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Exhausting Periods?

Challenging 5 Common Myths About Your Cycle.

Have you ever contemplated why you feel so tired during your period?

Perhaps you don’t feel tired, but the women around you always remark about how tired they feel around their menstrual cycle?

Maybe you read about how women can learn to actually stop their menses through specific practices and you wondered about whether or not that was a good idea?

It could be that you also wondered if somehow your period was a time for detoxing?

Or, you heard that if you don’t bleed on the new moon, there is something out of whack with your Femininity?

Myths about our menstrual cycle are so prevalent these days that it is hard to decipher fact from fiction.

In fact, their very existence can create a variety of neuroses that can evolve into female health challenges.

Five Unchallenged & Common Myths:

1. Women lose energy during their menses.

This is an interesting myth because it is a learned idea. Unless you are the rare woman that actually is exhausted during her period, this myth simply isn’t true.

Yet because we ‘believe it to be true’, we behave accordingly, blaming our period for our exhaustion versus our own lifestyle choices.

On the level of our body and psyche, the menstrual phase of our cycle is a natural ‘reset and rest’ time. It is a time for us to enjoy going inward, to attune ourselves to what is working and not working in our lives, and to part-take in nourishing activities.

As for blood loss, unless we are excessively bleeding, the amount of blood loss is not enough to equate fatigue. We lose, on average, 35ml of blood with our menses, yet donating blood, on average, we give more than 10x the amount of blood (450ml)!

Furthermore, in the West, we often attribute slowing down and being still with being tired or sleepy.

But these are unrelated states.

What is important here is to note that we have a strong ‘meme’ (a mental virus propagated as truth) interplaying with poor life-style habits.

Reset: Our menses is a time to go inward, to contemplate, to slow down, to reset and realign ourselves to what is most important in our lives.

When we slow down, if we are tired, we let ourselves enjoy relaxing and rejuvenating ourselves with plenty of rest.

2. Our kidneys are adversely affected by the menses.

What is actually meant here is a statement on our adrenal health, not so much our kidney health. This confusion comes from attempting to translate an Eastern concept (kidney health) into a Western paradigm (adrenal health).

Furthermore, this meme is backwards—It is the exhaustion or depletion of our adrenals that adversely affects our menstrual cycle, not the reverse.

However, it is common that in the natural ‘rest and reset’ time of the actual menses, we experience greater awareness of our adrenals and their imbalances.

What fatigues our adrenals? Stress, of all kinds.

When the adrenals are in stress cycle, they no longer can support producing our healthy hormones in a balanced way.

This can lead to issues such as estrogen dominance which is linked to the experience of PMS, fibroids, endometriosis and irregular menstrual cycles, just to name a few.

Reset:

By having a good look at our life-style, we can begin to make some positive changes towards enjoying more down time and practicing being quiet more regularly.

Many women report a positive change in their cycles simply by regaining their adrenal health.

3. The Taoist premise that encourages early menopause (cessation of the menses).

This premise is widely propagated through different texts that state that a woman loses her JING when she menstruates, therefore leading to the assumption that in order to stay young and healthy, we must prevent the loss of our JING as much as possible.

Again, here we have the difficulty of translating an ancient concept with modern medicine. In a very simplistic way, the concept of JING can be loosely related to adrenal health.

As we already noted, life-style is the main culprit to eroding adrenal health and I have found this to be true in regards to women’s health issues.

What is more draining than our actual menses is our lack of introspection and emotional responsibility.

PMS, in my experience, can be diminished or eliminated by having the willingness to examine ourselves more deeply and to take ownership of our choices and of our shaping our lives into one that is supportive of our natural, rhythmic, womanly cycle.

Reset:

Menstruation is natural.

Our environment, our life-style and our psychological well-being all play a big part in how we experience our cycle.

When we begin to live more in harmony with our own cycles, we return to our optimum state of vibrant womanly health.

4. Our menses is a natural detox program.

Here is another interesting meme that implies that we are somehow ‘dirty’ and must be ‘cleansed’ once per month.

Yet, menstruation is one of the four natural expressions of fertility cycle.

For this one, I want to jump immediately into the reset.

Reset:

As mentioned in #3, we could do well by owning ourselves emotionally.

Often we do use our uterus as a sort of psychic garbage can.

However, I have noticed that women who honestly begin to use the PMS/menstrual time of their cycle as a time to blossom in their emotional maturity, their menstrual pain diminished or ceases all together.

Of course, there are ways to exercise, eat, and supplement our lives that equally support the transformation of living in harmony with our feminine rhythm.

5. If we don’t bleed on the new moon, we are out of sync with our Femininity.

This meme is very harmful because not all women menstruate on the dark moon and this does not, by default, prove that they are out of sync with their Femininity.

In fact, women who follow the recommended protocol to bleed on the new moon may be doing everything right and still not bleed at the ‘right time of the month’.

Reset:

If your cycle is healthy and you feel attuned with yourself, then whenever you bleed is perfect.

We must let go of forcing ourselves to live according to external constructs and instead start to live according to what is true for our own unique self.

When it comes to our own deep Feminine wisdom, nothing replaces attuning ourselves with ourselves and being willing to challenge and question everything that we believe to  be true about what it means to be a woman in modern times.

This is a true and courageous act of claiming and living according to our embodied wisdom.

If you would love to understand your own inner wisdom, check out my book.

If you enjoyed this article, please like it, share it, and leave your comments below so we can continue to unveil our own truths about what it means to be a healthy woman.

Shameless Pleasure?

What It Is & Why You Need It.

There is no one around and deep inside, you feel a powerful urge to express the depth of your ache.

You ache for deep, fulfilling pleasure and you want it now!

Scenario One: You reach for your hidden stash of chocolate and with trembling fingers, rip open the wrapper to reveal the silky, forbidden darkness. As you bring it to your lips, your mouth is flooded with a gush of saliva. One bite and your eyes roll back into your head, you are filled with pulsing delight.

Scenario Two: You start to move your body in ways that allows your pleasure to amplify and express itself more fully. Slowly, in the most luscious ways, you touch your body and moans of delight escape your throat.

Finale: Both scenes end abruptly when you realize WHAT you have indulged in and quickly you are flushed with berating thoughts and you swear you will never do it again.

In our liberated world, it is astonishing to see that the words shame and pleasure are almost synonymous. How did this happen? Why is it so prevalent?

Let’s first look at shame.

In some definitions, it has a positive light of providing us with a sense of humility (albeit at times false) and thus, hopefully leading us to behave respectfully.

On the same breath, those of us who have no shame are regarded to have a lack of humility and thus, believed to behave in disrespectful ways.

This biased definition assumes that we do not have a conscience and that we are not capable of actually behaving according to society’s rules and guidelines.

Do we honestly need shame in order to guide our behaviors? Can we actually become more aware of ourselves without the need to take on shame as our chaperone?

And What About Pleasure?

Let’s consider the ancient myth of Eros (the God of Love) and Psyche (the Goddess of the Human Soul). When they finally marry, they give birth to Hedone (the spirit of Pleasure) which is the root word of Hedonism.

The modern interpretation of hedonism is often linked with negative aspects of sexuality. However, the original definition of a hedonist is a “Follower of any ethical system in which some sort of pleasure ranks as the highest good. The Epicurian identifies this pleasure with the practice of virtue.” — Online Etymology Dictionary.

Reframed in this way, pleasure can be seen as a virtuous and ethical act, not just limited to sex, but also inclusive of other experiences such as enjoying a deep conversation, a delicious piece of chocolate, the scent of spring blossoms, or a gorgeous sunset.

In fact, pleasure is so essential to our well-being that without it we get distressed and eventually may fall ill, psychologically, physically, or both.

When we awaken our Erotic energy (eros) and marry it with our evolving emotional/psychological self (Psyche), we literally birth more Pleasure which in turn sustains our aliveness, keeping us youthful and vibrantly healthy!

So What Does This Have To Do With Being Shameless?

Shame is useless.

Shame is actually not needed in order to make life-enhancing choices.

Shame also does’t feel yummy in our body. Shame actually shuts us down, raises our levels of stress hormones and contributes to our ill health and yes, rapid aging!

Shame is also a choice.

It exists because of our definition.

We think we need it in order to be good women. If we were to be shameless about our pleasure, then we must be bad.

Yet nothing is further from the truth.

When we can learn to trust ourselves and the wisdom of our body, all of our neurosis around pleasure will surface and have a chance to be loved into wholeness.

And if we are willing to embrace ourselves in our totality, free of judgement, we can begin to live from a truly shameless and pleasureful place.

In Fact, Shameless Pleasure Is Our Birthright. 

Remember, we are designed for pleasure.

Having over 8000 clitoral nerve endings dedicated solely to the function of activating our pleasure is not only living proof, it is a daily reminder of this truth.

Many medical researchers are still perplexed as to why clitoris even exists, surely pleasure cannot be the sole reason for its existence?

Personally, I haven’t found another use for it.

If accessing your deep, erotic intelligence while exploring and loving yourself into wholeness resonates with you, get started with my book: Emergence of the Sensual WomanClick here to get it now. If you’d love to dive into a dynamic training that helps make Shameless Surrender an embodied experience, then you’ll love my 6 hour immersion training: Click For More Details.

Pleasure Isn’t Optional

5 Secrets To Increasing Your Pleasure Now.

“I can’t remember the last time I actually felt delicious, seems like I am always tired these days.”

“Pleasure is for the younger generation, at my age, I’m happy just making it through the day.”

“After birthing my children, I never quite felt the same and now I have no idea what it means to feel sensually alive.”

“I’m too busy to think about pleasure and find it rather irritating to be bombarded with messages of sex and orgasm on a daily basis.”

“My partner has left me for what he calls a more orgasmically expressed woman. It hurts, but to be honest, I have never really known my own orgasmic potential.”

These are comments I hear every day from women around the world and they point to something important:

As much as we have ‘advanced’ our civilization, it seems to me that we have digressed in the realm of being deeply alive, expressed human beings.

What is your current relationship to pleasure?

Is it a random event or something reliant on external circumstances?

Or is it something you cherish and spend time exploring?

Pleasure isn’t a commodity, something we can buy by the ‘bunch’ or ‘jar-full’ despite a multi-billion dollar industry doing its best to convince us that our pleasure is a result of having something ‘external’.

Rather, pleasure is what we are.

Pleasure is like breathing, digesting, and our heart beating.

It delivers essential messages to our brain, triggering the centers which enable us to express our true selves with courage, self-esteem, and creativity.

In fact, pleasure is the very ingredient that nurtures life itself, for without it we literally fall ill.

Studies of nitric oxide (a substance naturally produced by our body when we experience something pleasurable) show that low the levels of nitric oxide make our body more disease prone, whereas high levels of nitric oxide keeps us vibrant and functioning efficiently.

How do we raise our nitric oxide levels?

Pure and simple: On-going infusions of pleasure.

This includes all things that induce the sensation of pleasure within us as well as sexual pleasure, but not just any kind of sexual pleasure.

In the state I like to call “relaxed arousal”, we access deep arousal while experiencing profound levels of relaxation, surrender, and softening.

This type of pleasure actually resets our entire being to function at its true potential and allows us to access transcendent states of consciousness!

5 Secrets to Relaxed Arousal:

    1. Choosing Pleasure: Discover new ways to delight yourself regularly. Be creative, explore all of your senses regularly and drop into a profound connection with them.
    2. Eliminating Stress: Do your best to eliminate stressors such as: bad relationships, work you hate, living in a toxic space, eating food that makes you acidic, etc. Stress actually numbs our capacity to feel pleasure and yet we need pleasure to counter-act the damaging effects of stress.
    3. Enjoy Softening: Define for yourself ways in which you could soften and relax, such as taking a bath with flower petals and candle light or deepening your breath when receiving a compliment or touch from someone.
    4. Self-Pleasuring: You must become your own best lover and give yourself the touch you yearn for. Let go of any goals towards orgasm, instead indulge in exploring yourself slowly. Pause, soften, and breathe as you start to get aroused. The more you take the time to explore your pleasure potential, the more you ignite it!
    5. Jade Egg Practice: The practice of using a small Jade Egg inter-vaginally. It’s excellent for pelvic health and awakening your pleasure potential. It also helps to send much needed signals via your pelvic nerve to your brain so that you can live from a deeply integrated, creative, place of self-love.

 

Aside from the obvious ‘sensual/sexual’ side of pleasure, pleasure also comes in many forms. Do you know what your key ‘pleasure activation’ activities are?

Make time right now to discover what simple, yet fun activities that you could do each day to create higher doses of pleasure for yourself.

Pleasure Tip of the Day:

The more you get your groove on, the more alive you will feel! 

One of the fastest ways to shift our mood, enhance our life-giving hormones, and create more openness in our body is through moving & shaking!

See if you can find a few minutes each day in this coming week (& longer if it brings you delight) to put on a favorite piece of music and just let yourself move with joy and innocence.

If you want to add a pelvic healing component, then add some curvy movements with your hips such as hip circles, side-to-side or front-to-back tilts, or even a shimmy or three!

Whatever you choose make pleasure a priority.

You will find yourself feeling more fulfilled, juicy, confident, and expressed and the world will be a better place for it.

If you want more delicious aliveness in your life, be sure to put your name and email below and you will instantly receive my free video series: 3 Myths That Are Killing Your Pleasure (& What To Do About It). 

And be sure to leave your comment below on what steps you are taking to weave more pleasure into your life.

Happy International Woman’s Day!

Let’s champion our birthright of Pleasure together…