I don't know a single woman who woke up to her cyclic power on a Sunday morning out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps you, too, have come to this revolutionary path because you have struggled in some way with a linear world order. Perhaps you too feel that behind the feeling of not being understood and not fitting into a society that teaches us to forget our own uniqueness in order to belong, there is something else.
The female body has a different sense of time and being in the world, in contrast to the linear patriarchal way of doing things. It is timed according to the moon and the seasons.
In each menstrual cycle we encounter two different energy streams and four seasons, two per stream.
The streams represent the two main energies of the universe: yin and yang, expansion and contraction, inhalation and exhalation, day and night.
Each "cycle month" (an average healthy cycle length varies from 24 to 38 days) corresponds to the entire cycle of the four seasons. These four seasons are associated with the hormonal changes that occur within the two currents of yin and yang, leading to the two peaks of ovulation and menstruation. The peaks of each cycle.
What are the four seasons?
When you bleed, you enter your inner winter. You withdraw energetically from the world and your energetic boundaries become very permeable and extremely sensitive. As you slowly rise from your bleeding, you enter your inner spring. You may gradually feel more open-minded and the desire to get things done and the inventiveness returns.
During ovulation, you are in the inner summer. The energy is quite high and intense. For some, it feels like a great drive to do things and be in the world, and for others it can be overwhelming and feel like "too much pressure and visibility."
With the fading of hormones around ovulation, we enter the second half of the cycle, which begins with premenstruum, which I like to call "breathing out." Just like in the fall, the days get shorter and the leaves start to turn brown and fall off. This is a sign that you have reached the inner autumn.
In each phase you have different needs, strengths, psychological tasks and vulnerabilities. So the idea that we have to live the same way every day is a great illusion and has a great effect on our cyclical bodies.
Between the seasons there are still so-called transition days. Something that most people don't even know exists. These are days when you find yourself "in between" the season that has just passed and the one that has not yet arrived. Many women feel disoriented on these days, like the rug is pulled out from under them. It can help to slow down on these days, to take stock of what's ahead or what you've just gotten past.
And then, of course, there's the reflection of the cycle in the moon.
If you want to learn to know yourself in the different phases of your cycle, observing nature can be incredibly helpful. Look at the moon. Its waxing and waning. Look at how nature breathes in circles. I promise you'll find yourself there, too.
"Watching the moon at dawn
Alone mid sky
I recognized myself completely
No parts left out."
Tzumi Shikibu
Comments