Tuning in to the Cycles and Rhythms of Natures and Ourselves

The 1st of August in the Celtic system is one of the festivals, one of the feasts. So in Welsh it’s Calan Awst, it’s Lammas, it’s Lughnasadh, and it’s the time when we celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. It’s the halfway point between the solstice in June and the equinox in September, and as it happens today, it’s a full moon.

Today’s conversation is all about cycles and rhythms and the importance of understanding our own internal cycles and rhythms as well as the external cycles and rhythms.

Why is this important?

Well, if you think about it, humans have been knocking around on the planet for 200,000 years odd-ish in our modern form, and for most of those 200,000 years, we lived in very small groups. We were nomadic. We lived in caves, and then eventually we started to live in small groups but the first cities didn’t actually come into being until 7,000 years ago.

For most of the last 200 and 1000 years, we’ve been very much living close to the land, living in tune with the land, and living in tune with the cycles of the land, and what goes on around us. Very important, if you’re growing stuff to know what’s going to grow, and if you live as hunters to understand how the animal population, the fish population if you’re fishers, how they work, and what are their seasons, and how do you tune into that so that you can really utilise and maximise that.

These external cycles are really, really important to us, but we also have these internal cycles and they’re important too, because the more in tune you are with these cycles, the more you can, as I say maximise your own energy and that of the planet itself. I love the story, the Greek myth of the story of Persephone, Hades, and Demeter.

Demeter was the goddess of the crops and the goddess of agriculture and Persephone was her daughter, and Persephone was out picking a flower one day and of course Persephone was very beautiful, and Hades the God of the underworld spotted her, and kidnapped her, and took her off to the underworld.  Demeter went in search of her daughter and she searched and she searched, and finally she found her in the Underworld with Hades.

Hades agreed to release Persephone back to Demeter, so long as Persephone ate nothing before she left Hades. Hades being a cunning sort of a chap, he gave Demeter, he gave her Persephone, sorry a pomegranate seed because it was so lush and beautiful, and he knew that she couldn’t fail to be tempted and of course she was tempted. Eventually they agreed that Persephone would spend half the year with her mother up top above the surface and half the year beneath with Hades, her husband in the Underworld.

One version of the story says that we have summer when Persephone is above with her mother, and then we have winter when she is below with Hades. So these stories of cycles and rhythms, we’ve always had these stories of cycles and rhythms. Within ourselves, we have obviously there’s the 24 hour cycle, the night and day cycle, but we also have much shorter cycles. There’s the 90 minutes cycle.

For most of us if we keep going for longer than an hour and a half at anything, we start to lose our concentration, and for many of us actually, the optimum is about 45 minutes. That’s why trainers, you’ll see trainers typically dividing training sessions into about an hour and a half, because that’s about as long as the average person can concentrate. I’m sure we’ve all been to events, a training event, or a lecture, or something, where the lecturer will ground on, and on, and on, for two hours, two and a half hours, and you’re bursting for a pee, you’re bursting for something to drink, and your concentration’s just gone.

So we all have these cycles and rhythms, and of course, as women, we have our own cycle, pre-menopause, we have our own cycle, that cycle of as the fertility hormones rise after the period, and then as they start to diminish again, and how can we tune into those cycles? There are many cycles and the Hawaiians.

The ancient Hawaiians always said that you must be conscious of the cycles. I love my 90 minute sleep cycle said somebody, and it’s just tuning into these cycles, and for the Hawaiians, understanding the rhythm understanding the cycle, riding the wave. As we celebrate this point halfway between the solstice and the equinox, this point where we’ve had this great burst of fertility, but the days are starting to get shorter, and the plants themselves are conscious if we can use that word in terms of plants, but the plants themselves have this awareness that the days are getting shorter. So, they start to be less productive.

How are you going to take this period from now until the equinox, when the nights and days become equal, and start thinking about what’s your relationship to that cycle in the year? What’s your relationship to your personal cycle? If you don’t menstruate anymore, what’s your relationship for example, to the lunar cycle?

A lot of us, I expand in the lunar cycle and I contract when it’s the New Moon. From a Hawaiian perspective you would plant at the time of the New Moon and you would harvest at the time of the Full Moon. Where are you in relation to the lunar cycle, if you’re no longer menstruating, or if you are to your own individual cycle and to that greater cycle out beyond, because we do, we have these two cycles, or, we have these two sort of types of cycle, the internal and the external.

So many of us either aren’t tuned into them whatsoever consciously, although our bodies are much wiser than we are consciously. We’re consciously not aware or we put our awareness out there on the moon, or on the seasons, or we put all our awareness in here on what’s going on with my personal cycle, but actually there’s a wholeness in this as above, so below, we’re reflections of the universe.

We are reflections of source.

So as above, so below, we reflect on the inside, what’s going on on the outside. The more you come to embrace these cycles and understand your own energy, then the more you can utilise that energy for your own benefit. So for example, once I realised that I did have this sensitivity to the moon, I will be much more ritual inclined, I will be more inward-facing and allow myself to be introspective and inward-facing at the time of the New Moon.

I think about what am I going to plant for the New Moon in the garden. Well, I’m not very bio-dynamic. I’m still struggling with just basic potato growing. I haven’t even graduated yet to doing potato growing, or beetroot growing, or whatever it is in terms of the phases of the moon. That will be next year.

But how can I use the moon?

So, planning, and creating, and planting the seed at the phase of the New Moon, so that at the Full Moon, I can really enjoy my bigger energy and I can enjoy and live off the fruits that I planted the previous month. I wasn’t really conscious of this to be honest when I used to have periods it wasn’t something that really that anybody ever made me aware of. I was pretty conscious of my own body but I wasn’t really conscious of this idea of the energy, but it’s there, and how can we tune into it and utilise it?

Now, as you come out of the period, as you come out of that cycle and your energy starts to grow, how can you embrace that? At the time of ovulation when you’re in full blown lover, how can you celebrate and enjoy that. Have good sex among other things, but how can you get just the juiciness of life that’s going on within you? Then that gradual returning to that point, where of often PMT, although PMT is for many people, a cultural thing, some cultures there is no PMT, and some cultures don’t have the problem with the menopause, subject for another day.

As our energies withdrawal a little, the juiciness is less predominant, and we come back to that inward-facing more sorceress energy. So how can you tune into your energies so that you make the most of them? How can you tune into the beauty of the cycles? Not just cycles in nature, not just cycles in yourself but even, and right now, something to be really conscious of economic cycles, because the economy works in cycles. How can you become conscious of the economic cycles?

The more aware you are of that, then the better you’re gonna to be in husbanding, as they say in husbanding your money. So there are cycles in everything.

What are the cycles that work for you?

What are the cycles that you need to be conscious of, that you need to be tuned into to have a more productive, fruitful existence, because when you plant at the right time, and you harvest at the right time, and you’re aware of that ebb and flow, that’s when you get to be really fruitful, and enjoy a fruitful living.

Hope that’s been interesting and useful. If you’re interested in joining the Kukui Collective which is the twice a month group coaching with meditation and with release work, so it’s all about rapid deep and ongoing transformation, then do get in touch and I can tell you all about it. It’s interview, we meet, we talk about it, and then you join or your don’t. Otherwise, I will see you in a week’s time and I hope this has been interesting.

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