Your Menstrual Do Nothing ‘To-do’ List.

At menstruation, you most likely find that your tendency is to be more focused on your inner world, more withdrawn into yourself. You probably also notice a great need to do absolutely nothing. This is as it should be.

However, most of us live in a world which demands much of us, and rarely supports deep rest.

On top of this, doing nothing is a skill that requires considerable practice—you laugh because you know it’s true! Doing nothing is a lost art. Women and folks at our workshops genuinely ask us how to do nothing, partly in disbelief that we actually mean do nothing.

So, when your next bleed arrives (or the new moon if you’re lunar tracking), we invite you to carve out a small chunk of time to do nothing and, if you find it a struggle here are some ideas to help.

Here’s a list of ‘to-dos’ to help you from doing at all;

1. Work with ‘holding the tension’. For a while doing nothing may feel incredibly uncomfortable, but if you stick with it you’ll soon discover that doing nothing has a magical way of leading you to everything your heart truly desires, including the full loving power of menstruation.
2. Don’t multitask: Resist the temptation to turn on the television or computer; dodge the urge to tidy just one more thing, or somehow multitask doing nothing with doing something.
3. Tend to your inner parenting: Sit back and watch all the inner commentary trying to throw you off course: “this is a waste of time”, “what’s the point of this?” And “if you really do stop, you may never get going again”. Gently reassure the part of you that always wants to be busy, distracted and on the move.
4. Cultivate forgiveness: Forgive all your damning self-judgement, and the voice in your head that tells you you’re lazy, slovenly or useless.
5. Rewrite the story: practice letting go of the idea that your worth depends on what you do and how much you produce.
6. Let yourself be bored: Doing nothing means having no agenda, zero power of agency, and allowing yourself to drift and potter. Risk being bored and simply hang out with yourself in the emptiness.
7. Remember the one per cent shift: This practice is especially powerful when the urge to do nothing comes at menstruation. If the idea terrifies you or makes your feet itch, start small and let it grow. Ten minutes of empty time is a great place to start.

The gateway to accessing the restorative powers of menstruation

This doing nothing is absolutely the motto of menstruation. Menstruation is the ‘let it all go’ moment of the cycle where we rest, repair and remember who we are. We like to think of it as a time where you cleanse yourself of the month that has been, to ‘clean the slate’.

And, just like in outer Winter when nothing much is happening on the surface yet below the ground there is a deep reparation and restoration going on in the roots of things, so the same is happening when we bleed—our whole system is being repaired, rewired and renewed.

Menstruation is your home base, where you are plugged back into yourself and to what really matters. Your metaphorical pit stop in the menstrual cycle where you fill your tank, so you can then we go out into your cycle renewed, connected and with restored purpose and meaning.

If you’d like to deepen your cycle awareness, we invite you to take a look at our book Wild Power or our self paced online course Cycle Power here.

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