One: The cycle is the reason you’re here. The menstrual cycle is the amazing means by which we create life. Let’s cherish it. It’s connected to all the systems and organs of your body so when you cherish it you are cherishing your whole being.
Two: Your menstrual cycle is a diagnostic tool. It is stress sensitive - constantly giving you feedback about your health and well-being. By observing and monitoring the physical and emotional changes throughout the menstrual month you get direct information about your self and your overall health.
Three: Your cycle is your number one self-care and stress management system. When you practice cycle awareness, cooperating with the energy and emotional monthly pattern, respecting the natural highs and lows, the times of extroversion and introversion, you model sustainably living and your nervous system will feel more soothed.
Four: Your menstrual cycle is your inner guidance system. When you’re connected to your cycle you have a direct line to yourself - to the many different facets and layers of your being. Over time this connection builds a delicious inner knowing about who you are and what you need to be doing.
Five: Menstruation soothes you with the ‘love and bliss’ hormone, oxytocin. When you bleed - if you’ve been able to stop and deeply let go - you can experience a glorious wash of oxytocin soothing and repairing your whole system - body and soul.
Menstruation is a glorious natural altered state of consciousness. As if that love and bliss weren’t enough, there’s also ecstasy, deep feelings of belonging and oneness, and the experience of a deep visionary state.
Six: Cycle literacy prepares you for pregnancy, birth and motherhood (if that is your path). When you consciously work with the rhythm of your cycle you are in charge of your fertility. 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 life as a parent.
Seven: 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.
Eight: Your menstrual cycle is your 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.
Nine: Tending to your cycle helps you tend to the Earth. Menstrual cycle literacy breeds ecological literacy. The more you discover the power of your cycle, the more you feel for the wellbeing of the planet (this is most heightened premenstrually and at menstruation). Cycle awareness is sustainability thinking in action.
Ten: The menstrual cycle is a spiritual practice custom made for you.
A commitment to the simple process of cycle awareness, and the awakenings that emerge from it, is a spiritual discipline that leads you 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 - menstruation is your inner temple.
