There is magic inherent in the menstrual cycle. Some women already know this and live by it. For others, they are learning about this idea (and likely raging against it). But hopefully, because you clicked on this article, you are open to the possibility that there is indeed magic in the menstrual cycle and curious as to how to tap into it.
Each cycle provides a woman with the opportunity to understand and read the messages her body gives. Each period is a direct communication from a woman's body on what she needs. Each cycle creates the opportunity for as much growth and personal development that she could want. All a woman has to do to connect with that potential is simply to be with what is, her cycle, happening over and over, and yet happening for the first and only time each individual cycle.
It is becoming more and more common for women to work with their menstruation, having it as their little superpower productivity tool, and this article gives an introduction to how that might be possible for each and every single woman.
Biohacking that goes back millennia
The Sanskrit word for menstruation and season are the same – ritu. The Latin root for menstruation, mens, is the same for moon, month and measurement. Both of these concepts are letting us know that women move in cycles, in seasons and in waves.
Ebbs and flows. Ups and downs, ins and outs. Riding those waves and using them to our benefit is where the magic truly opens. If we harvest during the harvest time, we will do so well and in line with nature's principles. If we are persisting with the harvest during the season for fallow, we will have a hard and frustrating time, our results will be fruitless and we will impact all our future harvest as well.
This seems really obvious when written in metaphor. However, when we think about a modern woman, there is so little time allowed for fallow. Most of the time women are working 5 days a week at a paid job, 7 days a week if she has a family, and add on top of that elderly parents, extracurricular activities or hobbies, friends, family obligations and the list goes on.
Rest is critical to wellbeing. We know that, and it isn't new information. But how to use the menstrual cycle to ensure you actually get it. That is part of the magic of this. Clearly restlessness can lead to sleeplessness and the rest is pretty self-fulfilling and a story well lived by our readers. So, this is one of the most important things to get right in your life. It has massive impacts if you do, and if you don't.
There is a time and a season for everything. Women are biologically deeply connected to nature's principles, but if we seek to overrule nature, we will suffer. Our relationships will suffer, our productivity, creativity, happiness and joy will all suffer too. We will burn out and life will become overwhelming. We see this all around us every day in our family and friends, coworkers, and we can recognise it in ourselves.
Rest has become a dirty word in our corporate worlds, and that culture has filtered out into our lives. Without rest, without fallow, all future harvests will be affected. Hustle, grind, double down, and push through. All really toxic ideas from the masculine work style that affect our lives, our happiness and our health.
Does it sound easier said than done?
How do we get rest in a world that wants us to work like we don't have children and raise children like we don't have a job? How do we do everything for everyone else, carry the mental load, hold a job, participate and excel at every expectation thrown at us and still put ourselves first on that list? Or even top 100 on that list? Ok, on that list?
Female Energy Cycle
There are so many women turning to their innate Female Energy Cycle as the solution. And this is so exciting because it is biohacking at its absolute original state. Women are meant to follow their cycle and live their lives this way, meaning it is so sustainable, enduring and pleasurable.It is literally built into our XX chromosomes, and that is why this is so exciting. It is our nature.
Let's cover some basics first.
The menstrual cycle is a cycle within a cycle. The bigger cycle is the woman’s life cycle, her life seasons, which are just like the Earth’s seasons: Spring – Maiden, Summer – Mother, Autumn – Maga, Winter – Crone.
Every cycle is the same as every other cycle, just different lengths. The cycle goes – birth, growth, full bloom, harvest, decay, death, rebirth. The menstrual cycle is the same cycle. And it is also divided into four quarters like the Earth’s seasons. We call them weeks 1, 2, 3 and 4 or more accurately, menstruation, the follicular phase, ovulation and the luteal phase.
If a cycle that is consistently longer or shorter than 28/29 days it’s the first half of the cycle that is shortened or lengthened. Provided that ovulation is occuring, the second half of the cycle is fixed and is always the same either 13, 14 or 15 days. Each week of the fertility cycle is as different to the other weeks as the Earth’s seasons are different to each other.
It’s the characteristics of each of these weeks that are the opportunity for each woman. Week one resembles spring energy. Week two summer. Week three autumn and week 4 winter.
Each week our inclinations, energy levels, outputs and the messages from our body are different. They speak of the physical situation of that point in the menstrual cycle and the related emotional situation.
Knowing the energy profile of each week of our cycle allows flow to more easily occur. Life management and planning around these energy peaks and dips, projects, commencing and scheduling of major events could become a secret superpower, wherever that is in our control. To be able to make time for creative expression our priority during the height of our creative energy week, and act on any creative urges when they arise could see projects have a burst of energy and propulsion if prioristed and scheduled correctly.
If parties or interviews or externally focused events could be scheduled during ovulation, they would be executed to the best of our ability. It is always best to finish off things in the third week and to stay home, and be on retreat when during bleeding.
There is likely to be a lot less strife in the third and fourth week if we know we will be retreating when the blood comes, and it is possible that women who follow this actually begin to look forward to their blood coming, and be ready ‘to let go’ of anything they no longer wish to abide by from that previous month. A psychological and spiritual clean out once a month, that really allows for a healthy, well balanced emotional and mental health scheme because rest is not only alllowed, but planned for and priotised as important to a successful harvest in the next and coming months.
Seasonal Linkages to Creation
Women are very lucky to embody the creative process in such a precise and intimate way. Each menstrual month we are being tutored in our own unique creative power cycle. If we can bring awareness to this process, deepening into each aspect, we build a core psychological muscle to go out there and fulfil our biggest dreams and ambitions.
In the creative map there are four distinct territories that we must travel through to bring an idea to fulfillment – initiate, manifest, discern, potentise. Within each phase there are powers and pitfalls, and some key tasks or activities one must do that allow a graduation to the next phase (and avoid those pitfalls). This map is literally built into our bodies – each ‘season’ of the menstrual cycle an embodiment of a particular creative phase:
Initiate – preovulation
Manifest – ovulation
Discern – premenstruum
Potentise – menstruation
And our relationship with each of our menstrual phases can both reveal our strengths and vulnerabilities within the whole creative process and support us in the actual fulfillment of our vision.
Monthy birthings
Each month, whether we are noticing or not, we all birth something into the world, whether it be a baby or a book, a project, a beautiful meal, a piece of art, or a new relationship. Taking notice of what we are birthing and the lessons of these successes or failures is also a really beautiful way of understanding what we need to learn for each ‘birth’ cycle each month. Hacking this and taking more precise action around it, also means that we can use this system consciously, and in our favour.
For this to work, a massive reprogramming of the guilt, and the dogmatic 9-5, Monday to Friday doctrine is required. We will need to educate those around us of our new working style and function. But we will be far less prone to burn out, far more creative and productive and will start to invite joy, pleasure and freedom back into life, living on a feminine cycle the way it was intended by nature.
How to use each week to unlock the magic within
Week One (day 1 – first day of bleeding – day 7): Death Rebirth Phase:
Inwardly focussed, quiet. On retreat. This phase should focus on a “Life review”. Your focus is on visualising how it might be this new upcoming cycle. Letting go of ways or beliefs and attitudes that no longer serve.
Cramps can be a powerful way to get you to apply some heat to your belly or back, and to get you to withdraw, from the outside world, so you notice what you’re feeling and thinking. You will hear your inner wisdom and have new ideas about how to do things differently for those outmoded ways.
When we bleed we are more tired and when we sleep we may dream more than usual and it is common to have prophetic dreams at that time. So that’s why your body sends you messages of tiredness, so you will sleep more, and have those dreams.
If you find yourself picking fights at this time, it may be a subconscious way of demanding alone time and space away from others. Bringing this into a conscious decision to take time off at this time and allow for this means that your relationships might be less of a burden to you and fewer fights are needed to get the outcome you desire.
Spring energy starts to build as your blood stops flowing. And it is a time for metaphorically planting seeds for the new cycle. During bleeding: “I feel quiet, inward”, “I don’t want to be disturbed”. After bleeding: “I feel soft, a bit vulnerable”, “I feel as if I’m peeking back out at the world ” “Here I come again”.
Week Two (day 8-14): High Energy Creative Phase:
Summer energy. Increasing physical, sexual and creative energy building to a peak at ovulation. Urgent creative feelings. Heightened awareness of self and others. More interested in physical appearance. “I feel happy, excited, full of energy”, “I can do anything!” When you emerge from your raw bleeding state, hopefully you will bring with you what you have learned from listening to her inner wisdom.
In the tradition of the Native American’s Moonlodge, the community waited for the wisdom that the women returned with from their moontime retreat. They would come back with information about when and where to move camp, about where the buffalo were etc. The community valued this highly and made their plans around it, they honoured the wisdom of the feminine.
Week Three (day 15-21): Coming Down and Harvest Phase:
Autumn energy. Post ovulatory descent – can be positive or negative, a sense of pride or failure. May experience feelings of failure or elation depending on what you achieved from your creative peak in the few days after your egg has died unfertilised. “I lost my chance”, “I feel useless”.
“I am so awesome, look what I did!” May feel relief or regret (at not being pregnant, literally and metaphorically).
Feelings of wanting to get rid of unnecessary things around you or in your life. Wanting change.
Things or ways of being that are no longer working for you show up. This may be confronting or a relief or both. Depending on how long you’ve been ignoring these promptings will depend on how you react to them showing up again. This happens to get your attention so you can let go of them in this and the next phase.
“Everything seems to be hard”, “Nothing feels like its working”. “I’ve been so busy, I’m so glad I can rest now”.
Week Four (day 22-28): Distillation and Clarity Phase:
Winter energy. Lessons from this cycle are available to be seen and felt.
Either glad of the where you’re at with your life or fed up (again). Feeling ready to let go and surrender or feeling frustrated and annoyed. Less interested in everyone else, less available emotionally to others. Back to inwardly focussed. It’s the contemplative and reflective energy of this phase of the cycle that facilitates this great opportunity, your inner autumn pruning, as it were.
In the third and fourth week of the cycle is that everything that’s not working in your life shows up. Like, ways you’ve been behaving in relationships, ways you’ve been meeting your needs, or not, old patterns, anything, everything. Its Nature’s design that at this time, you notice outmoded ways of being so you can let them go with your blood and replace them with their evolution next cycle.
Each month when you bleed you can consciously let go of old ways, patterns and beliefs that no longer serve you. You can do this for yourself and also “for all your relations”, the collective feminine.
Honouring the Menstrual Cycle
The flow of the energy through the cycle gives us the clues for how to honour it.
“The whole menstrual cycle is an alchemical process in itself, during which every woman who bleeds goes through a transformation inside herself. To menstruate means to live through a cyclical transmutation in which the past is shed and the new in embraced. Experiencing this transformation through conscious ritual awakens us to our connection with the cycles taking place all around us and to our relationship with all life.” Lara Owen – “Her Blood is Gold”
Find the energy patterns that your natural body clock are showing you and work out how to maximise the harvest, to ensure the fallow, plant the seeds, and ride the growth. If you know that you can do the equivalent of a month's work in your 1-2 weeks of planting and growing, and a strong output can occur during harvest, that week of rest can be taken. It has been earned. It is necessary for future harvest success.
Giving this a go
It’s a good idea to let the people you live with know if you are going to change the way you do things at your bleeding time. Their support will be important to the success of you implementing these life changes.
Be sure to write to us and let us know of your experiences with living your life according to the menstrual cycle flows. We would love to hear what works for you and what you recommend for others.