It's raining right now in the Bay Area and I love it so much.
The past few days, I've been noticing a desire to explore (and write about) what it means to be a woman. Maybe it's partly due to my menstrual cycle being in full swing this week. And today in particular, I'm feeling the inner contractions deeply this time. So this morning, I got on my yoga mat and moved through the pain.
Growing up, flocks of girls would get together, moaning and clutching their lower bellies from the uterine contractions, and passing around tampons and Midol, a painkiller used specifically for menstrual cramps. The pain can be intense. Menstrual cramps can feel like a combination of someone pressing into a huge bruise in your abdomen and having your lower stomach being wrung out like a sponge filled with water. The sore achiness will often travel up my lower back, making it challenging to walk and stand at times. Yet I never took pain medication because I actually liked when my period cramps came, despite how uncomfortable it can feel. I saw it as a sign that I was alive and that my female body was doing pretty incredible things inside. While many people judged and joked about the hormonal emotional rollercoaster ride, being on my period invited me to reflect and feel things deeply in ways that felt more real than the superficial culture around me.
I thought I was a weirdo about all of this until I joined the Holistic Health Studies program at San Francisco State where I got my minor and certificate in holistic health studies. I had taken a class that focused on Eastern perspectives in health. We looked at lifestyle factors that promoted balanced menstrual cycles, including diet, relaxation practices, herbs, aromatherapy, etc. We had discussions on how different cultures ritualized and celebrated the menstrual cycle, where many saw it as a great cleansing of the body and spirit. This was in stark contrast to Western culture, which tend to see periods as disgusting, dirty, and something you talk about behind closed doors.
Yet as females, our monthly menstrual cycles is a physical, biological, and spiritual reminder of how we are an expression of nature, with unique, self-regulating rhythms and cycles working to serve and maintain the creative forces of life. On the flip side of the coin, men don't often have such rituals and rites of passage moments (especially in this hypermasculine Western culture we live in) which can make it more challenging for men to connect with their deeper selves, and to be in community that supports that process.
Something that helped me manage my menstrual pain was breaking free from the tendency to freeze and tighten. When the cramps come, many women including myself want to curl up in a tight ball until it passes. Yet we were reading studies about how yoga, movement that opens up the hip flexors, dynamic relaxation, and even orgasms dramatically reduce the severity and pain. Makes sense, right? So much of healing is developing the capacity to relax and release, instead of tightening and contracting which creates dysponesis, unnecessary tension that exacerbates disease and inflammation.
All that being said, I got on my mat and moved around for an hour. Nowadays, I do a combination of pilates and yoga, which I find is the perfect integration of muscle engagement and dynamic stretching. It was also the first time I did a headstand in months! The second exercise in the video is one of my favorite exercises. It's a glute strengthener move with 7 lb weights around each ankle. Building muscle strength helps bring integrity to stretching, especially stretches that open the hip flexors. Without muscle activation, it's easy to dump into your bones and joints which can create inflammation and lead to injury over time. I learned this from a yoga teacher when I lived in San Francisco who became a mentor and kept me humble about moving with right alignment, and not with what looked cool.
Upon completion, my period cramps subsided and was barely noticeable. I'm constantly in awe of what we can do for ourselves for our own healing! Below is a video with the highlights of my practice today. I like to keep these videos around 5 min to not bore anyone!
Enjoy!