We speak a lot about the inner critic here at Red School, and today we want to unpack an equally important aspect of our menstrual cycle awareness practice — self celebration — which also happens to be one of the most powerful antidotes to self-criticism.
We speak about self-celebration as the ‘sacred task’ of the inner summer — the ovulatory phase of your cycle. The inner summer serves to affirm you and what you’re here to give. It honours the person you’ve become and urges you to celebrate your talents and beauty. It asks you to step up, enter the spotlight, peek your head above the parapet and let yourself be seen. It’s not a time to shrink away or blend into the crowd – your uniqueness is being called forth.
However, when our Cycle Power students start the inner summer module, they usually express some form of discomfort when we invite them to practice self-celebration. Is it any wonder?! We live in a world where women have been conditioned to play small in order to stay safe. As one of our leadership mentors, Abi says; “I’m happy celebrating others, this comes easily and feels great. But when it comes to me, it’s different, it feels awkward and indulgent, dangerous even. Something feels risky in it."
Why is self celebration so important?
But tough as it may feel at the beginning, we urge you to embrace this practice. Self appreciation and self celebration are crucial to grow your positive self image, as well as to feel and recognise your value, skills, and contribution.
Self celebration builds a ‘buffer’ and gives you resilience in all the roles you play in your life —supporting you to be able to meet and engage with the inevitable criticism that will come your way as you lead from your heart. It builds a ‘reserve’ of goodwill towards yourself for when you find yourself having to face up to your own ineptitude, shortcomings and failures. Self appreciation gives you the healthy ego strength to be vulnerable and humble.
Here are two ideas to help you practice self-celebration:
The most important time in the cycle to practice self-celebration
Practising self-appreciation on the crossover day between inner summer and inner autumn (often around day 19/20) is especially vital because it builds a buffer against your premenstrual inner critic.
After the activity of summer, remember to take stock of what you’ve done and acknowledge yourself and your work. This transition is for self-recognition and celebration. It’s the great Thanksgiving moment of the cycle, without which you could enter the premenstrual phase feeling unprepared to face your shortcomings, blind spots, shadow side and the inner critic. Self celebration helps you to fortify yourself and be at the ready to spot when your critic has turned up, and listen to what it has to say.
Would you like support to practice self celebration?
If you’d like support and holding to grow your inner summer self celebration muscles, come and join us for Cycle Power.
