaches and the bloating and all of these things.
From Alyssa Vitty, who’s the founder of flow live, she reframed PMs as prioritizing myself.
What if the rage isn’t wrong?
Educate not only our partners, but our children.
The status quo. PMs is a drag. It drains our periods. Let’s clog it up, let’s get on the birth control and skip it all together.

[30:55] The Birth Control

You have choices.
If you’re on hormonal birth control, you’re not going to necessarily be experiencing the same seasons that she was just describing because your brain and your ovaries are no longer communicating with each other and kind of like a child this message the other day.
If you’re on birth control, maybe you have more unhealthy gut bacteria 90% of our serotonin, which is our happiness neurochemical is produced in our gut.
To consider when it comes to birth control.
Who’s the authority of my life. I am. Yes.
I’m actually the expert in my own body.

[37:58] Eating in Flow With Our Cycle

You could find a way to nourish and sustain yourself so that you have more energy and the way that we do that is through the way that we eat.
Health really starts in the mind.
You love this cycle alignment piece because you get to choose and you get to move through different seasonal types of foods.
When it comes to cycles thinking it’s about choosing foods and behaviors and routines and patterns and all of these things that are going to optimally work with your change in biochemistry.
You can eat to support your cycle seasonally.
There’s a certain time and a place to eat certain food groups
Perfectionism dims your power.

Power Quotes From the Show

Have Curiosity to Your Period

“I think the first thing is where to start is with curiosity and to have that sense of curiosity of what would be possible for you. If you are having problematic periods, what would be possible for you? If you were to see your period as something that is your period, your cycle, as something that is there to support you and something that you can use as a roadmap or like an inner guidance system.

I think just having that shift or having that kind of moment of what would be possible for me immediately just conscious of all of these ideas? Well, I would be able to maybe spend more time with myself. Maybe I’ll get to know myself better. Maybe I’d be able to have more loving relationships, maybe have more love and relationships with myself. There’s just so many areas of exploration when it comes to this journey.” -Vianney Leigh

Looking at Your Cycle

“The first thing I would say is just by start with looking at your current situation and looking at your cycle as an experiment, an experiment and an opportunity for you to continue to grow and to discover who you are.” -Vianney Leigh

Eating A Lot of Sugar During Menstrual Phase = The Biggest Mistakes?

“The biggest mistakes I see people making is eating a lot of sugar during your menstrual phase. That’s okay. We want the comfort foods, but we want to get cozy with our comfort foods during this time. When I say cozy, I’m talking stews and soups and like a hug in a mug. Basically, we want foods that are going to really help us build back up the iron that we’ve lost her in our blade. We want to focus on foods like. Like miso, we want to have me. In our diet, we want to eat mushrooms during our menstrual phase. We want to have kale during our menstrual phase. We want to eat like what’s the word? Roasted vegetables, like sweet potatoes and complex carbs during this phase because you’re more than likely going to notice that your body intuitively knows exactly what it wants to eat. If you start paying attention. We want to load up with B complex carbs. We want to load up with iron rich foods.”-Vianney Leigh.

Hormonal Birth Control: You’re shutting down your access to your superpowers.

“That whole regulated word, hormonal birth control doesn’t regulate your menstrual cycle. It stops your brain and your ovaries from communicating. When that happens, there’s a lot of things that aren’t happening. You’re not producing key micronutrients that you need. You’re not getting all the minerals that you need. There’s more chances of anxiety depression and other health issues that can pop up because of hormonal birth control. What if that sacred channel of communication was the key for you to actually have that regulation in your body that you’re looking for, that balance that you’re looking for?

Because the minute you turn off that, that line of communication. You’ll you’re shutting down your access to your gifts. You’re shutting down your access to your superpowers. ”-Vianney Leigh

Broke Pill Came Out

“I’m saying this to educate, to inspire and to inform, but also be your own health advocate and also know what’s best for you because birth control was created at a time. […] A Broken pill came out. A current it’s so many opportunities for women, right? Women were able to go to work. They were able to compete. College era was able to bring in more money, right? Simply because they were taking something that would prevent them from becoming pregnant. But as time has gone on, we’ve recognized that some of the symptoms of birth control that you experience, that you were experienced in before going onto birth control, you can actually have higher symptoms or more worse symptoms when you transition off hormonal birth control because your menstrual cycle affects five of your biological systems in your body. Not a lot of people know this, it affects your immune system. It affects your stress response, affects your metabolism, your gut microbiome. You’ve got bacteria and your brain function. When you think about all of those five blocks, biological set assistant’s been affected by your menstrual cycle when you’re turning off the communication between your brain and your ovaries.” ”-Vianney Leigh

We Can Change The Rage

“We’re not supposed to be on all of the time, but we’re not lamps. We don’t have to be on all the time either. When we realize that we’d have to be on all of the time, we’re able to turn that light back onto ourselves. That is the reminder of our, in all tomorrow in a fall to prioritize yourself, create some boundaries, the cost yourself, give yourself a hug, spend some time by yourself. If you need to and use this time to create the work that you want to do, like switch those outside lights off a little bit and just focus on yourself a little bit if possible, at least 1%, at least the rage that you’re feeling or the anger that you’re feeling during this phase, we can change that.”-Vianney Leigh

Links from Today’s Show

The Perfect Flow Formula

What would it be like to get really excited about understanding your cycle so that you can be free from burnout, overwhelm & procrastination? The Perfect Flow Formula is a step by step action guide to know your monthly cycle.

The Perfect Flow Action Guide

Other links:

The Flow Zone | Menstrual Cycle Alignment + Energetics + Human Design

About Vianney

Vianney is the founder of Status Flow Collective, an education, empowerment, and coaching business that transforms and elevates your life through the power of your period. The brand’s mission is to challenge and disrupt the status quo of menstrual cycles. Vianney is a certified life & success coach, menstrual cycle alignment expert, and host of the Periods & Power Moves Podcast. She helps people with periods, particularly online coaches, consultants, and service-based entrepreneurs with energy-draining periods problems put energy management at the forefront so they awaken to their period power and reignite their creativity, leadership, and authentic authority.

Contact:

Instagram: @statusflow.co

YouTube: Status Flow Co.

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