One of the things that has kept us obsessed with the menstrual cycle for all these years is the visionary power that is awakened at menstruation.
At our annual Your Menstrual Cycle: Your Oracle visioning event yesterday we were able to drop deeply into inner winter as time of listening and incubation - a time to connect with the acorn of the visions within us, from which truly majestic realities can flower.
But vision isn’t just about insight - it’s about embodied shifts over time, and wonderfully, each cycle phase offers us a living, organic technology that can deliver us to the future we crave, right here within our bodies.
The beautiful truth is that you can awaken to the ‘Visionary You’ at menstruation, and afterwards, the whole menstrual cycle supports you to make that vision a reality. As you practice menstrual cycle awareness and follow what your cycle is guiding you do do each cycle month, you’re embodying and nourishing your visions and slowly but surely making them more real.
How can you connect to the Visionary Power of Menstruation?
So, menstruation can be this extraordinary moment where we’re gifted visions of our lives, which can change everything, but how do we connect to this power? It starts by honouring the impulses that happen at menstruation. A good way to explore these impulses is through the lens of the ‘five chambers of menstruation’ - the five phases that we all move through in the death-and-rebirth process of the bleed.
Chamber One: Separation invites us to withdraw from the world. It’s the ‘death’, the dismemberment of your ego – a transition moment that delivers you to the door of the inner temple. It’s also potentially the most spiritually powerful place in the whole cycle. As this phase begins many feel an impulse to suddenly walk away from activity and people, or a sense of your brain simply shutting down. Both of which are essential for you to enter into the different states of consciousness available to you.
Chamber Two: Surrender announces itself with the arrival of the bleed (this doesn’t include spotting, which for some of us occurs before bleeding). This chamber is as it sounds – about letting go, utterly giving in to the moment, being in the unknown and doing nothing. You rest, release and cleanse the ‘stuff’ of your daily life, making space for the new to come in. You may feel an impulse to lie down, or a sense that you suddenly can’t move. This is menstruation guiding you into awakening - it has to decommission your ego and drive, which will get in the way and interrupt the receiving of this gift.
Chamber Three: Renewal is the time of great remembering. As you empty out, you reconnect to the ground of your being and your unique place in the world. It’s a feeling of having landed and is the sure sign that you’ve arrived in this next phase, where you’re plugged back into the Source. You can experience a womb-like state in which you feel washed by the forces of love. Now is the moment to receive, to drink in the most extraordinary affirmation of your being. If you’re able to follow the instructions of your body now (even a little bit) the visionary you can wake up in all its glory.
Chamber Four: Visioning is the quintessential Vision Quest time. You can recover the deep meaning of your life – your Calling. It’s usually way too big, but it’s all you. You also get answers to questions or life issues you’re struggling with. You become the Oracle, visioning both for yourself and your community.
Chamber Five: Clarity and Direction. Finally, you begin to feel the energy shift again. As the ‘high’ eases. You’re on the cusp of exiting from the inner temple of menstruation, but there’s one more thing for you to receive and that’s clarity and direction. We love how practical the cycle is. Having given you ecstatic revelation it now slips in some down-to-earth instructions for the coming month.
The punchline is to care for the inner prompts that menstruation offers you. They are not wrong, even as they may be very inconvenient for everyone else who may be wanting you to show up as your all-giving superhuman inner summer self all month long.
Would you like a community of support to help you journey with the five chambers this year?
The Menstruality Leadership Programme supports you to deepen your relationship with the visionary power of menstruation. We actually begin the programme with a three-week deep dive into the map of the Five Chambers of Menstruation and how to become more aware of them, and work with them to receive rest, vision and clarity.
Along with helping you to bring this spiritual, visionary power alive in your life, the programme also help you to bring these visions into reality. The next maps we explore are the ‘Two Vias’ and the four ‘Inner Seasons’, and how you can work with them to embody your calling more and more in your life - to tap into the living, organic technology alive within you.
You can find out more and take your seat here.
