Alexandra and Sjanie teach their special approach to woman’s wellbeing, based on the power of our menstruality consciousness.
With experience in various fields including psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, coaching, teaching and facilitation, they are well equipped experts of feminine health and leadership.
After forty years of exploring menstruality they have gathered an incredible toolkit of knowledge and skills.
The Medicine of Menstrual Cycle Awareness
(As a Gateway to your ‘Wild Power’)
The menstrual cycle holds secret powers for a
woman, or person who menstruates. These powers can offer great benefits for us
an individuals as well as for our world at large. When we unlock this ‘Wild
Power’, we discover new capacities to contribute to our communities, our earth
and the causes close to our hearts.
The key to accessing this potent medicine = the simple art of menstrual cycle
awareness (MCA).
So, what exactly is menstrual cycle awareness?
For centuries we have been taught that the menstrual cycle is a weakness; a problem that we have to cope with. As though we are going about in the world with a ball and chain around one ankle. And indeed it can feel like that if you suffer from any kind of menstrual problem.
But what if the problem were not the menstrual cycle itself, but our denial of it?
The menstrual cycle holds power and when power is suppressed or ignored, trouble ensues. Aka menstrual problems in all their guises.
However, when you’re connected to your menstrual cycle you’re connected to yourself: to your physical health, your emotional wellbeing, your creativity, your truth, your power.
(You are also wired to also experience
extraordinary states of expanded consciousness; such as bliss, ecstasy, love
and deep meaning, when you menstruate).
In order to unlock these inner resources, you have to come into relationship
with your cycle, to know what day of your cycle you are on at any one moment
and to work with and cherish the changing energy, mood and rhythm that unfolds
throughout the whole cycle.
By tracking your mood and energy throughout your menstrual month, you begin to accept and cooperate with the emotional and energetic pattern of your cycle, and it’s natural ups and downs or ‘inner seasons’.
This means you naturally become more conscious of your needs, you pace yourself better and you therefore feel less hyper and adrenalised.
You begin to feel more grounded, and have more clarity and choice about your life, which creates more harmony and ease. It also helps you cultivate stronger boundaries that make it so much easier to say ‘No’ to others and ‘Yes’ to yourself.
Women often comment that they feel like they have ‘come home’ once they start tracking their cycle, and feel more optimistic and alive.
Your cycle gives you feedback
The more you tune into the cycle the more you will be able to ‘read’ yourself. Disturbing menstrual symptoms become feedback on your overall wellbeing physically and psychologically
This is especially true in the premenstrual time, which we think of as an early warning system encouraging you to pay more attention to your body and soul. When there are problems with the cycle, it’s an early warning to attend to your overall health.
When you practice cycle awareness you are able to recognise these signs and are empowered to act on them. This makes MCA a form of ‘medicine’ in its own right, pacing your actual energy and nervous system. It is a powerful form of self soothing.
Your cycle connects you to your ‘inner seasons’
Like the seasons of the year, through your menstrual month you move through an inner winter, spring, summer and autumn and back to winter again.
Each phase ushers in a set of very specific resources and psychological challenges that help you grow you into and embody your power as a woman, so that you can express your full magnificence or as we like to call it, your ‘Wild Power’.
Each season of the cycle reveals a different facet of yourself, teaching you something about your own nature. You’ll discover you have places in the cycle you love and places you don’t love at all. This tells you something about yourself.
For example, if you love the high ‘out there’ energy of the inner summer ovulatory phase of the cycle, that speaks volumes to your capacity to be in the material world – you feel gorgeous, unstoppable, and can do anything!
To give you a rough idea of these phases, in a classic 28 day cycle:
The inner winter is approximately day 27 to day 5: a time for rest and renewal.
The inner spring is approximately day 6 to day 11: a place of becoming.
The inner summer is approximately day 12 to day 19: the aspect of the cycle that invites you into the fullness of who you are.
The inner autumn is approximately day 20 to day 26: where you are challenged and tempered to grow up, and take full responsibility for who you are.
However, do not get too hung up on exact days.
The important thing is to sense and follow your own cycle experience, and
discover the season changing moments for yourself.
The ‘Big Red Rule’ of menstrual cycle awareness is that your lived experience
trumps all, this work has always been – and continues to be – birthed through
the bodies of women and their direct experience of their cyclical nature.
As you deepen in your cycle awareness and bring consciousness to each season in turn, you restore the order of the cycle, your inner ecology, and with that create a feeling of greater ease and pleasure, coherence and effectiveness in your life.
The Medicine of your Inner Winter ~ Menstruation
Today, we want to focus especially on the inner winter – a season replete with the most amazing resources, such as the ability to experience expansive awareness and altered states of consciousness, effortless presence, ecstasy and visioning, and love and Union.
If you are able to let go and rest as you start to bleed, you will be able to experience the great oxytocin (the bliss and love hormone) wash that can arise at this time of the cycle. You may start to feel as though liquid honey were washing over you and soothing any jangled nerves.
Menstruation is literally de-stressing you, repairing any stress you have experienced from the previous month, but only if you are able to stop.
To access these resources requires the sacred task of Surrender.
Surrender is your ability to let go and allow.
It sounds so simple but in our action-driven, action-packed world Surrender can
feel almost impossible – there’s always another thing to do.
And if we are honest, letting go can feel a little bit scary for most of us.
Stopping may expose us to feelings that we may have been keeping at bay with
activity. We might also feel like we are missing out, or it could feel plain
boring.
But, dear people, there is no way around this one if you want to access the
medicine of menstruation, meet your Wild Power and come home into a more
aligned, wholesome place with your health, your vitality, your creative
expression in the world.
Menstruation is the place where you root deeply into yourself. And Surrender anchors you in this experience.
We invite you experiment with making space and letting go at menstruation – as you do so, you’ll release tension, repair and refuel (through rest and the activation of the soothing balm of the hormone oxytocin), re-connect, and remember who are and what you are really about (your Wild Power).
We’d love to hear how this evolves for you. You can connect with us and receive a wealth of menstrual cycle awareness resources on Instagram @red.school, our Red School Facebook page or at www.redschool.net.
For more information on how to do MCA click here. If you would like to go deeper with menstrual cycle awareness and explore how it can support you to access your own wild power, we invite you to join our online immersion, starting on February 18th: www.wildpower.online
