I am learning to love being a female embodiment of my Self. There are, after all, many benefits to being a female. We get to dress up, have fun enhancing and changing our appearance through make-up and hair doo’s, have multiple orgasms, carry and give birth to a new life.. There is one aspect of being a female, however, that I have struggled with for years.. 25 years to be absolutely precise. And that aspect is related to my monthly periods. The female cycle. The bleed. For almost two weeks of every month (that’s 26 weeks per year) I go into a state of un-comfort, insecurity, instability, exhaustion and, sometimes, even a complete melt down! On a ‘normal’ week I look in the mirror and I see light. I smile at passers-by and laugh wildly and infectiously with my friends. I think life is beautiful and I create with ease. I live by the credo that there are no limits and that content is the new happy. And then I enter the cycle..
When I look back at the teenage me, in the days when I first started having my periods, I realise how embarrassing and confusing that time really was for me. I mean, no one had really explained what they meant. And no one around me spoke positively of them either. Or even shared much around the subject. So it became an inconvenience. Once per month, every month. The heaviness, the overflow of emotions, the inability to control them. 25 years. That's 650 weeks! And I know that I am not alone in this. Many of my female freinds have had similar experiences. And I suspect there are thousands of women out there who feel the same.
One prominent aspect of my monthly cycle is the pain. Not so much the physical pain but the emotional, mental tension. Positivity turning into negativity. Light to darkness. Laughter to tears. For years I was reacting to these dual states of mind almost unconsciously. Questioning, enquiring, but never quite understanding. Wishing away the negativity and the darkness. Hating the insecurity. Impatiently hurrying out of the cycle, destroying relationships (yes, that’s true!) along the way. Until I began to realise the true purpose and meaning of them for my being. In this female body. In this lifetime.
There is a great wisdom that we, as females, can tune into and receive each month, at the time of our bleed. The magic of female embodiment is hidden within our physical cycles which have the power to create and destroy. Isn’t it amazing that each month we are given this divine opportunity to connect with our true Self? An opportunity to attune with the cosmic energies of the universe, the moon and the stars, a step closer to enlightenment each time. An opportunity to shred the old and embrace the new. If only we accept this divinity within us. Open. Surrender.
By nurturing and honouring who we are, we allow ourselves to tune into the authentic core of our being. Beyond positive and negative, lightness and darkness, sadness and happiness. But learning to gain an insight, or even to catch a glimpse of it, in the midst of the heaviest waves of painful emotions, is challenging. One has to learn to maintain stillness inside the kingdom of ‘mind madness’, when negative thoughts attach themselves to each other at rapid speeds forming gigantic monstrous shadows upon our being. Tricking us. Thickening the veil in front of our eyes. The physiological force of this process is incredibly powerful and it gains momentum in resistance. So, these days I am focusing more on allowing the emotions to come up freely. To be in the flow and, well, just be. I let the thoughts and emotions come and I watch them as I sit in meditation, move through my asanas, walk, work, talk, cry, smile. I know they will pass, today, tomorrow, the day after... Like the cycles of the day, seasons of the year, phases of the moon. I want to savour every moment before it passes so I don’t miss the important lessons that each cycle brings to me.
I truly am loving being a female embodiment of my Self! I am learning to love my female body completely, unconditionally, inside and out, even in the darkest, most painful of times...
So let it flow through you, through every cell and particle of your being. Let it burn through you until it exhausts itself and dies down. Embrace, nurture and honour your female body, the kingdom of your soul. Know that you are beautiful. Know that you are limitless. Know that you are divine and pure love and nothing could ever taint that... Breathe.