Menses is women’s vulnerability & women’s power. Deny neither.

As beings in menstruating women’s bodies we must come to terms with our cyclical natures. While some women are more affected by it than others, it does operate in all of us. This is not an esoteric concept. It is real physically, energetically, and emotionally.

This makes us vulnerable in this culture where Success = being Solar, burning brightly every day. Women are Lunar, having outward times and inward times. The varying effects of hormones in the cycles do have an emotional effect which varies in intensity between women. Ayurvedically, thin & sensitive Vata women tend to express more changeability and are more effected than Pitta women, who tend to be more solar & focused way in general and Kapha women, who are more stable and unchangeable & absorb change. But all have the shifting within going on. When each gets out of balance, the expressions will get more extreme. So we are vulnerable if we stay aware of and express our cyclical nature, vulnerable to being called incapable of success due to being women.

Besides this cultural vulnerability, we are also vulnerable due to the changes of the cycle itself. The changes at the time of menses allow toxins, as well as menses to be released. We also literally open up, both physically (our cervix opens to let the blood flow out) and energy wise (our auras are more open and our energy will go downward to the earth more easily). To accommodate these vulnerabilities women often traditionally separated themselves from their usual tasks and from others who were not bleeding.

If we overeat or eat inappropriately, our digestion can suffer more easily during menses because the energy of fire is going out in the menses. The natural detoxification of this time begs for moderate eating to allow energy to go into that process.

If we over exercise or over work we can over stimulate the fire of the menses. If not remedied, this can lead to pitta aggravated symptoms or diseases of reproduction such as excess flow, fibroids or endometriosis. Over exercising can also push the toxins released in the natural detoxification of menses into body tissues instead of releasing them. Talking too much or doing spiritual practices that raise the energy upward during this phase will go counter to the flow of downward energy and can cause menstrual or reproductive problems if continued long term.

If we put ourselves in situations where we are connecting with the energy field of another person (giving body or energy work, psychotherapy or other healing work sessions, or having sexual relations) we are open enough to much more easily take on their energy/karma, as well as give them ours. This is why in many native traditions bleeding women would isolate themselves at this time & not participate in the spiritual ceremonies of the tribe.

The womanly cycle is also most obviously the power of potential creation at work within our female body. Giving birth to physical babies is not the only creativity we carry in our wombs. For millennia, this power was worshipped by humans in the form of the Goddess, each woman honored as embodiment of that power in her individual form.

Another great power of our cyclical nature is that the openness & inwardness creates a time when women can tune in to inner wisdom and messages from the subtle worlds. Another reason women would separate themselves was to have space to dream & vision, alone & with their sisters who were also bleeding. This guidance was a great resource for themselves and for the tribe.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in Women Who Run With the Wolves shares a modern view. She suggests that we use menses as a time to notice what it is time to let go of. We are in a physiological state of letting go of the possibility of pregnancy for that cycle. To let go psychospiritually & emotionally at this time is natural. As Won She’, another wisewoman midwife says,” Women give birth & women give death.” This giving death aspect of womanhood is greatly denied in this culture, just as the embodiment of it is: the Crone. During our bleeding time we get to practice being wisewomen crones, if we afford ourselves some time to do so.

Most women in this culture cannot afford themselves 3 days to rest & vision. But we can find ways towards that. For more ideas about self care during menses see – the FB notes on WiseWomanhood's page- www.facebook.com/WiseWomanhood

The Midwife's Mirror

It’s a hand mirror—clear plastic encircling the double-sided reflecting glass and then joining into a simple handle. The plastic is chipped in a couple of places and scratched on the surface. The mirror itself has aged as well. It is almost 30 years old.

The mirror has shown women their first surprising glimpse of their cervix—so like the head of a penis-- rounded, pinkish and soft with a small hole in the middle. It’s so empowering to actually see the opening lips of the mysterious womb, which plays such a large role in every woman’s life—source of her cycles and her cramps, her fertility and childbearing capacity, sounding board of her orgasms. Women can watch their cervix throughout their cycles see how it rises and falls, opens and closes, has fluids from clear to white to clear to red.

Hundreds of times women have peered down into this mirror to see their baby’s wrinkled, birthing head. First it’s just a bulge in the lips of the vulva. Then the lips open up, closing again between labor contractions, until the crucial distance has been traversed and the crown of the baby’s head begins to show.

Later this mirror has let them survey the aftermath of that birthing, to see how their once virgin vagina is now womanly with birthing blood and small wounds of childbirth. It’s so different from an episiotomy, where the doctor decides ahead of time where the scar will be. Most women stretch and, with controlled birthing of the head, can have only surface cuts that can heal without stitches.

I pick up the mirror now and look at my face. Like the mirror, it has aged these 30 years and witnessed so many women transform in their relationship with their own bodies, growing in understanding and wisdom regarding how to respect their woman ways.

--by Terra Rafael