Archive for November, 2007

Ritual MN02 Your own day

November 30, 2007 at 5:32 pm · Filed under feminine cycle, menstruation, ritual

Source: Adrienne Teague

Tester:

Materials: Self-care materials.

Ritual:Take one day off work each month to relax and care for yourself, possibly during the day when PMS or period symptoms usually manifest most strongly.

Hints: Be resolute about not using this day to catch up on household or other chores. Go to a spa, or schedule your facial, haircut, manicure, massage or therapy session for that day; have lunch with a good friend, or spend the day with a good book at a country retreat or on your own bed at home (if you can do so without interruptions).

Experience:

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Rethinking fertility cycle rituals, Tia Azulay

November 30, 2007 at 3:10 pm · Filed under feminine cycle

Karen Houppert, in her book The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation, points out that even sanitary-product advertising avoids mentioning menstruation by pouring a blue liquid on the sanitary item to demonstrate its absorptiveness. She points out that it is “psychologically disorienting for women to look out at a world where their reality doesn’t exist.”

sheTIME encourages women to discover or develop rituals which proclaim that feminine reality does exist and offer the opportunity to celebrate and enhance the entire menstrual cycle, including, but not limited to, menstruation.

As a starting point for developing your own rituals, consider these questions:

  1. Do any existing rituals (or elements of them) from my tradition serve to affirm and strengthen me as a woman?
  2. Can I participate in these and feel good about myself?
  3. Do some rituals (or elements of them) make me feel unclean and unworthy, or restrict my ability to live a full life?
  4. Can I take some parts and leave others, or do I need to start afresh?
  5. What is fertility to me? Do I need to celebrate it, or mourn its absence?
  6. What do I associate with menstruation? Would it be good to change these links?
  7. Can I associate any colour, music, poetry, art, movement, dance, word, image, place, object, action, form of dress, etc. with any aspect of my menstrual cycle to help me feel in harmony with it, at peace with it, energised by it, open to it?
  8. Can I use these elements and their positive associations to develop private or shared rituals?
  9. Do the transitions into and out of the fertility cycle: the menarche (first period), perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause, feel significant to me? Can I mark them or negotiate them positively with the help of ritual?
  10. How can I share these discoveries? With other women? With men?

To join in ongoing discussion about the general concept of rituals to celebrate the feminine cycle, please add your comments below.

Enjoy!

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Ritual MN01 Red Candle Care

November 25, 2007 at 5:31 pm · Filed under feminine cycle, menstruation, ritual

Source: Fran Montague

Tester: Fran Montague

Materials: Red candle, matches or lighter, bubble bath/bath salts, loofah, luxurious towel, etc.

Ritual: Create a self-care bath ritual that includes lighting a red candle before you get into the bath to relax

  • Use a special red candle that you only light during the times in the month when you want to centre yourself and connect with aspects of your cycle. This might be when you are feeling pre-menstrual symptoms or during your period itself. This candle then becomes symbolic, representing something purely female.
  • Turn all the lights off in the bathroom, so the only light is from the candle and it’s impossible to multi-task (e.g. read work related documents).
  • Focus on your physical or emotional feelings and use thoughts to nurture yourself and relax.

Hints: Make sure that you will not be interrupted. Concentrating on your breathing really helps you to sink into relaxation.

Experience: Extract from my journal: “My period arrived this morning and I have that ‘pull’ going on within me. As I lie in my bath, I can see only the glow of my red candle and the shadows it creates with what’s left of the flowers I received last week. I feel centred and calm, despite the physical discomfort which, in a strange way, I can enjoy right now. I feel drawn to celebrating being a woman. I reflect that today also marks the end of Week 4 of a liver, bowel and artificial-hormone detox, which has kept me alcohol- and caffeine-free for a month. I am aware that my PMS has been awakening and revealing rather than disturbing this month and so far I have no headaches associated with my bleed.”

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The nakedly evil origins of oppressive rituals, by Tia Azulay

November 24, 2007 at 10:42 pm · Filed under feminine cycle

I’ve read three articles today on the oppression of women by patriarchal religions. It’s not news to me, of course, but the intensity of these outraged lists of the sins of human against human on the basis of genital differences forces me to face the fury and the fear that always lurk within. When one reads these, it is hard to understand how anyone can insist that religion is a good thing. The only people who benefit from it are men, and even this benefit is short-term and deceiving, because how can men truly be served by systems that encourage them to be less-than-human and that rob them of the possibility of living a truly fulfilled life that is enriched and balanced by the female principle, by honest, equal relationships with women? The huge need to oppress women reveals an enormous fear of women. This cripples both sexes and ties us into continual battles with each other, when there are so many other issues on the planet that would benefit from our pouring all our energy jointly into their resolution instead.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2051503,00.html

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=303929&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/

http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/02/institutionalized-misogyny.html

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