79 Taq Kaur Bhandal Taq: Because even if right now we're like, I'm feeling great. I'm in this sprint, I'm doing so good. Eventually it catches up to us because of the way that this idea of linear growth productivity that ties into patriarchy that ties into colonialism works. It looks shiny and exciting. However, it's going to lead to pain and suffering and violence. And so. How do we shift our attention away from that by literally living our lives in these four seasons so that our businesses embody them so that our collaborations embody them so that the institutions themselves begin to embody cyclical living because the time is now like the earth is asking us, hasn't asking us for a long time to shift the way we live our lives in terms of sustainability, not only of. You know, like material things, but sustainability in terms of our lifestyle, our way of turning back to land, because land is slow, it's slow, it's slow cooked. It takes these seasonal ways of being in order to survive and have thrive for these like 4 billion years that the earth has been around. And so, as humans, as women, I invite us to take those to-do lists. Chart your cycle and see where you can start to make those small shifts. The needle point moves towards more cyclical ways of living Monica: [00:00:00] Well, welcome to the revelation project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed. He gets healed. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the revelation project podcast today I'm with various special guest Taq Kaur Bhandal. Taq is the founder of I'm with periods. And I was so interested in speaking with tech today about her work, because. As so much of my life has centered around getting comfortable with my body, with my cycle, with really understanding all of the various layers and opportunities that I have. To heal and relate to myself actually through my cycles as a gift, I really knew when I came across tax work, that that's kind of exactly what she's up to helping amplify the gift of our cycles and helping us understand its wisdom at a deeper level. So welcome Taq. I would love to hear more just about how you express your background. Taq: [00:01:35] Yeah, thank you so much, Monica for having me on and thank you to all the listeners out there who are jumping in and, you know, really tapping into your true divine feminine, which is what I hear this podcast and space is about. So I'm here for it. Y'all welcome. I can share. A bit about myself. So I'll take a few minutes just to introduce the land that I currently live on. I'll talk a little bit about my personal and ancestral history and history and what got me to this point of starting I'm with periods and. Publicly having conversations about our periods and menstrual cycles, and then a little bit about where we're going and how you all can be involved in the conversation in your own homes and communities as well. So how does that sound to you, Monica? And that sounds amazing. Okay. So in terms of land, I am currently based in Halifax, Canada, which is on the east the far, far east coast, the Atlantic coast of these borders that I live in. And it is MikMak first nations. Treaty territories and in treaty with Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is the city here. And I'm a huge nerd. I'll say that. So I'm going to share a little bit more about the lineage of land in a nerdy way honoring as well. The indigenous communities. And the diaspora that I've sort of been born from. So I was born and raised in Metro Vancouver, Canada, which is on the far west coast. So I love the ocean and I'm supposed to be near the coast apparently. And I was raised there for about 18 years. And I was basically burnt out the entire time during those 18 years y'all I grew up in a family home that was filled with a lot of violence. So when I turned 18, I thought, let me move as far away as I possibly can, just to start to detox and uncover the trauma though. I didn't know that that's what I was supposed to do at the time. And so. In that process. I started to uncover bits about myself, you know, chip away at the outer core and on the inside, I've always been passionate about women's health and just protecting women's bodies and how we can learn to have more. Agency around our own bodies and choice and knowing that we have full choice and how do we exercise that and the conditions of world that we live in. And so that's on coast Salish territory. And then my ancestors, my parents directly migrated from the Punjab region of modern day, India, Pakistan, and. Borders were drawn in those territories in about the 1940s. So there's been many intergenerational trauma that I've also healing and working with. And so. All of that is acknowledging the land that has gotten me here at this point. And the ancestors that have gotten me here to this moment in time and where I'm at now. So as I mentioned, I run a social enterprise called I'm with periods. That's the letter, I, the letter M with periods and it's my creatives. Space. It's where I get to shine out my divine feminine nerding out and talking about periods and menstrual cycles. And you'll often hear me use the word Malati Malati and that means menstrual cycles in Punjabi. So. All things, periods, menstrual cycles. Self-care we talk about sex. We talk about our pelvic centers as sacred womb spaces, as energy centers, where we can draw power from. And it's basically a safe space just to ask questions and engage in a relationship with a part of our body. That's often. Hidden no way, literally hidden away. We all have a huge complex about our Yoni's or vaginas and just pelvic center in general. And. I believe that comes from a lot of conditioning, like the processes of colonialism, the processes of patriarchy capitalism. And I see it very much through that lens. So that's my sort of, when I put my Cape on, that's what I go do, I'm with periods. And then my day job is as a teacher and professor at Del housey university here. So that's where I'm at. I'm really excited to. Talk more about periods and self-care in this conversation and where we're going. We just published a book last year, called self care down there in an effort to support people, to have a loving, positive relationship with their Yoni's and menstrual cycles so that we can yeah. Tap into the amazingness of our power and. Shine our lights out because I truly believe abundance is our birthright. There is more than enough creative Tivity and just like radness out there for us to tap into. And for me, the main key is our periods. Monica: [00:07:21] I love, I love how you introduced yourself. Thank you. Couple of things come up for me right away. And first of all, you're honoring the land, right? When I think too, about our menstrual cycle, so much of the indigenous. Cultures that we come from had such a sacred relationship with their cycles and the land and the cycles of the land. And so there's just obviously such a big conversation right away, as far as that goes. And I know that what you said is so true, right? It's like a very hidden. The fact that so much of the modern world, like we're, we're kind of inculturated to look at our menstrual cycle as just this bodily function. That's kind of an inconvenience versus understanding that it's actually got its incredible inherent wisdom that we carry that gives us access to different ways of. Being throughout the month, which is such a gift to the feminine body. So I love, you know, and there's also, I want to raise my hand and say, there's also. A certain line we cross where I don't know what the heck I'm talking about anymore. I just inherently know that there's so much more here to be revealed. Taq: [00:08:53] Definitely. And you touch on such important points around how it's that piece of self-referral because. I have realized in my research is that literally every single person in the world, regardless of their sex, gender, ancestry, citizenship, anything like regardless of any of those things in every body is the capacity to use those same hormones. In a way that's cyclical. Like every single body has the hormones of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and it's on a spectrum. And so knowing that, that we're not necessarily comparing ourselves to other people, it's that our periods and menstrual cycles are very unique to us. It's almost like our own fingerprint or. Signature where our own bodies are doing it in its particular way. So if we can radically accept that, that it's unique, we don't need to compare it to other people. And that. When we develop a conscious relationship with it, it's only going to grow and love us back and it's within us. So I love it for that as a form of self-referral to check in on our, how our body's doing, how our spiritual health is doing, how our mental and emotional health, it's a really good reminder and indicator to. Engage in different practices of self care for all the forms of health out there. Monica: [00:10:25] Yeah. And so I have so many questions, so many questions, and I guess the first question that I would ask is I have seen you post. About the seasons of the menstrual cycle. And so I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that and each season, and I'm making up that every cycle. And as you just said, for every woman it's different and every cycle is probably uniquely normal for her and that. In that cycle each month are the four seasons. Is that correct? Taq: [00:11:07] Yeah. You got it. You got it. Okay. So I can share a little bit about that tool that we all can use. So I'll get us to imagine the four seasons of the earth. So we fought winter, spring, summer, and autumn, and going back to the land. They're going to look different for every single person, you know, in south India, winter's like a balmy 35 and it ruins on the streets. Whereas here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I live in winter, we've got four or five feet of snow. All I want to do is huddle in my house. And there's not tons of light, usually by four it's darkness. So imagine those four seasons. Wherever you are in space right now. And knowing them, we can correspond different parts of our menstrual cycle with those four seasons. So the first one is winter. So we think of maybe turning inward, getting rest and that corresponds with our periods. So we have the shedding of the blood, our bodies. Basically releasing negative energies, any toxins that we've been holding in that. Sacred fluid and that's going out. So while that's going out, we want to turn inward again, rest, take care, engage in, self-care eat or things. And then we go into spring. So we think of maybe the flowers coming out and things are blooming. And in our own bodies, what is happening is an egg that's in our ovary. That's. We were born with is getting ready to be released. So it's getting all its nutrients on, you know, it's getting it. Snack boxes, it's getting ready to leave the nest, leave the ovary. And in that time of blooming and. The spring time we can write our to-do lists. Do those brain dumps really empty out our mind and map things out. It's a really, really good time for visualization, really tuning into that energy of creation of possibility. And then we go into summer. Summer is the shortest season in her bodies. It's obvious relation. As you can imagine, you know, super hot we're feeling sexy. We want to hang out with our friends. We are reading our wrong columns. At least that's what I'm doing. We are. So excited. There's new ideas flowing, and there's all this positive energy that's being released in that time that the egg actually leaves the ovary oscillates. It's about 24 to 48 hours. That that window is, and it's again different for every single person. So the timing is different. The length of our cycles are different. The length of seasons tend to be different. For each person, depending on where we're at. And then finally we go into autumn, which corresponds with PMs. So we can imagine the leaves, the deciduous leaves, you know, getting crinkly and brown and they're ready to shed and things are composting and getting ready to turn inward. Similarly in our bodies after we've operated our estrogen, which has been leading the movement until now, just totally mellows out and our progesterone. Kicks into high gear. So autumn and PMs is ruled by that amazing hormone progesterone. And it's a period of decluttering. So our minds are decluttering, you know, for me, it's that irritation things are coming up. More. So it's a moment of turning inward and seeing what is the limiting belief that is causing me to be irritable right now, because it's not the other person, like, you know, in my fertile window, when it's sunny, I'm in love with everybody. And everyone's like, yeah, best friend, but there's something in that irritation. It's that moment of breakthrough. So we almost have to get into that vibration in PMs and autumn. And then we go back to the winter and we go into that process over and over. So Autumn's a really good time to think about those limiting beliefs that are coming up. Get ready to declutter and. Concentrate, the body just does it naturally. It concentrates all of that into the period lining and then winter comes, gets shed. We continue on. Monica: [00:15:44] So good. Okay. So what, I'm my next question. And I again have so many, this is so great because of course I'm listening to what you're saying and I'm immediately thinking of my own cycle. As I'm sure most women who are listening are thinking of their own cycles and why this information is helpful. First of all, to me, how can I start to really maybe with one or two things like tap into using this information in a way that really. Feels different maybe from how I have in the past. Taq: [00:16:28] Really? Yeah. I love that question. And for me, I use it primarily as a tool to help us prevent burnout because I see this in especially women run businesses or even in my students, everyone's just burned out. I was burnt out, as I said, for so long in my life. It wasn't until I started. Tuning into my body's needs. And these four seasons that I was able to structure my life so that I can live in abundance. I can attract abundance as opposed to just being totally cut off from all of that, because we're just in survival mode and our nervous systems are like, Freaking out all the time. And the pandemic obviously is an intense period. And then beyond that, the social justice movement and paradigm shift is, you know, we're using a lot of energy right now. So what I would share in terms of getting started is whatever you use for your scheduling or calendar to think about how you can apply those four seasons to your scheduling and calendar. Because I'm assuming, I imagine that everybody listening to this is already doing amazing things like y'all are out there. You have tuned into this podcast, you're in the right space. You are doing all the things and you're busy, busy, busy, busy. Your life is amazing. You're attracting in everything that you want. And. Still there's that feeling of slight overwhelm to the point where you're like, okay, I know I have to get all these things done, but I am just want to like, go take a nap right now. And I can't do this a day. So it's going to using this. Four seasons framework will help prevent the burnout in the long run. Because even if right now we're like, I'm feeling great. I'm in this sprint, I'm doing so good. Eventually it catches up to us because of the way that this idea of linear growth productivity that ties into patriarchy that ties into colonialism works. It looks shiny and exciting. However, it's going to lead to pain and suffering and violence. And so. How do we shift our attention away from that by literally living our lives in these four seasons so that our businesses embody them so that our collaborations embody them so that the institutions themselves begin to embody cyclical living because the time is now like the earth is asking us, hasn't asking us for a long time to shift the way we live our lives in terms of sustainability, not only of. You know, like material things, but sustainability in terms of our lifestyle, our way of turning back to land, because land is slow, it's slow, it's slow cooked. It takes these seasonal ways of being in order to survive and have thrive for these like 4 billion years that the earth has been around. And so, as humans, as women, I invite us to take those to-do lists. Chart your cycle and see where you can start to make those small shifts. The needle point moves towards more cyclical ways of living. Oh, Monica: [00:19:53] Okay. All right. I want to go back to something you said, you said pain, suffering and violence. How is that related? Help me understand. Taq: [00:20:08] I love that question. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to add? Not yourself? Monica: [00:20:14] Well, what I would say is I'm, I'm up when you say that and I don't want to assume I make up that what you mean by that. Is that when we start to live and listen in a more cyclical way, we don't experience the inner conflict. That then creates the outer conflict with others, with like the angst, the burnout, the overwhelm, the irritation, and when we're able to listen more and be more cyclical where. Also then practicing that same skill set on our outside because we have we're filling the cup. We're basically honoring our land, our body. In a way that then creates more ease, creates more flow, creates more harmony. Taq: [00:21:18] Yes. You have it. Exactly. It's that point? That in the cyclical living our bodies, just start to. Get into this state of equilibrium of, okay, I can do this. I know what to do. I feel calm for me. It was shocking. Like within the first three or four months of say charting my cycle and using these principles, I kept just going. Yeah, you're on telling people, oh my gosh. I'm so chill. I'm so calm. Have you all noticed how calm and chill I am? That was in 2017. And now. We're in 2021. It's been four years of practicing this way and I'm telling you all, it has been so transformative too. The inner work. Like my self-talk is so positive, it has been able to shift so that I can say things like I love you, period. Thank you so much for arriving. Thank you for doing this work. Thank you pimples for helping me detox, the things that I've absorbed from the world in my body. And thank you, period pain. Like there is actual pain associated, even though in that moment, it's. So intense, but we can still have gratitude for it in that it's all helping us process all of it. And I know that your listeners and folks in your community are attuned to that as well. It's hard to hear it because obviously I'm like, no, I don't want the pain. I'm still saying, you know, take the ibuprofen, like use your medicines. Definitely not advocating for. The necessity to bear the pain, but just know that it's there as an indicator that something is going on and therefore we can attend to it with all the medicines at our disposal. Monica: [00:23:16] Yeah, Taq: [00:23:17] Yeah. That the earth is providing us. Right. Right. So it's more of an indicator. So using those four seasons. To notice where the pain is, where is the violence? I can give another quick example, which is being in relation to people like there might be some members of your tribe or your community, let's say your village where just being in the same space as them sets your nervous system into like I'm in so much pain. This is the worst. All I want to do is leave right now. And when we're tuned into our menstrual cycles and our bodies, that will be amplified. We'll notice that. And therefore we can do something about it and say, okay, you know, next cycle, I'm going to stop seeing this person in any shape or form that I tend. Like, is there a way that I can set. The boundary there and that's one way that it can help us eliminate just those everyday forms of suffering that, you know, we don't need it. I'm here to say we're stopping the suffering in this generation. Monica: [00:24:23] Yeah. Well, the other part I love that you're really highlighting here is that I always. Say that the first step to making any kind of change, making, developing any kind of practice is the noticing notice, notice, notice, because it's the awareness that creates the ongoing relationship and. Because this is something that we can practice. It's not like, oh, we don't have a million opportunities. In fact, 12 each year, right. 13 opportunities to kind of practice this, as you said, it's taken four years and yet. When you really started honoring your cycle and the seasons of your cycle, you noticed kind of this inner harmony start to establish itself, and that you were kind of reaping the benefits from that, just by becoming more aware of where you were in which season. I also want to come back to the fact that many of our listeners are now. Going through or have gone through menopause. And I go back to what you said before, which is even when we're not necessarily in that bleeding season of our life, in that menstrual season of our life, we are still having those seasons. And I want to point because I want to talk about this a little, but I also want to point to the fact that I've noticed that my. Husband, my partner in life is totally on my same cycle. Yeah. Like he, he completely is like, we always call it a sympathy, headache, or there's a way that like his rhythms. Mirror mine. And I know inherently that in some ways, even though he's a man he's, we're in sync in our cycles a way. Taq: [00:26:28] Yes. Yes. So you point to that magical piece that even if we don't. Even if our bodies shift into this new way of decluttering, like this wise way, for many years, we need the concentration. We need the shedding and we need the concentration. We need the shedding in that form. As we get into those older years, as you say, that cycle is still happening, there is a slight shift in hormones and I can direct folks to an amazing endocrinologist. Dr. Jerry Lynn prior, and she's based out on the west coast and I'll, I can share it with Monica to put in the show notes. She is a feminist researcher. She's sort of infiltrated the, the, the MD world. And she does amazing research on menstrual cycles and has. Been able to follow many, many, many folks through all of this, the various seasons of their menstrual cycles, but then also of our lives. So the menstrual cycles, the four seasons analogy can also apply to say pre puberty than puberty. Then the periods where we're releasing the eggs and. Going through the period process and then menopause as it's called, although there are ancestral languages and ways of describing it, that might resonate more with you all and that it has its own beauty. So I hear you and say what my partner I've been saying, I'm doing a long term ethnography about one man's experience menstrual cycles, because I think it's. Or I not even think, I know, as you said, you can sense in your body that there are shifts and seasonal ways of doing things just as we can also mirror the sun. Often testosterone is made an announcer, or we make an analogy with sun and testosterone and moon. Estrogen and progesterone. But as I said, at the beginning, everybody has all those hormones. So we also experience our own sort of masculine side and feminine side of the spectrum. Just as you know, our partners who identify as males also do Monica: [00:28:43] Say a little bit more about that Taq. Cause what I'm interested in is understanding at what season or out of the four seasons, which ones would you say were expressing masculine or feminine? Taq: [00:28:56] Yeah, I can see that it's it's every single day. So it's sort of almost on different scales. So just as the sun rises through the day lasts about 24 hours. The testosterone in our bodies also sort of acts that way. Okay. So it's super high in the mornings and then it kind of comes down. Whereas the moon, it's more of a 28 or 29.4 day cycle. And everyone's menstrual cycle though can be as long as it needs to be. So for example, some people who may identify with having PCOS, their menstrual cycle might be 90 days long, or somebody who didn't offer collate or isn't operating. Might have an 18 day cycle, or I might be experiencing a lot of stress on cycles. So my body's like, you know what, not a good time to obviously, and it's going to be a 21 day cycle. So there's variation though, in general, we can imagine the moon phases and how they change over time. So estrogen and progesterone, then they followed that sort of more. Longer flow and cycle, as opposed to testosterone, which is sort of like the sun in that it's like up and down every single day in that same fashion, we always expect the sun to come up, you know? Yeah. Monica: [00:30:17] Well, that's, that's fascinating. I love what, how you just described that. And I want, I want to go back to the, um, Pecos or the PCRs, cause I actually know quite a few women who I say struggle with that. And yet what I heard you say is that. Their cycle is normal for them. And there's a way that oftentimes we can, if we're outside of the bounds of what. Normal is we can tend to think there's something wrong with us. And I imagine that there's another kind of way to look at that. Taq: [00:30:52] Definitely. Yeah. I'm all I'm with periods in particular. Our main mission is to spread the worldwide love of period. So I'm all about seeing things through a positive way. So with PCOS or polycystic ovary syndrome, And that same researcher. I mentioned Dr. Jerelyn prior she is proposing a new word for it, and you all can read about that and she's done a lot of research on it. It's this idea that yeah, just accepting radically accepting where our bodies are at wherever they are, regardless of how long or short your cycles are, and then making an informed consensual choice based decisions. How we want to move forward. Okay. Say our cycle is 90 days long and it's super painful. And we bleed for 10 days in order. Like, you know what? I don't want to deal with that. Then there's going to be particular medicines that we draw on. Same with somebody who has a 28 day cycle. They might experience intense mounts of period pain and radically accept that. Okay. This is where my cycles at and we can make informed choices. So. How we want to proceed. And in doing that, it just allows us to honor where our bodies are at radically. Accept it, rather than, as you say, compare ourselves to this textbook idea of what menstrual cycles. Should be. And we often get that textbook, you know, and it kind of gets repeated and the same, um, myths and ideas about what menstrual cycles should be like get passed down and we're here to say, they're all different. We're going to love them all. And then we're going to make informed choices about what we're going to do for the next cycle. Monica: [00:32:40] Yeah. I mean, what a relief, right? Because again, with everything. I feel like everything comes back to this radical self love and really treating our own body as. Really this sacred telemetry system that helps us to navigate our specific experience. Taq: [00:33:08] Yes, exactly. Monica: [00:33:10] And allowance to be exactly what it is. And so I'm going to raise my hand and say that I have struggled for a long, long time with PMS. And as of. You know, let's say three years ago, I started with migraines. Sometimes I get them when I ovulate. Sometimes I get them right before my period. Sometimes I get them five days after I'm done with the bleeding. I haven't been able to figure out, I know that they're linked to the hormones. I know that a lot of women struggle with various, I say, struggle with various PMs symptoms. And so I immediately kind of think about what you were saying is. As far as charting and I have been actually charting. But what I'm going to do since we've had this conversation is instead of just charting, when the migraines show up, when I'm actually having the first day of my period, the last day of my period, what I'm going to do now is go in and map out those seasons. And what I'm curious about is what do you recommend for. That winter, right? For the winter. Are you advocating that women rest during that particular week? Like tell me more. Taq: [00:34:35] Yeah. I love that question. And I also just want to say, thank you so much for sharing about your experience because it's in sharing our stories that people can relate and say, oh yeah, that's in my experience. And I'm really excited to hear more about. Your own, you know, inner ethnography of yourself and writing these things down. And part of it is mapping like that physical manifestation. And then also the emotional piece because stress, the experience of stress and all the ways, physical stress, emotional stress, spiritual stress is. One way that pain can show up. Isn't that? So power to you. I want to hear more I'm day to check it and a few cycles and see where you're at. And then in terms of your question, which was just remind me Monica: [00:35:27] Again. Yeah. So I'm curious, like, what would you tell me in that? Because what I, what I loved about what you said about the winter. Yeah. And avoiding, you know, kind of like the pain, not avoiding, but honoring the phase or the season in my cycle where, and this is, I know this is part of the trance is like my inability to kind of like, like where you say blink rasp, like for a week, like, what were you? Right. Like my, my masculine trained, societaly trained. The way that I move in the world is like, that's, that's crazy. Right? Like that's to not do anything right. For a week or like, and I'm just making that up. Right. I don't even know if that's what you're saying, like breast. Taq: [00:36:21] Oh, I freaking love it, Monica. Yes. I'm saying radical rests. Y'all let us take radical rest. And it's so funny that you bring that up, like the length of time. And I do these principle challenges online with periods, mostly because I have a printable challenges. So I'm like, okay, I used so many, I'll put some out into the world for other folks and I'm designing one right now. That's called the. Challenge of radical rest. And originally it was going to be a seven day challenge. And I had that same thought. I thought nobody has, who has time to take seven days off. Monica: [00:36:56] It's time to rest for seven days. But I mean, that's so Taq: [00:36:59] ironic. It is it's shocking. And yet that's what we feel. It's what I felt. It's what you feel. And it feels so shocking to us that we would do that. And. That's okay. W let us radically accept that. That's where we're at. And so I've changed it to a one day radical rest challenge, and it can basically look like exactly how you want it to look like. So I'd say visualize, like, what's your, what would radical rest day look like for you? Is it going to be taking a slow morning sitting with your like warm drink and your. Book or, you know, that's me cause I'm an introvert. So everybody look at what does radical rest for one single day, one day look like to you visualize it. You don't even have to do it. Just think right now, what would it look like? And then I invite you to it again, will be different for every person cycle for me. I generally take it on. Like for me, deep autumn, deep PMs, like the last two days before my period, it's like, I'm just almost going to burst into two balls sire. So that's the day where I deep radical risks just can't deal with humanity sometimes on that day. So that's what I invite you to do on whatever day it's going to look different for everybody. It can be different cycle to cycle, but take one day of radical rest. Per menstrual cycle. You all know your bodies, you know, when to take it and just allow yourself, let everybody know around you. This is my day. It's so shocking that we live in this fast paced world. And at the same time, you know, our ancestors, especially with folks who were doing farming and live it off the land, which was basically everybody at one point, like you had to be on it all the time. There were periods of intense work and there was always a period of rest. Before the next harvest, there's always a period where in the fields, there's absolutely nothing we can do unless you want to go find that one weed in that one corner. So take those moments, allow yourself when you're in that time, where all the fields have been taken care of to sit and take that radical rest, and I'm going to cheer you on as you do it. Monica: [00:39:21] So I'm really tuning in right now to the fact that. The wisdom of the migraine is that it forces me. I have no choice when I get the migraine and to experience it as an invitation to, to look at the seasons differently. I just kind of wonder, you know, as I'm listening, if I were to map this out for a few cycles and really. Honor more rest. If those migraines would stop being so insistent, you know, like, I don't know. So, but there's definitely something resonating for me around, like there's more here than just the dip in hormones. Like there's a way that my body is. Been asking me politely for a long time and now it's not so polite. Cause I know that that's how my body, I know that that's how it goes for me that like I get the gentle nudges. And then I got the two by four. Taq: [00:40:39] Yes, yes, yes. I just say a hundred percent. Yes. So that will be your next self study question for yourself as what happens when I take radical rest in relation to knowing where your cycles are at and. You know, starting to get into that habit as we all need to I'm the same way. Like it's not until I'm just shaking from burnout that I'm like, okay, maybe I should take a week off now, which is okay. That's what our bodies are here for. They're here to tell us, but we actually have to listen to them. You know, that's the hard part. That's where all that social conditioning comes in. Cause I'm sure for you sometimes it's like, I feel guilty or like, I don't just see her smile and think police as well. I don't deserve to take rest or taking rest means that I'm not being productive for me. It's my ancestors did it. I get to rest and the women had to work so hard and therefore, okay. I don't get to rest because who, you know, dot, dot, dot these stories that come up for us and just allowing those to also detox. Let those go, as we believe as well. So it's, we're here for it. The earth is asking us for it. Our ancestors are like, yes, take the roast. This is why we did all that work to get you here so that you can carry things on and set a good example for the next generation. And I think we're doing it. I think we're doing it in our work and I'm excited for how we're going to continue to unfold. Yeah, as well, you know, Monica: [00:42:16] Me too. And you just brought up the magic word because I was recognizing that. I've been able to kind of generationally shift some things in my parenting right. Of my raising of my daughter, let's say, or my son, and one of those things was creating a Rite of passage around her menstrual cycle with the girls in her class. Like we, and these kids went to a Waldorf school. And so that was. Uh, we, we were appropriate conversation for this culture in a Waldorf school. Right? Like I laugh because of course, when you talk about those things, people just are like, that's weird. Right? And I think more and more, what we're seeing is like, no, it's so necessary. It's so needed. It's so it's such a passage that we've been missing and a celebration and a way to relate to ourselves and our bodies and our. And honoring again, like that passage into maidenhood that is so essential for, especially for a woman's psyche, a growing woman's from that girl into a maturing woman's psyche. And, but what I haven't done, which is what I was tuning into is really created. A modeling of this rest, because again, like, as an entrepreneur and a woman, right. I can just drop the entrepreneurial label there and just say power, you know, I've just power through it because that's what my mother did and that's what her mother did. And that's what all of our mothers did. And, and so we don't have that dialogue necessarily rarely my daughter and I, we have it about the immune system and resting and making sure, but not around. The cycle. And so it's occurring to me, like as something missing that I now want to bring from this conversation with you into her awareness and to start. You know, really shifting that together because we're the two females in the house and really creating something around it that supports each other in that way that I think would be interesting and powerful. Taq: [00:44:37] Definitely. Yeah. And I'll plug our book self care down there. It's all the profits from it. Go back into the business. It's a social enterprise to share it out into the collective, especially the young. Crew like the younger folks. So it's written for that age group. I would say for folks where English is their first language who grew up in it, maybe it will be new knowledge for older, more wise women as well, but it's. For the younger crew so that we can start to develop that vocabulary early so that we can experiment earlier in this as well. Cause I'm sure I would love, you know, we should definitely do another conversation one day. Cause I want to hear more about your journey, but yeah. You know, like my twenties were a freaking shit show and that's because I was so out of tune with my body. So imagine a generation of young girls and young people, all genders who have this knowledge earlier and then are able to apply it in everything that they do. So I'm excited for you. I'm excited for her. Congratulations to her for getting, it sounds like she got her first period. Alrighty. Oh, good. Monica: [00:45:51] Oh yeah. She's she's now she's um, she'll be 19. So she's been cycling for awhile now and, but, you know, I definitely noticed that I've been modeling the power through it, you know, like. It's not even something we talk about, it's just, and it, and it needs to be, you know, it's like to, to really recognize now to bring this awareness to her about the seasons and to grab your book, help her kind of get into. And because it's not like. We've ever missed the window. It's never too late, but I've just recognized that that's something that's been missing for sure. And so this conversation has been so revealing and so illuminating and I'm so grateful. Thank you. The other question I wanted to ask you is more personal. Like why is this so damn important to you? Taq: [00:46:51] That is such a good question. It feels like. As I mentioned, this is the key to me, tapping into cyclical, ways of living. Is the key to allowing our species to basically continue. I truly feel that if we continue on the trajectory that we're in as humans, and this is coming from myself, I'm trained as a evolutionary biologist. I studied health policy. I've been doing this work for a long time and recently. You know, just finished my doctorate in social justice. So looking at these two ways of understanding the earth, I can comfortably say that our species is doomed. If we continue on this idea that there's only one way to achieve human progress, success, and development. And that way is constant consumption and constant growth. And, you know, it's up to you, whether you want to decide to shift and I'll leave that knowledge and everybody else's hands, but it's not just me saying it. It's indigenous elders. We met through the soul of money Institute. And I often think about the work that Lynn twist is doing with folks in the Amazon and the women there who share the knowledge of saying when enough is enough. And so I'm saying enough is enough. And this is my way of saying that and giving tools so that we can then gesture towards decolonial futures, towards sustainable futures. The periods are the keys. Y'all where you can tap into that cyclical way in our own bodies and get it on that cellular level. Then it's just going to become second nature to us, which it already is. And then that then spreads into the world that institutions, this phenomenon and the current reality that we live in as well. Monica: [00:48:48] I just had a moment because Lynn just told the story the other day and, um, and I think you'd appreciate it. And so I'm going to retell it here for our listeners. What she said is that. She was in, in one of her tracks to the Amazon rainforest, she was in a storytelling circle. And one of the great shamans of the Ashworth tribe said. The role of women and the role of men in our village is, is that the women are the voice of enough that yes, they're the creators and the nurturers. But the most important thing is that the women are the voices of enough. And when the men go out and they hunt for food for the tribe, the women have to say, that's enough food. Now we have enough for the village. And when the men go out to chop trees in the forest for shelter, it's the woman's job to say that's enough trees now. And the idea is that. Enough, the word enough gives the forest the opportunity to repopulate regrowth replenish itself and the same with the animals that there's not this access of consumption or this overdevelopment or this continuing to power through it type of relationship that it's actually. By saying enough that we create room for expansion and regrowth and rebirth. And it's so simple, but it's so profound. And so he said, I invite all of the women who are here visiting to take this message of enough back to the women of the modern world so that they can remind the men of the modern world when enough is enough. Taq: [00:50:52] And I'll just let that land with everybody and myself and share the final note before we wrap up, which is the exciting part of saying enough is enough. Then we get to see celebrate. You have to party. And in knowing that, and. Listening to our cycles, listening to the seasons, noticing when one is transitioning to the next, when it's time to shed and let go. And when it's time to compost and when it's time to shine out and to go out that we get to celebrate each one of those periods. So I'll say that it's not a practice of. You know, all of a sudden we can't have access to all these things or it's coming from a sort of scarcity point of view. No, it's turning into, as you know, some of our teachers share the abundance of where we're at right now and knowing that. Our cycles are enough and we get to party and celebrate that through the process. So it's definitely going to be a fun process along the way. Of course, there's going to be pain, but there's also going to be a lots of snacking and lots of times of celebrating your sexy selves as well, Monica: [00:52:09] Completely. And, and just that idea again of that. In doing this, then you're actually have so much more in harmony and have the ability to kind of give from the overflow because you're not depleted. So again, it's an invitation and it's something that I think all of us have an opportunity to start to practice and to maybe remember the, you know, my big takeaway, I think today is like understanding how. My, by paying attention to my body in this way, I'm actually able to be a better steward to the planet and to make that connection because sometimes when we're just doing it for ourselves, it's almost gotta be like a bigger, and I think that there's a way that we're so biologically connected as women, you know, as human beings anyway, to the cycles of the earth that it's, it just kind of it's. It all belongs together. And so I'm just, you know, I'm never surprised that I have such incredible guests that brings so many incredible conversations, but I'm always amazed. And today has been just precious to me. So thank you so much for sharing your work with us Taq. It's just beautiful. It's so needed. And I just honor it so much. Taq: [00:53:39] Thank you, Monica, like truly, truly thank you for reaching out and for holding this space and the way that you did and yeah. Keeping it a safe environment for me to even share. And for us to have these sometimes difficult conversations with ourselves and know that we're all in it together, I look forward to hearing from you and all of the listeners in the future as well. I love meeting new people. So I look forward to staying in touch. Monica: [00:54:08] Yes. And we'll be sure to all of our listeners to have tax information in the show notes so that you know where to follow her. Because of course, following her, you'll get a better understanding of how to stay in practice. And of course, the link to her book, maybe you want to purchase for your daughters for yourself. And one thing that it also occurred to me, tech is maybe you and I can talk afterwards about different planners. Cause I know I have one that really works for me and maybe you have some recommendations for our listeners. For ways that they can map it out. I mean, I'm sure they can just do it on an average calendar, but the book that I have is really lovely, cause it like comes with poems and like all kinds of, you know, cool. Ad-ons that. And I know that there's some great resources out there, so we'll be sure to include those in the show notes. So until next time more to be revealed, We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.