The who, what, & why of the Spring to Life Method

Caitlin, the host of the Spring to Life podcast, shares her journey and the creation of the Spring to Life Method. She discusses her background as a dancer and how it led her to become a hormone health coach, STEM educator, and Pilates instructor. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the menstrual cycle and how it affects women's bodies. Caitlin also talks about her struggles with body image and disordered eating and how she wants to help other women make healthier choices. She highlights the negative impact of diet culture and the pressure to be small as a dancer. Caitlin shares her own health struggles, including chronic pain, inflammation, and mental health issues, and how they motivated her to create the Spring to Life Method. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Spring to Life podcast. I'm Caitlin, your host slash hormone health coach, STEM educator, Pilates instructor, and creator of the Spring to Life Method. My goal is to promote feminine body independence and share stories of female resiliency to help you love your body more and unleash your inner superpower, your period. Let's dive in. So I am very excited to be sharing this very first episode of the Spring to Life podcast with you today. This project has been bouncing around in my brain for quite a while now, and I am finally taking a bite out of it and jumping in. So it might not be perfect at first, but I think this is some really important knowledge that I want to share with other women out there. So in today's episode, we are going to discuss the basics, the who, what, why of the Spring to Life Method. Let's start with the who. So I'm Caitlin. I am 31. I am a Leo. My favorite color is blue. And I've been a performer for most of my life, and initially that took the form of being a dancer. I trained in dance intensively as a teenager. I went on to pursue a professional ballet career and was on stage. I loved being on stage. I loved performing. But in my mid-20s, I decided to transition out of that career, and that brought me kind of in a winding way to what I do now with the Spring to Life Method. So I am a IIN certified hormone health coach, a FEM educator, and FEM stands for Fertility Education in Medical Management. And I'm also a certified Pilates instructor, and I created the Spring to Life Method and kind of an offshoot of that, Spring to Life Method Cyclical Pilates. So all of these interests of mine, all of these things that I do as part of my job are overlapping. So I started with my education as just a holistic health coach. I really wanted to learn more about how to naturally heal things going on in my body to improve my longevity, and this just was kind of a can of worms for me. Once I started this education, I went down this rabbit hole. I was my own guinea pig at first, trying all of these different protocols and diets and all of these different things to see what would work to help me alleviate my symptoms. And along the way, I had the opportunity to add on a hormone health concentration. And there was just some kind of nudge within me that told me that this was going to be really interesting. This is what I needed to know, mostly selfishly, you know, to figure out what's going on in my own body. And I was correct. I'm glad I followed the nudge. And it opened up my eyes to the truth about being a woman and having a menstrual cycle and what that truly means. So I was already a certified Pilates instructor at the time that I became a hormone health coach, but I didn't have the knowledge about our menstrual cycle. For instance, learning that there were four phases to our menstrual cycle completely blew my mind a couple of years ago. And mind you, I was 27 at the time that I was learning these things. So I had gone almost all of my 20s, a lot of, you know, entered adulthood without truly understanding my own biology. And for a lot of the time, I was working against my own biology, my own energy. And that was what was causing me to experience a lot of the symptoms that I was dealing with up until that point. The most recent thing that I've added to my business is being a FEM educator. I knew that I wanted to help women transition off of hormonal birth control. And having an alternative, which is cycle charting, was something that I wanted to be able to offer. So I teach the FEM method. I have been seeing just wonderful results, and it has been so fulfilling, so fulfilling for me to be able to educate other women on what is going on throughout their cycle and how to identify if they're having the correct hormonal fluctuations throughout their cycles. And then the Pilates element, ever since I became certified in Pilates, I have just been in love with this movement. But being able to cycle sync our exercise is just this added layer of being able to access our energy and harness it in just a really effective way to get the results you want from your workout, but by doing less. So you're doing less, achieving more, which kind of goes against our culture where a lot of the times more is more, and women are thought of as small men, and that just simply isn't true. So that is what I want to provide as education to other women. Now I have definitely alluded to some of the why behind, you know, why I created the Spring to Life method in the first place, but I want to give you some more context and some more details. So starting from the beginning, as a former professional ballet dancer, you can probably imagine the immense mental struggle that comes along with that in terms of body image. Now I was always, you know, blessed with the body type that fit the ballet mold, but once you reach adolescence, and I, you know, I kind of bloomed a little bit later, and then the stresses of life, once you start to drink, once you start to have more adult responsibilities and, you know, maybe you're not dealing with your mental health in appropriate ways, our body keeps the score. This is something that has really come to the forefront of our culture or is beginning to come to the forefront of our culture. So I kind of accumulated this really poor body image. I remember, gosh, like, I wish I could give myself a hug, you know, 10, 15 years ago at this point, because I remember wanting so badly to love my body and, like, kind of knowing deep inside that there was nothing wrong with me, but feeling all of this external pressure constantly, you know, from every which way that I was not thin enough, that I didn't have good enough muscle tone, that I didn't look good enough in a leotard and tights, that I wasn't ready to be on stage in a tutu, and that manifested in me having disordered eating habits. So I definitely never had a full-fledged eating disorder, but I definitely would yo-yo between eating super clean throughout the week, and then because I had been so restrictive with my food throughout the week, I would then binge on the weekends on, you know, all the things that I wasn't allowing myself to eat during the week, and then that just kind of perpetuated this cycle of guilt within myself, and it took me a really long time, even after I stopped dancing, to undo that damage, and I realize now is because I really didn't know how to properly nourish my body. You know, I definitely had nutrition seminars throughout my career as a dancer. I definitely read books, maybe not always the best books for actual good nutrition information for a young woman, for a young dancer, but it was really damaging to my mental health and my body image, and I know that this is kind of like an extreme example, you know, not too many people go the route of being a professional dancer, but I don't think that you need to be in that kind of microcosm to have experienced that kind of mental struggle around your body image, around eating, especially growing up in the 90s and early 2000s with the diet culture that we were exposed to, demonizing carbs, demonizing fat, all of these like low calorie options that we were given that really were foods that were just full of like all of these additives and artificial things that were not nourishing. So that was a huge factor for me, wanting to be able to influence other women who were maybe in my, where I was, you know, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and being able to guide them to make healthier choices for their bodies. So along with that poor body image as a dancer, the idea that smaller is better was really perpetuated and a lot of times, unfortunately, and I'm almost embarrassed to say this every time I bring it up in an interview or something, it feels kind of shameful at this point, but as a dancer, not getting your period was a sign that you're small, that you are small enough because your body is shutting down that system, it's taking it offline because really now I know you're under so much stress, your body is signaling that like this is not a safe time to become pregnant, not that I was trying to, obviously, but it was just a really backwards way of thinking about my body. So once I finished my dance career, I think I was about 25, I just became so disillusioned with it, it was something that I had loved for so long and couldn't imagine my life without until I was just completely fed up with it and I needed something different in my life. So I decided to transition out of that career and that was when a lot of my health struggles began to kind of come to the forefront. I had had a back injury, I had fallen in a restaurant job while I was still dancing, and it was something that I just didn't take care of at the time. So I was already dealing with these kind of chronic pain issues in my neck and upper back and in my shoulders to the point where I couldn't hold both of my arms up on the steering wheel while I was driving, I had trouble carrying groceries in, it hurt to have my purse on my shoulder, like major issues with pain and weakness then in my upper body. Inflammation, I remember just for the longest time looking in the mirror and not recognizing my face because I just felt like I was living in this layer of puffiness and I couldn't, like I just thought that I had gained weight, I just couldn't figure it out no matter how I ate, no matter if I was intermittent fasting for a long, like I was really bad for a long time, I was working so much that I would get up, drink coffee in the morning and not eat until 2 o'clock, you know, and wonder why I'm so angry and shaky and about to pass out. So a lot of times I was in this caloric deficit and still feeling really puffy and inflamed. At the same time, I was constantly getting sick, I was getting chronic yeast infections, my anxiety and depression were just like maxed out, like I really just thought that I was an anxious and depressed mess and like that was kind of my baseline. I was also dealing with really horrible hormonal cystic acne on my jawline and that wasn't something that I started to experience until I was an adult, until I was in my 20s, so I really had no tools at that point to take care of my skin because I had never really had to up until that point. And then the burnout factor would come in where, you know, I was working multiple jobs, I was going to school and, you know, taking care of relationships and kind of being a yes woman and I just completely burned myself out. So around the time I began my certification as a holistic health coach, I started to recognize because I was learning about it, I wouldn't have really known probably if I wasn't educating myself about it that I was in this state of adrenal fatigue. I would sleep as much as I could, I'd get up early in the morning and feel like I hadn't slept at all. I would just be wiped out in the afternoon and at the worst point, like the brain fog got so bad, I would forget to set alarms, I didn't show up to my shifts at the Pilates studio a couple times and I just really like at that point did not recognize who I was. So I knew that I needed to make some drastic changes and I also knew that the direction I was going with my education and the things that I was pursuing, I just knew within me that that was going to give me the answers that I needed. And so the more that I began to be educated in the areas of just holistic health in general and hormone health specifically and kind of the ins and outs of the female menstrual cycle, I was just blown away by how undereducated I was on my own body and I knew that it wasn't just me. I mean my mom hadn't told me about this stuff. I could remember one friend over all the years who I knew of that tracked her cycle and at the time when she was kind of telling me about it, I didn't understand what she was talking about and I thought it was weird and gross and that she was kind of crazy. So I knew that for the most part, most other women were also just as undereducated as I was because if I was thinking back, you know in fifth grade you have like a mini health class and they say, hey you're going to have a period, here's a pad. And that was kind of horrifying. They ask you if you know what a period is. I remember one girl raised her hand and said, it's when you pee blood. That's just horrifying as an 11-year-old girl having no context around it and just getting very bare minimum details from the adults in the room. And now I know that I can't necessarily blame them because they didn't know either. But I knew once I started to learn about this and how really we can work with our energy, it was something that I wanted to share with other women. And the other side of that is that it was really validating because I think a lot of times, especially because we're undereducated on our bodies and on our cycles, there is shame around having a period. There is, you know, this feeling of being, it's gross and your hormones are the problem. But when you realize that you're supposed to have these hormonal fluctuations and even your mental focus is different at different periods of your cycle, that it's something that you can work with instead of work against. So because of all that, I want every woman to know that her period is her superpower. So the spring to life method is kind of this culmination of providing body literacy, wholesome nutrition education, and cycle charting education to women. I have several different ways that I am working with women at this point. Number one would be a personalized protocol where we kind of do an audit of what's going on with your health history, what you're doing to support your health at this point. And I'm going to provide you with support and advice and perhaps supplementation recommendations, nutrition recommendations, exercise recommendations around what you have going on specifically and what your goals are. And I also provide hormone testing with that. I also educate women on how to chart their cycles. And this is something that I'm offering one-on-one at this point. There are several different methods of fertility awareness. The one that I provide focuses solely on external cervical mucus observations. And this is because we know that you can really tell your hormonal fluctuations based on your cervical mucus fluctuations. So being able to identify that pattern is going to help you to identify your fertile window and be able to use that for conception or to prevent pregnancy. But the major thing to know here is that your fertility is not only important when you're trying to conceive. It is still important to your overall health even if you are not trying to conceive. Even if you don't want to have kids, your fertility is still crucial to your health because it affects your brain. It affects your bones. It affects your mood. It affects your energy. All of these things, everything is connected. So if you are interested in learning how to chart your cycle up, please DM me on Instagram at Spring to Life Method. I would love to begin to walk you through that journey and help you out in that respect. I also have a cyclical Pilates app. So if you are interested in learning how to do less and achieve more in the context of exercise, this app is for you. I offer three different intensities of Pilates flows for you to adjust throughout your cycle. And this is something that I'm going to dive into in one of the upcoming episodes. So there will be more details forthcoming. But if you want to learn more about that, you can DM me at Spring to Life Method or at slm.cyclicalpilates on Instagram and we can get you hooked up with that. Or if you are, you know, kind of just becoming aware of this kind of knowledge about your body and you want maybe just a little introduction. And believe me, I am 31 years old now. I didn't start to learn about this until I was 27. So there is no shame in, you know, just getting your toes wet in terms of cycle thinking and cycle charting. I have over the past couple of years developed a journaling template that, number one, helps you to track your cycle and just become aware of where you're at in your cycle, what phase you're in, what kind of signs and symptoms to look out for, but also how to get your mindset right. So a lot of times we deal with mood swings and all of these different feelings throughout our cycle. And it can feel like maybe it's coming from externally or maybe you're feeling like you're crazy. Believe me, you are not. But I have found that being able to sit down, take, you know, 10 minutes to journal it out, and I have a very organized way of doing it. You can download my template and you can, you know, print it out and use that, or you can just copy it into your existing journal. But that is a really great place to start if you are intrigued by this information and you want to learn more. You want to start to familiarize yourself with what is going on in your body. So I will link that in the show notes for you to get that free journal download, or you can connect with me on Instagram and you can get it that way as well. But I'm so excited to be starting this new podcast and connecting with you and sharing my passion. I've always wanted to help other people, and this is how it has come to be in my life. I want you to know that your period is your superpower and I want to teach you how to use it. So enjoy and thanks for listening. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Spring to Life podcast. Check out the show notes for the resources mentioned in this episode. And if you learned something new or if you resonated with this conversation, please share. Tag me in your Instagram stories at Spring to Life Method, leave a five-star review, or simply share it with a girlfriend because all women deserve to know their superpower.