When vitality ebbs: A prescription of self-compassion

In this episode, I’m inviting you into the space I’ve been dwelling in lately - one of lower energy, slower rhythms, and deep listening. From emerging out of migraine-land to lying on the earth in reflection, this is an honest share about what it means to support ourselves with softness and reverence when vitality doesn’t feel as readily available.

We explore:

• The shift from powering through to getting curious
• My 'prescription' for gentle self-support during a low-energy season
• How cyclical living has transformed my relationship to my body, and is standing the test of time
• Practices I’m returning to: journaling, Ayurvedic care, natural rhythms, and more
• Nature as co-regulator, reminder, and teacher

This episode isn’t about fixing or optimising. It’s about tending. Listening. Remembering. Whether you’re feeling a little depleted right now, or simply craving a more compassionate way of being with yourself, you are so welcome here.

✨ Referenced past episodes:
If you’re new here, you might enjoy the early episodes of Yes You, especially episodes 1–6 where I talk more about my own journey with cycle-aligned living and how to attune to the different phases of the menstrual cycle for yourself.

If you're curious about the Ayurvedic clock, you may like to give this past episode a listen on Apple  or here on Spotify.

Thank you, as always, for being here. May this episode remind you that your body is wise, your rhythm is sacred, and your worth is never in question, no matter your energy level.

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Transcript

Hey my friend. Welcome to Yes you. It's lovely to be here with you. Thank you for carving out this time to spend with me. I don't take it for granted. I really appreciate you being here.

I am coming to you from the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I  pay my deepest respect to their elders past and present. And just half an hour or so ago, I was lying out on the ground outside and just feeling the earth underneath me, feeling the support of the earth beneath me and enjoying that and feeling grateful for this land that I'm on. And I also couldn't help but notice as I really felt that and looked around the ways in which we have dominated this land and controlled it and tamed it and made it fit into little, areas and ways that suit us where we've built what we've wanted to build and pushed the nature into these little blocks that kind of serve us like little parks and things like that. And yeah, it just reminded me of the beauty of nature, the beauty of this land, and for me it was a reminder to keep challenging that way of relating to earth where it's like this power over and this extractive relationship of like, what do I get from it? And to make sure that the way that I am living and thinking about this land is one that is genuinely of respect and care. So yeah, that's something that I, as I was lying out there and enjoying it, found myself just naturally wanting to renew commitment to.

And I'm going to talk a little bit more about some of that in this episode coming up. So shall we get into it? Let's do it.

I don't know if you can hear in my voice so that I'm a little subdued. I am emerging out of migraine land, which is a land that I go to sometimes, and yeah, the migraine is pretty much subsided, but it's always a little bit of a time of emerging out of the fog of it for me. And so I just feel like I come out gently from it.

And overall I am feeling myself to be lower energy than I have usually experienced. And what I'm used to, and I think I've talked about this earlier, that even from the start of this year, I just noticed that I wasn't feeling quite as energised, wasn't feeling that kind of full level of vitality that I am used to.

And while that has shifted significantly since the start of the year, I feel like it has lifted for sure. I still feel like it's on the lower side compared to what I'm used to. And so that's an interesting experience and I guess I wanted to share with you today just how I am working with that and some of the things that I am putting in place to support myself in this time.

And maybe this goes well with the last episode where I talked about topping up your tank and getting yourself to full and then topping up with little acts of self care that just to help to keep you full. As always with this podcast, whenever I share anything, I always feel like there's the other side that I want to share.

And maybe this is part of that. This is gonna be a bit more of a personal share, really a share of what I'm doing for myself at this time. And in that, just to acknowledge that I totally get that it's not always as simple as just oh, fill yourself up as though there's some quick thing that you can do, or even some, like a few months long thing that you can necessarily do that.

Sometimes it's a longer process than that. And again similar to what I was saying earlier about relationship to earth and this sort of what are you giving me this extractive relationship of like it's there for my benefit. What I  share today really comes from a shifted relationship to my body that really happened when I first started getting into cyclical living and exploring what it was like to live in alignment with my menstrual cycle, where I moved outta a place of my body being kind of something to be dominated and controlled, and something that was supposed to perform the way that I wanted it to and expected it to, into a relationship where I was listening to my body and curious about what my body might be showing me. And I've shared about this in past episodes, and certainly if you go way back to the first five or six episodes of this podcast, I was talking all about that. And if you haven't gone back to those, I would encourage you to go back and listen to that story.

It's really foundational to all the work that I do really and certainly what I like to share about on this podcast. But yeah, that was a real shift in my way of relating to my body. And at that time, and I'm talking a good decade plus ago, I remember thinking this way of relating to my body will stand the test of time.

And I guess in moments like this or seasons like this in my life that I'm having right now, I am seeing that come to life that yeah, it is standing the test of time and just like back then, now if my sense of connection and appreciation and love for my body was reliant on my body doing the things that I expect it to do and doing the things that I have known it to do in the past, then we'd be in a bit of trouble right now.

Whereas I have shifted and cultivated this relationship of compassion and curiosity and loving respect for my body where I  learn what she knows and honor that wisdom as much as I can. So that's really at the heart of what I'm trying to do at the moment. So let me share a couple of things that I'm doing.

I, not too long ago, a few days back, actually just wrote these things down, like almost a prescription for myself. Like realising, okay, yeah, I'm still feeling this kind of lower energy, this lower vitality. So what do I know to be true based on my own experience and my own observation in my body? What do I know can be helpful?

And so I wrote these things down to remind myself almost like a prescription for myself. These are the things that I know can be good and may support myself. And it's really boils down to two key areas. And the first one is getting curious. So really paying attention, I think it's easy to just get caught up in the busyness of life and then to almost just feel like you're dragging your body along with you in life.

Is that a familiar feeling at all? Almost like, it's well, I've got this agenda, all these things that I need to do, and so my body is just getting dragged along for the ride whether it wants to or not. And so instead of that, I  shift to being curious where actually I'm really, really interested in what I can learn and what my body might be showing me, really paying attention to that and so that I'm doing that in a few different ways. One of them is through the medical system, like getting some blood tests. And I've shared, I think that I found a few months ago, or at the end of last year actually, that my iron levels or ferritin levels were low.

And so that was really helpful to know that 'cause that's something that then of course, I can respond to. And so we're gradually building up the iron levels and that is definitely improving. Still on the lower end, but we're getting there. So that's good. And I do feel like I'm noticing a difference as a result of that.

So doing blood tests, getting an idea of what's going on, the things that I can't necessarily feel into myself, but we're actually doing some tests and things can give some helpful data. Also another way of testing and getting curious about what's going on in my body is through Ayurveda. So I see an Ayurvedic doctor, and so going to the Ayurvedic doctor obviously is a process where I share what I know, what I'm experiencing and then the Ayurvedic doctor can prescribe based on that. But also he checks things like, he'll check my pulse in the way that they do in Ayurveda. So checking for the kind of my constitution and what's in balance or out of balance particular to me and what my balance is meant to be. And so that's helpful as well. 

And then it's just really noticing for myself how I'm responding to different things. So observing specific things like going to bed at a particular time. How does that make me feel? Waking up at a certain time, how does that make me feel when I eat certain foods?

How am I responding to that? What about exercise? I have a pretty diverse range of things that I do in terms of exercise, and at times I've done some more intensive things or like some longer things like training for a marathon last year meant that I was doing long, long stints of running and so I am really just noticing how is my body feeling while I'm doing these things, and also how's my body feeling afterwards. So in the 24 hours afterwards, but also in the days and even week or so afterwards, and just noticing whatever is there for me to notice as well as any other activities. So going out, socialising, or, I don't know, playing a game or going to the beach or whatever, different things that I might be doing, just paying attention to how does that make me feel overall? And is that supporting my sense of energy and vitality or is it taking away from that? 

And then the other thing that I am bringing back in is more deliberate tracking of how I'm feeling. So when I first started getting into cycle aligned living. That was a huge part of that process and that practice where I would every day pretty much write down in a journal, I'm day seven or day nine or whatever day of my cycle I was in, and write some observations just about how I was feeling.

And over years, I've built up a really amazing, log of information where I could look back and I could tell you how I was feeling on 50 different day sevens of my menstrual cycle. So I get a really good idea of what day seven feels like for me. And then as I got more and more familiar with my cycle, I haven't been as committed to doing like a daily recording of that.

And that's something that I find myself wanting to go back to because sometimes you can think that you're really aware and you can be aware in the moment, but sometimes when, for me, if I'm feeling low energy, it's actually really hard to imagine. And remember ever feeling high energy and what that was like.

Like you know, if you're ever sick and you can't even imagine what it feels like to be fully healthy again, it can almost be the same as that. And so like today, I'm on day 27 of my cycle, which means my period should be coming any minute, I imagine. And as I said, I'm coming out of having a migraine and yeah, just feeling quite, quite low energy at the moment.

And so it's really easy for me to just think, oh my gosh, I've been low energy nonstop for the last five months. But I know when I saw my Ayurvedic doctor just a couple of weeks ago and he was asking how I was feeling, I was like, yeah, my energy is definitely lifted. And I was telling him how I was feeling much better and I wasn't lying at the time.

And so it's reminding me that actually keeping track, like literally writing down how I'm feeling is a really, really helpful practice for this partly because it can just be a reminder when you are feeling particularly low energy and it feels like, oh, this is just how I am all the time now.

Just a nice reminder to go, "No, it's not always like this. There is still the ebb and flow and you will come out of this and you'll feel brighter and more energy again at some point." So that can just be encouraging in itself, but also in terms of just actual information that I can then respond to and work with and potentially share with the Ayurvedic doctor or a GP or a naturopath or whoever else I might see.

Yeah, it's just good to have that actual record of the ebb and flow. So I'm going back into using my journal to record that. I have always been a fan of doing it manually. So where apps can be helpful, and I have an app that can tell me approximately when my period is expected and it can tell me maybe when I might be ovulating but it's not quite the same, I think, as actually writing detail down and processing it in that way. So that's something that I'm definitely a fan of alongside the apps or instead of apps. So that's the first thing that I've been doing, just really getting curious. 

And then the next thing is getting closer to nature.

And I don't mean here, like going out and living in a cabin out in the forest, as lovely as that sounds, but just making gentle adjustments to align myself more with nature because I have enough experience to know that there is wisdom in nature and that my body is nature. And so the more that I can act naturally, as in, in alignment with nature and nature's rhythms, the better I feel in general. 

And so I'm talking about really simple and gentle stuff. So the first one is about sleep. So I know when I am camping, I usually feel my best. If I get to be staying out in nature for a week or a couple of weeks, I will usually just feel really well grounded, like literally grounded, but also just a nice kind of gently energised, not intensely energised, but just like a nice sense of vitality and energy. And a huge part of that is the sleep factor. When I'm camping, I will usually go to bed when the sun goes down and get up around the time that the sun comes up.

And I think that that cannot be overestimated overstated in terms of how powerful that is.

And yet when I'm living at home in my apartment, it's so different from how I sleep. The idea of going to sleep at seven o'clock or 7:30, which is what I'll do while camping just seems almost impossible in my day-to-day life where, I mean, I don't even stay up super late, but quite commonly to sort of 10 o'clock, 9:30, 10, 10:30.

Sometimes that pushes out to 11. But seven o'clock, no. That seems really, really unlikely and almost like I avoid doing that. I would avoid it because I just think, oh, then I'm just gonna wake up in the middle of the night and not sleep all the way through the night. 

But when I'm camping, I do. Yeah, I wake up early. But it's not like I'm awake all through the middle of the night. And so that's one of the things that I am exploring at the moment and experimenting with. In Ayurveda, which is something that I find really a helpful way of looking at living and living in a cyclical manner and living close to nature.

In Ayurveda, they teach the idea of waking up before 6:00 AM. But also the idea of waking up naturally rather than with an alarm. And those two things might seem at odds with each other, like how to wake up at 6:00 AM or before 6:00 AM but not with an alarm. And for me, I think the only way that that happens where I could do both of those things is by making my bedtime earlier and living a little closer to what I do when I'm camping.

And so I am exploring setting my alarm for 6:00 AM to wake up at that time if I haven't woken up already, and then gradually working towards going to bed earlier and earlier and earlier until I find a nice rhythm where I actually do wake up naturally before 6:00 AM and feel replenished. Feel like I've had enough sleep.

As a yoga teacher and fitness instructor and someone who owns a studio, I am very used to getting up before 6:00 AM. I have spent years doing lots and lots of classes at that time of day, but it's a different thing to wake up naturally at that time, and I know for me that the only way that that's possible and where it feels good is where I've had plenty of sleep, and that means going to bed earlier.

So that's something that I'm exploring, just challenging my habit of what time I go to bed in my day-to-day life. And as I think about that as habit, actually, Abdo my partner, he is quite different from me. He will happily go to bed at 7:00 PM even he could go to bed at 6:00 PM I reckon he can, like this guy can sleep.

But part of our routine, it has become where he went at whatever time says he's gonna go to bed. And then I generally stay up beyond that time and I'll just be relaxing, just chilling out. But it's almost just like a routine now of time that I have after he's gone to bed and where I enjoy that time to myself, but I want to play with that a little bit, and rather than it being just a habit that I just stay up automatically when he goes to bed just to actually play with the idea of going to bed. Like maybe when he does or just earlier than what I've gotten into the habit of doing. And just see if I can find a new rhythm.

I know from experience that you can change these rhythms significantly because for years and years and years of my life, I was like rarely in bed before 11:30, commonly more like 1:00 AM and waking up later or waking up with an alarm early. And so over time I have adjusted that where I can wake up early, much more comfortably and I don't like to be awake still at midnight or one in the morning like that.

Something would ever to be pretty amazing for me to be up for staying up that late. So, yeah, I've been able to adjust to the point where I feel quite comfortable going to bed at 10:00 PM but who knows? Maybe the rhythm that my body needs at this time in my life is going to bed even earlier. So that's something that I'm just going to experiment with and explore. 

Another thing in terms of getting close to nature is just the literal connecting with nature. And so, as I said before, I was just out in just this little park. It's not even much of a park, but a bit of a park opposite our apartment block and there with bare feet to actually feel my feet on the earth and sat down and then lay down and just felt that literal connection with nature. 

It felt to me almost like what they do with babies and mothers, like the skin to skin contact or like co-regulation with Mother Nature, like literally just lying there and listening for her heartbeat and tuning my heartbeat to hers just feels grounding is the obvious word that comes to mind, but just feels good, and I think I don't want to and can't underestimate how powerful that could be. Another obvious but important one is water and I've shared about this a few times before, but for me, whenever I see a plant, like an indoor plant that is a bit limp and wilting, it's always just this reminder to me to drink water that it's just like, oh yeah, like I am potentially just a little bit more limp and wilty than I need to be.

From something as simple as just not having enough water. And so I am just reminding myself to keep on doing that. And for me, I have a bottle that I carry around with me and I know I feel good when I have about four of those bottles, which adds up to about two and a half liters of water in the day.

And so, yeah, if I'm writing a prescription for myself, I have to include that. Drink four bottles of water a day and to make that more likely to happen, it's putting even a little bit of structure around that to say, okay, drink two bottles by the time you're eating lunch and another two bottles by the time that you're eating dinner.

It's just another way of just connecting into nature. Like the fact that I, as a living creature need water, like we're made up of so much water. And water is essential for our survival, but also for just feeling well. And yeah, just making sure that I'm having enough of that. 

And then along the same lines, just food wise. Getting closer to nature on that front too means for me, just a little bit less of processed food and a little more of just the straight up like fruit and vegetables and as boring and bland as the advice sounds to have your five serves of veggies in your two serves of fruit. It's actually not a bad starting point, and so just a reminder for myself to make sure that I'm getting at least that each day. 

So as I said, I'm not talking about any like fancy new things, some wild innovation. I'm talking about really, really simple things, but things that I know are good for me and that provide a good foundation for my wellbeing and my vitality, and who knows, maybe I'm in for a season of just a little lower energy than I was previously used to.

And that could be thanks to perimenopause. And if that's the case, that's gonna be okay. And I  be doing all of the things I can to just gently support myself through that time, if that's how it is. Perhaps I'll find that as my iron levels continue to rise or those ferritin levels continue to rise, that my energy just does go back to what I was used to or maybe there's something else. Who knows? I'll keep on exploring and I'm open to what's possible, but it feels empowering to do the simple things that I know are good for myself and that are an expression of love and compassion for myself. 

And when I think about it, that's really important. So it's not doing these things to force my body back into some other kind of behavior, but it's just a way of being with myself through this season as I want to be with myself in openness and love and holding myself and compassion for myself through all seasons of life. Whether they are ones that feel fully energised and full of vitality or not.

And then the last thing that I just mention that I'm also doing is just trying to keep my work life pretty simple. So just putting some little structures around that of like time to start working and time to stop working. And also keeping my to-do lists, just really, really simple as well. So just having one to three things each day that I'm focused on. And if I end up getting through those and have the capacity for more, then great. Or maybe I'll do that, or maybe I'll take some more rest. But yeah, just keeping it super simple in on that front as well. 

So that's me for now. Thank you for listening to all of this and I hope that it's been interesting for you and maybe it's helpful for you too.

Perhaps a reminder for you to tune into the things that you know are good for you and that can support your wellbeing. And perhaps just an encouragement to check in on your relationship to your body and notice if it's in any way in a place of kind of dominance or control or frustration, and whether there might be some little shifts that you can make that bring you into a place of loving compassion and curiosity alignment.

Yeah, for me that has been life changing and is standing the test of time. And yeah, if you could get anything out of this, that's what I would love for you, my friend. 

Thanks so much for listening and yeah, perhaps in a little while I'll give you an update on how all of this is going and how I'm feeling.

All righty. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will talk to you soon. Lots of love. Bye.