As I step closer to officially studying the menstrual cycle next week, I have over the last week encountered several interactions with women about cycle awareness and the embodiment and awareness of the cycle.
This conversation is certainly not exclusive to bleeders, but it does resonate more deeply as an embodied experience with the menstrual cycle being (or has been) a prominent part of everyday life.
I have had shared experiences with those who don’t bleed and there is still a connection there, after all, we are cyclical beings, yet for those who embody the lived experience of a menstrual cycle, the sensitivity of its cyclical nature, is more deeply felt.
The connection makes sense to me. We inevitably live in a cyclical world. Nature has its seasons, day and night, the moon waxes and wanes, the oceans rise and fall, animals, plants, insects, death and birth – everything follows a cycle and pattern, which is inherently unique.
But for humans, becoming so detached from our own senses and awareness in a society that promotes achievements and accomplishments over rest and much needed down time, when will be able to carve out the time to reflect, reassess and dream, feel into our own personal rhythm as well as to what may be arising within us? Can we come to accept what is arising and see it for what it is, the nuances, the hard critic and the gems hidden therein?
Is there something to learn in what feels like a dark void?
To move with it, go gently and encourage gentle and tender pacing in a predominantly patriarchal society that would much rather turn a blind eye, so that we continuously run the mill of the hamster wheel of striving, perfection and accumulation, unaware of the very nature of life itself – the wheel of life.
The cycles within cycles.
The importance of this knowledge and the deep sense of belonging that rests there, waiting to be discovered.
With awareness of our own inner world, we can let go, bit by bit, of the constructs around and within us. We can come home to ourselves, knowing that we are doing our best, and that is enough.
The more aware we become of our own patterns and cyclical nature, the more choice we present ourselves with, to not only live more authentically true to ourselves, but to live with a felt sense of freedom to do so. To whatever our capacity is, at any given time.
We know more readily what we need, and what we have to offer.
We are all limited by capacity, capability and boundaries. These are not bad things, although in the west, we are more often than not deluded with the idea of limitless boundaries. When we understand ourselves better, and these vital borders, we can express ourselves much more efficiently where it really matters the most.
So, we are all cyclical beings on a cyclical planet. We are meant to change and evolve, it’s how we allow ourselves to explore our inner worlds that sets the precedent on how we evolve through it, and bring that into an external expression.
I have only scraped the surface and it feels immense. Next week I dive right into it, and I am looking forward to it.
A new chapter beckons to be explored.
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