Episode 73 - How I Healed Cystic Acne After 15 Years of Struggle
I need to start with honesty: I struggled with hormonal acne from age 11 until well into my 20s, & I've never publicly shared this story. For over 15 years, I kept this part of my life hidden, pushed under the rug, never spoken about. Not because it wasn't significant—but because I was ashamed.
Hormonal acne was the thing I felt most insecure about in my entire body. The cystic breakouts that hurt physically & emotionally. The comments from kids at school. The desperate attempts with burning skincare products, birth control pills, & every "miracle" solution that never worked. The disconnection from myself because I couldn't cope with what my face looked like.
But today, my skin is glowy, soft, plump, & clear. People who only know me now say "what are you talking about, you have good skin." They didn't see the years of pain, the isolation, the shame spiral every time I looked in the mirror. They don't know that healing my hormonal acne has been my biggest accomplishment with my body—even bigger than embracing my menstrual cycle.
I finally understand what my skin needs to thrive. Not through one magical product, but through a complete shift in how I approach skin health: light & darkness as nutrients, circadian rhythm alignment, mitochondrial health, cellular hydration, the menstrual cycle connection, & understanding what actually supports healing versus what makes hormonal acne worse. This is my story, & what I learned about truly healing hormonal acne from the inside out.
Topics covered
In this episode, we discussed
- Personal journey with cystic acne from age 11 into 20s & shame around it
- Birth control pill clearing acne temporarily then returning worse on body
- First acne-free experience in Colombian Amazon: no artificial light, natural rhythm
- Environment as foundation: light exposure, circadian rhythm, meal timing, movement
- Unique approach beyond blood sugar: light, mitochondrial health, cellular hydration
- How light & darkness function as nutrients for skin health
- Oil-based products worsening dehydrated acne-prone skin
- Reconsidering sunscreen use for acne healing
- Daily skin practices: massage, dry brushing, cupping techniques
- Quantum Skin Health masterclass series announcement
Listen to the Episode
Timestamps
01:52 The answer to why I never shared this: shame
03:03 Struggling with hormonal acne from age 11 into my 20s: cystic acne was horrible
03:25 Cystic acne pain: knowing how much it will hurt the next day & feeling powerless
04:37 Being one of the first girls to get period & facing cruel comments about skin
05:38 Violent dermatologist skincare routine: seven steps of products that burned
07:40 Age 15: desperate enough to go on the heaviest birth control pill for hormonal acne
08:35 Cystic acne came back despite the pill: face, chest, shoulders, entire back
10:51 Colombia Amazon experience: skin completely cleared without the pill
15:53 The unique lens: blood sugar + light + circadian rhythm + mitochondrial health + menstrual cycle
18:44 The oil mistake: dehydrated skin with acne doesn't need more oil, needs hydration
The Shame & Pain of Hormonal Acne
When people ask what I felt most insecure about regarding my body, it was always my skin. It feels weird to say that now because my skin looks good, glowy even. But it wasn't always this way.
"I struggled with my skin since I was 11 years old. My hormones kicked in & my skin was like, let's give this girl hormonal acne, like cystic acne. And it was horrible. It was terrible. It hurts so much."
The Physical Pain
If you've had cystic acne, you know what I'm talking about. The pain you feel when the hormonal acne is coming up the day before. Knowing how much it's going to hurt the next day. Feeling like there's nothing you can do about it.
The cystic breakouts weren't just on my face. They spread to my chest, my shoulders, my entire back. Every outbreak was a reminder that something in my body was deeply out of balance.
The Emotional Toll
"I had to disconnect from myself a lot of times in my life because I could not cope with what my face looked like."
I wasn't the only one with something to say about my hormonal acne. Kids can be mean. I was one of the first girls in my class to get my period, & when the acne came, many people had comments. It made me extremely self-conscious about my skin, about the fact that other people could see what was going on.
For years, I lived in shame. Not just about my skin, but about my body betraying me, about feeling powerless, about the isolation that comes from not wanting anyone to look at your face.
Everything I Tried That Didn't Work
I have tried probably every single skincare product under the sun targeted to heal hormonal acne. Let me walk you through what I did wrong, so you can understand why topical solutions alone rarely solve hormonal acne.
The Burning Dermatologist Products
When I was in primary school, just moving to high school, my mom took me to a dermatologist. I was put on an extremely violent skincare routine with seven different steps—products that literally felt like my skin was burning all the time.
"As soon as I put the products on, my skin was literally on fire. It hurt so much. It hurt so bad. And up until today, I actually have no idea what was in these products."
There was some type of peroxide involved. The products were terrible. And they didn't really help my hormonal acne. Because at the time, I was only looking at products—not at my diet, not at supplementation or deficiencies, not at how I was moving or what I was eating.
I was a vegetarian, not looking at supplements, not connecting the dots between what I ate (or didn't eat) & how it impacted my skin. None of it.
The Birth Control Pill Desperation
At 15, I was done. I wanted a pill to clear my hormonal acne. The most famous pill at the time was the heaviest birth control pill. I read on forums online that women really benefited from it. I also had a boyfriend & wanted birth control anyway, so it felt like two birds with one stone.
I went to my doctor & said: "I have this acne. I don't want this acne anymore. I heard this pill works. I want this pill." She wrote a prescription for three months.
"Obviously, this pill made me feel like shit, but my skin started to clear up. So I took it & I kept taking it for a couple of years."
When the Hormonal Acne Came Back
Then the cystic acne started to come back. Not just on my face—also on my chest, shoulders, my entire back. I was absolutely desperate & didn't know what to do. This continued well into my 20s.
The birth control pill was just suppressing symptoms, not addressing root causes. The moment my body could no longer suppress the hormonal imbalance underneath, the acne returned with a vengeance.
The Wake-Up Call: Clear Skin in a Village Without Running Water
Here's what changed everything for me. I traveled to a village in the mountains with no running water, no electricity, very basic conditions. I was there for a while.
"My skin completely cleared up. And I was like, what the hell? How is this possible?"
This was my lightbulb moment. I was in this very natural environment—sunrise & sunset governing my day, eating simple whole foods, moving my body naturally, sleeping when it got dark, waking with the light. My skin had everything it needed to heal, & it did.
Then I came back to a westernized society in a city, & my hormonal acne came back. How was that possible? What was it about modern life that was so disruptive to my skin?
This question launched me into years of research, trial & error, & eventually discovering what my skin actually needed to thrive.
The Unique Lens: What Actually Heals Hormonal Acne
Everyone talks about blood sugar when it comes to hormonal acne. Yes, blood sugar is a huge factor. But there's so much more we need to discuss.
I take a pretty unique lens compared to other hormone coaches or specialists because I don't just look at one piece—I look at how everything connects.
Light & Circadian Rhythm
We have to talk about light & circadian rhythm & how they're connected to your menstrual cycle. I've done extensive research on how the skin responds to light, how light is a nutrient for the skin, but also how darkness can be considered a nutrient for the skin.
Your skin has its own circadian rhythm. When you're under artificial light for too many hours, when you're not seeing sunrise & sunset, when your sleep is disrupted—your skin's repair processes get thrown off.
Mitochondrial Health & Cellular Hydration
Mitochondrial health is directly connected to collagen production & skin healing. I've researched mitochondrial health, easy water (structured water), cellular hydration, & how they all connect to skin health.
One of the most important things I learned: when you have hormonal acne, there's often a lot of sebum production (skin feels oily), but many people also have dehydrated skin underneath.
"Like the worst thing you can do for dehydrated skin is put a lot of oil on it. I had to learn it the hard way. I thought I was doing all the right things. I was not."
The Menstrual Cycle Connection
Your skin changes throughout your menstrual cycle because hormone fluctuations affect sebum production, inflammation, & healing capacity. When I started tracking my skin changes alongside my cycle phases, I could finally predict & prevent breakouts.
Hormonal acne isn't random. It follows patterns connected to your estrogen & progesterone fluctuations, your stress response, your blood sugar regulation, your circadian rhythm alignment.
What I Had to Unlearn About Hormonal Acne Treatment
I followed a lot of blind advice that made my hormonal acne worse, not better. Here's what I had to completely rewire in my thinking:
The Oil Myth
"Oh, you need to use tallow. Oh, you need to use oils. Oh, you need to use this magic rose oil or lotus oil. Oil, oil, oil."
I came to understand that oil is actually not the best for a lot of people's skin these days. When you have hormonal acne with lots of sebum production but dehydrated skin underneath, adding more oil on top doesn't solve the dehydration problem—it can actually make things worse.
What dehydrated skin needs is cellular hydration from the inside (structured water, mineral balance, proper fat digestion) & hydrating products that actually penetrate the skin barrier.
The Sunscreen Question
For people with hormonal acne, wearing sunscreen all the time may not be the best option. I had to do a complete rewiring of how I thought about this because the conventional advice is "wear sunscreen every day always."
But here's what I discovered: your skin needs light as a nutrient. Certain wavelengths of light support healing, collagen production, & mitochondrial function. When you block all light all the time, you may be blocking some of the very inputs your skin needs to heal.
This doesn't mean never use sun protection—it means being strategic about when, how much, & what type matters for hormonal acne healing.
Beyond Topical Products
"It was not just one magical product. It was a lot of time researching, a lot of time of trial & error, but I got it so right that I applied this method with my clients as well. Lo and behold, their skin also just started to respond."
Your skin is one of the most honest reflections of what your body needs. Skin is very vocal, visibly vocal. It's up to us to interpret it & respond.
It wasn't a protocol that helped me. Not some strict protocol. It was a shift in:
- How I approach my skin
- How I think about my skin
- The knowledge I gathered about skin layers & their jobs
- How skin responds to light & darkness
- What products actually support skin (versus what the internet says)
- When I use products (timing matters for hormonal acne)
The Environment My Skin Needed to Thrive
Today, I barely ever have breakouts. And I can exactly tell when a breakout will happen because it's dependent on the environment I've put my body in.
By environment, I mean everything:
- How have I eaten?
- How have I slept?
- How much light have I seen?
- How much darkness have I seen?
- How much have I moved my body?
- How much have I stretched my skin & supported my skin?
- How much have I taken care of my meals, proteins, fats, the types of foods I'm eating?
There are so many layers to healing hormonal acne. I've put systems in place to give my skin the best environment inside my body & outside my body, so my skin could do nothing else but respond.
Daily Practices That Changed Everything
One of the things I do every day is massage my skin with specific products. I have dry brushes, I have cups, I use my hands. I have all these techniques I learned over the years.
It's so amazing to do & it feels amazing. The way I wake up in the morning & look at my skin & think "wow, I like my skin"—it just feels so special & so empowering to know that I did that.
I listened to my skin. I started to learn about her. I started to respond to her in different ways. And then she just started to respond back to me by becoming clear, by giving me a glow, giving me radiant skin.
Why I'm Finally Ready to Share This
I think I just needed a lot of time to accept my own story & how intense it's been, how lonely I felt. I really needed to do some therapy around this, some trauma healing, to be able to sit here & talk to you & say with honesty (not just saying words to people, but real honesty):
I like my skin now. I love how it looks & how it feels. I'm so grateful that I understand my skin & what she's trying to tell me.
It's been 15 years since my hormonal acne started. I've kept this hidden because the shame felt too heavy to share. But I'm finally ready because I want this for other people.
I want other people with hormonal acne to feel what's possible, to feel what it's like to have the power to support your skin & let it respond to an environment it needs to thrive.
The Bottom Line
For 15 years, I carried shame about my hormonal acne. The cystic breakouts that hurt, the comments from others, the desperate attempts with burning products & birth control pills that never truly worked. I thought it was a dead end, that there was nothing I could do.
But healing hormonal acne was possible—just not in the way I'd been taught. Not through one magical product or suppressing symptoms with hormones. The healing came from understanding what my skin actually needed: light & darkness as nutrients, circadian rhythm alignment, cellular hydration not just surface oils, mitochondrial health supporting collagen production, tracking skin changes with my menstrual cycle, & creating an environment inside & outside my body where my skin could thrive.
Today, my skin is glowy, soft, plump, & clear. More importantly, I've shifted from shame & disconnection to compassion & understanding. My skin isn't my enemy—she's been communicating what my body needed all along. Learning to listen, learning what actually supports healing versus what makes hormonal acne worse, learning that my efforts & dedication would pay off—that's been my biggest body accomplishment.
You are not alone in this struggle. Your hormonal acne is not a character flaw or something fundamentally broken about you. Your body is capable of healing when given what it needs. There are many, many things you can do to support your skin, & your body will start responding. Your efforts, your dedication, your devotion to be with your skin & support her—they will pay off.
Join the Quantum Skin Health masterclass series - a three-part series covering the science of skin health & practical guides for supporting your skin: https://cycleseeds.activehosted.com/f/25
Key Takeaways
- Hormonal acne often involves both excess sebum & dehydrated skin - adding more oil doesn't solve the dehydration problem
- Topical products alone rarely heal hormonal acne because the root causes are internal: hormones, blood sugar, circadian rhythm, mitochondrial health
- Birth control pills suppress symptoms without addressing root causes - when the suppression lifts, hormonal acne often returns
- Light & darkness are nutrients for skin - your skin has its own circadian rhythm that affects healing capacity
- Skin changes throughout your menstrual cycle - tracking these patterns helps predict & prevent hormonal acne breakouts
- Cellular hydration is different from surface moisture - healing hormonal acne requires addressing hydration at the cellular level
- The environment your skin thrives in includes sleep, light exposure, movement, nutrition, stress levels, & circadian alignment
- Sunscreen timing matters for hormonal acne - blocking all light all the time may prevent healing inputs your skin needs
- Your skin is communicating, not betraying you - learning to listen & respond compassionately changes everything
- Healing hormonal acne is possible - it requires understanding your unique skin needs & creating the right internal & external environment
Transcript
[00:00:00] Iris Josephina: You are listening to the podcast of Iris Josephina. If you are passionate about exploring the menstrual cycle, cyclical living, body wisdom, personal growth, spirituality, and running a business in alignment with your natural cycles, you're in the right place. I'm Iris. I'm an entrepreneur, functional hormone specialist, trainer and coach, and I am on a mission to share insights, fun facts, and inspiration I discover along the way as I run my business and walk my own path on earth. Here you'll hear my personal stories, guest interviews, and vulnerable shares from clients and students. Most people know me from Instagram where you can find me under @cycleseeds, or they have been a coaching client or student in one of my courses. I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into today's episode.
[00:00:56] Iris Josephina: Hey, thank you for listening to this episode. I need to start off with a little heads up because I have a kitten, maybe you saw on my social media. His name is Bibo and he is laying next to me on the guest bed. He's purring, so maybe you can hear it, maybe not. But sometimes he comes because he wants me to be close to him. So it could be that while I'm recording, maybe he comes and joins us. I don't know, maybe we'll see.
[00:01:20] Iris Josephina: So today I want to share a personal story about a topic that I have actually never talked about. And I was preparing for this episode and I really had to sit down with myself, and I was like, Iris, you have never shared about the topic of acne with your audience, like your personal story, you've never shared it. And I really had to ask myself, why not? And the answer is because I was ashamed. I have struggled with acne from the age of 11 until well into my twenties. That's a lot of years and it's been a huge part of my life, but it's the part of my life that I have wanted to push under the rug and hide and never speak about because it's also been a really sad and dark part of my life. It's also the thing that I've always felt the most insecure about. When people would ask me, what do you feel the most insecure about when it comes to your body? It's my skin. And it's weird to say now still, because my skin looks pretty good and pretty glowy, and people who have never met me when I was younger and only know me with this skin are like, what are you talking about? You have good skin. But it wasn't always this way.
[00:03:03] Iris Josephina: I struggled with my skin, like I said, since I was 11 years old. My hormones kicked in and my skin was like, let's give this girl hormonal acne, cystic acne, and it was horrible. It was terrible. It hurts so much. If you've had cystic acne, you know what I'm talking about. The pain that you feel, like the acne coming up the day before and you know how much it's going to hurt the next day and there's really nothing you can do, or that's what I thought. It sucks. And I just want to say that if you're struggling with your skin, if you're struggling with acne, I really, really feel you. It's terrible. And it can hurt physically, but also emotionally and mentally. It was definitely like that for me, and I had to disconnect from myself a lot of times in my life because I could not cope with what my face looked like. And I wasn't the only one that had something to say about it. Kids can be mean. I mean, I love kids, but kids can be mean, and kids were definitely mean towards me when I started to hit puberty and my skin started changing. I was one of the first girls in my class to get my period, and then the acne came and many people had things to say about it. It made me extremely self-conscious about my skin and what it looked like and the fact that other people could really see what was going on, and it's just been this big part of me that I've really struggled with.
[00:05:04] Iris Josephina: And like I said, it feels weird to say that because right now I have good skin for someone who is 35. I have good skin. And my skin is glowy and it's soft, and it's plump. But it wasn't always this way and I really struggled. And I found ways to support my skin and to get to this glowy skin that I have today. And I just want to walk you through all of the things that I quote-unquote did wrong and what really started to move the needle.
[00:05:38] Iris Josephina: So obviously I have tried probably every single skincare product under the sun that was targeted to heal acne. When I was in primary school or just moving to high school, my mom would already take me to a dermatologist and I was put on this extremely violent skincare routine with like seven different steps with products that would literally feel like my skin was burning all the time. Like as soon as I put the products on, my skin was literally on fire. It hurt so much. It hurt so bad. And up until today, I actually have no idea what was in these products. I was just like, okay, this lady said I should take this and do this, so I'll do it. It didn't really help my acne. I think there was even a type of peroxide. Oh my God, nevermind. The products were terrible. So I have tried those types of products so many times and none of them worked because at the time when I was just doing the products and not looking at my diet, not looking at supplementation or any deficiencies, I was a vegetarian, not looking at supplements or anything, not looking at how I was moving, not looking at what I was eating, how I was eating, how what I was eating or not eating would impact my skin. Nothing, none of it.
[00:07:40] Iris Josephina: And at a certain point I was just done. I was 15 at the time and I was like, I've had enough. I want to take a pill to clear my acne. And the most famous pill at the time was the heaviest birth control pill. And I was determined. I read on forums online that women really benefited from that. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to go to my doctor and I'm going to ask for this. I also had a boyfriend at the time and I really wanted to get the birth control pill, so it was like great, two things at once. So I went to my doctor and I said, look, I have this acne, I don't want this acne anymore, and I heard this pill works. I want this pill. And my doctor was like, okay, fine. And she prescribed this pill for three months and I took it. Obviously this pill made me feel like shit, but my skin started to clear up. So I took it and I kept taking it for a couple of years, but then at a certain point, my cystic acne started to come back, not only on my face but also on my chest, also on my shoulders, also on my back, like my whole back. And I was just desperate.
[00:09:07] Iris Josephina: Absolutely desperate. And I didn't know what to do, and this just happened well into my twenties, and I just coped with it. I was so tired of managing my skin, like the mental load of having to think, what will other people think about my skin? If I meet people for the first time, they're going to look at my cystic acne. It was everywhere, everything I was doing. Like, oh my God, I can't meet my boyfriend right now because I have this gigantic outbreak of cystic acne. It was just terrible. It was really terrible.
[00:10:03] Iris Josephina: And things really started to shift and change for me when I started to put myself in environments that were supportive for my health. And my first experience, I'm actually thinking about this now, I didn't write this down when I was preparing for this episode, but actually my first experience where my skin completely cleared up was when I was 21. I may have shared this story before. I had shifted to a different pill when I was 21 because the one pill that messed up my skin made my boobs so big that I just couldn't cope with it. So I changed to another pill, and this pill made me go numb in my leg, and it was about the time that I was embarking on a solo journey to the Colombian Amazon. So I started taking this pill a couple of days before I left, like one or two days before I left. And then I woke up there in Colombia and I didn't feel my leg, and it lasted for 26 hours. And my doctor in the Netherlands said I should immediately stop with this new pill. And the feeling in my leg went away. And there I was, not on a pill at all, for the first time in six years, and I was in the Amazon with no artificial light at night, specifically in a natural environment, a proper rhythm of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sweating a lot. And this was actually the first time where my skin cleared up and where I had no cystic acne, no outbreaks, and my skin looked amazing. And this is the first moment that I started to think, huh, this is really something.
[00:12:38] Iris Josephina: And then I went back to the Netherlands, and within three weeks I started to have cystic acne again. And that's the first moment where I started to think about my environment and the impact of my environment. And with environment, I mean the weather outside, yes, but also how much light exposure there is, how much sun is available, what the temperatures are like, but also what am I eating, what am I feeding my body, when am I feeding my body, how am I feeding my body. And this is where I started to read everything I could about the skin and trying to educate myself, because how could it be that I was acne-free for almost a month, to then come back to a westernized society in a city and have my skin be messed up? Like how is that possible?
[00:13:45] Iris Josephina: So I started to research many, many things, and over the course of that moment and my career start in hormone health, and everything that I've learned along the way, I've applied everything I thought would work for my skin. And lo and behold, today I still have some imperfections, but my skin is glowy. It's soft. I barely have any wrinkles. My skin is plump and I barely ever have breakouts, and I can exactly tell when a breakout will happen because it will be dependent on the environment I've put my body in. And when I say environment, I mean everything, like how have I eaten, how have I slept, how much light have I seen, how much darkness have I seen, how much have I moved my skin, how much have I stretched my skin and supported my skin, how much have I taken care of my meals and my proteins and my fats and the type of foods that I'm eating. So there are so many layers to this, and I really want this for other women.
[00:15:16] Iris Josephina: I want other women with acne to feel what is possible and to feel what it feels like to have the power to support your skin and let it respond to an environment it needs to thrive. And I think I take a pretty unique lens here compared to other hormone coaches or hormone specialists, because everyone talks about blood sugar. Okay, yes, blood sugar is a huge factor, but we also have to talk about light and circadian rhythm and how they are connected to your female cycle. We have to talk about mitochondrial health and the connection with collagen. I've done so much research on mitochondrial health, structured water, cellular hydration, and collagen, and how that connects to skin. I have looked at how the skin responds to light and how light is a nutrient for the skin, but also how darkness can be considered a nutrient for the skin. And I have put so many things in place to give my skin the best environment inside of my body and outside of my body so that my skin could do nothing else but just respond to the environment.
[00:16:58] Iris Josephina: And this is what has gotten my glow. This is what has cleared my acne. And it was not just one magical product. It was a lot of time researching, a lot of trial and error, but I got it so right that I applied this method with my clients as well to see how it works for them. Lo and behold, their skin also just started to respond. And you know, our skin is one of the most honest reflections of what our body needs. Skin is very vocal, visibly vocal, and it's up to us to interpret it and to respond. And it was not a protocol that helped me, not some strict protocol. It was really a shift in how I approach my skin, how I think about my skin, the knowledge I have gathered about my skin and the different skin layers, what the different jobs are of each skin layer, how they're responding to light, to darkness, and what kinds of products do support my skin. Because I followed a lot of blind advice. Like, oh, you need to use tallow. Oh, you need to use oils. Oh, you need to use this magic rose oil or lotus oil. Oil, oil, oil.
[00:18:44] Iris Josephina: And I came to understand that oil is actually not the best for a lot of people's skin these days, because one of the most important things that we overlook is that when we have acne, there is a lot of sebum production and the skin feels very oily already. But a lot of people with acne also have dehydrated skin. And the worst thing you can do for dehydrated skin is put a lot of oil on it. I had to learn that the hard way. I thought I was doing all the right things but I was not doing all the right things. And so I really had to research what products actually do. And you know me, I want to keep things as natural as possible. So I really had to dive deep into the types of products that I put on my body and my skin, and when am I putting the product. And one of the products I really had to reconsider was sunscreen, because for people with acne, wearing sunscreen all the time may not be the best option. And I had to do a complete rewiring of how I thought about my skin and what I thought was okay to do. And I've put a system in place to really support my skin, and I'm finally ready to share this with the world.
[00:20:16] Iris Josephina: And I think I just needed a lot of time to accept my own story and how intense it's been and how lonely I felt. And I really needed to do some therapy around this and some trauma healing, to really be able to sit here and talk to you and be able to say with honesty, not just to say this to people, but really be able to say with honesty that I like my skin now. I love how it looks and how it feels, and I'm so grateful that I understand my skin, I understand what she's trying to tell me, and I don't loathe my skin anymore when something has to be communicated with me through a breakout. I mean, I barely ever have breakouts anymore, but if it does happen, I'm not loathing myself. I'm not going into this shame spiral of, oh, I can't go out because people will see my skin. I have become much more compassionate towards my skin, towards my body, and I want this for other women and I'm ready to share this.
[00:21:51] Iris Josephina: So I have decided that I need to create this, like I actually have no choice. I have decided this and it needs to go into the world. I have the desire to create a three-part series called Quantum Skin Health, where I will share everything I have learned, like the science about the skin and how it works and what it needs, as well as a practical guide on how you can support your skin and how you can hands-on engage with your skin. Like one of the things that I do every day is massage my skin with specific products. I have dry brushes, I have cups, I use my hands. I have all these techniques that I learned over the years, and it's so amazing to do and it feels amazing. And the way that I wake up in the morning and I look at my skin and I'm like, wow, I like my skin. It just feels so special and so empowering to know that I did that. I listened to my skin. I started to learn about her. I started to respond to her in different ways, and then she just started to respond back to me by becoming clear, by giving me a glow, by giving me just a radiant skin.
[00:23:28] Iris Josephina: It's something that I've always wanted and I now have it and it's not leaving me. And I think I've said this on social media the other day, like it's my biggest accomplishment for my body and my relationship with my body. Even more than embracing my menstrual cycle, my biggest accomplishment is supporting my skin in such a way that it now glows and is clear. And I want that for you. So you can go in the show notes to see how you can grab the masterclass series. And I can't wait to see you there.
[00:24:01] Iris Josephina: And I just want to say, there are ways to support your skin. I thought, you know, it was a dead end, there was nothing to do. There are many, many things that you can do to support your skin, and I promise you that your body will start responding and you'll see that your efforts and your dedication and devotion to be with your skin and support her will pay off. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. I really appreciate that you're here. I really appreciate that you made it to the end and heard me talk about one of the things that I have not wanted to talk about for like 15 years. Yeah, thank you for being here.
[00:25:09] Iris Josephina: If you want to share something about your skin, or how you felt during this episode, or something that you have experienced with your skin, please feel free to DM me on Instagram or comment under the podcast. I'm happy to listen to you and please know that you're not alone. And if you want change, please join the masterclass series. I promise you it's going to be epic. Thank you so much for listening.
[00:25:38] Iris Josephina: Okay, this wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Want to know more about me? The best way to reach me is via @cycleseeds on Instagram, and if you heard something today and you think, oh my God, wow, I learned something new, feel free to share the podcast on your social media and tag me or leave a review or rating. In this way, you help me reach more people like you. Thank you so much.
About the Host
I’m Iris Josephina, a functional hormone specialist, orthomolecular hormone coach, circadian biology practitioner, and entrepreneur. Through Cycle Seeds and The Inner Rhythms Podcast, I support people in reconnecting with their cyclical nature, deepening body literacy, and reclaiming hormonal harmony from a place of sovereignty and embodied knowledge. Most people know me from Instagram, where I share stories, tools, and inspiration on cyclical living, menstrual cycles, fertility, hormones, and more.
Let’s stay connected:
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cycleseeds
📧 Join my newsletter: https://www.cycleseeds.com/cyclseeds-newsletter
💻 Visit the Cycle Seeds website: https://www.cycleseeds.com/
📝 Check out the blog: https://www.cycleseeds.com/blog
📚Join my courses: https://www.cycleseeds.com/courses-masterclasses
📊 Chart Your Cycle Masterclass: https://cycleseeds.plugandpay.nl/checkout/chart-your-cycle-37-f-a
🐚Join the CYCLICAL waitlist: https://www.cycleseeds.com/cyclical-waitlist
