The Sabbath of Women: Celebrating the power of menstruation
Lara
Owen
used to think that my periods were a nuisance, an intrusion that increased the dirty laundry and caused a lot of unpleasant symptoms including fatigue and debilitating pain. Menstruation interfered with my sex life, my athletics and my energy level. Causing erratic changes of temper, irritability and moodiness destructive and unstoppable
. In addition, cost money - in pads and tampons to absorb the blood, ruined clothes, time lost from work. It was a vile and insidious saboteur who always came at the wrong time.
Despite this preaching
of distress, was not entirely against it. When my time came, there was always a part of me was pleased. Meant I was healthy and fertile and everything was working properly. Bleeding caused me some pride that I felt deeply in my first period, but in the absence of any external approval, that pleasant feeling gradually disappeared.
- A Jewish friend told me that when she had her first period her mother slapped her. With amazement she demanded: "Why did you do that?" Her mother replied, "I do not know, my mother did the same, it's tradition." Receiving a blow when one becomes a woman-that's an interesting point about women's nature is seen. Maybe it's an attempt to eliminate the feeling of pride that comes with the first blood. Something else finally take my pride and I think it was the absence of ceremony. Internally felt that something truly amazing and magical was happening, and yet everyone around me treated him as something trivial. He had a sense of accomplishment, tinged with excitement, curiosity and pity. also remember a vague awareness of a vast and unknown future. Intuitively I knew it was a very important event in my life, and yet nobody said anything about it except to give me some pads. I think my mother was pleased, after all, meant he was healthy and growing normally, but I needed more than that. I needed a ceremony, a celebration, a joyous public recognition of this great event in my development. But nothing happened.
As the months passed I felt increasingly embarrassed and less excitement and pride that had shone briefly with the first blood. - At home, my periods were something to be kept hidden from my father and my brothers. If I had to mention it, speaking softly and preferably with my mother alone. Shortly after my periods started during a family trip, I had to ask my father to stop the car because I needed to go to the pharmacy. Of course I wanted to know what needed to buy. remember a horrible feeling when I said I needed to buy sanitary napkins. It was a peculiar mixture of shame, pride and absolute worth. He was very nice about it, as I recall, and never said anything to make me feel ashamed. But somehow that shame is always in the back of my mind, and it affected my relationship with the outside world. At school, menstruation was something that should not be mentioned but in biology class. All information received about menstruation was purely physical. There period because there was no pregnancy, and menstrual blood was simply discarded the uterus lining produced for a potential fetus. My friends and I were discussing, in the absence of further information, we decided that the female body was
poorly developed-all that blood and this scandal for years and years when you needed only to have it once or twice before having children. - The image that society gave me through the advertising was misleading. Tampon ads showed nimble girls bikinis happily running towards the sea and girls in tight jeans
white jumping horse. This does not correspond at all with my experience lethargy and cramping, and I knew that no woman in their right mind would trust both in a buffer to go for a walk in white pants. Bah! Surely they were men who wrote those ads.
Yet I felt that I should be like the girls in the Tampax ads 
and that something bad was in the way my body and mind-behaved normal that a girl should not feel any difference during the period, and that there was nothing she liked more than getting on a horse and gallop into an adventure while that nice buffer allowed to forget that she was menstruating. The embarrassing truth was that I could not even introduce a buffer. Not only did not fit the stereotype, but also was poorly armed. I felt strongly Feminax
" and contained a powerful blend of ingredients designed to eliminate each of the symptoms of menstruation, including caffeine to reduce depression and lethargy. In times of school exams, getting medicines to delay my period until most suitable days, when the rage of hormones could attack the left side of my brain without affecting my academic future. I never mentioned anything about the benefits of experiencing a state of mind different once a month, because nobody knew anything.
At 18 he started taking the pill and at first I was pleased that my periods will lighten and became so predictable. It took several years to really realize that the reason for the lightness of my periods was that it was false periods. I noticed that I became increasingly sensitive and angry for my so-called periods, so I decided to suspend
pill. After a couple of months I was "myself" again and I realized that, despite how convenient it was the pill, I really felt betrayed with such light periods. That's when I began to realize that menstruation was an important part of my life, a rate which depended for my mental and physical health, and ignored or suppressed at my own risk. In other cultures, instead of being ignored, menstruation has been regarded (and in some cases still is) as a special and sacred time for women. The abundance of symbols relating to women found in excavations at ancient sites in Europe and the Middle East strongly suggests that these cultures were matrifocal and revered the Goddess and the female body processes. ritual practices were linked to women's monthly bleeding and menstrual blood was highly regarded as having magical powers. The word ritual comes from "rtu " which in Sanskrit means menses. In the days before the sacrifice of living beings, menstrual blood was offered in ceremonies. Menstrual blood was sacred to the Celts, the ancient Egyptians, the Maori, the first Taoist Tantrists
and the Gnostics. Native Americans understood very well the different feelings that women experience when they menstruate and for them, these feelings were part of something very important in the cycles of the female body. The women retired to a special room to pass its bleeding. It was considered
Yurok tribe in Northern California
possessed a highly developed spiritual culture based on the rhythm of the menstrual cycle for practices rituals not only women but also men. Women used to retire en masse during the new moon for a period of ten days. During that time the men were concentrated in the "inner development", in ceremonies and meditation. While the adults were busy accumulating spiritual power, the children were cared for by the elders of the tribe. All the work that adults had to be concentrated on other days of the month.
When white men arrived on the scene, "the world stood on his head." The changed attitudes towards menstruation and the girls were indoctrinated by priests rather than the elderly of the tribe. Rather than taught
once a month their bodies became sacred, they are taught that they became unclean. Instead of retiring to a room to meditate, pray and celebrate, they were taught they were sick.
In 1986 I met a teacher of Native American traditions. He taught me that a menstruating woman has the potential to be physically and spiritually stronger than any man or woman at any time. That turned my head conditioned representations of reality. I had always seen my period as a period of weakness and difficulty. What could be talking about this man?
I said to dig a hole on earth and to talk to the pit of my negative thoughts about femininity and bleeding. He said the land would transform the negative energy that I held around my feminine nature. I felt pretty silly, but I did anyway and was surprised to find how many bad feelings about being a woman lurking in my mind, highly educated feminist. This exercise was painful but very effective.
my blood began to see with reverence rather than fear, disgust or indifference. By that time I did not use tampons, so I started looking at my blood properly each month, instead of seeing a nasty buffer. I saw it was clear and red and sometimes darker and with clots. If you really freed my vision, then I could see he was full of life, full of magic, full of potential. I started to feel joy at the thought of my blood, being a woman, thinking that after all there was something extraordinarily magical and mysterious to inhabit a female body. The resentment he had felt during my youth by being born a woman and the belief that boys were better, faded and were replaced by a growing sense of wonder with the complexities, possibilities and depths offered by the monthly cycle. I started taking time to rest, meditate and just be with me during the days of my period. I realized that time was particularly able to reflect, and that these discussions were of a timeless nature. I felt like I was connecting with some ancient and vast source of female wisdom, simply sit still and listen while bleeding. Take me during my periods this time created a very different relationship with my body. My health gradually improved and the cramps that had suffered most of my life were eased, and my period became a time of pleasure rather than pain.
was beginning to truly love myself. Of course one can not be compelled to do this, in the same way that one does not "make" someone else wants one. Began to happen very gradually, and many people who crossed my life helped me see more clearly. But the important thing at first was the knowledge that menstruation is a source of power. This
invaluable piece of information, combined with the strong instinct that was about the power of the uterus, transformed my deep and largely unconscious lack of self respect. Think
For many women, the root of your unhappiness lies in the process painful relationship with a woman. Women are trained to hide any costs that
menstruating. Blood stains on clothes are a horrible shame. Nobody ever says: "I'm not going to work or the party because I am menstruating", unless you feel sick about it and then usually tell you that you have a headache or a digestive problem.
When the uterus and menstruation are seen only as an uncomfortable biological necessity, the self
of women is correspondingly low. We are our bodies, and we can not really love deep in our hearts if not our bodies truly love. And if you love your body you find yourself saying "Oh, no, I dropped the rule!"
In the nineteenth century
, menstruation was seen by doctors as a sign of inferiority and weakness of women. However, there are usually at least a spark of truth in any ideology, and the doctors of the Victorian era were not entirely wrong when they pointed out the importance of menstruation in relation to the overall health of women, the relationship between uterus and psyche, or the sanity of rest during the periods. We have tended to reject all this because we remember the time when the lives of the women were more controlled by men, and because it revives the old arguments that kept women tied to the house and without interference with the outside world. We have also quite rightly rejected the idea that natural processes of being a woman are a disease. But saying something is not a disease and ignore it completely is not necessarily the same thing. By ignoring the period as a reaction to the ideas of the Victorian era , perhaps we have lost contact with a persistent thread of awareness of its value in the lives of women. The changes that have taken place in the lives of women during the last thirty years might seem like a revolution, but in many cases have been rather a asimilac Many women do not want to delve into the topic of menstruation, afraid of what they might discover. Seems best to suppress their feelings with tranquilizers, sprayed with vaginal deodorants to mask the smell of blood, numb their pain with chemicals, and buffers absorb your blood so you do not have to see it. It is easier to be a successful woman in a man's world if we just recognize that
menstruating.
suppression technology tampons, vaginal deodorants, sophisticated and soothing anti-depressant drugs - has acted together with the myth of the superwoman to create a predominant cultural attitude that a menstruating woman is not different from not menstruate. The problem with this is simply not true. Any woman remotely contact your body knows that when she is menstruating, and usually days before it feels different. And this is a fact of nature that can not be denied. One of the aspects of menstruation that I love and appreciate now is the predictable unpredictability. You never know when it will come exactly and sometimes it takes you completely by surprise. And not only does not count the times it is also a mess. We tried both order and health to modern life that we run the risk that no life left in us. Menses save us from that fate is a wild and primitive, raw, instinctive, bloody and eternal feminine, and no amount of "civilization" change that. My period is a monthly event in my life I have in common with all women who ever lived. Women living in caves 20,000 years ago, the priestesses in the pyramids of ancient Egypt , the visionaries of the temples of Sumer : all bleed with the moon. The first woman that caused the fire could have been menstruating at the time. That's something to think about. If menstruation is a highly creative time for women in the psychological and spiritual aspect, who knows how many gifts have received the humanity of women during their periods. The value we attach to menstruation has direct correlation with the value that we assign ourselves as women. And this affects men as well. We believe that the sexes are separate, and somehow it is. On the other hand we are all part of the same great human soup, and how women view themselves and are seen also affects men. It would seem on the surface that men have had the advantage over the past several thousand years, but that is true only from a certain perspective. Both men and women have benefited and suffered from imbalances of patriarchal society. Men also have been separated from their bodies and their feelings, and pleasure and healing are possible when there are relationships based on cooperation rather than on hierarchy and domination
.
Imagine a world in which men and women work together to develop a sense of inner peace that occurs when you sit still for a couple of days a month, a world in which men support women to spend some days in stillness and silence, a world in which menstrual blood is again a magical fluid with the power to nurture the new life, a world in which the period is defined as the Sabbath of the women, a natural in a cycle lunar retirement, introversion and domestic work, a world in which women emerge as the same new moon renovated the old molted skin. few years ago I had the opportunity to spend long periods alone in a beautiful place in the Sierras to Lake Tahoe, a vast and blue sacred to the Indians. I began to withdraw completely when I had my period, like staying and alone, sitting on the ground under the sun, with lizards and blue jays as a company, with the wind and the moon and sun, waves and surface colors Lake guiding and entertaining.
traveled into my psyche and suddenly I was crying for something long forgotten, some event in my childhood or adolescence. My period became a time that was particularly able to open up the psychological material and release emotions. I noticed that after the first day of bleeding, I was very still and quiet for a day, and apparently nothing happened - an empty space after the tears and memories. Then, as my term ended, there were several hours of light in which it was particularly creative and open to information about the future, usually the following month, but sometimes even later. This pattern continues, although usually less intense today. Much of the psychological entanglements kept deep have been released, probably as much as my psyche wants to take over at this stage of my life. Now I feel more up to date with myself, so there is less to drop, usually are just things that I've clung to for the last month. I still struggle with empty time and often start doing things, thinking that nothing is happening internally, feeling that it would be better to return to my activities in the outside world. Often this has an impact and find that achieving very little and spending a lot of energy.
is difficult to sit still when nothing came to work on, it's hard to honor that void even though I know that precedes creativity, inspiration and the insight. All part of the process, but it is a party without drama and yet I have a tendency to treat regardless.
not usually practice meditation daily. Prefer to set my time contemplating my own impulses. When I have my period, often entered a quiet room, alone and meditate for three or four days, and certainly much less frequently the rest of the month. I feel this as a natural pace for me, and that's why I think the bleeding time as the Sabbath of women.
Owen
Her Blood Is
Gold
:
Celebrating the
Power of Menstruation
.
Harper San Francisco, 1993
(part II sigue! blood on the ground)
Hidden content
NOTE: not because there are natural remedies to take them cheerfully. let us be careful and consult with experts of the dose, duration, etc. 
Acid linolenic: evening primrose oil and borage 
carrot juice, beet and cucumber: excellent combination to purify and balance the organs and sex glands 
preventive measure there YOGA postures that promote flexibility the uterus: Malasaña COBRA that tones the ovaries and uterus and ARCO to relieve congestion of blood in the abdomen 
inadequate until they finally succeeded. Then began the process of imagining that I was not menstruating at all. My periods considered as an inconvenience and that was it. If they were painful, took a painkiller - it was called "
ion. Women who seek power in a masculine world have tended to do so by becoming pseudo-men. And feminism has perhaps inadvertently played a role in the suppression of menstruation. One of the biggest fears women have found successful and ambitious when I talk about the old ideas of the power of menstruation is somehow affecting his myth of being "as good as men and sometimes better." 