text © 2018 Dana-Sofie Šlancarová, dana-sofie.com / photo © pixabay.com
We all know it so well. When the time of the late premenstrual phase comes, no matter what we do, our energy subdues and we feel much more tired, exhausted and overwhelmed than we did a week or two ago in the ovulation phase. This energy downswing usually lasts over the second half of the premenstrual phase and most of the menstrual phase, and for sure you cannot spend all this time resting in bed (though you’d love to).
Never mind. Here is my top tool for fighting the fatigue in the late premenstrual and menstrual phases:
It Is Sleep!
In these two phases, sleep is the most powerful means to both your physical and mental well-being. I suggest you try out either of the following three possibilities or all of them:
1) Go to bed earlier! This is something you most probably can achieve most easily, with just a bit of discipline. (And once you learn how great it is, no more forcing oneself to bed will be necessary.)
Get an hour of extra sleep all the days that you feel you need them It will come back in the form of more energy, more vitality, more focus, more efficiency, more patience, more clarity and much more. An hour slept in those days is definitely not an hour spent but an hour earned!
All you need – just for the first time – is to push off your rational urge to finish this or that or your feeling of guilt that you go to bed earlier. Remember: Do you want to feel good tomorrow? Be able to manage more? Be nicer to those around you? Good decision! So all you need to do today is to go to bed earlier. (And repeat tomorrow if still necessary…)
During those days, our body naturally wants more sleep so you do not usually need to persuade it a lot…
2) Get up later! Another possibility, especially for the owl-type freelance women, is to get an extra hour of sleep in the morning.
Mind that you can combine both, even during one night: one hour extra in the evening, one hour in the morning…
There are multiple pieces of research these days confirming that the lack of sleep is, in fact, the cause of much stress in our lives leading to accidents (such as the Chernobyl disaster), illnesses, chronic fatigue or even disharmony in our relationships (and much more). Those studies also show that enough sleep provides you with heightened ability to think, focus, work efficiently, be patient, be faster, have a clear mind or come with greater ideas…
3) Take a nap during the day. This is really something I love. I do not do it every day, but I definitely do it in any phase of my menstrual cycle. Any time I feel overwhelmed, I love to take a nap (best in a hammock) to clear my mind and to restart my body.
It shall not take longer than 10 to 20 minutes (getting into the deep stages of sleep would make you more sleepy), but if you learn to trust your body, it will wake you up just in the right time.
It’s not the sleep proper. It’s just the nodding. Being in the alpha state, gently drifting deeper, but not too deep.
When you wake up, it’s just like a restart of your whole system – especially if you felt so tired a couple minutes ago because of being in the premenstrual and menstrual phase. (But as I said, you don’t have to restrict napping only to those phases!)
If your rational mind tells you cannot do that, check the internet and you will find that this is something exceptional people do – and it helps them attain more in life.
Taking a nap can be tricky if you work in an open space full of people or as a cashier in a supermarket. So try to apply it immediately when you return home from work or shortly after that. It may seem you are giving away 10 or 20 minutes of your precious time that you don’t have but it will return manifold. You have to realize that the little tasks that would take you 10 minutes when tired will take you 1 minute if fresh – and all your time is back and you manage even more!
Dana-Sofie Šlancarová is a translator, writer, teacher, and entrepreneur. Her passion is to write and teach about the beauty of women’s cycles, pragmatic aspects of menstruation, and the incredible benefits of cyclic time management®.
She is the founder of the Cyklická žena® (The Cyclic Woman) project and an author of several books on this topic, including Návod na ženy (A Manual to Women: Navigating the Modern Man Through the Unpredictable World of Women, still only in Czech) that she co-wrote with Erik Hutter.
BE CYCLIC AND SLEEP MORE!
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