Tara McCann is a Menstrual Cycle Passionista

Tara McCann is a menstrual health coach on a mission is to help women use the power of their menstrual cycles to tune into what their bodies need. Tara guides women to identify patterns in thei cycles and helps them find ways to support their health. Her goal is for women to live in the flow of their hormones and to stop fighting with the natural functions of their bodies.

Read this sneak peek of Tara’s episode and be sure to listen to her full episode to learn more about tracking your cycle.

Passionistas: So what's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Tara: You know, I think the biggest thing that I'm passionate about is women shifting from just enduring their menstrual cycle to really understanding and knowing themselves in a very different way through their menstrual cycle. It's the space where we tap into our intuition. It's where we are powerful in our wisdom. It's our creative force and power in the world.

Passionistas: Talk more about that concept that tracking your cycles can help you with productivity.

Tara: In our menstrual cycles, our hormones shift and change every single day. So there's this, you know, big ups and downs that are happening. And we have grown up in a society where we think we get up in the morning, we go to work, we work all day long and you know, do all our work. We come home, we go to sleep, get up the next morning, rinse and repeat over and over again. Every day should be the same.

Our bodies don't work like that. Because we may get up one day and have all of the energy. And then the next day we're like, "where did all that energy go? It's gone." And that's... our hormones are shifting in our bodies and that's shifting what we can do.

Passionistas: So what is the actual tracking?

Tara: When I'm teaching people to track, we start by tracking just two or three things, because there's a lot that you can track depending on what information you are wanting.

So you can track your energy levels. You can track your sleep, you can track how does exercise feel? How does your movement practice feel? Do you have food cravings? Are there sometimes you're really hungry or not so hungry? Do you have certain days that you have headaches? So there's a lot of different things, depending on what's happening in your body.

One of the places we often start is energy. So what does your energy feel like? How is your energy today? What kind of things did you get done? What felt easy? And then as you move through the cycle, like, okay, where are you in your cycle? Those hormones that shifted and move, what's underlying that. So how do you support your body to flow through that cycle, and to support your body to be able to move through fluidly without forcing things.

Passionistas: So the best way to get started is to sort of start keeping a journal then of your energy levels, your hunger, your cravings... things like that.?

Tara: Yeah, you can. I created just a paper tracker with a paper and pencil because I'm a paper and pencil gal. I like to be able to see that... I like to be able to compare one to the other, right, side-by-side. Because then you can say, oh, look on day 10 of my cycle, this happens. On day 22 of my cycle, this happens. And so you can compare month to month.

There's lots of, you know, online trackers out there as well. So if you are a, you know, you want to do it on an app, there's lots of apps out there. Or I've had lots of women create spreadsheets. Sometimes that can get a little expansive because they'll start with like two things. And then they're like, "oh, I wonder about this and this." And suddenly they've got like 15 things that they're tracking every day. And so that's why I recommend, you know, honing in, or what are the most important things that you're wanting to understand about your body in this time and space?

Passionistas: So aside from the pain, what are some of the other myths about menstruation that really need to be debunked?

Tara: So pain is one of them. That's one of the biggest ones that you have to endure your cycle and that it's painful. You know, the other big myths are the shame around it, that it's something you shouldn't talk about. It's something that should be hidden.

Hear Tara's full episode here.

Learn more about Tara here.