Purpose
To restore the psycho-spiritual integrity of the menstrual cycle, including its transitions of menarche, pregnancy and childbirth and menopause.
The menstrual cycle is the psycho-spiritual template in women. Constituting the ground of woman's being, the cycle has an 'intelligence' and function that goes beyond its role of baby making, A woman's cyclical life opens her to an enormous elemental force that is both intensely intimate and universal: ecstatic, creative, erotic, restorative and full of love. We can enter the depth of this space monthly at menstruation and the menstrual cycle is our training ground for fully understanding and realising this power.
Our failure to attend to the menstrual cycle as a vital and vitalising psycho-spiritual process deprives women of a fundamental layer to their process of maturation and empowerment including preparation for the profound psycho-spiritual challenges of pregnancy, birth and mothering. Unless we address this issue our healing, psychological and spiritual disciplines will constantly fall short in speaking to and nourishing women today. Our spiritual, psychological and physical wellbeing will continue to be undermined.
The loss of this wisdom equally affects relationships between women and men. In effect men are deprived of an opportunity for maturation too.
It is critical women now reclaim the authority and spiritual integrity of their bodies. The restoration of this knowledge will work a quiet (and possibly not so quiet!) transformation in the spirit of women, relationships between men and women, and with our children, and in turn the culture.
Menstruation is still largely a taboo subject, which today has been safely relegated to the realms of 'just a biological process' that women have to learn to 'manage'. Some of us may also experience very real suffering such as period pain, endometriosis, or PMS that may obliterate any capacity to enter menstruation's imaginative depths. I believe that regardless of whether you personally care to engage with these ideas or not to live in a menstrual positive world would be immensely healing and dignifying for all of us.
From my experience women who have begun to embrace this empowering vision of the cycle have experienced significant changes in their symptoms. For example it has made it easier for women to feel OK about and take a stand for their needs around menstruation. This has reduced stress levels and in turn has reduced period pain and the premenstrual distress. This change of attitude has also altered a woman's perspective on what she is experiencing. Some symptoms stop looking like symptoms and become more like interesting if challenging states that need to be lived out rather than medicated.
The beauty of this work of imagination is that it costs nothing to experiment with. You can become your own researcher. There may indeed be side effects such as others having a little trouble adapting to your new approach or way of being in the world! But fortunately these are not toxic to the body as modern pharmaceutical drugs can be. So try revisioning menstruation anyway.
Who is this work for?
All women and men
Women and men in the fields of education, psychology, psychotherapy, coaching and health care
Public Workshops (click Workshops for more info)
Counselling
Personal and Professional Coaching working with a holistic embodied paradigm that embraces and celebrates the archetypal imperatives of both the feminine and the masculine. If you are a woman in your menstruating years you will also be able to draw on the template of your cycle as an ally, guide and creative source of inspiration in helping you clarify and manifest your dreams. For more information on coaching, click here
For information about the Women's Power Package click here
I have drawn on a number of approaches. This has included research in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, cultural studies, feminist theory, sociology, psychology and science as well as putting aside the restrictions of intellect for a more engaged, passionate way of knowing, allowing intuition, feeling and imagination to deepen into and fill out the story.
It has been a constant weaving back and forth between the different modes of thinking, mental and relational, over the last 30 years, playing on that creative edge where these two modes meet.
Academic resources, whilst providing an interesting context from which to begin this work, have ultimately been limited in their helpfulness because the means of research distances one from, rather engaging with the material. Far from the academic analysis being objective it simply is another subjectivity which whilst useful is partial and in fact can deaden the spirit within menstruation.
At the heart is women's experience: a story distilled from my own and the many I have heard over the years through teaching, counselling and conversation. And like an archaeologist, I have slowly pieced 'a bigger story' together. The aim of my research is to bring together multiple perspectives of women's experience as a collective whilst also addressing specific and individual needs of each woman who works with me.
My contribution is a research of the heart, a deeply embodied engagement that I encourage each woman to do for herself. The prima materia is our monthly cycling. With attention and love it can be a constant process of discovery and recovery.