Mindful Intentions For A Healthier New Year

As 2022 winds down, many of us are finding ourselves called to set resolutions for the new year. Now, when I say the phrase New Year's resolutions, the image that springs to mind for most people is dusting off that gym membership and getting back to a regular workout routine. In this week's episode, we look at how intention setting is so much more than just a new workout routine.

Do you want to set some realistic movement goals for this year? Are you feeling the pinch because you're too busy and too stressed and know that you need more ease in your life in order to feel happy? 

Creating boundaries that are mindful and made from an embodied place will reduce your menstrual symptoms and be more meaningful in managing.

In this episode, I'm inviting you to consider a new way of setting goals and intentions for optimal health in 2023. 

Transcript

Adrienne: 0:00

As 2022 winds down, many of us are finding ourselves called to set resolutions for the new year. Now, when I say the phrase New Year's resolutions, the image that springs to mind for most people is dusting off that gym membership and getting back to a regular workout routine. In this week's episode, we look at how intention setting is so much more than just a new workout routine. And let's be honest, a routine that will likely be abandoned by March. So do you want to set some realistic movement goals for this year? Are you feeling the pinch because you're too busy and too stressed and know that you need more ease in your life in order to feel happy? Creating boundaries that are mindful and made from an embodied place will reduce your menstrual symptoms and be more meaningful in managing. In this episode, I'm inviting you to consider a new way of setting goals and intentions for optimal health in 2023. Hi, I'm Adrian Irizari. I am an eastern medicine practitioner who is passionate about women's health and helping women live their best lives. My goal is to put you in the driver's seat of your menstrual health offering period solutions for a symptom free life. Statements made in this program are for educational purposes only, and not intended as a substitution for medical consultation or advice. We do not claim to diagnose, treat, or cure any diseases. This podcast is inclusive and welcomes all gender identities. The focus of the program is on biological function, and we will use the term women throughout, but it is referencing physiological and social challenges for biology. Not identity. Come as you are. I am happy you are here and welcome all performances of identity. I hope you find something helpful in this show. Welcome back to another episode of the Reproductive Re Podcast. This one is about one of my favorite times of year, actually. a lot of times when people start thinking about the new year and new intentions, we start thinking about going to the gym and changing our diet routine. And let's be honest. I, and I'm in this boat too, so I'm not saying this from a place that it worked out for me either but for a vast majority of us that set intentions and goals like that for the new year, we end up by end of February, beginning of March, reverting back into some of our old patterns. Either because our lives are too busy or we had a grander vision of what. Bodies and time and schedule may have been capable of, we get frustrated and we give up, right? So this is not that kind of resolution that's not what I'm talking about. I really like this time of year because it forces me to take a step back and reflect on what's working and what's not. and maybe in that reflection process I find that I am sitting at my desk too much and I'm not getting up and I'm not walking around enough. So yeah, movement might be part of my resolutions and it could be for you too, but if you are making those decisions from a body wisdom, For example, when I sit at my desk too long, I can feel that my body is like, girlfriend. It's time to get up. You cannot sit in that seat any longer. I get stiff in my hips. My legs get restless. any of you that sit at a desk for a work position over a long period of time, you know what I'm talking about. Your body wants you to move It wants you to get up. It wants you to it. You essentially blow the cobwebs off. is the only visual I get in my head, when I talk about this because the body knows what it needs to thrive and movement is one of those things. And it doesn't have to be crazy, like a one hour kickboxing class five days a week. Okay? if that feels good in your body, then go for it. But, just do it in mindfulness to your cycle, and we'll talk about that more as we go along. But, If sitting at your desk doesn't feel good to you, then maybe one of your intentions that you set for next year is I'm gonna do a better job at moving through the day. Maybe that is starting my day with a 20 minute walk, and then I walk another 20 minutes at lunch, and after dinner I walk another 20 minutes. It's not a huge amount of. It's not a huge commitment, but you'll sleep better, you'll feel better. Your resting heart rate will be better, and so on and so forth. So I love this time of year because. A lot of times we get caught up in the day to day and we go from one thing to the next one, busy activity to the next running after kids, getting them to sports, loading them into minivans and running them to parties at the school or scouting events or you name it. and because we get so caught, in that go mentality and I think that was actually one of the gifts that we were given as 2020 forced a lot of us to slow down, is we had a chance to reflect on, wow, maybe I'm a little more overscheduled than I realized. I. Maybe I should do something about that in the future. So I had a lot of those types of conversations with my clients during lockdown and the time that followed afterwards, but the pendulum swung equally as hard back in the other direction. I don't know about you, but I feel like the speed of life has returned to exactly the same speed that it was before, if not faster, because we're trying to make up for lost time. Deep down, most of us acknowledge that we really don't enjoy being overschedule. It doesn't feel good. I had this conversation with my kids the other day about the fact that sometimes I feel like everywhere I go screaming into the parking lot on two wheels to drop them off at different events. And so any of you that are in that motherhood stage listening to this, you're probably chuckling at that because you do, you feel like you go everywhere in the world with your hair on fire and. Everything you do is half baked because you're trying to fit things in between, and before you have to pick your child up at daycare or go off to the next thing and. Maybe that is at the expense of fully getting yourself ready and present first thing in the morning. Like all of these things are a reality. I talk to my clients about it all day long. I am living it so you know when things are really busy, we don't have a chance to. Take a step back and think about, what is serving me? What isn't serving me? What's working? What's not working? So I love this time of year because it's an invitation to have that reflection and really truly ask yourself some meaningful questions about what's working and what's not. So when somebody says the word mindful, Or mindfulness to you? What do you picture in your mind? In my mind, being mindful is a level of intentionality. It is consciously choosing to pay attention to certain things that you may not otherwise. I read a book a little while back, the Art of Mindfulness Byon, the Late On, and, that book was lovely because one of the aspects of that book is he was talking about how you can be mindful in little things like pouring tea and washing the dish. And I know that sounds a little wild for some that may be listening, but it's really interesting when you slow your experience down, whether it's the racing thoughts in your mind of, where you need to have your kids next. You know how much. You have to fit in during the day before they come home from school, or you have to pick them up and take them to activities and so on and so forth. just slowing your mind down and being very intentional and paying close attention to something like washing dishes can be almost a meditative experie. It will help to slow down that, that pace, that frantic pace that we embody going from thing to thing. And you start to pay attention to things like how the water feels through your fingers. How warm is it? the motion of your hand as you're cleaning the. How the water feels as it cascades over the dish when you're rinsing it after you've washed. all of those things sound very basic, but when you really slow down and you start paying attention to those things, you realize how much of it becomes automatic and how much of it you don't even realize you're doing. So when I think of mindfulness, I think of slowing things down and figuring out what feels good in my physical experience and what doesn't. I'm mentioning all of this because not only is this a time of year where we set intentions, but we have so many menstrual issues that come out of liver cheese, stagnation. Liver chief stagnation is a big culprit for a lot of health related issues. And for those who aren't familiar with what that term means, it's a Chinese medicine term that has to do with, the. Inefficiency of energy and fluids, particularly blood moving in the body and that constriction, that slowing down happens when we're stressed. or stress is a big culprit anyway. There can be other causes, but for the vast majority of us, stress is a huge trigger for liver cheese stagnation. And having things not move smoothly in our bodies. And so if you think about how you feel when you're stressed, everything feels tight. You've got tightness in your neck, you've got tightness in your upper body. Maybe you have it in your low back into your hips, but you're holding your place and guarding your body in certain ways because you are stressed. All of this weaves together actually. when you are thinking about mindful ways of moving through your new year, you are actually also, whether you're conscious of it or not, setting the intention to improve your menstrual symptoms. Managing stress is an incredibly important and powerful part of a healthy. So when people deal with period pain manifests itself a large amount of time with stress as an underlying factor in the equation. So when we think about being mindful and we're setting intentions for the new year, this is more than just getting yourself to the gym regular. Now also helping the smooth flow of chi in your body or that vital energy that makes everything go. getting to the gym regularly may be part of it. So those that have period cramps and whatnot, movement does help, because it helps to ensure that things are moving smoothly. So maybe getting to the gym is part of your. However, setting the bar so high that you're doing things like hit workout six days a week is where people often will end up giving up on their resolutions instead of maintaining them. So let's think about what. Things, what types of movement feel good in your body? Maybe it's not going to the gym, maybe it's getting down with your bad self, listening to some of your favorite music and dancing in the living room with your kids. That moves your body. That is a form of exercise, even though we don't always think of it that way. Whenever we think of exercise and. Losing weight or those types of things. We always, what is called to mind is the. But it doesn't have to be that way. One of my favorite activities is getting outside in nature, breathing in the fresh air, and going for a walk. It doesn't have to be a long walk, but spending even short amounts of time, 15 to 20 minutes outside in nature every single day, has immense health benefits. Not only are you moving your body and helping with the flow of chi. And decreasing your stress. But that kind of connection in nature will also help your sleep. It helps your bio rhythms, it helps the natural sleep process, and I have found that since I have made that more of a regular practice in my own life, that I sleep better, I feel better, I have more energy. I wake with a clearer head, so I can absolutely tell that my quality of sleep is absolutely affected by my walks outside in nature, and it's because we are inextricably bound to nature. As cycling bodies, we go through four seasons in our body every 28 to 30 days. Our powerful connection to the lunar cycle and to nature is undeniable. And as we go through these episodes will dive in deeper as to what that means and what that looks like, but I think that it's really important to high. As you're thinking about things that feel good in your body and setting intentions for the next year, that we are so connected to nature and the more that we can experience it and get fresh air and be outside the healthier we are. So mindful intention setting. Maybe it's going to the gym, but maybe it's going for a walk. Maybe it's planning to take a little nap on the heaviest day of your cycle. Maybe that's just 15 or 20 minutes, but it makes you feel a little more refreshed and not quite so tired during your period. So I'm inviting you to think about what in your life isn't working quite as well as you would like right now. Is it that you're, you don't feel like your body is showing up for you? So that could be digestive issues, sleep issues. It could be that you feel like your period runs your life every month because you have debilitating cramps, or you feel like a fire breathing dragon for five days before your cycle starts. Maybe you feel like you're on an emotional rollercoaster and you are laughing one minute, crying the next, biting everyone's head off a few minutes later, and you just don't like how wild that ride feels. So think about areas in your life that aren't working as smoothly as you would like them to. These are areas that we can really do some meaningful intention setting for the next year. This is so important for women's health because a lot of times we are like I said, we're so focused on getting the kids into the van and getting them to soccer practice and picking them up from scouts and getting them to robotics and, oh, this one has a wrestling practice and it doesn't get out till nine, so I have to make sure to go back out to pick them up like those. Things that we deal with on a daily basis. And I'm focusing on motherhood because it tends to add a lot more logistics into the equation. even for those that don't, you still have work obligations. Sometimes employers tend to. And inappropriately that because you are maybe not married, maybe don't have children, that you have a little more free time than the average person. And the workload and the demands of that workload reflect that, right? So let's think about what's not working in your life right now, and then I invite you to really feel into where could you create more? does it mean saying no to some things? I know that when I started exercising that boundary, I got a lot of pushback from my family, my kids were very unhappy that I made the decision, especially around my period, to say no to a lot more things than I used. And when I started saying no at the beginning, I felt so uncomfortable in my body. It was totally not in my nature to say, no. I am the kind of person that I just love you with my whole heart, and I will give you all of me and at the expense of myself. So this is something that I've always been working on. I talk to so many women in my practice that have this struggle in their own interior conversation, right? where part of them says, oh, I know that I'm not supposed to say yes to this because I need to rest. Right now my body is screaming at me for rest. And then the other part of the brain that goes. But this is family. You just have to put on a good faith face and suck it up and move forward. You're gonna be just fine. And then they get through the family event or the activity or the scouting event or whatever it is, and they are even more tired. It takes forever to recover from their period, and enough of that over time, you start having a regular bleeding patterns. Maybe you can't tell where the start of your period is, where the end of your period is, because you're just bleeding all the time. Or you have more days where you're spotting or bleeding than you have without. That shows your body is tired, it is screaming for rest, and we're not giving it what it needs. So where do you think you could create more ease? We tend to think that we need to live in silo. And historically we always used to raise our children in villages, right? And again, I know I'm going back to motherhood, but that's where I see probably the vast majority of burnout for women. because they really have a hard time fitting in any sort of regular self care into their life because their life is so busy. And we, as a culture, Create this. Narrative that we have to look like the pin trust mom, and we ha or Instagram with the, fancy lighting and makeup is done perfect. You have the perfect, magazine looking house behind you. Let's face it, that's not reality. If you have a small person that you are caring for, the moment you get your house looking. A picture out of a magazine, they are coming behind you and pulling out all of the things you just put away in pretty baskets. let's be real This is not reality. And we try to hold ourself to this bar that is absolutely not achievable. It's not. And then we stress ourselves out about the fact that it doesn't look that way and my house is a disaster and there's dishes in the sink, and I haven't had a chance to do any of those things. And today is day two of my period, and I mind numbingly exhausted and I had a small person wake me up hitting me in the face with a package of crackers because they were hungry and all I wanna do was sleep. This that is life. Life is messy. It does not look like a magazine. It just doesn't, and it takes so much work to maintain that manicure, to look that either you have somebody coming in to help you maintain it. There you go. Tapping into your village, right? You've got a clean, a housekeeper, or maybe you have an O pair that comes in and helps you with the kids that comes in and helps you with the cleaning, right? Not all of us have that as resources, and if you don't, you are the person whose body is progressively not showing up for you. Because you don't have that space in your life, so where could you create more ease? For a lot of us as women, it's calling on a village or creating a village. Maybe you don't live near your family. There's a lot of us that don't, and. When I first made that transition, not living really close to my family, that's actually where a lot of my cycle related issues began. Just before I became a practitioner. It was one of the motivating factors for me to become a practitioner because I felt like my body was calling the shots all the time. My period showed. Whenever it felt like it, it bled for two weeks. I might have a week off and then we were off to the races again. It was dreadful and I really looking back at it now, cuz you know, hindsight is 2020, that I think not having people that I could call on to ask for help. A contributing factor to why my body was showing up the way that it was. So maybe you're a homeschooling parent and you find a couple of other homeschooling parents and maybe you guys can trade off where, all of the kids are at one house one day and then somebody takes them all next week, or something like that, maybe. You team teach and you do something that's like a pod where there's like a few families that are all together and, you are not solely responsible for all of the teaching. If you're a homeschooled parent, maybe. you organize game nights and they're hosted at one house, which gives you and your partner a chance to go out for a few hours and come back, and then you host another week to allow that same opportunity for another couple in the pod. whatever it is, get creative because we need. A lot of our cycle related issues come from a lack of help. So how can you create more ease in your life? Are you good at setting boundaries? this is also part of ease, right? And once you set those boundaries, do you stick to them? Now I, like I said at the beginning, I don't have this all figured out. I am merely raising the conversation so that you can think in meaningful ways about what is gonna work for you and what doesn't. And for me, a boundary setting is very hard. I have a very hard time saying no to people because I just wanna help everyone and. I just wanna make everybody happy. I wanna help everyone. I wanna fix all the things, right? And there's a lot of us that, that fall into that category. And the sad part is you cannot pour from an empty cup. I know that phrase kicks around on the internet every so often, but I don't know if we really, truly stop and think about what that looks like. If your cup is empty, how are you going to give anybody anything else? If you're bleeding at a regular times and you're having massive PMs symptoms that make you feel like a fire breathing dragon, you have pain so bad, you end up in bed for two days. how is that good in terms of your boundary setting when it the outcome? Is you being debilitated in bed, right? Wouldn't it be better for you to say no and maybe feel a little uncomfortable as you practice saying no and holding yourself accountable for that? No. if I said no, not allowing yourself to be swayed and talked into, Whatever the thing is, right? So when you are asked questions, asked to do things, asked for commitments, take a moment, that mindful moment, and really check in with your gut and go, does this feel aligned for me? Do, does it feel good to say yes to this? Or does it not feel good to say yes to this? And if the, if your body is saying, no, no girlfriend, walk away. Like, how many of us, if we really think back about it, have had those moments where we could feel that s in our stomach and our stomach is going, Uhuh. Nope. Bad idea, friend. Walk away. Don't do it. And. We do the thing anyway, and then we look back in that hindsight is 2020 moment and go, yeah, my body told me I shouldn't have been doing this, but I did it anyway. And now I regret it. All right, so these are the kinds of things where when you are setting mindful intentions for the new year, these are equally, if not more so important. Then holding yourself accountable to a gym schedule. Movement is important. Healthy food is important because food is medicine. So you know, eating the right things for your body constitution, eating foods that are supported in this season. and we'll do a deeper dive in another episode about this, but, Food is medicine. So eating in an aligned way is important, and your health and your energy and all of those things will naturally get in line when you are mindful in that way. But you have to hold yourself to certain boundaries. And even if it feels uncomfortable at first to say no, because saying no is not your natural first response. Practice. Practice makes perfect. and the more you say no, and the more you're like, I committed to this or I committed to no, and I'm going to stick with it, it's going to get easier, I promise. It does get easier and. That is going to help your health, your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual health, all of those things. I know that I am a more well-functioning human when I have quiet time in the morning. I am naturally more of an introverted person. Those of you who do know me and interact with me, probably chocolate that, but I am definitely an introverted person. I need to have that quiet time to recharge my battery, and I think that has been one of the hardest aspects of being a mom for me, is that. Somebody always needs something. And when we went into lockdown for Covid, I really struggled, got the cortisol belly kind of stress level struggled because I was trying to do everything that I was doing before in the same cadence that I was doing it. But my kids were home all the time. Now, I didn't realize how much I had soaked up those quiet moments when they were at school or they were in activities, and those were my recharge moments. I had to get very mindful and very intentional about carving out as a survival mechanism. Carving out quiet time for me. So now when I get up in the morning, I do not leave my room and I spend 15 or 20 minutes that's maybe doing yin yoga or putting my myself through some sun salutations I'm getting older. So I wake up a little stiffer than I used to. Getting my body moving helps to work out some of the stiffness. Sometimes I meditate. Sometimes, so whatever it is that's gonna fill my cup that day, I kind of check in with my body and I go, what do I need right now? And if it ends up being another 20 minutes of sleep because I slept like garbage the night before, for whatever reason. Then I'm gonna give myself the 20 minutes of sleep, but more often than not, I will get myself up outta bed. And I use that as intentional time for me to fill my cup, to recharge my battery and get myself in a mental position that I can show up to be the best mother. And practitioner and hold space for all of the things that my clients need during the day when I allow myself that time. So as you are setting your intentions for 2020, what are you gonna create for boundaries? Are those boundaries gonna help give you more ease? What are you going to do or put in place or have an accountability partner or whatever to help you stick to the boundaries that you set? My husband is fantastic for this. He is always my, but you said no, are you gonna hold yourself to that or not? Like he is an awesome accountability partner because he knows what I look like when I start to spiral. Right when I'm overworked and I'm overtired and I'm overstimulated. For me overstimulated is a big one. when my kids have been wild and galloping through the house, and I'm now in that preteen teen stage, when they were little, it was all of the toys with the loud sounds and that type of thing. now at this phase, it's all the teenage fighting and the door slamming So even though we talk about using your words and all of these kinds of things, I still have the door slamming in my house. Those kinds of things when I'm coming out of a long day or, maybe I've had some emotionally challenging aspects to my day. those kinds of things can be incredibly overstimulating for me. And so my husband will be like, Hey, do you just need to like go to our room for a couple minutes? And I'm like, oh, you are the best. So he gets it. Like he's taken the kids to the birthday party when I had the overloaded meltdown in the kitchen because I. I could not handle the thought of one more very loud overstimulating child's birthday party. On the heels of the week that I had, this was several years ago now, and I totally lost it because I had reached that threshold I had given and given, and my cup was totally empty and I just could not put one foot in front of the other to do this child's birthday party. and I really liked the family and the child and all those things, and I felt wicked guilty about it, but I just couldn't take another step. And he saw me and was like, Okay, I'm gonna take them. You just have a couple hours to yourself. And I know that I took at least a 30 to 40 minute nap as part of that that time that was quiet. I know that I did. and then I seriously think I sat on the edge of the bed, if I remember correctly. I don't remember doing anything other than. Sitting on the corner of the bed in the complete silence of the house and how the silence entombed me and how therapeutic that was. So by the time my children came back from this party and they were all sugared up at this point and had all of the flashy, like party favors, sounding toys and all of those things that I could handle. And I could, embrace them in the way that I wanted to. That deep down I wanted to, but I just had reached my limit, right? So think about ways that fill your cup. Maybe it is a quiet cup of tea in the morning. Maybe it is finishing a cup of coffee while it is hot the first time. Yes, I see you because I have this problem too, right? Where you pour yourself the cup of coffee and then you get pulled in six different directions and then you have to reheat it two or three times. Yeah. I see you been there, done that. you know what is it that makes you feel, maybe it's that bath that I was talking. Maybe you put a little ep, some salt in your bath and take a nice hot bath before you go to bed. Like whatever it is that's going to help create relaxation and space in your body, in your life, in your day. Those are the kinds of things that we should be setting as intentions as we're going into the new year. So what are you going to. What no longer serves you? Is it a behavioral pattern? Is it taking on too much? Is it, seeing spaces in your schedule and feeling like you need to fill them? What kinds of behaviors are you going to release for the new year? What kinds of things are you gonna lay down in 2020 and not carry forward into the new. So when I talk about mindful intention setting for the new year, these are the kinds of things that I'm talking about because let's face it, our lives are busy and sometimes they're unnecessarily busy. There is a lot of beauty and importance and stillness. So I release and then I trust. I trust that these decisions that I'm making are going to serve my highest and best good. I trust that making these changes are going to make me feel less stressed, have more ease in my body, and when I do that, In a mindful, intentional way, I am taking care of myself. I am creating space for myself. I am filling my cup so I can continue to show up in my life the way that I want to, not having period problems rule my month, not having stress, make it so I can't sleep at night, not having stress and anxiety levels that are so high. My stomach is off. Like how do you want to show up in 2023? I know for me that this is one of my favorite times of year for this reason, and I have been actually taking a lot of steps in the last few weeks with exactly this in mind. My goal is to create more space in my life. My kids are in their teen years now. I'm not gonna have a lot of time left with them. I wanna spend the time I've got left with them before they leave the nest, right? So getting outside more is an intention of mine. Taking a little bit more time for myself. Not just my quiet time in the morning, but actually taking vacation time. So any of you who are listening who are currently clients of mine, know that I'm really bad at taking time off for myself. So you know how I communicate with my clients, how I, plan to show up in 2023, I am taking proactive steps to walk my talk. These are all things I talk about with my clients on a regular basis because so many period problems arise because we don't mindfully care for ourselves in these ways, and I am walking my talk. So how are you going to be mindful walking into 2023? Thank you for joining me for another episode of Reproductive Rebel Reproductive. Rebel is recorded by certified per steam hydrotherapist, herbalist, sound healer, and Chinese nutritional therapist, Adrian Irizari of Moon Essence, llc. If you are interested in setting up an appointment with Adrian for one-on-one support, ordering from our store or checking out our course offerings, visit our website at Moon essence dot. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get insider information on upcoming events and offerings. Join the conversation like us and follow Moon Essence me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Your voices make this program possible. Thank you all for your continued support.