Period pain is probably the most common symptom that disturbs women. We've come to believe that period pain is something we should endure. But I'm here to tell you that period pain isn't normal.
With the number of women who suffer from period pain, it has become the norm to associate our periods with cramps, stabbing intense pain, and complete wipe out every month. Doctors put PMS down to the imbalance of hormones, the impact of certain foods you eat, and sometimes even the types of exercise. But what if the pain you're experiencing is trying to tell you something? What if that pain in your womb, in your ovaries, is asking you to dive a little deeper and acknowledge a part of yourself that wants your attention and needs to be seen, witnessed, and heard?
What if that pain directly manifests how you subconsciously feel about your sexuality and femininity?
What if that pain is a physical manifestation of your femininity that you have been repressing and suppressing?
What if that pain asks you to connect deeper to the feminine and heal your relationship with your mother?
What if the pain represents the relationship you have with your period?
What if the pain you are experiencing is linked to how you subconsciously feel about being a woman living in a patriarchal society?
The womb is such a powerful, energetic centre of the body; it's connected to our sacral chakra - the centre of our creativity, the centre of our pleasure, and represents our relationship with the self and our worth. It is said that when we are disconnected from this energy centre, we are disconnected from our life force - the divine feminine energy that we possess within. Everything starts with energy and manifests in the physical. Then, the body talks to us to get our attention, creating symptoms that highlight an imbalance or blockage in the body's innate healing system.
See, here's the thing, our modern-day culture introduces our period as a big problem or inconvenience. We aren't taught to honour our cycles or taught how they are linked to the lunar cycle. If we go back to our ancestral times, before street lights and outside lights affected us, women bled on the natural cycle of light, particularly the moon. Women would all bleed together and learn together, leaving their tribes during these times. They would share their emotions and what they were feeling at this time, providing them with a space to feel, release and let go. They would then return to the tribes and share with the men what they had learnt and what needed to change, and this ultimately scared men as they started to see how powerful women were with their emotions.
In the patriarchal society we live in today, we fail to honour our menstrual cycles. When we bleed, we shove in a tampon and continue our day like nothing is going on, completely disconnected from what the body is going through. It's an inconvenience, something that we disregard; often, we don't even think about what our body is doing; instead, we complain about it.
From a psycho-emotional-spiritual perspective, how we responded to entering our 'Menarche phase' - when we first had our period - plays a role in how we feel about our sexuality/femininity. For example, when I first had my period, my attitude was very much to use a tampon and not fuss about it. Basically, what I had then subconsciously believed was that there wasn't a place for the feminine aspect of myself. Instead, I suppressed this and focussed on the practical, masculine part of the doing rather than the being. I experienced amenorrhea for ten years - losing my period when I was an athlete and only getting it back to a regular cycle when I started to delve deeper into my healing journey. I was enlightened about how disconnected I was from my feminine side and the ability to feel my emotions and allow them to be expressed.
As a society, we are gaining more awareness of ancestral trauma and how this is passed on down the generations; the key place this trauma is passed onto is our womb space/sacral chakra. Too many women feel disempowered when it comes to their struggles with periods; not enough conversation is being had around these things that focus on turning inwards rather than looking outside of yourself for the answers.
With this information, I urge you to sit and reflect upon your relationship with your period, your sexuality, your womb, and your sacral chakra. Give yourself space to self enquire and feel how it feels to place your awareness on your womb space and allow your body to talk to you without any judgement. Maybe you feel completely disconnected from this space. That's okay; the first step is acknowledging and accepting this. Start by just getting a little more in tune with your cycle - witnessing and observing what comes up for you when it comes to your period.
True healing means becoming active in wanting to bring about change. It's less about trying to fix and take things away and more about self-enquiry, connecting back into the body and tuning in to its messages whilst bringing about acceptance and compassion.
