Ovulation: The Fireworks Of Your Menstrual Cycle

The most famous part of our menstrual cycle is menstruation itself. We've grown in a culture that sees our cycle as two parts: period and the time between periods. Ovulation is rarely mentioned or talked about. In my particular case, I feel like I only truly started paying attention to ovulation when I was TTC (trying to conceive).

However, ovulation is an incredibly important time marker every single cycle (whether you are trying to conceive or not), and knowing how to unleash its power every month will help us unfold in our regular lives on a cyclical basis.

Menstruation has an obvious aspect to it that must break our routine in one way or another, but ovulation requires a bit more of our attention, intuition and connection with our bodies to know when it's happening, although there are also concrete, physical characteristics that we can notice, but they are not as obvious. During menstruation we need to use a pad/tampon/cup/underwear to catch the blood, helping it become incredibly obvious. It is also sometimes accompanied by disruptive body aches. On the other hand, in the ovulatory phase, there is cervical mucus, but that doesn't disrupt our lives as much and people don't even always notice it; and the general physical feeling is pretty great at this time, making us forget that something is even going on inside of us. (To further help you know when you are ovulating you can use an app tracker, check your basal body temperature, notice your cervical mucus or just feel into your energy).

Keep reading to learn about how to make use of the ovulatory energy in your regular life.

Besides menstruation and ovulation there are two more phases, Follicular and Luteal, the order is the following:

Menstruation - Follicular - Ovulation - Luteal

This cycle repeats over and over again throughout your menstruating years (unless you are on birth control or something else has interrupted your cycle).

During the follicular phase, the body has been growing some follicles in the ovaries so that in the ovulation phase, the dominant follicle may release the egg that will travel down the fallopian tube towards the uterus, awaiting fertilization. After this, during the luteal phase, the body prepares itself for pregnancy in case the egg did get fertilized, or until it finds out that it wasn't, and so it sheds everything in menstruation, only to start this process all over again.

How are hormones affecting our energy during this phase:

As mentioned, during the follicular phase, the body is preparing and growing the egg. Two different hormones are most at play here, the follicle-stimulating hormone and estrogen. This precise cocktail of hormones is our best friend! It makes us feel strong, beautiful, powerful, flirtatious, sexy, clear-minded, patient. (Read my article How To Make The Best Use Of Your Follicular Phase to know more about this). Estrogen rises steadily throughout your follicular phase, arriving to its pinnacle just before ovulation! And this is not everything, while the hormone Testosterone is only associated with the male biology, female biology also produces some of it (in much lower amounts), increasing precisely during ovulation. Added to the benefits of FSH and Estrogen, Testosterone will cause us to be more daring and competitive. Between these hormones, in a matter of a very short amount of days, we have the highest energy boost. These are the fireworks!

Ultimately, in biology, this is all done for the purpose of reproduction, but unleashed with our own purposes in mind, we can use this same energy to apply to any other aspects of our life.

What to do with this energy:

Looking at the list of attributes and energies you have going on in this short period of time:

Strength

Beauty

Power

Flirtiness

Sexyness

Clear-mindedness

Physical Energy and endurance

Patience

Competitiveness

Courage

(*You obviously can have these throughout your cycle and in your general personality, but ovulation will still be the height of them!) think of what you've been wanting to do, that you need your highest self-esteem in order to do. Here is a list of things I am thinking of, fill in with what is relevant for you in your life:

• Quit a job

• Interview for a job

• Stand up to someone

• Propose to your partner

• Ask someone out on a date

• Go skydiving

• Throw a party

• Get on a stage - be the highlight

• Present a project

• and obviously if this is something you are trying to do: make a baby

If you want to do a deeper dive into your own, unique way of living your menstrual cycle, check out my Wombs Cycles Program.

To fully embody this phase of your cycle, listen to my free meditation on Insight Timer, Ovulation Phase Guided Meditation.

*I am not a medical professional, I am a Transformational Coach interested in knowing and sharing how to connect with our deepest selves and use our menstrual cycles' energies in our daily lives.