13 powerful reasons to love your period - part 2

Well it looks like we've kick started a mini revolution with Part 1 of the 13 Power reasons to love your period (and menstrual cycle). Thanks for reading and sharing it so widely, we expect these ripples will go a long way.

As promised here are 6 more powerful reasons to love your period and your menstrual cycle

1. Cycle literate women are contraception literate and better prepared (and possibly healthier) for pregnancy, birth and motherhood From menarche to the point of conception you are on an initiatory journey and each time you bleed you are potentially practising for the next great initiation of birth. When you consciously work with the rhythm of your cycle you are in charge of your fertility rather being controlled by drugs (hormonal contraception). You’re building trust in yourself and your body, good health, an exquisite knowing about who you are, your boundaries, ability to assert your needs and hold an understanding and respect for rhythm and timing. This is your ‘ground’ for conscious conception and the journey of pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Embodied, trusting yourself over what others may want to impose on you, you have learnt the process and necessity of passing through various energetic stages/phases each menstrual month and can appreciate and work with the stages of the birth journey and particularly birth itself more easily. You understand the post-natal bubble and can let go into that rather push to get back ‘out there’ into the world prematurely. As a mother you hold more self awareness and can be less reactive and more present for your children.
2. Cycle savviness transforms sexual experience and takes relationships to a new level of union. To be connected to your cycle is to be connected to your sexual energy and its unique expression. Your sexual energy and needs fluctuate throughout the menstrual month, taking on different tones and charge. Recognising and valuing that releases you to be your full sexual self and not assume you’re supposed ‘to be sexual’ all the time i.e. permanently available for your partner. If you use hormonal contraception not only does it suppress libido, it flatlines your sexual energy. You become a one note wonder. Very dull. When your partner understands and deeply values your cycle a deep, sacred intimacy can evolve between the two. And in particular each month in those hours or days just before bleeding a couple can enter a place of the most exquisite union which may or may not be sexual but can be profoundly healing and spiritual for both. (By the way if you’re a single woman you can still experience this exquisite sense of union or oneness just before bleeding if you know how to approach it properly. The body gives you the clues if you can trust and follow it).
3. The menstrual cycle is a woman’s initiatory process. It is the means by which we mature psychologically and spiritually. It helps us to evolve from an ego-based consciousness to a participatory consciousness in which we experience ourselves and the world as one. We grow up in short! For anything to be initiatory it must involve some kind of psychological death (of an outdated, immature way of being) and birth (of a new, more inclusive way of being) - in other words your ego takes a bit of beating! And that is what is being played out in your menstrual cycle each month. In the first half of the cycle your sense of self rises and reaches a peak of self confidence at ovulation only to be undone in the second half of the cycle. Premenstrual angst is your ego going through a mini breakdown each month and this is healthy. All spiritual practices hold this as part of their aim. We lucky women have it automatically built into our bodies. Understand it and instead of being battered by your premenstruum you are transformed by it.
4. Your menstrual cycle provides the ultimate blueprint for optimum success. It is the creative process embodied in your being and we’re not talking babies here but rather the means for fulfilling your dreams, ideas and goals. When you appreciate the different energies and powers of each phase of your menstrual cycle, you are being intimately tutored and guided in the different stages of the creative process. The cycle is holding and nudging you and sometimes plain shoving you to make real your ideas. Honestly, it’s as concrete and real as that. And you won’t have any problems with procrastination again. Bring it on!
5. Menstrual Cycle Literacy breeds ecological literacy. Now this could be dangerous for those who have an investment in us remaining ecologically illiterate. The more a woman discovers the power of her cycle, the more she feels for the wellbeing of the planet (this is most heightened premenstrually and at menstruation) and the more we are going to have ecologically literate people, because a woman will naturally educate her partner and family in this. Cycle awareness is sustainability thinking in action. A cycle literate woman is continuously modeling this to those around her.
6. The menstrual cycle is a spiritual practice custom made for you. A commitment to the simple process of cycle awareness, and the concomitant awakenings that emerge, is a spiritual discipline that leads a woman into an ever deepening sense of the Sacred. You grow in your wisdom to see into and beyond yourself. You develop ever more refined intuitive faculties, and each month when you bleed you’re able to enter into the expanded consciousness of menstruation itself to experience a Oneness or Holy Union. Menstruation is the inner temple of women. And the imperative of your cycle each month is to deliver you to that temple, that place of Union with the Divine.

Folks this is just the beginning of a huge list of reasons why we think it's important to get in touch with your cycle and harness it's plethora of offerings. What reasons do you have for loving your period and your cycle? Post in the comments below we'd love to hear from you.