Briana Donaldson: 00:00

Welcome to the Honey Toast podcast where we talk about the undoing, the unspoken, and remembering femininity and truly reclaiming it. Today really feels like

Briana Donaldson: 00:09

a portal because the guest that we have on is someone who lives right on the border between the body and beyond. And that guest today is Rebecca Cat. Yeah. We are so excited to welcome Rebecca. She is the creator and muse of Bloom Womb.

Briana Donaldson: 00:24

And Rebecca started this because of her own initiations and having her own experience with her own cycles and not really understanding the impact and abandonment that that had on her lifestyle and cycles. So Bloom Woom was all created because of her own journey, And now it she really did realize that there wasn't really education for women out there when it came to understanding their feminine essence, how to live within their cycles, and really understand the womb as that portal. So Bloom Womb has blossomed into this incredible online space offering education and knowledge information. And she shares all of this with all these other women. And because she went through her own incredible initiation through cyclical living and being connected to her own womb, She now offers this platform and has created Bloom Womb's mission to help empower women all over the world and help them to connect to their own power, specifically the womb.

Briana Donaldson: 01:20

It's so awesome, and I can't wait

Briana Donaldson: 01:23

to dive in to today's episode. I've been really excited this whole week. So today in the episode, we really want to try and cover, you know, what it means to get deeper more deeply connected to our cycle just outside of the normal things that we know and the regular awareness that we have around it. We really want to go beneath the surface where there's more of a sacred bond and connection to that part of ourselves. And we really want to understand how we can implement things to get in rhythm with ourselves, with our cycle, with our womb.

Briana Donaldson: 01:55

And lastly, we really want to talk about the parts of femininity that maybe have been exiled over the years. What are those things? Why have they been exiled? And how can we reconnect to them? So without further ado, we'd like to welcome Rebecca to the show.

Briana Donaldson: 02:08

We're so happy to have you, and let's get started.

Briana Donaldson: 02:18

So, Rebecca, just let's get started right away. Just tell us what that initiation was for you. I'm so curious to know, like, what was that moment that sparked your connection or understanding of the power within your own womb that led into your whole journey of Bloom Womb and the work that you're doing today?

Rebecca Akat: 02:36

Yeah. It's such a it's such a funny question because I feel like there's there's so many initiations along my path, obviously, that then has led me to do this work. I think the really, the big turning point for me was about three years ago now. I was very much in a season of life where I felt really uncertain. I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

Rebecca Akat: 02:58

I just left behind my business that it was it was based on a network marketing business, very masculine, very goal oriented. Right? Very much like hitting certain quotas every single month. And I burnt myself out completely doing that. And so I just decided to leave that behind, and I took a step away from working for about a year.

Rebecca Akat: 03:21

And, yeah, I was just in this season of life of, like, I don't know what I wanna do next, but, like, I just really, really allow myself to sit in the uncertainty. My best friend at the time, was pregnant, and she kinda planted the seed of, like, why don't you look into, like, becoming a doula? So I went into that route at first. Nice. I did a little course on becoming a doula, and I was like, wow.

Rebecca Akat: 03:43

This is incredible. However, it's not exactly what I wanna do. And then I moved into understanding understanding more more about about the menstrual cycle. And I started tracking my own cycle, and it just, like, shifted something with the way that I viewed my life and viewed myself because I finally understood what it meant to live with my body, in my body Mhmm. And with my feminine

Briana Donaldson: 04:09

Mhmm.

Rebecca Akat: 04:09

After years and years of building a business in a very masculine way and being very disconnected to my body and very much living in this, like, survival fight or flight mode. And so it wasn't really I think a lot of women that are in this work that dive into menstrual cycle work have had, like, hormonal imbalances, which I don't feel like was my initiation into it. It was more of, like, this need to come back into the feminine in a way where I found the resting and the receiving of it and also coming back into my own womb space, my own creation, my own inspiration, my own joy, my own pleasure, all of that. And I did that through connecting back with my cycle. It really was this, like, yeah, beautiful way of being able to connect back with my body and what sparked my my joy and then just learning myself through the way that I moved cyclically every single month really was that initiation for me coming back into balance and all of that.

Rebecca Akat: 05:09

So, yeah, that that is how Blue Moon started.

Briana Donaldson: 05:12

That's awesome.

Briana Donaldson: 05:13

I love that story. Yeah. Me too. I'm like, keep going. Keep going.

Briana Donaldson: 05:16

What else? Also, I'm like, why are we not all living that way already as women, as a collective? Which leads me to my next question is, as now that you've been in this space for as long as you have and now that you've reconnected with yourself and gone through the transition, and maybe you touched upon this having just spoken about your previous work, but what do you would you say is a stage that a lot of women get emotionally stuck? So even when cyclically, they're continuing to move forward and and go through their cycles, where would you say that typically you see women get emotionally stuck?

Rebecca Akat: 05:57

And this is women that have already connected with their cyclical and their cycles No. Tracking and all

Briana Donaldson: 06:02

I would say before.

Briana Donaldson: 06:02

I would say before. As a as a whole because typically women are feeling stuck. They get stuck in a certain stage and, you know, they're still having their cycle. They're still evolving through life. They're still going through life.

Briana Donaldson: 06:12

But maybe they feel very stuck in a certain place.

Briana Donaldson: 06:15

And symptoms come out from that. Yeah. In other ways that that they are not connecting it back to it being they're out of tune with themselves and their cycles and their bodies. It might just be because, like you said, we're in a very masculine world. Mhmm.

Rebecca Akat: 06:30

Yeah. I mean, I think it's the simple question is so many women are divorced to their bodies and living from their heads and not from their womb spaces. Mhmm. And, I mean, if we look from we just look at our culture and our society, it is a very much I feel like we see this talked about a lot where we're like, live in a masculine German society. But it is true.

Rebecca Akat: 06:53

And I was just talking to my my friend about this, like, literally an hour ago. We were talking about how when we shifted from worshiping the feminine to worshiping the masculine and it went from worshiping the cyclical, the the moon phases to then when the agricultural the agricultural revolution started, industrial revolution in that, we started needing the sun cycle, and that's the the masculine. Right? The twenty four hour cycle. Mhmm.

Rebecca Akat: 07:23

That's really where where we started neglecting the feminine. And so if we look at it now, our our culture in our day and age, we're very much on that twenty four hour cycle where every single day we're supposed to or we're we're asked to show up the exact same way, which for a man, it is easy to do because they are operating on a twenty four hour cycle. But for a woman, we operate on an average of a twenty eight day cycle, give or take, depending on the woman. Right? Totally.

Rebecca Akat: 07:49

And we don't operate the same way every single day. Our hormones very much shift throughout the month. And you have to understand that our hormones dictate everything about us. It dictates our personality, our energy levels, it dictates our appetite, our libido. Like, everything about us, we are our hormones essentially.

Rebecca Akat: 08:09

And so when our hormones shift throughout the month, we shift. And so so many women well, one, there hasn't been education around this. Right? Like, I don't our generation never got any education on that. I know my mom's generation never did.

Rebecca Akat: 08:23

So it's brand new information that we even operate on a twenty eight day hormonal cycle.

Briana Donaldson: 08:29

Yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 08:31

And so so many women are so there's just there hasn't been that education to how their body actually functions. So how are they supposed to then know how to actually live with their body? And so, again, I think being so divorced to their body and operating from their heads is where so many women have gotten stuck because they just don't know any better, no one has taught them. Right. And then also, it's often been told that it's not safe to accept our bodies and live with our bodies and feel with our bodies.

Rebecca Akat: 08:59

There's so many you look at the diet culture, override your body's needs. If you look at the beauty industry, your body always has to change. It can't look this way. It has to look like this, bigger here, smaller there, whatever it is, right? There's been so many or even like religion telling us that sex is not appropriate, that feeling our pleasure isn't appropriate.

Rebecca Akat: 09:19

Right? There's so many things, so many stigmas, so many beliefs and things that have been ingrained and indoctrinated in us that like it's not safe for us to be connected to our body. And so with that, it's not safe for us to feel the feminine that that's very much the home of the feminine is the body, is the felt body.

Briana Donaldson: 09:38

Exactly.

Rebecca Akat: 09:39

So I think that's a big reason. Like, there's so many different layers to

Briana Donaldson: 09:43

it to why women are So layered, yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 09:44

Where they've gotten stuck. But there's there's really, it comes down to just like them being not taught how to connect with their

Briana Donaldson: 09:53

with their bodies right Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 09:55

And what do you what do you think, especially as like a coach seeing this in other women, like, what is that cost when women aren't having that connection within that body? What do you see happening?

Rebecca Akat: 10:06

There's, I mean, so many things. We can look at hormonally what happens, right, when we're stuck in our heads. We're very much in fight or flight survival mode. We don't know how to regulate our nervous system. This leads to us then having higher cortisol, which leads to us having cycles that are irregular or painful or just all over the place and also will affect our fertility in the long run, obviously.

Rebecca Akat: 10:34

It leads to women not being connected to their pleasure, to their sensuality. This is, like, a huge one, I think. I think we often don't think how important that is for women, but that's really where a woman's power and magnetism lies. Because if a woman knows her body, what feels good in her body, how to feel her body through her senses, through her sensuality or pleasure, She then also knows how to set healthy boundaries because she knows what feels good, what doesn't feel good. Yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 11:03

And that leads to her relationships, that leads to the decisions she makes in her life, it leads to every area of her life. So really, the coming into your body and connecting back into it through whether it's somatic work or nervous system regulation practices or breath work, there's so many different avenues we can obviously tap into, is really one of the most important keys when it comes to your health as a woman, your vitality, your fertility. All of that is really connected to what your relationship looks like to your body. Because you can take all the right supplements, eat all the right foods, do all the right things, but if you don't have a healthy relationship to your body, it often won't actually come back into balance and you will still have the symptoms or the signs or the imbalances that you're experiencing because that isn't in in healthy relationship.

Briana Donaldson: 11:58

Oh, yeah. Love that. I love that. Love that. Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 12:01

It's so true. And like you said, you did a really good job because it is a very layered question explaining that and tying it in. It's hard for us not to wanna jump in and be like, gotta catch on that thought right there. But do you wanna ask that one question? Well, I was gonna say it it's so well, obviously,

Briana Donaldson: 12:18

it's so interesting having this conversation with you because I feel like it's a conversation that Danielle and I have had so many times. But something that I would say even for myself that I struggle with, even with this knowledge that we're discussing today, is truly understanding how to embody the practice. So, you know, you were saying, like, you can eat healthy and you can exercise and do all the right things. So how would you be able to Just tell

Briana Donaldson: 12:44

the difference.

Briana Donaldson: 12:45

Kind of identify and tell the difference between truly embodying the connection and embodying that practice and that self as opposed to just kind of, you know, putting on a performance of all of those things, so to speak. Yeah. And kind of it being more of a surface level thing. So how would you explain to someone the difference between that? And maybe how would you be able to coach or guide someone to be able to learn what embodiment truly is or how to get there?

Rebecca Akat: 13:16

Yeah. Well, let's look at the word embodiment. What does it mean to be in your body? How do we get to our body? When we feel our body.

Rebecca Akat: 13:24

How do we feel our body? Through using our senses. And so this is why using our senses, our sensuality is such a huge part for women and again, coming into balance with their health. Because, okay, let's take nutrition, for example, and food, right? Let's say you are someone who is wanting to balance your hormones.

Rebecca Akat: 13:45

You are doing all the right things. You're eating breakfast first thing in in the morning. You're eating enough protein. You're not skipping meals. You're balancing your blood sugar level.

Rebecca Akat: 13:54

But the thing that you're doing is you're scarfing your food down, watching reels while you're doing it and not really thinking about what it is that you're actually putting in your body. So you're telling your body while you're eating, you're kind of in a rush, you're in fight or flight, and so you're not in a rest and digest. And that in itself isn't an embodied way of eating your food, but it's a very disconnected way because you're not using your senses. And then imagine doing the opposite of like, okay. Let me take the time.

Rebecca Akat: 14:25

And this doesn't even start with, like, you eating your actual food, but, like, how do you prep your meals? Do you do it rushed? Do you glaze over it and just, like, put something together and it's, like, a meal you would never serve anyone else, but you you're serving yourself because you just wanna get something down? Or are you really taking the time to like chop everything slowly and just like making a whole little like rich water? Because it's you're nourishing your body, you're nourishing your vessel.

Rebecca Akat: 14:53

So it's one of the most important things to take care of as a woman. Right? And so really being so intentional with that, bringing in more presence with what you're doing, that's really what creates the embodiment of it. And then when you're eating the food, savoring it, savoring every little bite, seeing how it feels in your body. Does it even taste good to you?

Rebecca Akat: 15:14

Does your body even like it? Or is it just something you think you should be eating? So like, that's one example in all of it. Just taking food as the example because I think that's a big thing that we're like, I'm eating all the right foods, healthy ways. Right.

Rebecca Akat: 15:27

But like, it's not about what you're eating, it's also about how you're eating it. Right. And it's that goes for everything. It's like, you can do all the right things. It's not about what you're doing, it's how you're doing it.

Rebecca Akat: 15:38

Right. And a lot of times we don't even need all the tools that we think we need. We just need to go back to the basics and really do it with so much presence and embodiments. Right?

Briana Donaldson: 15:50

Mhmm.

Rebecca Akat: 15:51

So that's kind of how I would explain the difference. And again, like just bringing in more of your senses and your presence with everything you do will create embodiment for a woman and for every human, for men too, obviously, but especially for women.

Briana Donaldson: 16:07

Yeah. I love that. I think Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 16:09

That that's a great way Okay. I think. I think that that's a great way to describe it, but also make it like very easy to understand. Digestible. Digestible, literally.

Briana Donaldson: 16:18

Yeah. Yeah. Digestible information. Because we all know what our five senses are. You know, I also feel as though at times in this more spiritual, deeper, connective world, there's a lot of terminology that's thrown around that maybe isn't as easy for someone who has zero knowledge on these topics to understand.

Briana Donaldson: 16:39

But everyone can understand the five senses. Anyone can connect to that and understand that messaging. So I appreciate that. Really, really well said.

Briana Donaldson: 16:46

Yeah. Rebecca, do you notice or find that, like, with womb work or women and young girls that you talk to or work with, even older women as well, that they connect the womb more so with just fertility and that like for instance, for myself until I became a mother, I I personally wasn't as connected to my wombs or my cycles. I mean, you're going through a whole different version of hormones and postpartum all those things on top of it. And like for me, I just had my daughter less than a year ago so I still don't have my cycle back with me or my period because I'm I believe I'm still living in a cycles without without actually menstruating. But it's I find it's like a little bit more difficult for me to kind of align with the cycles and understand where they are.

Briana Donaldson: 17:32

I have to be very in tune with my body at that point because it's not physically showing me. But going back to the question because I kind of veered off. But do you find that with womb work, is mistakenly just about something to do with fertility? And if if that's what you see, what do you think, like, the womb would have to say about that, the general womb?

Rebecca Akat: 17:54

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot. I well, I think women come into womb work or into just learning about their cycle and they're just like and a lot of women come in because they're having hormonal issues or they're not ovulating or they're trying to get pregnant and they're not able to get pregnant or whatever it may be. Right? Like having some sort of imbalance hormonally with their cycle.

Rebecca Akat: 18:13

And really, it's just like their cycle yelling at them being like, I need you to connect with my womb, like connect back here, you know? But I think for me, what I've noticed is, like, women come to me and they're like, yeah. I'm having all these issues, PCOS. I'm having painful bleeds. Like, I'm not ovulating regularly, whatever it may be.

Rebecca Akat: 18:33

Right? Long cycles. And I'm like, okay. Cool. And, also, like, that is just the layer.

Rebecca Akat: 18:41

That's just the top layer of all of it. Let's look below because the way that I approach cycle work, I'm not gonna just, like, look at your hormones. I'm gonna, like, see how are you processing your emotions? How are you processing your anger? How are you going about your your your relationship to life, your creativity?

Rebecca Akat: 19:01

Right? And then in that so you go back to your question of, like, do you think women just approach it from a fertility standpoint? I think they start realizing that the cycle is so much more than it just being about an egg released every single month and then we can make a baby. We start understanding that, like, fertility is so much more than just making babies. It is the barometer of our health, not only our physical health, but also our emotional and our spiritual health.

Rebecca Akat: 19:31

And that fertility is so much more than, again, making babies, but it can it's about how we approach life and how we're immersing ourself in life and how Totally. We're creating life. And so I I think for everyone listening, just think about the process that happens in your womb every single month. So we all know we're ovulating. Right?

Rebecca Akat: 19:55

We're ovulating, our egg is being released, and then we bleed because the egg wasn't fertilized. And so our uterine lining is shed, and we do that process all over again. What does that actually mean for an egg to be released? That egg has the potential of human life. That's pretty powerful.

Rebecca Akat: 20:13

And then with that too, that human life has the potential to continue more human life in the long run.

Briana Donaldson: 20:20

Wow.

Rebecca Akat: 20:21

And so you having that, like and women just being, like, the co creator with God is the way that I see it too. Like, who you decide to allow to infertile like fertilize that egg with you opens a whole new path of generational paths. Like Right. That's really powerful. That's really powerful that we have that within our women.

Rebecca Akat: 20:42

That's happening every single month. So but going back to the fertility thing, so knowing that, like, if we're not creating a baby or not wanting to get pregnant, what is happening in our wombs is that you have this conception energy that is alive. And using that conception energy for different avenues in your life, whether it's your relationships, your business, your work, your passions, whatever it is you wanna bring alive. So, yeah, I think when women start realizing that their cycle is, like, so much more than just fertility, but there's so many layers to it and being able to then utilize it in a way where we're actually really tuning into each of the inner seasons of our cycles too and and how we work as women and that we can plant seeds in our inner spring and then bring them to life in our ovulation phase in our inner summer. And then we're going through this inventory state of needing to really retreat and let go of what doesn't serve us and then go through a whole death process.

Rebecca Akat: 21:43

Like, that's what the cycle is. There's a whole initiation process we go through every single month. It's so much more than just fertility. So, yeah, to answer your question, a lot of them start with that, and then they there's just like it brings them layer by layer deeper into like, oh my God, I can actually live and breathe with my cycle and it becomes this container that holds them.

Briana Donaldson: 22:05

Right. And it kind of defines, I don't wanna say defines their life, but it really becomes something so much more important and so much more integral to their everyday life as opposed to just this one thing that happens once a month.

Rebecca Akat: 22:18

Exactly. And it's becomes its own little the the own it's a journey that you go through every single month if you allow it to be and you really tune into it. Mhmm. Yeah. Because it really it really can lead leads you through the whole process of of life and then death and, you know, bringing yourself through through that process every single month.

Rebecca Akat: 22:37

You start really attuning your life to that versus just blindly going through your life in in that way. Right. And I've always like to see or always like to think about the the analogy of, like, imagine the the feminine being this body of water, and then the the container is the cycle that holds it through all of her ebbs and flows, her big waves, her small waves, like all of

Briana Donaldson: 23:01

that because it allows you to understand what is happening in your body and then come into communion with it, relationship with it, and really tend to yourself in that way. So outside of like our typical and standard menstrual cycle that that we've just been going over and explaining that and, you know, trying to get more in flow with that. In your work and in your experience in working with women and trying to get in more flow with their cycles, do you feel like there's any other kind of cycles that you see women go through in their lifetime outside of the cycle. So it's like the cycles outside of the cycle Mhmm. That you feel that is another thing that we're kind of having to also keep up with and understand and and learn to work with.

Rebecca Akat: 23:49

For sure. I mean, I think everyone has their personal cycles that they obviously move through. And then with that like, I I also just, like, as someone who owns a business, like, my business goes through cycles and that then I move through that cycle with it. But then I also have my internal cycle, which I always feel like is my grounding, like my foundational cycle that I can always go back to to like keep me centered. I have like my personal cycle of like emotions that I maybe move through, which is very much my own cycle, honestly.

Rebecca Akat: 24:18

But we also if we think about women's life cycle, I think that's a really big one to to think about too where a woman moves through this life cycle of moving through the maiden to the mother, then her menopausal years, and then her Crohn years. And so that cycle plays out, obviously, in every woman's lifetime. And that cycle will also play out in your internal cycle every single month by moving through these different versions of womanhood that you're experiencing in in your internal menstrual cycle every single month.

Briana Donaldson: 24:56

Right.

Rebecca Akat: 24:57

So, yeah, so there's these archetypes that that are really connected to each of the phases of the menstrual cycle. And these archetypes then also are the ones that we move through as women in our larger life cycle. And when we come into con con relationship with each of these archetypes within our internal cycle, it's a lot easier for us to transition into our larger in in in the larger life cycle. So just to give you I don't know how deep I wanna go into this or how deep you guys wanna go into this, but just to give you a little overview. So we have the maiden, which is our inner spring, which is our follicular phase, which is also the first archetype that we move through in our early twenties.

Rebecca Akat: 25:40

Right? And this is right after we start our our bleed, our cycle as women. Then we have the mother, which is very much the ovulation phase. The mother is and that's our inner summer. She's all about fertility, bringing creation to life, and that's really when we start moving from the maiden to the mother in our in our, like, late twenties, early thirties.

Rebecca Akat: 26:06

And then we have our menopausal years. And our menopausal years is the sorceress. That's the archetype that's connected to it. The sorceress is very much all about transmuting pain into power, which I think a lot of women struggle a lot in their menopausal years when really it is where they find their power because they're no longer they no longer have their cycle as their container, but they now have to learn to be their own container pretty much. And so this is where the a woman finds her power.

Rebecca Akat: 26:37

And the within our internal cycle, our menstrual cycle, the sorceress is the luteal phase, which is our inner autumn, which if we think about the luteal phase, very similar qualities where we are very much faced with our shadow side, and that is often very uncomfortable for women. And so, again, the sorceress being there to provide this, like, transmutation of being able to transmute our pain into power or shadows into magic. That's all what the sorceress is all about. And then last, we have the crone, which is our inner winter, our menstrual phase when we're bleeding. And that is the last cycle or the last phase in our life as well after our menopausal years.

Rebecca Akat: 27:21

And she's really the wise woman, the woman that just knows, that lives from her womb, that is also lighthearted and playful and she doesn't isn't scared of death. She surrenders to it. So that that archetype will come alive during our menstrual phase, and then that's also the last archetype that we experience as a as a woman in our lifetime. So Mhmm. You can see that our monthly cycle mirrors our lifetime cycle, which is really beautiful.

Rebecca Akat: 27:49

And the more that we connect with these different versions of ourself that come alive in our menstrual cycle, the easier those transitions will be when we're moving into them in our larger lifetime cycle. And this is really why the cycle tracking is so much more than just fertility, similar to what you were asking earlier about women coming in thinking that's just about fertility. Like, it's actually preparation for life in many ways, you know? Right. Especially at like preparation for motherhood and pregnancy, preparation for menopausal years, like all of that is is hidden in in the cycle.

Rebecca Akat: 28:29

The cycle has all of that, those answers, all those teachings for you when you start tuning in for yourself and just remembering that for yourself. So, yeah, we really have these cycles within cycles and being able to tune into our internal cycle will really allow us to then also see all the other external cycles and how we shift with them.

Briana Donaldson: 28:54

That makes that makes total sense. But for somebody who is afraid to feel uncomfortable because like every cycle, what goes up must come down, and it goes around and around. So, I mean, to know what light is, we know what dark is. We need to know both sides of of the spectrum. So as a coach, how do you find that you provide safety for women who are looking to rewild themselves but are afraid of what they might be feeling during that process?

Rebecca Akat: 29:20

Mhmm. And you are you talking specifically, like are we talking about luteal phase? Because I feel like that's a big one.

Briana Donaldson: 29:26

Is like luteal phase. Because when you were talking about luteal, was like, oh, that's probably

Rebecca Akat: 29:31

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And I think that's what most women struggle with most is their luteal phase and their PMS.

Briana Donaldson: 29:39

Yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 29:39

So the way that I approach it, this is why I love talking about the archetype so much with women because it's like, I don't wanna just talk about your hormones and, like, what's happening hormonally and why you're having PMS. Like, talk we about that too. But I'm like, Okay, let's actually talk about your relationship to this part of yourself and why you've been neglecting it and why it doesn't feel safe to feel that.

Briana Donaldson: 29:59

Right.

Rebecca Akat: 29:59

Big thing here is like, well, one, I want to actually touch on like how the first half of our cycle when we're moving through our inner spring or inner summer follicular ovulation phase, I mean, for most women, that first half of the cycle is a breeze, right? It's easy. It's like we're

Briana Donaldson: 30:15

feeling We're

Rebecca Akat: 30:15

feeling just like in the world. Everything feels just a lot lighter. We're not as in tune with like our emotions yet or not the heavy emotions at least. And those qualities, the maiden and the mother, very much have the light feminine qualities. The qualities of like the easy, nurturing, playful, sensual, feminine woman.

Rebecca Akat: 30:38

Right? And if you think about our culture and our society, those are the qualities that are appraised in women. That's what makes a woman a woman that is acceptable. Right?

Briana Donaldson: 30:47

Right.

Rebecca Akat: 30:47

Then we look at the second half of our cycle where we're feeling more in touch with like or a lot wouldn't suppress this and neglect it. Mhmm. But, really, this is where the wild woman comes out, where we're feeling our anger more, where we're more the the shadow aspect of us comes out. The, like, the deep intuitive knowing, the the mystic, like, all of those qualities, which are very much the dark feminine qualities, which have very much been suppressed by our society and our culture because it's that's too crazy. That's too wild.

Rebecca Akat: 31:22

It's and, actually, it's really, really powerful for women to be in that and be connected to that. Yeah. And your anger and your shadow is really where your power lies because you're able to transmute that into something so powerful. And so I think so many women have such a hard time in their luteal phase because they have been taught that that's not feminine or appropriate to feel these things and to be people, like, to people, please, to not have your boundaries in place, to be the cute little feminine woman that like never oversteps or never is angry or never is wild and whatever it may be. Right.

Rebecca Akat: 31:59

So being able to like come bring women back into relationship with that, I often don't even have to do anything about them looking at their hormones or changing their diet a bunch. But that in itself shifts their whole entire luteal phase and their PMS often disappears because you're coming back into touch with that emotional side of them. Yeah. So So what I often do with women, one of the main things is like bringing them back into touch with their wild woman, which comes in through movement, through being more in their primal ness as well as like their anger And creating or giving them tools where they can healthily experience their anger and feel their anger without it projecting onto other people, doing a lot of somatic work in that is how I feel like a lot of women feel safe to then be able to reconnect to that part of themselves. But yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 32:55

So that that that the second half of their cycle, like, the more they can connect to those versions of themselves, those archetypes, the easier it often gets for them.

Briana Donaldson: 33:05

I think love how you said you equip women with tools because I it's not just women. I feel like this is we were talking about this earlier. Like, a lot of adults, unfortunately, never really may have gotten tools just to begin with to even just handle emotions, let alone understand what's going on on a hormonal level. As you know, they like sneak up on you one day, wake up, you're like, Why do I just feel so angry? It's not like an alarm goes off unless you do like the work, what you're encouraging women to do, is to track, to sync sync up and understand rather than just be like pulled along with the current, you know?

Briana Donaldson: 33:40

Learn how to navigate the water.

Briana Donaldson: 33:42

Have a relationship with yourself and with your cycle so that you're in flow with it.

Briana Donaldson: 33:46

Love the way that sort of cut you off. I love the way you defined the seasons of like the spring and the summer being reflective of the qualities of feminine that's accepted in society because I never actually thought about it that way, but it is so true. True. So true.

Briana Donaldson: 34:02

So true.

Briana Donaldson: 34:03

Yeah. And it's not just like the representative of, you know, the mother archetype being like once you hit in your mid, late thirties and then really because once we hit 40, that's you're you're totally right with the beauty industry, all these other standards that are impounded on women just aging alone. You're seen as less valuable in society because you're not able to show up in the ways and your cycle is changing too. So a lot of the time women 40 do get forgotten about. Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 34:28

And women 40 are misdirected. Right. So there's And it's like

Briana Donaldson: 34:33

that part of your cycle of life and that part of your menstrual cycle, you feel like you have to be hidden away. It's like you feel like that part of you

Briana Donaldson: 34:42

Is not accepted. Is not accepted.

Briana Donaldson: 34:43

And it's better to just hide away until that phase has passed and then you can reemerge as the new Right. Good version of yourself that everyone accepts and

Briana Donaldson: 34:52

loves that that people can handle.

Briana Donaldson: 34:54

Yeah. You know? Yeah. But it's so interesting to hear you speak about how the tools that you do, you know And the connections. Give to your clients and and the connections that they're able to make, really actually completely evaporate those symptoms and really, you know and at the end of the day, the only person that matters of accepting you is you.

Briana Donaldson: 35:17

So Mhmm. You know, if you can get to a place where you're in full acceptance of yourself no matter what phase or cycle you're in, I think that that's a really beautiful thing. And and we just were honored to be able to talk to you about it and, you know, hear about the work that you do and and the fact that you're able to help women achieve that and see that within themselves and connect to themselves is sacred work. And it's something that I hope one day all young girls can learn and be educated on and and be more understanding of for sure. Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 35:49

So I think our closing reflection for you, Rebecca, would be a two part question. I'll start with the first part, let you answer that, then Brie can ask you the second part. But why do you think that as women, we wait until our bodies physically force us to make a change? Why do you

Briana Donaldson: 36:07

think that is that way, basically? We're assuming that typically when a woman gets to a point in her life and she's coming to see you and she wants to be more in touch with her cycle or understand what's going on with her hormones or what have you, whatever it is, she's trying to get pregnant or whatever the situation is, What we've kind of uncovered is that women really wait until they feel like something is breaking down or not working properly or they're in pain or, you know, they're having health issues. So why do you feel that it's only when we come to this stop sign in a way that we finally reach out and get the help to find this reconnection and to really dive deeper into ourselves and and uncovering what the womb connection is and what that looks like?

Rebecca Akat: 36:58

Yeah. I mean, think about when something is broken and you don't know how to fix it. You just kinda leave it for like, that's kinda what it feels like. So it's Mhmm. I think it goes back to, like, what we were talking about earlier, how so many women have never been educated on their bodies.

Rebecca Akat: 37:12

And so they're like, well, there's might be, like, little signs here and there that something's off, but, like, whatever. And then your body starts screaming, it gets louder and louder. And then you can't ignore it anymore because it get it becomes debilitating, whether it's like, say, your period cramps, right, where you literally can't get up out of bed for two days or you're throwing up or whatever it may be, or PMS that turns into, like, debilitating depression, anxiety before your bleed. And I think that it goes back to what we were saying earlier of how many women have just never been taught to connect with their bodies. And, actually, like, if we it's almost like the analogy of, like, a river where when we're in flow and we're in sync, we can start we can can continue to to flow in the riverbank.

Rebecca Akat: 37:58

But when there's, like, something that when something comes up and we're and we're, like, not taking care of it, it's it starts building a dam. Mhmm. And then our river starts backing up, and we turn into a cesspool. Don't know if that's a good example. Yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 38:16

But, like, kinda. You know? And then it it starts building up to a point where you're like, ugh, I feel so uncomfortable.

Briana Donaldson: 38:21

Mhmm.

Rebecca Akat: 38:22

And you just if you would have taken care of, like, every single part that would, like, started building the dam by just, like whether it's a suppressed emotion or suppressed trauma or and how like, a little health thing that you haven't taken care of because you're actually in tune with your body and your emotional body, then your river would continue to flow and there wouldn't be an issue with that. So, yeah, I think it just it goes back to, like, what we were talking about earlier, how so many women are disconnected to their bodies and don't really know what feels good and what doesn't feel good. They're disconnected to their pleasure, to their sensuality. And so bringing that relationship back will then hopefully in the long run not have women get to a point where their body is screaming at them, but they're able to in the first sign of like, okay, I have had a cycle where something was a little off. Let me look at that.

Rebecca Akat: 39:13

Let me maybe shift my diet this next month, look at my emotions a little differently so that I don't continue to have cycles that are getting worse and worse as I go. Right. For example. But, I think that relationship to your body will will shift everything as a woman.

Briana Donaldson: 39:29

Definitely. Makes complete sense. Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 39:33

The second part to that question is do you think that inconvenience such as like a menstrual cycle for women which is seen maybe by the woman herself or by peers or anyone else really is actually an initiation for women? And it's actually been taught that this type of initiation is something that we should resent, which keeps women in, like, a disconnected space more so.

Rebecca Akat: 40:03

For sure. I think that I mean, we just think about our society and our culture and how I think women have just been been asked to, like, be little men. That's the best way I can put it, you know, where it's like, oh, you're too complicated as a woman. Take the pill. Suppress that so you can go to work.

Rebecca Akat: 40:20

You don't have to think about getting pregnant. You can have casual sex that you wanna have. You don't have to think about your fertility. Like Yeah. Suppressing your hormones, whatever it may be.

Rebecca Akat: 40:29

Right? And it's being seen as, like, it's an inconvenience to be a woman, which, yeah, just suppresses the fem the feminine all in all in both women and men, in my opinion. Like, the inconvenience of thinking that the feminine is too much or

Briana Donaldson: 40:46

Mhmm.

Rebecca Akat: 40:46

It's not proper, like, is a collective problem.

Briana Donaldson: 40:50

Yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 40:51

And when we just look at it from a cycle perspective, though, I think the moment you start cycle tracking because I think a lot of the times we come into cycle like, women come into cycle work and they start cycle tracking. And I think it's like the strict guidelines of do's and don'ts of each phase of the cycle and that you have to track your cycle every single day, and that's this complicated hormonal thing. And you can't work out here, and you have to eat this here. And it just becomes this rigid thing wherein it's really the opposite. Right.

Rebecca Akat: 41:19

It is your path to freedom. It's your initiatory path to freedom because you start learning your body and what it needs. Those guidelines just become more of like a foundational way that you can approach it. But cycle tracking in itself is it gives you the permission to start listening to your body by tuning in. And when I say cycle tracking, I'm not talking about just using an app and you're just, like, putting in when you're bleeding, and then your app is telling you about when you're ovulating.

Rebecca Akat: 41:48

That's actually a very disconnecting way to cycle track because your an app is telling you where you are in your cycle, and most apps aren't actually accurate with when you're ovulating. But I'm saying, like, written tracking where you're taking note of what you're feeling in your body every single day, and that connects you back into your body. And that will allow you to then feel what you need in your body or for your body versus it being the strict guideline of like, I have to do x, y, and z because that's what some social media posts tell me. Right? So that's really what then does it it's it's not an inconvenience.

Rebecca Akat: 42:20

It's literally your you connecting back to your body, and it becomes the most convenient thing ever because you're actually able to live your life from a place that is empowered. And, yeah, you have full autonomy over your body too, which is really where a woman reconnects to her power and feels embodied as well. So that's the power of cycle tracking. It's not don't make it think that this rigid thing, really, it's the opposite. It's this this thing that allows you to flow and come back into alignment with yourself.

Briana Donaldson: 42:50

That's so great. Yeah. I love that you said don't use the app because, honestly, I was like, when I get my period again, I am ready to cycle, sync it up, and, like, track everything. And I'm like, okay. I gotta use an app, I guess.

Briana Donaldson: 43:01

But I but I really value how you were saying, like, make it more of, like, that personal connection. Like, you can have an app or AI. Like, it's already taking over our life. Like, let's have a little more autonomy. Yeah.

Briana Donaldson: 43:11

Yeah. So, like, with your work, because you have so much knowledge, so much education, so much experience, like, where can people find you, Rebecca? Where can they reach out to you? What what can they find when they find you? And just give us a little more info before we

Rebecca Akat: 43:26

Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram at Bloom Woom. I have a website, bloomwoom.com. I offer I'm just I'm about to launch my membership, so there's a lot of information and juicy resources in there. I offer one on one coaching.

Rebecca Akat: 43:43

And then I also have products such as cycle like a journal, cycle tracking journal because I'm just on the mission of allowing women to track with a written tracker versus an app, like, doing that as much as possible. I do also have free cycle trackers. If you wanna just download it for yourself and print it out, it's linked in my my bio too. Amazing. But, yeah, I have Yeah.

Rebecca Akat: 44:07

I have a website with all my offerings and all my products on there if you Amazing.

Briana Donaldson: 44:12

If you

Rebecca Akat: 44:12

wanna dive more into Expect

Briana Donaldson: 44:14

a call from me.

Briana Donaldson: 44:15

Yeah. We're we're gonna put all of your all of Rebecca's info in the show notes below so you can have access to all of her links directly. So don't worry about spelling or remembering it all. It'll all be there for you. So thank you so much again for your time and energy, Rebecca, and all of

Briana Donaldson: 44:26

your knowledge and wisdom. It was such a pleasure. I feel like it was it was like a refresher for me too today and, obviously something that all women, most women can connect to and understand and something that's so powerful and so needed. So thank you so much and and we're really excited to follow-up with you and and hopefully our our viewers can tune in to your channels and hear more and learn more.

Rebecca Akat: 44:51

Thank you so much for having me. Bye.