Women In Wellness: Megan Faller of The Aligned Cycle on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
The power and beauty of a woman’s cycle goes beyond her ability to get pregnant. So often when we discuss menstrual cycles, the focus is on periods and trying to get pregnant or avoid pregnancy. But our menstrual cycles provide us with critical information about our health, our mood, and our energy. We can get a baseline picture of health from a single charted cycle. With continued charting, we can predict when the next cycle (period) will begin, we can evaluate the impact of dietary or lifestyle changes on a particular person’s health, and we can go deeper into understanding our own unique patterns.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Megan Faller.
Megan Faller is a Menstrual Cycle & Productivity Strategist and Founder of The Aligned Cycle. As a Certified FertilityCare Practitioner she spent years helping women understand their bodies and chart their cycles so they could make important decisions about planning their families and scheduling medical procedures. She stumbled into using the power of her cycles and hormonal waves to schedule her work and now she helps other women put their cycles to work for them, so they can make an impact and grow their businesses with flow and ease.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
In my early 20s I was introduced to fertility awareness and it blew my mind. How I’d gone through over 10 years of menstrual cycles, sex education, and hundred of women’s magazines and never come across this foundational health knowledge still confounds me. Eventually I took a class to learn more about tracking and interpreting my cycles and then I went through an education program to teach other women fertility awareness. While I personally used the power of my cycle to interpret my health and plan my family, it wasn’t until I stumbled into resting during menstruation that I realized the full potential and beauty of my cycle and hormonal patterns. Now I use my cycle to plan my schedule so that I can enjoy more flow and ease in my work, and I help other cycling female entrepreneurs to do the same. As a homeschooling mom of 3 boys, I want to use my work time to the fullest, so that I have energy, time, and attention to give me family, home, and health.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
During a session, a client exclaimed that she had to call her mom and tell her about what she just learned about her cycle and reproductive health. She wanted to fill her mom in! Not on the details of her health, but on general reproductive knowledge that she thought her mom needed to know. The client herself was almost thirty years old, and yet there she was, wanting to fill her mom in on this important information. The main takeaway is that we can do so much better. We should equip all women with the facts of their health and fertility, and do it early on.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I was scared to pivot, so I kept doing the same work, in the same way, for too long. It was safe and familiar, but I was approaching burnout. I knew I wanted to continue working in the fertility and wellness space, but the way I was working wasn’t aligned with my highest skills. I wanted to be energized by my work and to find ease and flow. I wanted energy and attention to give when the work day was done. I have found these things now, but I had to let go of something good to discover something better. The lesson is — don’t be afraid to pivot or change course. There is power in leaning into the unknown. Also, tune in to your unique patterns of energy and mood and work in accordance for maximum flow.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
The other women in the world of women’s health and cycle/fertility awareness. Their passion for, and commitment to, serving women and empowering them to make informed choices is an inspiration. The work they do, in spite of many obstacles and objections, inspires me. Our work as entrepreneurs can be lonely. On particularly hard days, the collaboration, community, and encouragement of women doing similar work make it possible to keep going.
Ok perfect. Now let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
I believe that women have incredible gifts to share with the world. Sometimes women can feel like their biological design keeps them sharing their gifts on a larger scale. I want all women to have the tools and support they need to make an impact. Our womanhood allows us to create, grow, and nourish human life. It also gives us an advantage when it comes to building and sustaining businesses and movements that change the world. We should know how to tap into, and maximize, that advantage.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
The following tweaks are good for fertility and cycle health, but also overall wellbeing.
- Optimizing your sleep by limiting unnatural light. We can do this by avoiding screens in the hours prior to bed (or wearing blue light glasses when screens are unavoidable). Sleeping in total darkness helps increase our sleep quality and supports our hormonal health, so get the lights and devices out of the bedroom and invest in some blackout curtains.
- Find your favorite fast, good-for-you food options. Instead of being tempted to grab processed foods focus on keeping some easy, nutrient dense options on hand. Some of my favorite options include bone broth and sweet potatoes. All you need to do is warm the broth or roast the sweet potatoes and then add in what you have on hand. For bone broth, this may be veggies, herbs, or spices, along with a scoop of coconut oil or a splash of coconut aminos. And for roasted sweet potatoes, consider hummus or avocado, a pickled veggies for gut health supporting probiotics, and a sprinkle of seeds.
- Dry brushing. It is super accessible and can help with lymphatic flow and detox. As an added bonus, it feels amazing and exfoliates the skin. I like to dry brush prior to a shower. You simply use a dry body brush to brush your skin, beginning at your feet and brushing toward your heart with long, gentle strokes.
- Find your favorite way to move and do it, often. We all know exercise is good for us, but sometimes we get caught up in how it should look. But the thing is, movement does so much for our bodies — releases stress hormones, increases blood flow, supports digestion and detox. We don’t need fancy classes or equipment to move our bodies. We just need to find a way of moving that brings us joy and to incorporate it into our day. This could be as simple as stretching, hiking/walks, or jumping jacks.
- Take a few slow, deep breaths before meals. It helps your body shift into rest and digest and allows for better digestion and nutrient absorption and it supports hormone health by reducing stress.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
A cycle awareness and tracking movement. Understanding that our cycles are an important indicator. Charting our cycles provides a to monitor and optimize our wellness. Cycle awareness gives menstruating women a powerful way to connect to their health and wellbeing — both their physical and mental health. Thankfully, I think this movement has already begun, but I would love to see if spread like wildfire. My vision and hope is that we are equipping younger women with this critical self knowledge and that they can pass it on to future generations. While cycle tracking directly impacts the health of cycling women, I believe that women who understand and care for themselves are better able to care for the health and well being of those around them, both young and old.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
- The power and beauty of a woman’s cycle goes beyond her ability to get pregnant. So often when we discuss menstrual cycles, the focus is on periods and trying to get pregnant or avoid pregnancy. But our menstrual cycles provide us with critical information about our health, our mood, and our energy. We can get a baseline picture of health from a single charted cycle. With continued charting, we can predict when the next cycle (period) will begin, we can evaluate the impact of dietary or lifestyle changes on a particular person’s health, and we can go deeper into understanding our own unique patterns.
- No matter how much you have on your plate, as a woman there are times of the month when it will all feel like too much. This is what hormones do to cycling women. They rise and fall. And when they plummet, right before your period begins and on the first few days of your period, you aren’t feeling your best. You may experience overwhelm, exhaustion, or mood swings. Your inner critic may come out. This will pass. Give yourself grace and keep on going.
- Managing your energy is key to preventing burnout and achieving your goals and our cycles provide a guide. So often we focus on managing our time and our money, but our energy is a critical resource. We need periods of rest. Tune in to when and where you most need a break and focus on the activities that actually restore your energy versus the ones that deplete your energy.
- There are answers out there to whatever challenge we face. When we are faced with challenges — health, work, or personal — sometimes it can feel like we’ve hit a dead end. But just because you haven’t found the answers yet doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. During my time as a FertilityCare Practitioner, women would come to me after months or years of not finding answers or solutions to their health issues. They were thrilled at the chance to have someone look at their issues in a new way and, often, answers were found. Try asking “What haven’t I tried?,” “Who might be able to help?,” etc. to keep yourself open to new paths.
- The way we work is equally important to the work we do. We often come to our work with a paradigm of the right way to work. We internalize a standard that may not be right for us. Ambitious women can get really good at self motivating and taking action, so much so that they find it challenging to take a break. When we work with our cycles we tune into our unique needs, whether they encourage us to go out and make things happen or to retreat and recharge. And as we work with our cycle, we can take our break with peace of mind, knowing that our time to move and do is just around the corner. We can also push hard during mid cycle when our hormonal waves are increasing our energy and drive.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Mental health is such a huge issue and can be more closely related to our cycles and hormones. We hear jokes about women being hormonal, but our hormones, or more specifically, hormonal imbalance, can cause a variety of mental health related symptoms ranging from mood swings to suicidal thoughts. There is a condition called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) that can cause severe anxiety or depression in the week or two before the beginning of a woman’s period. Tuning in to our cycles and connecting it to our moods and mental health can really help women to understand themselves and to seek help and support where and when we need it most.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Follow me on IG @thealignedcycle to learn how to tune in to your cycles and to grow a business with flow and ease.
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: Megan Faller of The Aligned Cycle on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.