🌺 The Menstrual Cycle: learning to listen to the body’s language
For centuries, women lived their cycle without always understanding it.
We were taught to ignore it, to “carry on as usual,” to move at the same pace every day without listening to the subtle changes moving through the body. But the female body doesn’t follow a straight line. It follows a rhythm, a movement, an inner dance.
Understanding your cycle is learning to read that language.
It’s rediscovering what your body already knows: how it expresses itself, speaks to you, and guides you.
This article is also a letter to my daughter, Violette, to her friends and the daughters of my friends — so they can read their bodies with confidence and walk at their own pace.
🔬 A cycle science (re)discovered surprisingly late
What’s striking is that modern science only identified and described the menstrual cycle in 1928.
Yes — 1928. Barely a century.
Before then, researchers knew women bled, but hadn’t understood that this phenomenon was linked to organized, cyclical, natural hormonal fluctuations.
It was Austrian biologist George W. Corner and American physician Willard M. Allen who brought key hormones — estrogen and progesterone — to light. Their work opened the way to a scientific understanding of a phenomenon present since time immemorial.
But women already knew.
We felt it, observed it, honored it — often in connection with the moon.
In many ancient cultures, menstrual blood was seen as a sign of vital power.
Women withdrew together — to sacred spaces, “red tents,” or circles — to rest, meditate, and reconnect.
They knew this time of the month wasn’t a weakness but an inner doorway.
🌿 The cyclical body: a symphony in four seasons
Only recently have we begun to reclaim what our ancestors intuitively knew:
the female body is cyclical, like nature.
And this cycle — averaging 28 days — can be read as four inner seasons in one inner garden.
This article echoes a piece I wrote for Esprit Yoga Magazine titled In harmony with your cycle, where I explore how our energy and emotions follow the body’s inner seasons.
🌸 Inner spring (follicular phase)
After your period, energy gradually returns.
It’s a time of renewal. The body prepares a new ovum, and you often feel like moving forward, creating, planning.
It’s ideal for learning, starting projects, getting back into motion.
Curiosity opens again; you turn toward the world.
In Women’s Yoga, this phase favors dynamic yet light practices: circular movements, breath, renewal.
It’s also a beautiful moment to plant new intentions — like seeds in spring.
☀️ Inner summer (ovulation)
Your energy peaks.
You radiate — sociable, confident, turned toward others.
Your body is literally geared to give, receive, and share.
Emotionally, it’s often a time of joy, sensuality, openness.
In Women’s Yoga, this is the season of full expansion: open your heart, dance, breathe fully, connect with life.
Inner summer is a time to love, create, and transmit.
🍂 Inner autumn (luteal phase)
After ovulation, energy begins to descend.
It’s the season of truth.
Inner autumn invites you to recenter, sort, and listen to what needs attention.
Rawer emotions often surface here — sensitivity, fatigue, irritability.
They aren’t “symptoms”; they are signals.
Your body says: “Slow down.”
“Come back to yourself.”
This is the time to set boundaries, notice what no longer fits, honor your need for truth.
In Women’s Yoga, choose grounding practices, deeper breathing, gentle stretches.
It’s also a fertile time to create, write, reflect, dream.
❄️ Inner winter (menstruation)
At last comes your bleeding phase.
Your body releases what it no longer needs.
It isn’t an ending — it’s a return to the beginning.
A time for rest, quiet, inner listening.
Across many traditions, this time was sacred: women rested, listened to their dreams, received intuition.
What if we reclaimed that time today?
Take a few hours, slow down, breathe, reconnect.
In Women’s Yoga, this phase calls for slower practices, floor postures, soothing breath, warmth — and inner coolness.
The body knows what it needs.
💫 One cycle, many lives: why it concerns us all
Whether you are 13, 35, or 55, the cycle is part of you.
It teaches you about your energy, your emotions, your relationship with yourself.
Even when bleeding stops at menopause, the rhythm doesn’t disappear — it becomes inner, subtler, calmer, yet present.
Adolescence
It’s time to discover your body without fear or shame.
Recognizing the signs of your cycle is already learning to listen to yourself.
Keep a small journal — moods, energy, sensations — a precious knowledge for life.
Motherhood
After birth, your body needs time to find its rhythm again.
The cycle can change, pause, reinvent itself.
Again, it’s an adjustment — a dialogue between your energy and the life moving through you.
Menopause
It isn’t the end of a cycle — it’s a transmission.
The body no longer bleeds, but it still lives within a rhythm.
The seasons simply grow longer, more inward.
It is a time for listening, sharing, embodying wisdom.
🧘♀️ Living your cycle differently with Women’s Yoga
Women’s Yoga is not about performance.
It is a space for listening.
A way to return to your breath, sensations, energy.
Each practice becomes a dialogue with your cycle:
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In “inner spring”: open, awaken, welcome movement.
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In “inner summer”: radiate, express, breathe fully.
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In “inner autumn”: come back to yourself, sort, soothe.
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In “inner winter”: settle, dream, rest.
Within the AliaOm approach, we harmonize body and breath and learn to listen without judgment.
It’s an authentic, accessible path that reconnects women to their natural rhythm.
To go deeper, you can read Honouring the feminine, another article I published in Esprit Yoga Magazine about our relationship with the body and the sacred dimension of the feminine.
🌕 Go further
This article is an entryway.
If you want to explore how your body works, and how to adapt your daily life, practice, and energy, I invite you to discover:
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The workshop Menstrual Cycle & the Female Body — a space for practice and transmission.
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The full Women’s Yoga training on the AliaOm campus — to integrate menstrual wisdom into your life or teaching.
These spaces help you reconnect with your body, understand your rhythm, and rebuild trust with your own nature.
This Women’s Yoga approach continues a path I began in 2011, inspired by Yoni Shakti by Uma Dinsmore-Tuli — now shared as Womb Yoga — and presented for the first time in my Yoga Journal France article in 2017.
🌺 In conclusion
Your menstrual cycle is not a constraint.
It is a compass.
A continuous dialogue between your body and your life.
An invitation to live with nature, with your breath, with what makes you a woman.
If there is one thing to remember, it’s this:
your body knows.
Each month, it speaks through sensations, impulses, needs.
It doesn’t need to be “fixed” — it needs to be listened to.
So whether you are a teenager or a grandmother, in a time of renewal or of rest, remember:
every woman is a season of the world.
And within this inner dance lies the beauty of the feminine.
🌕 AliaOm Method | Women’s Yoga
Online trainings and workshops to understand the female body and live in tune with your natural rhythm.
