By Melany Birdsong.

Our bodies guide us through an initiatory rhythmic alchemy, called Menstruality, that began at menarche and that carries us through and beyond menopause. 

The loss of ancient knowledge and rites of passage for women in modern times has cut us off from the depth of our inherent connection to the forces underlying all of life - to an inherent belonging through the menstrual cycle and the related cycles of our lives.

Without this sense of belonging we may be endlessly searching for answers and fulfillment outside of ourselves, trapped by the temporary gratifications of a consumerist culture, living disembodied from the head up, and certainly estranged from the pelvis. 

But our lives are initiatory journeys, and our experience of these journeys is entirely informed by the way in which we move through the world within the sacred vessel of the human body.

Feminine rites of passage - like menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause - must be consciously engaged along this initiatory path. 

Our experience of each feminine rite of passage is influenced by the depth of our connection to, and the health of, the pelvic organs and their energies.

Western medicine has pathologized women’s bodies - minimizing and normalizing menstrual and menopausal challenges, medicalizing natural processes such as pregnancy and birth - and does not recognize that attentive care to the whole of a woman’s life cycle (including the physical and non-physical aspects) is required in order to support true health.

Western culture is seemingly oblivious to the immense healing potential and psychospiritual power of the feminine initiatory path.  Feminine processes are generally portrayed as mere burdens to be alleviated. Artificial hormones are prescribed to “treat” menstrual and menopausal challenges, which actually overrides or shuts down normal bodily functions and can create hormonal imbalance. This discourages inquiry into and masks the root causes of such challenges, preventing women from receiving the somatic feedback required to truly heal.

True healing takes place within the context of, and at the level of, the whole life - no part is separate.

Every signal from the body is meaningful and points the way to healing.

I serve in the role of a Menstruality midwife - witnessing, supporting, and honoring your embodied feminine evolution through education, ritual, and somatic inquiry.

This work is for you if you wish to:

learn and leverage your unique cyclical rhythms to elevate your life, livelihood, and relationships,

understand and alleviate challenges related to your menstrual cycle (whether physical, psycho-emotional, or spiritual - they are all connected)

enhance hormonal health,

ignite your creativity and sensuality,

reclaim body sovereignty,

deepen into connection with feminine wisdom and your shared experience with all women,

prepare for and navigate menopause with greater health and ease,

enhance fertility awareness and potentiate fertility,

experience the deep sensuality of pregnancy and birth,

prepare for and heal after pregnancy (birth or loss, including termination),

recover a healthy menstrual cycle after hormonal birth control,

live more ecologically and sustainably, aligned with natural cycles and rhythms,

connect to the sacred in the everyday,

identify and release outdated patterns that no longer serve you,

nourish your nervous system,

be your own teacher, build trust in yourself and look within for answers to your biggest questions,

resolve menstrual shame (no matter your age or whether you are still cycling),

navigate life with greater authenticity, vitality, self-knowing, ease, flow, and purpose, and

reclaim your wildness and connection to the Earth, return to a more free and natural state of existence, and embody a sense of wholeness, oneness and belonging.

Red School.

“Imagine that knowledge of the full spectrum and power of the menstrual cycle is commonplace, and we all feel the utter rightness of having this experience within us. Imagine a world in which the menstrual cycle is respected as our spiritual practice. Imagine young people growing up in this menstrual-affirming world.

Imagine a world in which menopause is recognized as a healthy, organic step in one's evolutionary journey stepping into the vital and powerful role of serving your community and the world. Imagine knowing that you’ll be profoundly met in the dignity and power of this new place you stand in post menopause.

May we all trust our menstrual cycle and reclaim the spiritual significance of Menopause as the path to instate our full sovereignty. May we all recognise and relish our entitlement, dignity and authority to be channels for Menstruality and the Divine Feminine on the planet.”

By Lara Owen. “Menstrual taboos in patriarchal societies have been a core method for diminishing women through the shaming of a fundamental female-only experience, with corresponding prohibitive and limiting behaviours. This taboo is gradually changing as our world becomes more equal in gender terms, but there is still much work to be done. Centuries of shaming have left a legacy of inhibition and silence that impacts women’s health today…

The stigma associated with menstruation in patriarchal societies has also had a major influence on how women behave during menstruation. From childhood on, women absorb a powerful social message to ‘grin and bear it’ during menstruation, and to carry on ‘as normal’.

Yet anecdotally, many women report feeling better in body and mind when they adjust their activity to the cycle. Most significantly, they report enhanced wellbeing in general when they have some time for rest and relaxation during the heavy bleeding part of their period….”

By Artist Jamie McCartney. “Female genitalia have long been a source of fascination but also of confusion.

In 2006, British artist Jamie McCartney set out to end the confusion, at a scale that could not be ignored: The original vulva diversity project that has inspired so many more.

The 8 metre (26 feet) long wall sculpture consists of four hundred plaster casts of vulvas, all of them unique, arranged into ten large panels. …The age range of the women is from 18 to 76. Included are mothers and daughters, identical twins, trans men and women as well as a woman pre and post natal and another pre and post labiaplasty and many others.

Vulvas are as different as faces and many people, particularly women, don’t realise that….”

By Uma-Dinsmore Tuli. “Most of the people on this planet who practise and teach yoga are women. Most of these women have wombs. And many of these women have little clear understanding about the effects of yoga practice upon their wombs. This is because yoga was originally developed by men for men’s bodies, and has been, until only very recently, transmitted through exclusively male lineages. Traditional forms of teaching yoga are thus likely to have zero womb awareness, so there is much ignorance and confusion in the yoga world about what happens to our wombs when we practise yoga.

The information provided overleaf sets out the aims and effects of certain yoga techniques and outlines the effects of these practices on the womb.

Why bother?

The healthful energies of a woman’s womb are key to her lifelong wellbeing and vitality. In the yogic anatomy of the energy body, the womb is the seat of creativity, fertility and capacity to nurture and grow new life, new ideas—to manifest. It is literally the cosmic gateway for śakti (power) within. Yoga is all about refining awareness, of body, mind, breath, emotions and energies: it is about ‘union’ or re-connection with the source of all life.

To pay no attention to the changing needs of womb cycles is to neglect the very place within that is the source of vitality and well being. Respect for womb cycles is the foundation of a refined and sensitive yoga practice for women….”

By Lara Owen. “The value we place on menstruation has a direct correlation with the value we place on ourselves as women….”

By Emma Balnaves. “A practical guide for women in the three important stages of her life - menstruation, pregnancy & menopause.”

Joanna Macy, On Being interview with Krista Tippett.

“We’ve been treating the Earth as if it were a supply house and a sewer. We’ve been grabbing, extracting resources from it for our cars and our hairdryers and our bombs. And we’ve been pouring waste into it until it’s overflowing. But our Earth is not a supply house and sewer; it is our larger body. We breathe it, we taste it, we ARE it. And it is time now that we venerate that incredible flowering of life…”

By O’Nell. “The Beautiful Cervix Project encourages people with cervices to learn cervical self-exam and fertility awareness as a revolutionary path of promoting respect, confidence, and health. We believe that this form of self-empowerment and education will help contradict shame and misinformation around our reproductive health and choices, affecting positive change from the personal to global levels.”