If you feel intuitive, sensitive, creative, and deeply connected to the earth, there’s a good chance your body has been whispering to you through your menstrual cycle for years. Maybe even shouting sometimes. This blog post is an invitation to finally listen.
I’m Jaylyn, a wellness mentor and yoga teacher who supports women in reconnecting with their inner truth, rooting into their authentic energy, and living in harmony with their nature. Menstrual cycle awareness has been one of the most powerful practices in my own life, and it’s become a core part of the work I share with others.
If you’ve never tracked your menstrual cycle before, or you’ve heard about “cycle syncing” and feel curious but overwhelmed, this is a gentle place to begin. And if you already practice menstrual cycle awareness but want a refresher or a slightly different perspective, you’re welcome here too.
In this Menstrual Cycle Tracking 101 guide, we’ll explore why menstrual cycle awareness matters, the four main phases of your cycle, and simple, practical ways to start tracking today.
(Do you prefer to listen rather than read? You can listen to the full podcast episode here:)
Menstrual cycle awareness matters.
It’s a topic I’m deeply passionate about and it matters not just for our fertility (although that is a very important aspect of it, which is tied to our creativity as people with wombs) but it’s also important for our energetic health, our physical health, our emotional health, and even our spiritual health. There’s no aspect of your being that your menstrual cycle doesn’t touch into. It’s a full body, full mind, full heart, holistic experience. So it’s important.
I always like to set a little precursor to menstrual cycle tracking by saying that it’s not about controlling your cycle. It’s not about right or wrong or dissecting anything. The place to begin with menstrual cycle tracking is just simple awareness.
Awareness is the beginning and the end of this whole practice for you. If you just become more aware of your cycle, it will reveal to you amazing things about yourself, about your life, about how to align your outer life with your inner world, and so much more.
So, let’s talk about some of the key benefits of tracking your cycle and practicing menstrual cycle awareness.
Some key benefits to menstrual cycle tracking:
Benefit #1: Understanding your energy patterns
Although the menstrual cycle has a universal pattern to it, the way you express that pattern and the way that pattern moves through you is unique to you. It’s both understanding the cyclical pattern of the cycle as it exists in nature, and also understanding your unique flavor and signature.
Benefit #2: It supports hormonal balance
Hormonal balance is key to our physical, mental, and emotional health, and also key to those creative aspects of life like fertility. It helps us to plan our self-care. If you feel like you just don’t know what you need some days, maybe you just need a little cycle awareness, and having that awareness is very grounding. It can be very grounding and affirming when we are aware of where we’re at in our cycle and what that might mean for what we need on any given day or week.
Benefit #3: Align your life
Menstrual cycle awareness can be very helpful for designing our schedule. For instance, not planning a whole bunch of social events or launches during menstruation is a way to honour your cycle. That way, you don’t get to that place where you just want to rest and take it easy, and you’re frustrated with your past self for booking a bunch of events.
Having awareness throughout the month is very helpful. It can help us plan our work and even our exercise, our movement routines, our rituals, and the things that we get up to in order to support our hormonal balance and also to honor our energetic state. Menstrual cycle awareness also helps us to spot irregularities and gives us some key insights into our health.
Benefit #4: It provides insight into your overall health
One of my teachers used to say that menstruation is like a health report card. How we move through menstruation gives us key insights into our overall health. So it’s important to get to know what’s happening in our bodies from the inside out.
I want to emphasize before we get into the breakdown of the different phases of the cycle and how to begin tracking it, that this is a practice of self-awareness rather than control. We are not practicing menstrual cycle awareness so that we can get anything out of our cycle or so that we can coerce ourselves. In fact, this is the opposite. It’s about honoring ourselves, being in touch with our nature, being in touch with our feminine energy, and giving ourselves more space to express that and to be that and to be authentic in what is coming through us.
Modern lifestyles tend to override our cyclical patterns and they tend to promote hormonal suppression. Even something as normalized as hiding that we are on our period can make us feel like we have to conceal that part of ourselves. Menstrual cycle awareness is about coming back home and integrating these parts of ourselves that we may have been taught to suppress, that we may have repressed, that may have been oppressed, and to be life-affirming and self-loving again.
The four main phases and how to begin tracking
Let me give a brief overview of the four main phases of the menstrual cycle and roughly when you can expect them to happen, and how to begin tracking your cycle.
Maybe you are in menstruation currently, maybe you’re currently bleeding. This would be the first phase of your menstrual cycle. If you’re not currently there, maybe you can think back and remember: when was the last time that you were bleeding?
Menstruation is the first phase of the cycle. The new menstrual cycle begins each month on the first day of blood flow. A very helpful way to begin tracking your cycle is to think back to when the first day of your blood flow was, or perhaps to think forward to when that might be. If you have a very regular cycle, this can be quite easy. On the first day of blood flow, we would mark that as day one of the cycle.
Menstrual cycles can range in total from 25 to 35 days. A “typical” menstrual cycle length is often described as 28 days. I’m going to go based off of that average cycle length, but I want to be very transparent that I myself have a 31-day cycle. I’ve always heard this 28-day menstrual cycle as being what is normal and expected, so please don’t take my 28-day rough guideline as a hard and fast rule or a cycle length that you “should” have. Everyone’s a little bit different, but it helps to generalize to get the overview.
Day one to about day five, six, or seven would be the first phase of the cycle (menstruation). Whenever your blood flow stops, that would signal the end of menstruation. During menstruation, the uterus sheds the uterine lining, which creates the flow of blood. This is a time of shedding old energies, old identities, and old parts of our self with that release of blood. This makes menstruation also a time of renewal. We are both letting go of the old and welcoming a new cycle.
Your energy here might be a little lower than usual. You might feel a little more introspective, or a lot more introspective, and you’re encouraged to honour that.
Some great rituals for menstruation are…
Rest: taking time to just do nothing, literally just lay and be. Drift, daydream, spend as much time in that space of reverie as you can. Maybe some restorative yoga. Maybe enjoying some grounding, nourishing foods. Dark chocolate can be a welcome treat here during menstruation.
In a word, rest is really key during menstruation so that you can give your body and mind the space to let go and allow for a sense of renewal.
If you haven’t tracked your cycle before, it can be helpful to begin on the first day of your next bleed so that you can know exactly where you are. You can mark that on your calendar: day one. You can mark it in a journal with a date and “day one.” Or you can use an app, your phone calendar or a wall calendar to mark the day.
Phase two of your cycle is called the follicular phase. In this phase your sex hormones, especially estrogen, begin to rise and this brings a sense of rising energy. You might feel a little more awakened here, a little more playful, a little more creative, social. This is a great phase for starting new projects, starting new routines, setting goals or intentions, enjoying some light exercise, moving the body, and enjoying a little bit of lighter foods.
Everyone is unique, and please take this as a rough guideline. This phase unfolds from the end of the bleed phase—let’s say around day six—until ovulation, which usually occurs around day 14 or 15, just following menstruation and up to ovulation. This is the second phase.
Because of the rising energy in the follicular phase, it’s important to balance activity with adequate rest, honour your boundaries, and support your nervous system. Some great ways to support your nervous system during this activating phase include: regular walking or exercise, spending time in nature, herbal allies (like ashwagandha), mindfulness, and deep breathing.
Phase three of the cycle is ovulation itself, the ovulatory phase. This is a really short phase in the cycle because it’s the occurrence of ovulation itself. Ovulation is when one of the ovaries releases an egg (an ovum) and that egg travels through the uterine tubes and makes its way to the uterus for potential fertilization.
Ovulation typically happens around day 15 of the cycle. We can call the ovulation phase roughly days 14 to 18. Somewhere between those days, ovulation is most likely to occur.
How do you know if you’ve ovulated? There are some signs. You can take your basal body temperature, which means taking an internal temperature with a thermometer. You record your temperature, and when you notice your temperature rise about 0.5 or even a full degree, this indicates that ovulation has occurred. You can also take notice of cervical mucus. When the cervical mucus (the discharge that comes out of you) is clear and sticky, often compared to egg white consistency, you know that ovulation is happening. Those are some key ways to know that ovulation has occurred.
In phase three, in this ovulatory phase, there can be a sense of boosted confidence, boosted social magnetism, wanting to connect with others, wanting to get out there and express yourself. Energy for some people can really dip around ovulation, or for some people it can be elevated, but in either case it tends to be more outward-focused and expressive.
Some great rituals for ovulation are…
Collaborating and socializing with others, higher-intensity movement practices or exercises, indulging in your creative projects, and generally taking your foot off the gas and letting yourself express whatever is coming through you, whether that’s creativity, fertility, social connection, sexuality, or something else.
The final phase of the cycle is the luteal phase. The luteal phase begins just after ovulation. Roughly days 17 to 19 it will begin and then it will take you to menstruation. This is the fourth and final phase of the cycle.
Here we see a rise in progesterone. Progesterone is often known as the “nesting hormone.” The luteal phase is often characterized by wanting to nest, wanting to get a little cozier, wanting to start reflecting a little bit more, tidying up, turning within, slowing down, winding down, and in general feeling a little bit more intuitive and in touch.
This can mean an increase in emotional states, emotional waves, sensations in the body. It’s a very ripe and juicy time in the cycle that can also, for some people, present emotional struggles, mental or even physical aches and pains. This is a time for slowing down your pace, honoring your energy, and for most people, just taking it easy. Spending a little time tending to your needs is very helpful during this premenstrual phase.
It’s also a time to honor the emotions coming through you. Take a little time to journal and reflect, and to start completing some undone tasks, tying up loose ends, and balancing that with taking more time to nourish yourself and maybe indulge in some comforting foods. Maybe spend a little time wrapped up in a blanket. Whatever your needs might be in this phase, really honour them and listen to them, and definitely don’t let yourself call yourself crazy for needing that little extra time to just cry.
This is the phase for feeling your feelings. If you haven’t all cycle, now is the time. Allow yourself to process all of the things that have unfolded through the cycle before you arrive in your new cycle in menstruation.
Four phases summary
Menstrual Phase – Days 1-5
Follicular Phase – Days 6-13
Ovulatory Phase – Days 14-18
Luteal Phase – Days 19-next period
Practical steps for tracking your cycle
All you need to begin is a journal or even just a piece of paper where you write down the date of your first day of blood flow. Mark that as day one of your cycle. From there, you can count it out or you can use an app that counts it out for you.
If you want to take this cycle tracking a step further, you can start to take some notes. Take note on every day of your cycle (or every week or every phase), jotting down: What was your mood like in general that day? What were your energy levels like? Did you have any cravings? How did you sleep? Did you have any social desires? Did you have any creative bursts? Did you have any intuitive feelings or messages come through?
Just note these things without having to do anything about them, simply noting these little details about yourself. If you do this for about two to three months at minimum, you will start to notice patterns.
Menstrual cycle awareness reveals patterns to us about ourselves. It’s a way to consciously evolve yourself and also just better understand yourself.
After tracking your moods and your energy levels and the things that came through to you for about two to three months, you’ll start to see patterns emerge that allow you to read your own energy and read how your experience is through the cycle.
The idea is that when the patterns we’re experiencing are unconscious, they will definitely repeat and repeat and repeat. But when we bring awareness to them, they become conscious, and through consciousness, we evolve.
Let me give you a personal story.
I started menstrual cycle awareness when I noticed this recurring pattern happening: about the day before I would bleed, I would go into this very erratic emotional state where I would feel like I’d want to burn everything down, and I would often get into heated emotional arguments with the people closest to me.
That alerted me that something was happening in that phase. So I started tracking my cycle, and I started tracking my moods, and I started to notice this recurring pattern happening in my luteal phase. Once I was aware of that pattern, I could then choose: do I want to just let this pattern continue, or now that I’m conscious of it, do I want to start listening to my deeper needs coming through here? How can I better understand myself in this phase? How can I take that awareness inward to better understand myself and my energy so that it becomes a tool for healing?
The awareness becomes a tool for healing. Through that awareness, through the healing, you start to evolve through your cycle. These recurring patterns start to evolve, and you start to become freer from the kind of unconscious repetitive experience that maybe you’ve been having.
Bring your awareness every single day to your cycle. If you forget one day, come back to it the next day. It could be as simple as, when you wake up in the morning or in the middle of your day or at the end of your day, saying:
“Okay, today I’m on day _ of my cycle. That would land me roughly in the _ phase of my cycle. How is it to be me today in this place? What am I noticing? Are there any sensations in my body? Are there any thoughts coming up in my mind? Are there any impulses I’m feeling or things I’m being drawn toward—people or places? What might I need in this phase?”
Awareness is the beginning and the end. It is really the whole thing.
What if your cycle is irregular or you no longer menstruate at all?
Here’s a tip for those of you who are either no longer menstruating but really want to connect with this cyclical energy, or maybe you’re on a hormonal contraceptive that changes your cycle quite a lot, or maybe you are just having a very irregular cyclical pattern. Maybe your cycles vary from 15 days to 40 days—that’s quite irregular.
For those of you who are not fitting neatly into this model, you can follow the lunar phases. The moon goes through a 29.5-day cycle and it begins with the new moon phase when the moon is totally dark. It gradually waxes until the full moon, and then from the full moon, the moon gradually wanes back to the new moon phase.
The moon mirrors the menstrual cycle
The moon’s cycle very much mirrors the menstrual cycle in terms of the pattern and also the energies that come through at each phase. If you’re just wanting something cyclical and feminine to ground into, and your menstrual cycle is making it challenging for you to find that flow, you can lean into the lunar phases, you can lean into the moon.
Chances are, if you are experiencing an irregular cycle (and you’re not perimenopausal or nearing menopause), then by connecting with the lunar cycle you will start to gradually balance out your cycle just because you’re bringing awareness to it. You’re giving your body, psyche, and energy system permission to find your natural flow again. You’re tapping back in. You’re tuning back in. That’s a beautiful thing.
Some closing remarks: awareness leads to alignment.
Awareness is the beginning and the end. It is the whole thing. Just by being aware of your energy levels, your mood, your creativity as you shift through the month, from phase to phase, from day to day; just being aware is the whole thing, and that’s where all the self-discovery happens.
Start today. Simply note where you are in your cycle and set an intention that beginning today, you will take the first step toward inner harmony by bringing more conscious awareness to this beautiful cyclical unfolding that is happening within you.
Mentorship & Next Steps
If this introduction to menstrual cycle tracking has lit up something inside you, you don’t have to explore it alone.
I offer a 4-week Wisdom of the Cycle mentorship through Innerswim, where we take a deep dive into each phase of your cycle. The program includes one-on-one sessions, heartfelt conversations, and personalized exploration of what your unique cycle is communicating to you. You’ll also receive self-guided practices, PDFs, and nourishing resources to help you immerse yourself in menstrual cycle awareness and womb wisdom.
You can find details on this mentorship program here. If you have questions or want to know whether it’s the right fit for you, you’re warmly invited to reach out to me directly at jaylyn@innerswim.com
A little bit about my background
I’m a Menstruality Mentor, trained through the year-long Menstruality Leadership Program with Red School. I’m also a women’s yoga therapist and have studied deeply with teachers such as Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, Alexandra Pope, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, and others. Their wisdom has given me many beautiful tools and practices, and my mentorship is rooted in my own lived experience of practicing menstrual cycle awareness over many years.
When I began honouring my inner rhythm, my life changed. I felt like I unlocked more of myself: my power, my harmony, and a softer, more loving relationship with my own body. The menstrual cycle is one of the closest rhythms we have, as close as our breath, and yet so many of us are disconnected from it. I truly believe that the keys to your healing live within you, and sometimes all you need is a compassionate guide to help you uncover them.
If menstrual cycle awareness, womb wisdom, or yoga is calling to you, I’d love to hear from you. Here’s to happy, conscious cycling and a deeper connection with your inner rhythm.
Jai Maa
With Love,
Jaylyn