Episode 9 - Harnessing the Female Cycle and Learning to Live in Flow with Eleshia Harris and Mairi Taylor - Part 1 of 6
Jun 09, 2021
How many times have you dreaded your period coming because you worry that you’re not going to feel at your best? You know that your energy levels will be low and that you won’t be your usual confident and productive self?
Imagine if, instead you could make your menstrual cycle into something to be honoured, celebrated and welcomed with open arms. Better still, imagine if you could work with your natural flows, not against them and turn your periods into a tool for productivity.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not.
In this episode, I’m delighted to have Mairi Taylor, also known as the “Menopause Rockstar” joining me as my co-host for this series.
Together we’ll be discussing exactly how we girls can maximise our productivity, harness our unique female energy and boost our skills during all phases of our monthly cycles.
We’ll also discuss periods, perimenopause, menopause and how self-care is a form of self-love. Whether you’re a teenager, a young adult, or a supermom, this episode is just for you.
Don’t forget to subscribe and tune into this whole series starting this week for some highly relevant and life-altering hints and tips to help you harness your cycle and live in flow.
Also, as a special treat, I'd like to share with you the ebook: Harnessing the Female Cycle and Learning to Live in Flow, an interactive resource that helps break down the female cycle and learning to live with it.
Eleshia’s Essentials:
- We have to start listening to our bodies a lot more because they're telling us what is going on. - Eleshia Harris
- When we change our lifestyles and our mindsets, we get empowered, enlightened and we're ready to listen. - Mairi Taylor
- Our period is like a red warning light going on in our dashboard every month that we should be aware of and take note of. - Mairi Taylor
- The fitness industry is geared towards us being treated like we're small men. - Mairi Taylor
- We are not small men because we have energy at different times of the month and when we can harness that, we can embrace it which is equally important. - Mairi Taylor
About Mairi:
Mairi Taylor is an educated Home Economist, ex HR Manager, retired fitness professional, Menopause Rockstar, Women’s Wellbeing Guide, juice therapist, cacao medicine carrier, aromatherapist and essential oil enthusiast.
She works with women to empower them to rewrite their menopause story and come home to themselves - by honouring, loving and fully accepting the woman they are now.
Connect with Mairi:
About the Show:
The Eleshia Show is an exciting new podcast that helps empower female business owners to put their well-being first whilst building their businesses.
Tune in every Wednesday as my inspiring guests and I discuss strategies, share stories and experiences and dive into how you can build your business whilst trying to navigate real life.
The host, Eleshia Harris is here and ready to share her decades of project management and wellness experience to help you start saying ‘Yes!’ to your business and life.
Show Transcript:
Eleshia Harris: Hi, I'm Eleshia Harris and I am your host of the Eleshia show. I am also the founder of eleshialifestyle.com and I'm so excited that you're here with me and I am here with you. I'm also really appreciative.
Each week, I'll be sharing strategies and stories and insights to help you enhance your wellbeing and to build your business while still navigating life. Because sometimes we often try and separate the two and let's face it. If you are not well you have no business, you know, so let's try and work.
With these two things combined, we can enhance your lifestyle. Again, I'm really excited to have you here. I have wanted to put together a podcast for over two years. Here I am ready to share, so let's get into this week's episode.
Hi, and welcome back to the Eleshia show. I am beyond excited about the next six weeks. I have collaborated with a dear friend of mine. Her name is Mairi Taylor, and I have known her for over eight years, and I am excited that we have finally been able to get our diaries in sync to collaborate on this series for you.
We are going to be talking about how to harness the female cycle and learn to live in flow. And I just want to let you know, this is for all the women. This is for our young ladies and this is for the women that have gone through their menopause. That is so much wealth of great information in this series.
I want you to listen to every episode of the next six weeks because there is going to be so much learning and education in these episodes for you. So let all your friends know, let's really educate ourselves. So, let me tell you a little bit about Mairi. Mairi is an ex HR manager. She is a retired fitness professional, and now she goes by the menopause rockstar and she truly is.
She is also a women's well-being guide, a juice therapist. That's exactly how we met all of those years ago at a cacao medicine carrier, an aromatherapist. And also an essential oil enthusiast. This woman knows her stuff. Mairi walks with women to empower them, to rewrite their menopause stories, and come home to themselves by honoring, loving, and fully accepting the woman that they are now.
And I'm so happy to have her as my co-host for the next six weeks. Please make sure that you subscribe so that you can get the whole series. If you have any questions for us, please reach out to us over the next six weeks. We are coming to you with information on nutrition, lifestyle, well-being, business strategies, and ways to put systems in place.
We are going to be touching upon a lot of subjects. So I really want you to enjoy this. I don't want to say anymore. Stay tuned. Listen to this episode, for we are going to tell you what to expect with more depth. Enjoy. Welcome Mairi, I'm so excited that we're having this conversation. It has been in the works for a couple of years for us to actually sit down and just talk about our stories and our experience and just life really.
We've known each other for about 10 years now. Can you believe it? Do you believe it? It's amazing. And we've had so many different opportunities to collaborate. And I think, this year is the year to really dive into that. So thank you very much for being my co-host on this series where we're going to talk about;
Mairi Taylor: We're going to be talking about harnessing the female cycle and learning to live in flow.
Eleshia Harris: Yes, exactly. And this is so important, especially for me having an Elessandra and just wanting to equip myself. When I was growing up, we never had these conversations about the female flow. My mom never talked to me about periods or when she was going through her menopause, it was just done in silence.
So for me, this is really important for me to be able to have a toolkit, to be able to share my experiences, but also to educate Elessandra and other females in my life.
Mairi Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think it's really interesting because our connection over the last 10 years has always been wellbeing.
It's always been about how we support other women? And we looked at it in so many different ways, whether it was juicing or parties, or fitness or nutrition and pre and postnatal and fertility and all the rest of it. And I think where we both landed today. You know, you are one hot mama, and I'm adoring watching Ellis grow and just see her flourishing under your guidance and role modeling.
And I'm a woman who's gone through and menopause with no children and very much wanting to play the big sister role in terms of, just sharing with other women. Enlightening them to help them rewrite the story because that very much is AKA, The Menopause Rockstar. I've always been somebody who's being told at this age, or this will happen to your body.
According to who. Who decides when this is going to happen and that's going to happen. And yes, of course, there is average age of menopause and yes, I now have my mother's eyes. I am blind as a bat if I don't have them on, but everything else is really up to us to a degree.
And that's what I mean by rewriting the story. You know, our history is not our destiny. Both of us have been surrounded by disease and ill health in our very immediate families. And yet here we are thriving, surviving, and empowering, and enlightening other women so that they also can rewrite their own stories and live their life to their fullest and maximum potential.
Eleshia Harris: Exactly. Let's talk about your whys, why you got into the whole well-being journey.
Mairi Taylor: Yeah. And it's interesting because, as we all know, we always have those conversations beforehand. And like you said, we've known each other for almost 10 years. We met across the Jews in Wellingborough in Northampton.
And it's only in the last few minutes. I mean, we're recording this at the moment in March 2021, which is just endometriosis awareness month. And I haven't really joined the dots from my whole journey because I am someone who did suffer from endometriosis. Very, very mild, nothing to the extent that some of the women listening may be suffering, but enough to be debilitated, enough to have to take time off work, enough to have to take prescription painkillers, which affected my liver.
Enough to bleed through, even on the prescription and painkillers. And I decided to take it at that time because given that I'm 54 this year, that we're talking over gosh, almost 20 years now because it really was sort of in my late thirties that the endometriosis had started. And when I failed a medical for a new job, It came down to the fact that it was because of the prescription painkillers that I was on.
And that was the first time I ever read the country indicators of the medication that I'd been taking for years. And the number one country indicator for taking my prescription Co-codamol was liver damage. And I had failed my medical because of the white blood count in my liver. I have a history of liver problems in my family.
And I knew that I needed to find another way because I couldn't take the risk that what I was doing was going to be harming me long-term. I did, at that time, decide to go on the marina coil. That was the option that was available to me. I'm really happy that I took that option. It gave me my life back. I noticed some women listening.
It will have had completely the opposite and adverse effect. I know some women in my circle, in my community, who have almost taken their lives affected by being on the coil and nobody is listening to them. And it's yes, you just go in and get it removed to a degree. So when I was on the coil and everything balanced out, I then started looking.
I was a group fitness instructor at that time. I'd always sort of struggled a little bit with my weight. It was up and down. I was quite an apple shaped-individual, which again was very healthy at that time. Around that time, my sister had died from cancer. My mom had a hysterectomy.
My dad was dead. It was all these things but stopped. But at that point, I was still very much all about skinny jeans. So I decided to start my own business and I decided that I needed to look right to be a group fitness instructor because of course, that's what it's all about. It isn't that it's me being a physio.
All shapes and sizes as well. In my head, I had to look a certain way, I had no credibility, so to cut.
Eleshia Harris: But that's an interesting thing as well. Isn't it?
Mairi Taylor: Yes. Yes. The diet I chose to work with is very ketogenic. So lots of green vegetables, lots of lean protein, no carbs, intermittent fasting. You know, I was doing this in my early forties.
And my body, in my late forties, just said, thank you very much. No, I absolutely dropped the weight. I was the slimmest I'd ever been. My boob shrunk, my belly shrank. It was all amazing, but the amount of vegetables I was eating, I could eat for like two hours, you know, niche. And so that's what got me into juicing.
Because if you can't eat it, drink it, the juice thing then gets me into the bowl of food and then looking at my skincare and this and that. And then I got myself into essential oils. And so it just led. And then, so I'm like sat here today going, why do I share what I share? Well, it's because I had endometriosis in my late thirties, early forties.
And I wanted to find a much more natural way to support my body. Like you let the books be studied. Did the courses and discovered that, Hey, guess what? For most women, not all, because let's not disrespect. People who have to go through medically induced menopause have genetic predispositions who have other genetic or family traits.
But, most of us, even with all of that can make a difference. When we change our lifestyles, we change our mindset, we get empowered and we get enlightened and we're ready to listen.
Eleshia Harris: Yes. And that's so important as you just said, it's the listening aspect of actually listening to your body. It's huge because in our society, we've been told so many times just to take a tablet and he goes, here's a tablet to help, but.
A lot of the time it's just suppressing, what's actually happening within and yes, we have to start listening to our bodies a lot more because they're telling us what is going on.
Mairi Taylor: Yes. And this is the thing we have normalized. What's become common because of our lifestyles, the way we eat. And period pain and huge discomfort.
At the end of the day, we are shedding the uterine lining and there's this stuff going on, but it shouldn't be this two weeks or this debilitation that so many of us have to live with. And fundamentally it's like having a red light, pardon the pun, but it's like a red warning light going on in your dashboard every month.
And you just keep driving that car, hoping that it's going to carry on working.
Eleshia Harris: That is such a good analogy. I have to take a moment to actually let that sink in because you're right. You're so right.
Mairi Taylor: That's what drives a car where the wheels are wonky. The steering wheel kept going off to the right. The petrol gauge kept flashing at us.
It wouldn't start in the morning. I sometimes struggle to find a more feminine analogy, but most of us, or all of us have been driving in a car, not a red light comes on. We're like, whoa, pull over.
But our body is constantly saying, well, pull over. And we're like, I'm just going to keep on driving.
Eleshia Harris: Yes, exactly. That was just like a light bulb moment for me because there were so many of us that do that. And it's not always our fault that that's what we've been taught. Had I learned a lot of the things that I'm learning now in my teens and my, and my twenties?
Wow. This is why, as I said to you, these conversations are so important because we've got another generation coming up and they need to be more well-informed about these topics.
Mairi Taylor: Absolutely. And when you're saying to me kind of like, what's my story and what's mine why? It's really about being able to say probably at 35, would I have listened?
I think I would have actually because I was in so much pain, but my reason is really just to empower other women so that we can take charge. That was totally even things like your eyes will do at this age. And it's like, no. Now my eyes have done that. You know, I can't change that, but they're still really very healthy.
And again, we get our eyes checked up. We go to the dentist twice a year. I go to the opticians twice a year who goes and gets the whole well-being.
Eleshia Harris: But even you're saying that we never get our internals checked.
Mairi Taylor: No. I've just done it, so I can manage to find a really fantastic women's health physio.
And I was just like, do you know what? I would just like a full MOT, please. So inside, outside, and top to bottom and just check what's working, what's not working, and what do I need to do to put it together? And I know we can talk about that on one of the latest series because we are going to take everybody through all of the phases.
Look at the different elements of the flow. Talk about perimenopause menopause, but we can't do it all in one go because that's too much.
Eleshia Harris: Be here forever, but I'm so excited because as I said before, it's so needed. And like you said, when I had Elessandra, I went and had an eight-week checkup as well, because I had to be practicing what I preached.
And for me, it was really important as a well-being coach, as a plus-size teacher that I didn't exercise before I could. And that everything internally was looking okay. And I got the okay to do what I needed to do when I needed to do it. And again, that is key because a lot of the time we're doing things that are not right for our bodies at that time.
Mairi Taylor: Yes. And that's the same with perimenopause. It's the same for menopause. It's the same, just in your monthly cycle, both of us, you know, we're very qualified in the fitness industry. I have to go outside of my qualifications to understand how to support women through their menstrual cycle, because of the whole sweeping statement, but fundamentally, you know, the fitness industry is geared towards us being treated like we're small men.
And we're not small men. And how many of the women listening today or partners of women know at certain times a month, they can smash it out. A term I now absolutely hate, but I get it. You know, you can smash it out. You're doing your full body press-ups. Lifting your big weights and all the rest of it running, doing a PBS.
And then two weeks later, literally all you want to do is lie with your legs up against the wall, but you then berate yourself for not smashing it out again, or your trainer or your group exercise. And actually, we have a 28-day cycle each, depending on what your cycle is and our energy changes.
And again, this is exactly what we're going to be sharing with everybody over the weeks to come. But this is why we want to invite you in, you know, we are not small men. We have energy at different times of the month. And when we can harness that, when we can embrace it, I think that is equally important.
Wow. There is really no stopping us.
Eleshia Harris: Exactly. And just to add to that, your productivity as well. It is amazing. What a difference you can have when you actually work with your cycle instead of against it. And we've been taught to work against it, or, you know, poopoo it in that. Oh, I'm on again. I can't do it.
No. I've got cramps. I want to eat chocolate. I've got no energy. I can't do anything. And realistically, if we know more about how to work with it, you're going to see some amazing results.
Mairi Taylor: Absolutely. Because what you'll then be doing is aligning as much as you can, your work tasks with your cycle, which means you'll be in the right energy at the right time of the month to do stuff.
And if you can't completely change it all around, we're going to teach you and show you hints and tips to scaffold your life. So that you can still be productive when you have to be when ideally what you really want to be happy.
Eleshia Harris: I'm so excited about this series. I'm so, so excited. As you said, it's come full circle for me also, just really connecting the dots of my why's as a well-being coach and a business growth strategist, and a consultant.
It is just making me realize how I can really equip my clients as well, to get the best out of themselves and to have five in their businesses and in their lifestyles and their wellbeing. It's just amazing.
Mairi Taylor: I think once you understand it, it is so empowering because all of a sudden you can look back and think, ah, you know, there will be so many, a whole moment for the listeners.
As you know, our communities as we go through this together. And that's really what it's all about. It's about those hard moments. It's about feeling empowered. It's about feeling enlightened. It's about being an informed consumer because even post-menopause, you still have those energy cycles, they don't stop just because you stopped having a period.
Because if you think about it, you know, I started menstruating. Goodness, maybe when I was probably about 11 or 12, I was quite young and carried on menstruating till I was 52, so 40 years. So for 40 years, my body had that energy cycle in it. It doesn't forget that. And so I'm still working with and recognizing, oh, right.
Yeah. I'd have been having my period now. And again, even for some women who are in medical menopause, they are recognizing where they would be in their cycle because the body holds on to that energetic, you know, it's like anything. It's like a muscle, its energy memory. It's still there. It's still going around.
So. Please don't think this isn't relevant to you. If like me, you walk post-menopause because we're going to be looking at all the different types of energies that we have and hold and how to use them to our best advantage.
Eleshia Harris: As I said, it's just going to be so amazing.
Mairi Taylor: I know, but as you say, we've been talking about this for a while and the time is now, right.
Especially for me with, again, we're recording this in March 2021. Literally, we were out for five weeks. So this is something we've been in lockdown for a full year. So most of us have been living with chronic stress for over a year. And chronic stress is one of the biggest aggravators of imbalanced hormones.
So that was my big concern through the whole of 2020 and into this year is how many women. Basically a feeling frazzled, frumpy, and just freaked out by the fact that they may have seen huge changes to their emotional and physical well-being over the last year, as they tried to juggle the homeschooling, the side hustle, the job, the elderly parents, the caring, the shopping, the this, that, and all the rest of it.
Because whilst so many of us do have enlightened and supportive partners, a lot of this. What was left to the women, do the schooling and the home care and etcetera? And there are statistics that show that women are stuck at home. And I'd done that in that inverted commerce has suffered one of the biggest sorts of impacts on their mental health.
Eleshia Harris: I know for me just working around it or it was intense. Sometimes it was really intense. And then luckily I got myself into a little bit of a groove, but then there's always going to be moments where you're like, "oh my goodness, I've forgotten something". And you've got to be okay with that. So yes.
Everything that you've just said is so important. And we are just here to serve and empower as many ladies as we can and partners. Exactly. And partners, because if you can get your man to listen to this series as well, you'll be winning because it's really important. They know as well, and they're informed as well because they live with us and they want to continue living with us.
Hopefully, it's important stuff. And if you've got daughters as well, It's very important from that perspective as well, because it's not just up to the mom and some girls are being brought up just by their dad.
Mairi Taylor: Yes, for sure. And again, the certain times of the month when you are better or in the better energy for asking what you want.
It's not that we're going to be teaching you some hints and tips. And also this is when the partners won't be listening. Cause there's also a time of the month when you asked for not that any of us are going anywhere, but when you ask for the golf holiday and then two weeks later, it will be like, everyone's a winner.
Eleshia Harris: Yes. So with that, we are going to be running at least four episodes to go through each phase of your cycle. So if I was you, I would stay tuned, have a pen and paper, ready to take some notes, and just enjoy the information that you're going to receive because it's going to be truly fabulous.
Mairi Taylor: It is indeed. I can't wait to share it with you and just hold this space with your relationship for you and my communities.
Eleshia Harris: Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me tonight, and I will see you next week. Take care. I really hope you enjoyed the intro to our series, Mairi and I are so excited to have you with us over the next six weeks.
And next week we are going to be discussing the menses cycle. So, stay tuned. And again, as I said, if you have any questions, please reach out to us on our socials. I'll leave all of the information in the show notes until next week. Bye.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Eleshia show. If you know somebody who needs to hear the conversations that we are having, please share it, take a screenshot and send it to them. Also, I would really love for you to rate and review the podcast as this really helps. And I'd love to read your comments.
Lastly, remember, you need to invest in yourself first because you are important and amazing. Take care until the next time bye-bye.
