Finding Your Flow with Embodied Time Management

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As Mother Nature turns her wheel from summer to fall and from fall to winter, the days  slowly get shorter, and the nights become longer. She gives us a gentle nudge through the  lack of sunlight and solar energy to slow down and do less. Unfortunately, our culture  doesn’t always follow suit. The holidays can be confusing for the nervous system. Our  animal bodies sense that it’s time to hibernate, while our minds keep track of the ever growing to-do list and the short amount of time we have to get it done. 

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Last month, we shared Ayurvedic tools to help you stay grounded, nourished, and calm  through the holiday season, and we hope it inspires you to continue carving out time for  yourself. However, historically, this is the season when the hustle and bustle of gyms and  yoga studios transform into ghost towns, and the hustle and bustle shifts to stores. Ever engrained consumerism can take over, while discipline and self-care tend to fall by the  wayside. We’ve got a lot to do, not a lot of time to do it, and, on top of that, many get  blindsided by unresolved grief. We remember loved ones who’ve passed, who aren’t with  us, and the physical darkness can turn emotional quickly. If this is you, we want to remind  you to re-read last month’s article. 

While we at Keller Yoga hope and pray that you and yours are experiencing more peace and  joy than the opposite, we also want to provide you with tools and information to reignite  your spark and help you find your flow on the other side. For the beauty of Gaia’s wheel is  that it keeps turning…The question is: are you going to return to your own system of self care and time management, or will you try something new in the New Year? 

Embodied Time Management is a system of honoring, embracing, and honing the power of  the female cycle, so this month’s article is geared to empower our sisters, mothers, and  aunties who still menstruate. 

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A woman’s life can be marked by seasons (maiden-mother-queen-crone), and so can her  period. Every month, a woman’s body prepares for a possible pregnancy. Her egg gets  fertilized, or it doesn’t. The release of the egg is her spring, when new life is possible.  Summer is when her body preheats and is ready to cook any buns that get placed in the  oven. But if nothing is planted in her soil, her body will slowly cool. Autumn is the time of  harvest. Even if her body isn’t growing a baby, she could have planted seeds of thought or  creativity that cooked in the fires of her passion and are now bountiful, ready to be  harvested and enjoyed. But just like Mother Earth’s winter, the menstruating woman’s cycle  must end so that it can restart again. Things slow down, die, and slough off. 

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Unfortunately, in our do-more culture, most women have been conditioned to power  through their seasons, ignore them, and thus spend more time and energy fighting their 

body’s natural rhythms. This year, we invite you to consider letting go of the upstream battle  and instead catch your internal wave or current, allowing it to help you find your own  individual flow to bring more peace and productivity to your life. 

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With a woman’s 28-day cycle, there are weekly shifts in her estrogen, testosterone, FSH,  LH, and progesterone levels, with a different one being dominant on a weekly basis. Not  only does each hormone play a role in your reproductive cycle, but they also affect you  energetically. Through education, attention, and reverence, these energies can be  harnessed as weekly “superpowers.” 

Each superpower supports different skills and tasks needed to complete projects on your  to-do list, specifically creation, communication, detail orientation, and decision-making.  All big projects can be broken down into small pieces. Take the time to brain-dump  everything you have on your plate personally and professionally in the first quarter of 2026.  Then, list out all the single tasks needed to complete each big endeavor. The next step is to  distinguish which superpower is best suited to help with that step in your project. Then, on  a weekly basis, you can choose the most time-sensitive items from your quarterly brain  dump that can easily be accomplished during that phase of your menstrual cycle, because  your current hormones naturally support that task. That way, you can actually look forward  to the gifts that come from the turning of your internal wheel, knowing that you can lean  into what currently feels natural and trust that you’re using your most precious resource— time—in the most efficient manner possible. 

 

The first step in adopting this process, however, is knowing where you are in your cycle. Day  one is the day you start bleeding. Is your cycle twenty-eight days? Is it longer, shorter,  consistent, or irregular? While the average cycle is twenty-eight days, you are an individual.  If you aren’t already in tune with your menstrual cycle, start tracking it now. Get a journal or  mark your next day one on your calendar. It can also be helpful to note how you feel each  day. Sure, we can study hormones and what they do to the average woman, but does that  reflect how they make you feel? Once you track your cycles for a few months, you can start  to discern what’s “normal” for you.And then, if you’re ready to dive into this practice to see  what sort of lady magic you can cultivate through this new approach to time management,  we strongly suggest you check out the book Sleeping Beauty Awakened: Tools for the  Modern Goddess, written by our very own long-time yoga teacher, Aubrey Warren. In the  chapter "Finding Your Flow: The Female Cycles and Embodied Time Management," Aubrey  thoroughly breaks down this practice. She explains scientifically the function and effects of  each hormone involved in the female cycle, its energetic capacities, their metaphysical  superpowers, and how you can use them to find your own flow and claim your  empowerment.

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For more, go to https://aubreywarren.com/sleeping-beauty-awakened-tools-for-the modern-goddess/. Her book is available in paperback, digital, and audio. She created a  workbook and journal to support those who prefer listening rather than reading. It contains  all the journaling prompts listed at the end of every chapter and also holds all the recipes  and embodied time management charts that aren’t easily translated via audiobook. One  last thing: Aubrey’s book is quite spicy, so if you have any young women in your life, we  strongly suggest her young readers' edition. It provides menstrual cycle education via a  more age-appropriate delivery. 

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May your holiday season be filled with health, joy, peace, and connection, and may your  New Year be graced with momentum, focus, and flow. You’ve got this! And just a reminder,  come to class!  

Aubreywarren.com