11 | How to Harness the Menstrual Cycle for Your Spiritual Evolution

Dear One, Holy Earth Surface Walker, Life-Bringer, Life-Bearer...

It is my sincere hope and prayer that you may experience how special and sacred your life is. 

I offer this knowledge and medicine from my heart of hearts, because our Earth needs us to remember the power and wisdom within us, so that we may be able to create more life. To create more life! Thriving life!

Here, I offer a perspective that has changed my entire worldview and everything about how I experience life: that when I am menstruating, I am the Highest Altar of Humanity. My cyclical nature is a gift, an inborn rite-of-passage that initiates me deeper into my inherent wisdom every single month.  

For All My Relations and the Continuing Story of Creation. 

IG: https://www.instagram.com/embody.faith/?hl=en

Transcript

introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:03

We've got goodness. We've got joy. Peace and patience. We've got gentleness and self-control. We got love.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to the Remember Your Nature podcast. My name is Faith Hannah Corbin, and today I am your host of this journey. Specifically around the spiritual value of the menstrual cycle. The spiritual value of the menstrual cycle. What does that mean? May seem a little bit foreign and odd, especially in a culture that doesn't really talk about the menstrual cycle. And the things that we do talk about are inherently quantitatively very negative and filled with a lot of shame and fear. And I think underneath of that, there's just a lot of unknown. There is a lot of mystery within the female body and within the female system. There's a lot of information that we don't know about our own bodies as wombholders. And there's a lot of untapped power and potential there when we start to uncover and ask questions. And now I believe this is a really redeeming way to think about the menstrual cycle because, yes, we live in a patriarchal culture, um, a toxic culture that really devalues the feminine, devalues the female body, objectifies and disrespects the female body. Yes, that is true and is really important to look at. But this is where we are. And we're gonna have to make peace with that and accept where we are at so that we may be able to move forward in a more life-serving way, in a more empowering way, and in a way that helps us have more responsibility for ourselves so that we may have better, um, better lives, um, stronger sense of self, more confidence. And so we might be starting at the point of I know nothing really about my female body, I know nothing about my hormones, I know nothing about the menstrual cycle, what even is the menstrual cycle? And I'm gonna lay you in on a secret. I have been doing menstrual work for a few years now, like very deeply and in a very embodied sense, and I still couldn't really tell you all of the ins and outs of what is basically happening biologically, and it's something that I am learning, but like I was never taught that, and that's something that I have to learn. This isn't really like I mean, it is common knowledge, but it's not really common knowledge. So I think that there's a lot of space and room for compassion. Um, the mystery that is the female body, and I want to shine some light upon the menstrual cycle, but specifically the spiritual value. This is

understanding the spiritual value and potential of menstruation

SPEAKER_01 3:44

kind of my wheelhouse specifically, because now, thank God, there is a lot of information coming out around the menstrual cycle, a lot of information around the four seasons of the menstrual cycle, and really important information about like things that you should eat or things that you should avoid, uh, behaviors, exercise patterns, um, how your hormones shift, understanding your hormones, all these things really important. Um, and I think that it all goes together as we start to journey and connect more deeply to our bodies and start to listen and to attune more to our bodies. But I am interested in more of the witchy component of the menstrual cycle, which is which is using this process, this biological process that happens within us every single month, connecting to the energetics of it and using it as a tool to spiritually

how I understand the process of conscious evolution

SPEAKER_01 4:44

evolve. What does that mean? Spiritually evolve. How I think about it is that we are basically allowing ourselves to meet the conditioned versions of ourselves. So the conditioned patterns, the conditioned beliefs, the conditioned ideologies, the things that were given to us that we haven't naturally consented to or to agree to believing. For example, a conditioned belief is that I am unlovable if I have a specific fat percentage on my body, or I need someone's attention to be seen as lovable, or um a very pervasive one is that my worth is based upon what I do and the possessions that I have, and that power equals more worldly validation and success. So, okay, these are ideas and thought patterns and habits that are given to us and usually indoctrinated within us through media, through um religious upbringing, through family, through friends, through the culture that we live in. Okay, and then we start to adopt and think that these things are the truth and they are true because people outside of us, authorities whom we're told that we are supposed to trust, give us this information. Yeah, so we have all these conditioned beliefs and these conditioned ideas about who we are, and a lot of them are not helpful in terms of helpful for us to carry and to be responsible for in our process of evolving towards the light. So

everything in nature evolves to create more life

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I like to think that you know it's we are not separate from the natural world, we are not separate from the laws of nature. We are animals, we are earth-based creatures. And so if you look at the laws of nature, everything is unfolding and evolving together in a very inextricable, interconnected way, and everything is unfolding to the light to create more life. And so, if those is that if that is the laws of nature, then that means that we naturally have a process within us that's a part of our deep ancient biological wisdom, which I like to connect to the the animacy, like what makes creation and life animate. We also have that that uh animus within us. And so this this life forwarding process. Andy Fisher in his book Radical Ego Psychology, whom I got this idea from, this life forwarding process, basically speaks that like a moth knows where to go, and a tree knows how to grow, and we they know instinctually how to move forward to survive, to create more life, and to be in harmony with the greater environment that is around it, and it knows how to grow, it knows how to develop, and it just goes through its process, it unfolds naturally. And we also have that within us called our life forwarding process. Now, this life forwarding process is this like deep, I would like to think of it how I understand it is this this animate life that lives within us, that can be, you know, called our our inner wisdom or our womb wisdom. It's the it's the intelligence that lives within our DNA, that lives within our cells, that lives within this organism that we inhabit in the body. And so a lot of these ideas actually inhibit our ability to really trust our own experience and to trust that inner voice that is that is speaking to us. And it might not even be through words, but it is this this feeling, intuitive sense, this this sensuousness that is um a part of our human experience.

recognizing the fear towards and domination of the feminine

SPEAKER_01 9:17

And in a world um that's very much based upon image and what we see and the effects of all of these oppressive systems that we are conditioned by, that we that the world runs on, um, in an industrialized, developing capitalistic society based on colonialism and patriarchy, the effects of that, what we see that, the symptomology of that is um a dissociation from the body, uh a mistrust of the body, a deep disconnection and distrust towards the natural world and towards the ways of nature, and a fear towards the natural world, a fear towards the body. And a lot of work in ecofeminism posits that this separation from nature and this cultural fear of the wilderness and wildness also parallels our unconscious perception of the female and the feminine body. Um, and if you look back in history, this can be evident through women who are going through emotional processes being seen as hysteric, women being seen as irrational, women being seen as not being able to hold any positions of power because they are seen as irrational, because we worship um logic and linear thinking and transcendence, and there's a mistrust and a devaluing of intuition and felt inner wisdom, and because of all of this, what we find and what I see is a deep mistrust of the body and the signals of the body and what's going on inside the body, and a mistrust of feeling, and an overemphasis of intellect and intelligence, and kind of um only trusting the logical, rational mind, only trusting that which can have evidence, and being super disconnected culturally to felt sense, to intuition, and to general presence and grounded connection through the senses to our immediate environment and to the world in which we inhabit. And so how that affects women and those who have wombs and those who menstruate is that

a deeper look into why we are so collectively unaware of our menstrual powers (infradian vs. circadian rhythm)

SPEAKER_01 12:08

there is a lot of fear towards our body, there is a lot of mystery around our bodies and what happens within our bodies, and there's a lot of misinformation, um, or I would say lack of knowledge. Lack of knowledge and lack of wisdom around our bodies because we live in a culture that does not value or does not practice lived orientation and connection towards something called the infradian rhythm. Our nine to five same every single week culture which parallels the cycles of the sun, the circadian rhythm, is conducive to the hormonal cycle of a man. A male hormonal cycle is 24 hours, and it's the same every single day. There's a um, you know, they wake up, there's a peak during the day, and then there is a crash uh in the afternoon, and that's what happens every single day. And so um having like rigid routines or routines of like the same schedule every single day, um, actually, you know, can work in the the masculine um in a male-oriented body, in a male body with male hormones. However, women follow a different rhythm, a 28-day rhythm that actually parallels the movement and the changes in the cycles of the moon called the infradian rhythm. And that means that there is a bigger rise and fall of energy, and there are four distinct cycles throughout this month, four different seasons. And so, because this is the truth, historically, women have tried to force themselves into following and living and molding ourselves in a system that is not created or conscious of the changes that we experience in our daily life, in our monthly life. And so when you think about it, trying to force ourselves to be the same every single day can actually cause a lot of issues and create a lot of stress on ourselves, which I believe and I see results in a lot of shame and self-hate and feeling like there's something wrong and broken with us because it feels that no matter how hard we try to fit in this system, there's just like sometimes it works, sometimes we're thriving, and sometimes we're not, or we try to manipulate ourselves to be the same every single day, and when we don't feel that way, or we feel like a success one day and a failure the next day, we um usually glorify when we are feeling like success and when we can fit in that model, and when we're just producing and we're working hard, and we're just as successful as all the men who are doing all the things, but when we feel like we need to rest, or we don't have the capacity, or we're feeling really stressed, or our body is inflamed and acting out, or potentially exhibiting um, you know, chronic illness or different illnesses, especially around our wombs, could be evidence that something isn't working in terms of working with our natural cycles and how um our body needs to orient itself in terms of its cycles of um action and rest.

I see you and I share this revelation because you deserve to live

SPEAKER_01 16:05

So that's I feel like an important context to um to kind of speak about and to build this this information upon because you know if if you're feeling like your menstrual cycle is a mystery and that anything that has to do with female hormonal health is a mystery, and it's not really something that like you it just feels inaccessible to you. Um I want you I want you to know that I see you and I understand you, and um also having the revelation of this information can really serve you, serve you very, very well, potentially even change the trajectory of your life and your wellness and your vitality, your pleasure, your quality of relationships, how you feel about your life, how you feel about yourself. It has been the key to everything for me. One of the keys. And

to evolve, we must give space for shedding and death

SPEAKER_01 17:23

spiritual evolution, then, is being able to consciously recognize the beliefs and the conditioned ideologies that are placed, that are running our psyche, that are running our soma, and that are the root of our behavior, whether that be life-serving behavior or life-negating behavior. Spiritual evolution is being able to clear, clear out how I understand it, take it with a grain of salt. It's clearing out all of those conditioned beliefs and all of that stuck energy that hasn't just been given to us through experiencing trauma and hardship growing up, but is evidence of something more deep, more ancestral, more connected to the lineage that we are a part of, and these patterns that are old and that are ancient. And usually at the root of that is felt unworthiness and fear of power and fear fear of identity, ego, annihilation. And with our menstrual cycle,

menstruation is our natural, monthly initiation into death and rebirth

SPEAKER_01 18:54

we experience death every single month. We experience a shedding every single month. Because when you consciously recognize beliefs and patterns that are not serving your life, and are not serving your ability to trust that life-forwarding process that is creating more life here on earth in relation to the other organisms around it, then there is a need for letting go, and there is a need for shedding, there is a need for death, for transformation, and for renewal. Something different, experiencing something new that is more aligned with creating more life, our menstrual cycle gives us a natural opportunity to shed every single month. Because either we get pregnant and we experience life, or we don't and we experience death. Death of an egg, shedding of an egg. That's literally what's happening within us. And so when you really think about that, with every death comes more wisdom. With every death comes more insight, comes more connection to the primordial truth, comes more attunement to the way, the natural way. The way I refer to, like the way, following the way, referred to in the Tao de Ching. I am the truth and the way and the life. The natural flow of things, the natural flow of the river downstream, the natural flow of the wind moving through the trees. The way of harmony. So we gain more wisdom. We gain more life, more conscious insight, more personal power. Personal power meaning more attunement and connection to one's inner essence, to one's inner voice, conscious attunement to one's values, to the feelings of one's body, which is a very powerful tool and resource to have. And so, as a biological female, someone who has a womb and menstruates, we are going. Through this process of death and rebirth every single month. And imagine the wisdom that would be accessible to us if we were able to consciously connect to that process. It's happening for me. A tremendous amount of wisdom has made itself possible because I have been gifted this knowledge and I have been practicing it. And it has changed my whole life. It has changed everything about how I experience myself and I experience life. It has changed everything about how I experience culture and what I believe and what I choose to believe and what I don't choose to believe, what I allow in and what I don't allow in. This is why I'm sharing this with you. Because the lived consequences of this, the

cyclical living teaches us how to really love

SPEAKER_01 23:09

lived effects of this are tremendously powerful and tremendously beneficial to our well-being and to our ability, not even our well-being, but our ability to love. Our ability to really see ourselves and hold ourselves in love. And to break cycles of generational trauma so that we may be free in this lifetime, in this lived experience, so that we may be able to love all of the parts of ourselves, the parts that we have rejected, the parts that we feel that are not worthy of being seen, bringing it all to the light and transmuting it all in the hands of love, so that we may be able to walk out into the world and just stand in love, to stand in peace, to stand in dignity, to stand in respect, and without fear. Because with love comes accurate boundary. Love comes presence and truth. It comes standing in your personal power as an individual. As an individual deserving of dignity and respect, as an individual with her own beliefs and ways of thinking and values. And that is where true justice comes from. There is not justice without love. And so if we can awaken to love, then we cannot stand for injustice. If we can all collectively awaken to love, we will naturally create more life-serving systems. We will naturally be able to create solutions from a different paradigm than the issues that we're facing right now were created. Life-serving solutions. Solutions that are created from a place of love. This spiritual practice that is cyclical living. Consciously sitting with the process of menstruation.

the four seasons of the menstrual cycle

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Twenty-two years old. And I had no idea about this knowledge and information before. So essentially, in a nutshell, our hormones, we have several of them, rise and fall on different trajectories, each hormone, throughout the month. And there is an overarching rise in the beginning of our cycle. We start low, then rise, finding a peak, and then lowering down again. And these cycles can be parallel to the four seasons of the four seasons of the earth that we witness: spring, summer, fall, and winter. And now with the changes of these hormones, there are huge changes that happen to us every single month. And we can even be described as four different people throughout the month. And there are really advantages to leverage in every single phase. And here I'm going to be speaking about the spiritual advantages. To speak about the four phases, I am going to use archetypes. And archetypes are like avatars, like characters that can be referenced, um, characters that kind of act as a culminating personality of how this phase may be embodied or experienced. And so there's a lot of information out there about the four seasons, and that's follicular, ovulation, luteal, and menstruation. I highly recommend that you do your own research and really start to be curious about these four seasons and how they can be affecting you and understand, you know, eating patterns and exercise patterns and how they're affecting your energy and your physicality and all those things. But I'm going to be focusing here on the archetypes and the spiritual advantages.

menstruation / crone / winter

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So first, I want to begin with menstruation. This is our inner winter. And as I have described before, winter is death. It is shedding, it is slowing down, it is the cool packed earth where nothing seems, it is growing, but is an absolutely essential time for rest. Spiritually, menstruation is like Pandora's box. Menstruation is the time of insight and connecting to inner wisdom. It is the time of slowness, and I like to think of it as the time of connecting to profound spaciousness and to connecting to higher realms. It is the time of connecting to the energy and space and life, the animus, that which is bigger than us. This could mean connecting to your lineage and your ancestry. Have you ever heard the term, the phrase, the veil becomes thin? Like maybe on Dia de los Muertos or Halloween, the veil becomes thin. You know, there's a lot of darkness, there's scary. There's walking into cemeteries, there's connecting to ancestry because it is the time of darkness. It's going into the womb and receiving all of the nourishment, all of the nutrients, all of the wisdom. And it's like where you really let go of being a person in the world and your egoic identity. So you really experience your own essence and your own energetic imprint. And this is really a time to connect to deep acceptance of oneself, deep and profound experienced unconditional love and connection to all things. It makes you so sensitive that you have these like antenna that are connecting you to everything, and you feel really attuned to the process of life that's happening around you and in you. And this is a time of heightened creativity and ability to think in novel ways and finding solutions, creating plans. And this is a time of letting go, of witnessing your patterning, which we will get into in the ludial phase, and letting go of identities that are not serving your life, letting go of self-hate, of ideology, beliefs rooted in unworthiness and separation from love, and releasing those through your yoni. Shedding it all out and giving it back to the earth as compost. This is menstruation. The archetype is the crone, the wise woman, the woman who knows, who knows without thinking, the woman who does not have to have an explanation for what she knows. But who just feels and knows. Who sees and senses in color and in feeling. Who dreams and sees her dreams manifest in reality. Who knows before it happens. The crone menstruation. If you can, a time to let go of who you are in the world. Meaning the holding attachment that you have to the egoic identity that you have formed. Because we have to have a healthy ego in the world, individuality. If we didn't have individuality, all lines would be blurred. Distinction is important for co-creation and union to happen. But the advantage of this space is that this is naturally a time for you to connect to how expansive and how spacious you are as an essence to disattach from those identities that we're holding so hard onto, which is a gift.

follicular / maiden / spring

SPEAKER_01 34:20

And next we have the follicular phase, our inner spring, and this is um constituted or characterized by the maiden. The maiden, who is the maiden? The maiden is the beautiful young woman. She is sensual, she takes risks, she is curious, and she loves to play. So we've really shed and let go. Maybe we've grieved a lot, we've connected to that dark, deep essence of ourselves, the depth of ourselves, the part of ourselves that does not have any ounce of care about other people's validation. Because she is so empowered and so spacious. But we have to integrate that as we become a person in the world again. And so we gain an insight of who we are and who we can experience ourselves to be the spaciousness, the unconditional love, the acceptance. And then we come into the maiden phase and we start to become a person in the world, to bring in that love and that essence that we've experienced. And it's a beautiful time. It's when we start to do more things in the world, we start to take more action based on what we have seen, the visions that we have received in the womb in the darkness. Things are starting to bud and to grow, but you think about the maiden, she's a little bit messy. She can be a little bit messy, she can be a little bit awkward, and this can also be a time where one of my menstrual cycle teachers speaks about this can be a time where a lot of um trauma can come up and a lot of freezing and fight and flight responses. And I experience myself sometimes to feel a little bit overwhelmed as I experience the sense of safety and protection and love and the darkness and in my shedding, and then I start to come into the world again, but then I feel as I come into the world, I also feel all of the fear and the unworthiness and all of the shadow aspects of my egoic identity that I'm consciously working on, but that rear their head. But the but I have experienced myself to be held in unconditional love and protection. So as that comes, I I am now in the practice of integrating, integrating that love to who I am in the world. This is a really fun and beautiful time, can be difficult, and I would encourage you to play. And this is also like a great time for sensuality and feeling sexy and the maiden. Embrace the maiden. I love the maiden. The maiden is sacred, the maiden is pure and she is sacred.

ovulation / mother / summer

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Now we have ovulation, which is the mother. And the mother is someone who is got it all going on, and she is very busy, she is taking a lot of action, and she has a lot of care that she is involved in. Care for others, cares for her, what she's stewarding in the world, and care for hersel, care for lots of relationships. But I would say this is like when we experience like our peak um our peak person in the world, and so we're taking the most action. She's taking the most action, and she is also using her life force energy in response in relation to what she had experienced during menstruation. Because menstruation is a time for visioning and insight and connecting to who we really are, and also connecting to like what we envision, what we are creating in the world. And so the mother phase is like we are birthing, we are giving birth to those visions that we've experienced in menstruation. So we are funneling our life force energy, um, kind of using our inner masculine, our masculine strengths, and funneling that, taking action towards the things that we see that we value and see as important using our feminine essence and the insight and wisdom we have create that we have connected to when we're deep in our feminine womb portal, and um using that as a compass and a guide to easily inform and guide our actions in this mother phase, ovulation. And this is when we're strongest in our bodies, and this is also a time where perfectionism could really be high too. And um the the ways in which we're hard on ourselves were when we're really in our person in the world egoic identity. This can be a time where it can all be like very heightened. Perfectionism, people pleasing, wanting to be everything for everyone. Just um something that I find is true for myself, and I need to actually learn how to learn how to soften a little bit more in my ovulation days and not shame myself for softening.

luteal / sorceress / fall

SPEAKER_01 41:07

And now we have the ludial phase, which is characterized by the sorceress and the sorceress, but also like witch, but also like also wise woman. So, like whatever feels most resonant or um, yeah, most resonant with you. This is a really important and juicy time of the menstrual cycle because this is the time where our person in the world energy is starting to wane, and the leaves are falling. And if you think about late autumn and how the leaves are almost all gone, and they're usually like brown and hard and crackly on the ground, and maybe you're looking into a forest, and there's just a really strong wind that's moving through the trees, and it's almost like um a howling wind, and that there's almost a like this whisper of darkness and of eeriness, even. And it's a time where truth really rises to the surface, meaning that as our excitatory hormones start to wane, and we start to become more sensitive and more internal, and our criticism, self-criticism, and shadows can really come up. Shadows meaning maybe that really harsh dialogue that we find ourselves um engaged in with ourselves. And if you've ever read Eckhart Tole's work, um like the power of now or the new earth, he talks about the pain body. And the pain body is just this unconscious material that comes up when we are triggered, and then that we really become it becomes embodied within us. And then when we become our pain body, then we interpret the world based on our pain and based on our wounds, and then tend to gravitate towards things that are going to continue to feed that pain body and make it stronger and continue to perpetuate it, which makes it hard for us to. Have space from it, see how we're being triggered, and see our um unconscious behavior, and then have space, have love, uh, and and switch the behavior. But essentially the luteal phase is kind of when the pain body comes up, and it can be a difficult time, a time that's really supported by like you know, loving connections and nourishment and carbohydrates and and slowing down. But I have found that I can consciously witness my unconscious behavior or my unconscious patterns and and become them, allow them to be, but have spaciousness with them, knowing that they're just doing what they have to do to be able to shift and shed. Now, it might be hard to hear, like to really hear this and understand because it's um really deep and really subtle. So if it doesn't make sense right now, that's totally okay. Not all of this has to make sense. It's more of an invitation to see this in a new light. But I often become my my shadows, and that doesn't mean that I'm hurting other people, that doesn't mean that it's this big scary thing, but it's just like, oh, really noticing myself, shaming myself about this, or I'm really noticing this fear come up around um speaking what I need, or I'm seeing myself um want to cling more to comfort, such as social media, or such as like food and sugar, and I can have space for it, and I know like oh I'm in my I'm in my my Ludeal phase, you know, like there's something that's um that's wanting to be my camera died, and I am not connected to my microphone right now, so if it sounds a little bit different, um here it is, the raw human experience. So yeah, the Ludial Phase is a really potent and important time to bear witness to the things that are not working. It can be a time where anger and grief can come up a lot because the tolerance level, tolerance level for injustice, for pain, for other people causing harm, for things that are just not feeling loving, they really go down during this phase, and so it's really important, potent information um to bear witness to and to sit through. And generally, like a lot of stuff gets accumulated during this phase, and if we can sit through it and to have the consciousness and the spaciousness enough to be able to have compassion with ourselves, we can really learn to have a lot of patience and appreciation for this time of our cycle because it's showing us what isn't working, and ultimately when we see what isn't working, um we are able to make a different choice, and that is love, that is what is really, really loving. And so when the ludial phase is over, all of that pain body, unconscious material starts to come up, we start to bear witness, and we start to have lower tolerance for socialization, perhaps, and being a person in the world, starting to connect more to spaciousness and to contraction in the body, and to being alone and kind of separating ourselves um from the very stimulated world, then our winter comes and we get to shed and we get to let go, and we get to experience unconditional love, protection, and safety within ourselves. If we do have the ability and give ourselves the chance to slow down enough to be able to connect to that very, very subtle energy that is underneath all of the upregulation and stimulation,

honoring our inherent rite of passage

SPEAKER_01 48:47

and men have to go out and experience really intense things to be able to face this death. Men as adolescent boys, they're they're itching towards experiences, itching towards death in the sense of um intense experiences that are going to help them let go of parts of their egoic identity that are um not in alignment with whom they are meant to rise into in terms of who in terms of creating more responsibility and having more connection and conscious awareness of who they are meant to be in the society. Like in indigenous societies, rites of passage is something that it's is something that's a part of the development of the human and in um in relation to the the tribe or the society, and you know, they take adolescent boys out into the woods and separate them from their mother, and they have to experience these intense things so that they can shed those parts of their identity so that when they return back, they are more clear in their values and in their integrity and in their manhood, and they're also treated differently, they're treated as more of a man. And so this is, and for us, this is accessible to us every single month. And imagine if our wisdom, if the wisdom and power of our menstrual cycle was something that was actually recognized, valued, seen, and practiced, that would be a completely different world, wouldn't it? So this has changed the fabric of my life of who I am and how I see the world, and it is an honor and a privilege to be able to share it with you. Take it in and take it with a grain of salt. Because ultimately, your experience is your compass and is your evidence, and is is yours. This is what's true for me. Much less.