What is cyclical living?

Hello sacred soul,

Welcome to another musing from my wild heart. The topic heavy in my mind lately, that so many of my wonderful friends and community members keep asking me about in one way or another, is cyclical living. 

I know this topic has become quite trendy and so many people I know are now shying away from talking about it in spiritual practice for this reason, but I feel the trend is well deserved!! We are slowly and beautifully and wonderfully breaking up with the need to be on all the time and doing so much to fill our days, going against our nature at different times of the month or year or day! We need plenty of encouragement in this department as we seek to dismantle beliefs that have been ingrained in us for multiple generations. So I say, talk about cyclical living till the cows come home! Teach on it, repeat it, share it, workshop it… reinforce the knowing that cyclical living is THE way. This is the only way for certain that we will truly return to it.  

Even as someone who has been practicing this for years, I still need the gentle reminder to recondition my mind and realign myself every once in a while.

To begin, I want to share with you the various cycles in which we can attune ourselves to that are innate within our nature and the nature of the earth. There are many here and the key is not to get overwhelmed trying to control your life around them (that would be the total opposite of cyclical living), instead we must look to attuning ourselves to nature and letting our intuition guide us through this process. The more intuitive you are, the most aligned you naturally become with the cycles.

Some of the cycles that affect us human beings are:

• Cycles of the sun (solar)
• Cycles of the moon (lunar)
• Seasonal cycle (wheel of the year)
• Menstrual cycle (part of the infradian rhythm)
• Personal cycles of birth, death and rebirth

*There are other cycles that occur naturally to humans but these ones are the most obvious to us and the easiest to cultivate some personal changes around* 

Below is a very brief breakdown of each of these cycles.
 

Solar cycle:

If you google this then you’ll come across an 11-year cycle that the sun goes through, but I’m referring to the sun’s movements around the earth that govern us and many of the other cycles. This could be the daily movements between night and day (circadian), the seasonal changes in light and dark and the balance between the two, or even astrological shifts of the sun into each of the 12 zodiacs. You also go through your own yearly lunar return on your birthday. They all affect us in some way.

Lunar cycle:

There are 13 full moons in the calendar year. A lunar cycle goes through 8 phases—a new moon, waxing crescent moon, first quarter moon, waxing gibbous moon, full moon, waning gibbous moon, third quarter, waning crescent moon and then returns to begin the cycle again. It occurs about every 28 days and with each phase a unique energy is present that affects us collectively.

Seasonal cycle:

This is the natural repeating pattern we see the earth go through every year… Winter, spring, summer and fall. As the earth tilts and the sun shifts how it strikes our planet the seasons are created, with opposing seasons happening between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. We experience a long day, a long night and a balance of light and day. You may not realize it yet but the season you find yourself in where you reside has a lot of personal medicine for you to embrace and attune yourself to.

Menstrual cycle:

This of course applies to women and covers the hormone cycle that takes us through the four phases of menstrual (winter), follicular (spring), ovulatory (summer) and luteal (autumn) over approximately 28 days (normal length of cycle varies for each woman). Each phase has its own energetics that we can align with internally and externally to feel more balanced in our daily life.

Personal cycles:

I debated putting this in here or not, ultimately I feel that our personal cycles that we go through are just as important as the ones listed above. They aren’t necessarily intuitive or organically occurring in the same pattern but they are definitely cyclical to each of us individually and they greatly impact our emotions, thoughts, physical bodies and spiritual lives. So, I feel to live intuitively/cyclically we do have to honour these cycles or we risk leaving out a big part of the process.

How do you live cyclically?

As I mentioned above, cyclical living has nothing to do with control or greatly monitoring the ins and outs of the above cycles. You can certainly do that in the beginning to grasp a firm understanding of your own nature within these cycles, but ultimately the goal is a very restful and relaxed awareness you build over time to attune yourself to these cycles—aka your nature. They are always overlapping so taking a natural approach to it is so key. Tuning into your emotions, thoughts, physical needs and feelings, spiritual changes and lifestyle desires throughout all these cycles simultaneously occurring is the same as tuning into yourself regularly. The greater you are aligned with yourself on a regular basis - knowing how you feel and where you’re at in any given moment - is what will make the process of cyclical living easier. Start with awareness of self and keep building it from there.

Intuition is key

Many people try to live cyclically and say to me “it’s so hard! I don’t know how you do it!” To which I often respond… it is hard to the mind that is attached to control, schedules and constructs of the modern world. The more you can relax into your intuitive nature, the easier it’ll be for you. Building a relationship with your intuition is learning the language of your soul, and this relationship is vital to not just cyclical living but also to living a truly free and aligned life. Intuition helps us to be aligned with the spirit, with God’s divine plan for us. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is learning the language of your intuition. I’m very passionate about this, which is why I teach about it in my courses.

How to get started?

I encourage you try not to over complicate this and to take it gently and slowly. Take the time to learn every cycle I listed above (I cover this in my wheel of the year course) and how you personally evolve and change through them. Notice how your own innate animal wildness expresses itself through the cycles of the day, the week, the month, the year, the moon cycle, the seasons and your personal cycles. It will look so much different for you than it does for me. No one can tell you how you will change through the cycles, it is a personal experience for you to discover. Start with awareness and let it build over time! It took me 4 years to slow down enough, pay attention, allow myself to hold awareness for my personal shifts and to embrace it fully. Cyclical living is a slow job because the cycles themselves are slow… let it be that way!

If you want to start living cyclically right now then you can just allow yourself to feel into your day. Hold awareness for what is happening outside of yourself in your environment and the people around you. Hold awareness for how you feel when you get up in the morning and how you progress through the day. Notice how your spiritual practice is feeling, how your thoughts change this time of year, how you recognize different things at different times of the month or year… awareness of self is the foundation for it. Let it happen organically.

My final note and recommendation to you is to take it slow. Don’t force cyclical living, that completely defeats the purpose. Notice what caught your eye in the writings and visuals I shared above and roll with that. What has sparked your attention here is no mistake, follow it!

Resting into the wildness of the heart with you,

Em