The Possibilities of Cycle Tracking for Your Business and Life with Laura Kline-Taylor

Catherine A. Wood  00:02

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today, I am really honored to have a special colleague and friend here with me. I’m excited to introduce Laura Klein Taylor to my community. Laura is a life and leadership coach. And she and I actually have a long history of knowing one another. She was my first full pay client back in 2014. I think I actually told the story of how you hired me on my 38th sample session on my last podcast. And I was our first coach. And that really kind of created a beautiful opening for relationship that we’ve created and built over the past eight years of you joining the same coach training program that I’ve registered and was part of us training coaches together within that organization. You joining the unbounded mastermind last year, and then you coming on board, my team to co facilitate the mastermind with me. And it’s just been a beautiful, beautiful relationship that I feel like really speaks to how both of you and I do business like just through deepening relationships. So welcome to the podcast. And I’d love for you to introduce yourself, who you are and what you do.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  01:26

Thanks, Kat. I love the reconnection to our journey. And I definitely have related to myself as following in your footsteps in some ways. So it’s cool to be here. On the podcast with you, I am a life and leadership coach. I work with women who want to be in powerful conversations about motherhood. And my favorite clients are spiritual entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurial spirits. So that just means somebody who is in business in a way that connects them to a greater purpose. They know how powerful they are as individuals, but they also know that it’s greater than them and so they seek to develop themselves in their relationship with spirit. And some of my clients also our chief executive, mothers is the term I like to use I self identify as that because my motherhood informs my business as much as my entrepreneurship informs my motherhood in my family life. So chief executive mother, Chief Executive Officer, and everything in between.

Catherine A. Wood  02:32

I love the way you introduce yourself, when I think about starting that chapter of life with Parth I always look to you for inspiration and education and, and humanizing it right? Like you have this beautiful way of humanizing motherhood of not just sharing the rainbows and butterfly aspects of motherhood, but also the really hard parts, which I think normalizes the experience for us, and for those of us who are interested in pursuing motherhood.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  03:03

Yeah, yeah, totally. Motherhood and leadership, I think are almost synonyms in my life, because I learned so much about who I am by what motherhood requires of me. And then I take that to all of my professional relationships to because sometimes leadership requires something of me that is more than I initially think I’m prepared for. But it’s, it’s one in the same as far as a training ground for me.

Catherine A. Wood  03:30

You know, you entered your journey into coaching almost simultaneously with becoming a coach. And I wonder what the journey of coaching and that level of self awareness how it’s supported you with becoming a mother?

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  03:47

Whoo, that’s fine. Yeah, my transformational journey, and my coach training happened while I was pregnant, and then I gave birth and graduated from this training program on the same weekend. And so the two have been parallel paths for me. And so I really look at the, like, the term being pregnant with possibility. Like I was pregnant with life, literally. And I was cultivating and just dating this, this new business. And so I think what I experienced literally, biologically, physiologically, through growing a child and birthing a child and having a young child really has been the almost direct template that I can draw from to talk about my business to talk about new entrepreneurship. And now I’m seven, almost seven years into motherhood and seven years into business. And I really feel there are some places where I have my ceiling so to speak. And yet every new year with a child is a first for me, it’s a first for them, and it’s a first for me. So I get to keep that beginner’s mind as I launch into a new level of business or a new way of relating to people who are my, my clients who want to learn.

Catherine A. Wood  05:19

I really appreciate that about you. Like you always embody a beginner’s mindset. I heard this quote recently that I literally have it on my desk. I don’t remember where I read it. But the quote is the minute you think, you know, something, you stop paying attention.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  05:37

Yes, yes. Yes. And that the enter the land of assumptions,

Catherine A. Wood  05:45

enter the land of assumptions. Well, I am excited to learn from you today. Like I, you have a long lineage in your family of educators, right? Your parents are educators, you grew up in the university world, and I often think of you as an an educator, and I’m excited for you to share with us about your journey with cycle wisdom, it feels like it’s a huge part of who you are, and what you teach about.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  06:18

Yeah, awesome. I think I come from a long lineage of educators and also rebels. Both my parents rebelled against their very religious upbringing, and then became educators of religion instead of practitioners of, and so I, I’ve really tried to be an educator of things. I’m also a practitioner of, and teach what has efficacy for me, even if I’m not an expert, by training, I’m an expert by passionate living and engaging in whatever the subject matter is. So I embraced cycle wisdom, and really dove into this more spiritual path for understanding how women in particular, who have bodies that men straight can draw on the wisdom that is innate, that we don’t usually tap into we respond to it. But we don’t tap into it to understand how it is part of a larger system, that is cycle wisdom. So we can look to the systems that are found in nature, to understand ourselves as cyclical beings. So think of think of the seasons of the year, as a cycle, there’s the dark season, the cold, more quiet season, and all of the time leading up to that, where it becomes colder, slower pace, people who withdraw seek warmer things. And then the season that follows it, which is more and more of an emergence. So the seasons is one example. But the moon might be another I think of a dark moon, then slowly growing and waxing into the full moon, then it wanes again. And so there are both these sort of expanding and contracting phases. And then these two polar opposites on either side of those waning and waxing, expanding and contracting phases. So that literally happens in every season in nature, every cycle in nature, I should say, there’s the, the low tide and the high tide, and the flow on the way to the high and the ebb on the way to the low. And then there’s like, midnight, and high noon, and how the sun cycles. And so we can draw on these as examples for how we operate in the world, as humans of the world. So I think some of us who might be familiar with tracking the moon, or the stars via astrology, like we get really good at looking outside ourselves, and looking to the earth, but we forget that we are of the earth. And so within our bodies is also the system. And so that’s what I mean, that’s what’s at the core and kind of provides the framework for understanding cycle wisdom. And what happens in our bodies, at the most micro level is a creativity cycle where our bodies are prepared to create life, and every month, offer the opportunity for life to to emerge. And so in our uterine and ovarian systems, there’s an expansion and there’s a contraction and a release. There’s the dark or Maybe winter phase, which is menstruation. When there’s really nothing to do, there’s total release quiet, and new life has yet to begin. And then there’s ovulation, which is like the summer, the full moon, the high activity, we have most of our energy by then, at that time, because we are at at a peak point. So winter and summer could be two of those poles. Spring on the way from winter to summer, autumn on the way from summer to winter. And if we look, then to compare it with the menstrual cycle, menstruation and ovulation are the two poles. And these are the ones we learn about right as women we learn ovulation, no one is happening. So you can either get pregnant or don’t get pregnant, right? And we get really good at managing that. And then menstruation no one that’s coming. So you can say no to the pool party you were invited to, or book your vacation a week later. And we have this hyper awareness on these two that are either about motherhood or relationships or being out in the world. But they’re not about what’s happening in our systems as creators. And how might we leverage that, to inform how we can go out and do something daring in business, or launch our really great program, when we’re in that phase, when we most want to be seen that the most primal level, ovulation is the release of the egg, it’s the LOOK AT ME sperm, calm and get it

Catherine A. Wood  11:59

oh my gosh, that’s hysterical.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  12:01

And it’s like, it’s just a template, right? Like it doesn’t, you’re not gonna go stand in front of the room and your networking meeting and say like I’m ovulating today. But you might know that and then choose to use that as the time to say the thing that you’re most scared of. Because you know, at your core, you’re sort of primed to be received, and to not mind being seen, being visible being a little loud. So women who work this system might might only post, when they’re in the expansion phase, when they’re feeling more outward, and connect, like they’re happy to connect with others. Maybe women will use the the contracting phase to instead of lash out on the people they love during the PMs Bay’s when we all are accustomed to apologizing for our behavior, but instead use it to edit that book that you’ve been writing that you know really needs a critical eye, and yours is the best one. So you’re channeling that discerning powerful energy on something really productive. It’ll serve your business, and then you can leverage that cycle really intentionally, every month.

Catherine A. Wood  13:24

I so appreciate hearing you talk about cycle wisdom every time that you do, because I feel like I hear something new for myself each time. And it’s also really out there from my own experience of myself and my own access to my seasonal awareness of how I operate. And when I’m at, you know, different experiences of creativity because for me, like, I do have this experience of myself when I’m in my creative. I don’t know expression. And then I also experienced myself when I’m in this withdrawal period. But they don’t occur on a monthly basis. They typically occur on an annual basis, right? Like, we just I mean, you know this, I just relaunched the podcast and the website and brought on a team and got married. And like that is how I experienced myself as the creator. It’s like bam, bam, bam, many things at once. Someone once told me I have like balanced masculine and feminine energy, which at the time meant very little to me. But I do have this capacity to kind of just go go go and disconnect from my I don’t know, I guess it’s my, my, my needs in the moment to pursue a goal and then I recuperate and withdraw. But it’s it is it’s like bi annually rather than monthly. And my experience of you is that you really empower the The this the monthly seasonality of your cycle. And so I guess my question is like, what do you gain from being attuned with your monthly cycle? Like, what? How does it support you? Yeah. And also, also, do you experience this for a lot of people like is this a common a common experience for people who are, who track their cycles and who are kind of clear on the season that they’re in?

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  15:36

Love it. So you’re a finance person. So I’m going to use an analogy that I think you’ll love and can probably speak to, you know how, if you if you meet somebody for the first time and they want to start a budget, you first will ask them to track their expenses, maybe over a quarter or three months or so. And then they can get a sense of what’s going out and what’s coming in and how it is for them and what they really need. And then establish a budget based on having some information. The same can be said for tracking your cycle and tracking the monthly seasons. So it’s like a research project in a way, the more attuned I am, and the more attuned I’ve seen people be with what it’s like and at each of the four stages on a monthly basis, then you can be more intentional and design how you want it to go the next time around. And it might be that one month or two months, you don’t really leverage that phase, because it’s hard to be with, I find that some people are really just more comfortable in their masculine, you know, that young, outward producing energy, and some people are really deliciously comfortable in that withdrawing inward phase. And so the activities that you’re up to in business, and where you are in the stage might not play out every every month, like it might be happening, literally in your female physiology, but it might not be expressed in the outside world, it might just be that you choose to do some activities with the kids that are outside of your comfort zone, in your inner spring and summer. Because that supports you and your family life and your business life is a little bit more consistent until you know the launch happens in a at that annual point. So when you’re tracking your cycle, you’re noticing all of the ways you’re willing to show up with your partner with your kids, with your friends with all of the things you’re up to, and then at different monthly periods it can it can play out differently, I guess is the way I could answer that.

Catherine A. Wood  18:01

I mean, I appreciate that I hear like it as a permission slip, right, like the permission slip to empower the wisdom of your cycle when it supports you. And just be mindful of it. Even when you’re perhaps not practically embodying it, or adhering to it. Yeah. So I’m just trying to get clear in my mind. So will you walk through each of the four stages of the cycle, and the name and the purpose that each of those stages serves? I think my like, my economist brain is wanting a spreadsheet.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  18:41

Totally. Yeah, and there’s sort of two ways to do this. There’s the there’s the way that focuses on our hormones and what happens in our bodies. And then there’s the sort of spiritual lens that it takes. And so what I could offer and I don’t know if you can provide an additional resource to support this, but I do have a visual that can demonstrate it, you just picture like a circle with four quadrants. At the top of the circle is menstruation, or inner winter, inner, uterine winter. And that’s the point where the release and the quiet is happening. And at the bottom of the cycle is enter summer or ovulation. And so there’s these like north and south poles so to speak. And in the top right quadrant, the body goes from menstruation into the follicular phase, that’s the hormonal phase where the the egg is getting released and all of the follicles are starting to connect In wake up and turn on and that’s your inner spring it’s literally like the buds are emerging the blessings on the trees New Life is everywhere and then that transitions to the bottom right cycle which starts taking you into enter summer and that’s the ovarian phase or I’m sorry the ambulatory phase

Catherine A. Wood  20:32

Haley This is an edit

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  20:43

I’m wanting the visual I’m wanting to like talk through the visual because I’m getting my maximum except there’s like two overlapping on top of them do you want

Catherine A. Wood  20:59

yeah

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  21:33

okay so basically the four phases

Catherine A. Wood  21:41

spiritually

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  21:42

speaking are inner winter, inner spring, inner summer and inner autumn. And how that translates in the physiological hormonal framework is that enter winter is menstruation. Enter spring is the follicular phase. In our summer is the ovulation or Abila Tori phase. And inner Autumn is the luteal phase. So menstruation is in our winter. It’s the dark, quiet, still most withdrawn phase of the creativity cycle. In our spring, or the follicular phase is literally like what what happens in outer spring, the blossoms start to bud and the leaves start to come out onto the trees, that’s happening in the womb, the follicular cells in the ovaries are starting to do exactly that and create new life. In ovulation. There’s the release of the egg, the full bright sun, high tide high noon, so to speak. And then in our autumn or the luteal phase. It’s the leaves are falling from the trees, metaphorically speaking. And what’s happening in the uterus is that the endometrium lining is being shed, because there was no impregnation of the egg. And so that lining is no longer needed to protect the birth or the the growing life in the body. And so then that gets released and shed during menstruation. So those are the four phases. And there are a number of different sort of overlapping visuals and maps that can be used. And I’ve really worked hard to reconcile all the material that’s out there in a way that makes space for the more scientific hormonal conversation and then this spiritual sort of lived experience of that in our lives, and it’s complex, but it’s definitely one that I love being academic about and creating resources to share.

Catherine A. Wood  23:57

I also hear just how empowering of a experience it is like of talking about it from that lens, right like the idea of getting to express in your home I’m in my inner autumn, and then you put your you know your head into editing a book or a workbook rather than criticizing your husband or your children, right. It’s like it’s just such an empowering interpretation versus some of these more like this colorized this this way that we’ve come to, to normally talk about our cycles that feels disempowering, dehumanizing, ungenerous, unwelcoming. I just hear how much it supports you and your family. And I’ve also heard you talk about the ways in which your family is fully enrolled in this interpretation of your cycle and I’d love for you to share like a couple of the ways that you have brought your family on board with you in this In this way of living this way of operating,

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  25:04

one of the things I’ve worked really hard to do is normalize the language. And to be a little bit, you know, out there about it for so long, I would refer to my period as my period with hushed tone. Or when I needed to care take somebody else a lot, I might even say like, it’s the time of my cycle. But now my very rebellious approach is to call it it’s my bleeding time. And to kind of normalize bleeding as something that is powerful and beautiful, and blood as life creating, and not just something that’s painful and gory and gruesome. Because the societal response to menstrual blood is that it’s gory, and gross and gruesome. And so in my family, I’ll tell, I’ll tell my family, it’s day one of my bleed mom is on her bleeding time. And I’ve let the kids know that I don’t pick them up. During that time, I don’t carry heavy things. And they give me some space. They’re like, so you’re bleeding time. And I’ve introduced the concept of the seasons to and so some, initially, I was, I would tell Eloise, it’s as if it’s snowing in mommy’s body right now. And so sometimes they’ll ask me, mommy, Is it snowing in your body? And I’ll say, yeah, it is. And that’s fun and playful for them. It also helps my husband help me. He wants to be supportive and take the kids. And so he gets really fierce and protective over me and he’ll tell our son, It’s mommy’s bleeding time, give her some space. And I just find that so delightful because men empowered around. Period talk is so uncommon to me. And then one of my favorite stories, our babysitter was bathing our son a year or so ago, and she reported that he told her it was his bleeding time while in the bath, and she asked him what what does that mean? And he showed her the booboo on his knee. And, and doesn’t of course, he’s for understand that, that it’s not the same thing. But he’s just being empowered around, there’s a time that you can announce that I’m having a different experience than you might be. Or then you might know about. I’ll also feel no shame around rejecting an invitation that my husband may say are, you know, my work colleagues are going out? Do you want to come? Or can we have our neighbors over? When I’m in a phase when I’m more withdrawn? I’ll say I could, but I’m just really I’m separating from the outer world right now. And can just schedule it for next week. And that normalizes it, and doesn’t make me the bad guy, I just the person on a cycle with with the cycle and a time she’s willing to empower socializing a little bit more.

Catherine A. Wood  28:10

I mean, I really hear how the wisdom of cycle awareness plays out, has played out in your family, and has supported your experience of prosperity in your family. And I’m wondering how it has supported your business? Hmm.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  28:27

Well, I have a couple of clients who, even before I knew if they were aware of this part of my work, I sensed that they would be very empowered by the structure. So I would fold it in and let people know that I coach three times a month. And sometimes that fourth month, we take off, to menstruate or go on vacation, or integrate, you know, and I’ll make a joke of it. Because, yeah, a lot of there are a lot of reasons to take a break every month. But when I can speak very, very outwardly and playfully about that. Many women have just laughed and said, well, the Yeah. And that’s been the door into an empowered conversation about how we can play with this time. And I will bring it into client conversations when we noticed there’s a cycle playing out in their business or in their relationships, and I’ll get curious where they are on their menstrual cycle, with permission and all feel intuitive course, but it’s become a framework that many clients are really thrilled to rely on. And, and, and give permission to, to all the phases that that they go through.

Catherine A. Wood  29:48

I mean, I so appreciate your transformation and your experience of how you’ve shifted. Because when I first met you back in 2014 like my experience those of us that this was, you know, not at all part of your life, not at all part of who I know you to be as a glob a globetrotter and an educator like in the boardroom facilitating corporate trainings, right? Like, this is a very different version of you. So I guess I’m curious, like, what was the inspiration that opened these doors for you?

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  30:31

I began working with a shaman, a practitioner of Earth wisdom, in May of 2020. And that was right around the same time that I decided I was done having my two year old follow me around to nurse. I mean, we were two months into the pandemic. And so I didn’t need any more contact with my children than I was already having. But I recognized that I wanted to wean him and I wanted to reclaim body autonomy, but that I wanted to do it in this really intentional way that honored all that I had been doing with my body in service of these lives that I had been growing and, and birthing and raising. And I think it was a therapist who mentioned that I might check out Chinese herbs to support my hormones. And that just sent me down rabbit hole, I got really curious about all the alternative ways, alternative for me new ways that I might support myself, because I was recognizing that being off the hormones that come with nursing and pregnancy, and being I hadn’t been on a pill for four years, but I had been prior to being to getting pregnant, I had been on the pill for 15 years. And so that hormonal cocktail, that synthetic hormonal cocktail was what put my hormones on this cycle that they were, which isn’t actually a menstrual cycle. That’s another conversation but my body was a mess and, and resetting it really took something and took a level of awareness that I guess I didn’t realize I was pretty well practiced in in tracking. And then I found this book called Wild power by Alexandra Pope and Shani Hugo will let sir there these two brilliant creators of a program called Red School. And it was through reading their material that I just became began curating all the thought leadership that was out there on the subject, there wasn’t a whole lot, and then putting it together in a, in a form that really served me and my life. And then it was just I said, I teach what has efficacy for me, because it works so well. I thought there’s something here that that others need.

Catherine A. Wood  33:00

I love that. And I love how much you own it. Right like I still notice in my body, I get a little bit of a reaction when you talk about some of the things that you believe in, it’s just not part of my world. But the way in which you talk about it so flatly, so transparently is empowering. It’s normalizing it’s it’s just so lovely seeing another woman leader and coach and business owner, being so fully self expressed. So thank you for your authenticity, we will absolutely link in the show notes, to your website, to your social handles to that book you mentioned and any other worksheet or cycle wisdom that you would love to share with our audience. And I want to end with a question that I asked all my guests which is what has supported you in becoming a prosperous empath.

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  34:00

You mean aside from menstrual cycle awareness?

Catherine A. Wood  34:03

Could be that it’s totally

Laura Kline-Taylor Roethel  34:05

that but I would say it’s it’s that and it is also been this piece that we touched on which is growing my prosperity and applying my empathy to these little beings that I’m raising as a mom so it’s it’s not having my business and my work compete with my family and my motherhood but really requiring that they integrate. That’s ultimately been I think the the practice that is supported me most.

Catherine A. Wood  34:44

You continue to inspire me, thank you so much. It’s such a treat to have you. And thank you everyone for tuning in.