Sow The Seeds Of Hormonal Harmony With Dominique Elissa
let it grow!
It’s time to plant a new health ritual, but with so many fleeting trends, it’s hard to know what’s worth your time! I caught up with the wellness queen Dominique Elissa who’s been testing seed cycling for over three months. What’s that, you ask? It’s all about using different seeds throughout your menstrual cycle to balance hormones and tackle annoying symptoms like acne, bloating, and cramps. Plus, it’s a tasty way to spice up your meals – think sprinkling on salads or adding a crunchy twist to your salmon. Curious? Keep reading for all the juicy details!
What is Seed Cycling?
Seed Cycling is all about having different seeds depending on your cycle. What a lot of people don’t know is that we have four phases in our cycle, as women we are just told, when you bleed that’s it, but no, we have four distinct phases where our estrogen and progesterone are changing. By having different seeds depending on where we are, we can balance out those levels and can really help with symptoms such as acne, bloating, and sometimes pain… I really enjoy it because it’s delicious.
What kick-started your seed cycling journey
I went off the birth control pill nine months ago. The first three months were smooth sailing, but the next three months brought symptoms. By month six, my skin broke out, my gut was in chaos, and I felt like I was doing everything right. I felt like, “Why me?” I saw people doing all the wrong things – not exercising, eating whatever they wanted – and their skin looked perfect. I just thought “I’m going to have to find an alternative method.”
What are your tips for incorporating seed cycling into everyday life
Gratitude has been the most effective practice for my health. It helped me see the good in my life and become a glass-half-full person. It was how I beat my insomnia and disordered eating. It was so powerful. My second tip is meditation. All these things are free, and people think wellness is expensive but doing vedic meditation, mantra meditation, 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon, allowed me to go inward, and I think that was a big reason I found my purpose. Instead of masking my feelings by comparing myself to others on social media, I listened to my inner voice. Then, there’s movement, movement is just incredible. I just became a qualified Pilates instructor, and I am just completely obsessed with movement and just mixing it up because movement should be fun.
What are the benefits you’ve noticed
Seed cycling has been really beneficial for me because I include it in my breakfast – whether on coconut yogurt or in a smoothie. It’s adding more protein and fat to my diet, which has a positive flow-on effect. It also encourages me to eat breakfast. So many women don’t eat breakfast and they fast, but all the studies on fasting are mainly done on men. Women have hormones and four phases of our cycle, meaning we should be eating accordingly, so that’s been one of the main benefits. It’s given me more routine in my life.
How’s the journey been?
It becomes fun. I truly believe that someone reading this is like oh my god this sounds so overwhelming, all these different things “Start with one thing, and you start doing the seed cycling, start adding the supplements, then you enjoy that. The more good things you do and you trial, your body is going to thank you. I feel like lots of women are dealing with hormonal issues and I hope this can inspire people to not give up and try new remedies old and new.
What seeds do you have at different phases
For phase one, you have flaxseed and pumpkin seed. For phase two, you have sesame and sunflower seeds. Because they level out the progesterone and estrogen in your body, and they also need to be crushed up. The seeds have to be grounded, you can’t have whole seed. That’s one of the reasons people are resistant to trying it, as it quite time consuming.
What would you say to yourself at the start of seed cycling?
Be adventurous for seed cycling because you can put it on your sweet or savoury dishes, I always thought you had to add it to fruit and yogurt but it’s beautiful on a salad or crust your salmon, be adventurous with it!
What habit do you want to start in 2025?
More low impact workouts, more yoga, more yin. Yoga had such a moment three years ago, and now we are all Pilates girlies. I want to see yoga come back to the surface, it’s so good for not only balancing hormones because it’s calming your parasympathetic nervous system but it’s also going to help with detoxification through twisting, mobility and a lot of breath. Which is also amazing for our health.
Tune into the Selfdom Podcast for meditation, positivity, and health tips this New Year.
Take a moment for yourself — start your journey with the Selfdom Gratitude Journal.
Imagery: @dominiquelissa / @selfdom_
