Over the coming weeks, we're going to share a series of articles about how menstrual cycle awareness can change your life. We're sharing these articles both to help you personally, but also to share some different gateways into the power of menstrual cycle awareness, to share with with your friends, family and community, or perhaps with those you teach and guide in your work.
Throughout the series, we’re going to explore some themes that come up again and again in our community and how cycle awareness can support you to transform them; big emotions like anger and self self-doubt, creativity and self expression, guidance for going through big life transitions, and how cycle awareness can support you as a highly sensitive person.
Today we’re exploring the connection between cycle awareness and creativity…
As we consciously travel through the menstrual cycle, we experience different sides of our nature, our strengths and our vulnerabilities, and embody different types of skill or power.
For example, logical thinking and use of language are greatly enhanced or more acute at ovulation, while premenstrually, a more knowing, instinctual, intuitive intelligence comes to the fore. This doesn’t mean you become a gibbering irrationalist premenstrually; rather, you operate from an intelligence tempered by more feeling and a greater awareness of complexity. You can be a pure channel, calling down inspiration, insight and knowing that seeks to be born into the world. You can be a midwife for the unspoken and unmanifest.
These changes in consciousness and perception throughout the cycle are an amazing resource. When they are known and understood, you can work with them to enhance your creativity.
Your Inner Seasons are a Template for The Creative Process
As you learn about yourself through the four cycle phases, or your inner seasons, you not only develop the skills to handle your emotions, you also build your capacity to create.
The menstrual cycle is the embodiment of the creative process. Each season reveals the very precise stages every creative project goes through; from conception to early experimentation, to full fruition, then composting back to the creative void. This is built into your body, and the more intimate you become with your cycle, the more you can work with it as your personal creativity coach for accessing inspiration and manifesting your ideas.
For example, the more you understand timing, and the rhythm of your creative process, the more you allow your creative projects to flourish in their right time, and the less likely you are to label your hesitations and the ‘putting off of things’ as procrastination.
There is Immense (infinite?!) Creativity Within your Innate Wild Power
Wild Power becomes ‘embodied’ through the process and practice of menstrual cycle awareness over time. Embodied Wild Power is the liberated expression of who you are. It’s the culmination of wisdom that you begin to live by, the peace that you make with who you are, and the freedom to express your creativity in the world.
Over time, menstrual cycle awareness builds what we call your inner vessel, or ‘container’ to hold this wild river of creativity within you. This helps you establish boundaries and feel more stable in yourself – a place within where you can ‘rest’, even as you’re active in the world. The practice also helps you develop the vital skill of what we call ‘holding the tension’ – the capacity to sit with all the complexities, challenges and fullness of the creative processes you’re navigating, and reduces feelings of creative overwhelm.
You Become a Channel for the Creativity of the Feminine
Many of us feel a strong sense of, or a deep longing for connection with the Feminine. When we speak of the Feminine, we’re not imagining a goddess figure but rather a presence, a process – a way of being that needs to be cultivated so that She can be known and experienced.
The Feminine is Wisdom: the ineffable, invisible, intangible presence without which life is rendered soulless. We believe that women and people with wombs have a crucial role to play in restoring the Feminine and creating a new, life-affirming power story in the world. By restoring our ways and practices – like menstrual cycle awareness - we integrate the power of the Feminine into our lives and back onto the planet.
We need the Feminine because She leads the evolutionary edge. She’s the veiled mystery that cannot be named but calls us all the time through life’s disturbances, yearnings and synchronicities, which might feel challenging creatively. She’ll either show up as big trouble or - through our commitment to our cycle awareness practice - we’ll meet Her as worthy channels for Her brilliance, beauty, medicine, revelation and creativity.
Would you Like to Experience More of the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness in Your Life? (Or share it with others?). You'll find all the information on our next Menstruality Leadership Programme here, 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.
