As I (Alexandra) yielded to the menstrual pain that started to take me out every month in my early thirties, I began to understand that menstrual rest opened me up to new spiritual capacities. As you can imagine, this altered my perception of menstruation radically, and in my psychotherapy practice and workshops I began to share with other women what I'd discovered about the spiritual forces within our bodies.
The more I taught about it, the more I discovered that our stories hold the gold. When we all stop to listen, and follow the natural impulse of the cycle, it’s as though a whole new world, a new cosmology, reveals itself: where the menstrual cycle is a spiritual practice which has the possibility of opening us to the most blissful, visionary and holy places within without effort. As you learn to work with your cycle you awaken new forms of intelligence and knowing within you; it’s like you’re clearing the channel to your inner oracle.
It’s An Inside Job
And the most exciting and radical thing about this cosmology or spiritual path? It’s an inside job. The cycle initiates you from within – it’s happening to you rather than being something you do. You don’t have to impose rigorous regimes on yourself – there’s no fasting, sweating, pushing or any other tough practices. You simply have to engage with your cycle, believe in the changing pattern of mood and energy as meaningful, and learn to love and follow it as best you can.
It’s Already Unfolding Within You, Waiting for You to Collaborate With It
The name we give to the spiritual power that is revealed through the cycle is ‘Wild Power', and we think of it as a living presence that’s seeking expression through you. It’s your Calling, and it longs to be embodied and expressed through the singularity of who you are. It’s an unnameable, unknowable mystery at the heart of your being. It’s on your side; it’s your individual way in the ocean of possibility.
It’s present within you from the moment you’re conceived, and it’s stays dormant until your first bleed at menarche, when it announces itself and begins to inform and orchestrate your life path. During your menstruating years, as you engage with your cycle, an intimate presence of love is able to take up residence within you and infuse your life with purpose and meaning. And at menopause you’re offered the opportunity of wholeheartedly inhabiting that love and claiming the full authority of your Wild Power.
There are multiple opportunities to experience the spiritual power of this love throughout the cycle, but two particularly potent moments are the premenstrual phase, and your bleed...
The Premenstrual Phase is Opening up New Spiritual Capacities In You
As we begin to descend into the inner autumn - the premenstrual phase - we’re being made more vulnerable and permeable, and potent spiritual gifts become available to us. This vulnerability nourishes our humanness; it stops us from becoming automatons – unable to feel, know ourselves and love. Vulnerability is the doorway into your soul, the key to finding what truly lights you up. It’s the means that allows you to be blessed by beauty, bliss, wonder and all those glorious feelings that make life worth living.
Brene Brown, who has written and researched on this topic extensively, says it beautifully: ‘Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, accountability and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose, or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.’
Your Inner Winter Holds the Key to Spiritual Awakening
Menstruation holds an extraordinary secret that’s rarely known, acknowledged or given the veneration it deserves. It’s the ability to experience altered states of consciousness, naturally and effortlessly. You can slip into vastly expanded states of awareness and experience blissful, ecstatic and loving states of being and union. As you enter menstruation it’s as if a veil or defensive armouring between you and the spiritual worlds falls away. Your organs of perception are cleansed, so you can see into and fully experience this expanded dimension.
How to Access More of These Spiritual Powers? Deepen Your Commitment to Your Menstrual Cycle Awareness Practice
Menstrual cycle awareness (or MCA) is a complete spiritual practice and the ultimate mindfulness tool for all of us with cycles. As you feel and respond to your changing mood and energy throughout the phases of the cycle, you’ll experience increasing inner warmth or kindness, more flexibility, choice, and a growing sense of integration and coherence that will help you feel more alive and in yourself. If you don’t practise cycle awareness you’ll be left adrift in a sea of possibility and potential – with a head full of information but shut out of the realization of these inner spiritual powers.
If you’d like to experience more of the spiritual power of menstrual cycle awareness in your life, you can take a look at our next Menstruality Leadership Programme, which is a great next step for you if you want to deepen your understanding of your cyclical nature, or guide and teach others to embrace the power of the cycle, and you can register for free here.
