Nav.it Takeaway: The stress and pressure from our everyday lives is detrimental to our mental and physical wellbeing. But we can change that—and the way we live—by understanding the correlation between our cycles and our brains, and how it affects our productivity each month.
Being a woman in 2018 is both empowering and exhausting. Every day, we’re affecting changes that we hope will strengthen and afford more opportunities to future generations of women. But every day is also a new fight against the rampant sexism that’s ingrained in our culture.
On top of the many external stressors are internal struggles. We know we’re undervalued and underpaid, yet we wonder if there’s more we could do to demonstrate our worth. We’re exhausted, yet we worry we aren’t showing up early enough or staying late enough at work. We’re giving everyone else 100 percent, yet we feel it’s too demanding to ask for that in return. That pressure takes a toll, manifesting in physical and mental health issues that become nearly impossible to pinpoint.
Perhaps the worst part is that we’re resigned to deal with all of this in silence. Why? Because the exhaustion and stress has become normalized. Almost every woman is overextended, and the prospect of fighting to feel any other way requires time and energy we just don’t have. Complaining, feeling tired, or being emotional isn’t an option, because it’s attributed to an “inherent” weakness: being female.
Nicole Negron, a holistic wellness advisor and life coach, doesn’t believe that women have to submit to patriarchal standards of success to be successful themselves. In fact, she wants us to tap into our feminine superpowers, embrace our sensitivity and intuition, and use them to our own benefit. Here’s how.
Sync Your Brain and Cycle
After years of being misdiagnosed and debilitated by PMDD and dysmenorrhea, Negron decided to take her health into her own hands. She studied functional nutrition and earned certifications from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and the Integrative Pelvic Health Institute. Using her knowledge of female endocrinology, she tuned into the phases of her monthly cycle, and how they affected her productivity levels. Through extensive research, she developed an approach to women’s health that was based on listening to the female body instead of trying to alter its chemistry.
Today, Negron’s life mission is to help other women make sense of—and lean into—their personal biochemistry. She unleashes her clients’ potential by teaching them to understand the correlation between their brain and their monthly cycles. Once their brain and cycle are in sync, productivity isn’t as draining, and mental and physical health comes more naturally. Negron calls it the “Art of the Female Body.”
Understand the Art of the Female Body
Rather than simply coaching you on being more efficient, Negron helps strategically prioritize your workload (and life) based on the cyclical shifts in your brain. During the first week of your cycle—the follicular phase—the prefrontal cortex is more active, which means things like planning and decision-making come easier. The following week, which is the ovulation phase, sees heightened activity in the left hemisphere (which controls language, logic, and critical thinking) but diminished activity in the right (which is responsible for creativity, intuition, and emotion). In the third phase, activity in the hemispheres switches; finally, during the fourth phase—menstruation—communication between the right and left brain is at its peak.
Strike the Perfect Balance
Synchronizing your brain and monthly cycle isn’t as simple as understanding it. Chemical imbalances have to be righted to maximize both mental and physical output. By studying your cycle and its effect on you, Negron can identify hormonal deficiencies that are potentially throwing your entire system out of whack. Suffering from short-term memory loss or brain fog? You could be lacking in estrogen. Is your sex drive low? Your progesterone levels might be, too. Are you struggling to lose weight? You may have too much (or too little) testosterone.
To help set the foundation for full body harmony, Negron also determines your metabolic type and establishes a diet that’s most beneficial to your unique body. Through careful experimentation and fine-tuning, she finds the protein and carbohydrate ratio that’s optimal for your needs, whether it’s losing, gaining, or maintaining your weight.
Forget What You Know
To sustain the healthy relationship between body and cycle, there has to be a change in mentality, too. And that’s where Negron’s Principles of the Feminine come into play. Through support and practical advice, she helps reframe the deep-rooted gender norms and expectations that have forced us women to sacrifice our mental and physical health since…well, forever.
By embracing your femininity and the emotions you once believed were a hindrance, you can begin to energize. Instead of nurturing others out of obligation or guilt, you learn to set boundaries so that it’s mutually beneficial. Self-care comes without guilt, and expressing yourself comes without fear of retribution. Overall, Negron helps you become the woman you were destined to be: strong, successful, and satisfied.
We’re changing the narrative around money but change can’t happen with a one-sided conversation. That’s why we’re excited to bring different voices and experts to share their wisdom. Send us an email and let us know what you think. And remember the nav.it money app offers you free tools for checking in and managing your money moves.
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