Full Circle Woman: Lesson 1: Part 3
Disturbing the Balance
In both men and women, hormonal and reproductive issues are significantly on the rise. But for women, this manifests as a disturbance in the flow of your cycle and a whole range of different health issues.
To understand why this happens we have to look at the body as a fully connected system. The messenger system of our body that tells our bodies to trigger a response to stimulus is called the Endocrine system, or hormonal system. The endocrine system rules the cycle.
It does this by producing different chemicals, hormones, that run through the body telling different tissues what to do and when. Nurturing and balancing our hormonal health is essential for having a healthy weight, good skin, hair and eyes, libido, restful sleep, good mood and releasing stress.
Stress
The body will issue these chemicals in such a way that prioritises our survival. If we perceive something stressful, the body will respond by immediately putting energy into vital organs such as the heart, lungs and brain, while digestion, reproduction, elimination and skin take a back seat. Its these additional systems that are essential for feeling good and maintaining balance. If we are constantly under stress, the natural rhythm of our bodies stops.
Solution: Manage stress with yoga and meditation techniques and lifestyle review.
Elimination and digestion
Waste, toxins and old and excess hormones need to be cleared out of the body in order for it to function well If, as a result of stress or neglect, the elimination system (lungs, skin, kidneys, liver, colon and lymph) is not running smoothly this causes big problems for our cycle. Likewise, without our digestion running well, nutrients we need to support our body cannot be effectively absorbed.
Solution: Maintaining your digestion, keep an eye on your bowel movements, allow yourself to sweat and avoid blocking the flow of your lymph. Clearing the system with easy to digest, cleansing foods and exercise, keeping a good routine.
Nutrition
In order to function well, the body must be well nourished and well hydrated. If this does not occur, not only will the body lack energy and nutrients to perform complicated tasks (like building a uterine lining or maturing an egg in the ovaries) it will also cause stress on the body – a vicious cycle! Blood sugar spikes and dips cause a huge problem for hormonal health which has a serious knock on effect.
Solution: Prioritising meal time. Becoming more aware of making meals balanced for blood sugar. Properly spacing out meals to prevent “starvation mode.”
Exercise
Exercise plays a vital role in encouraging hormonal health. Exercise helps to encourage elimination and reduce stress. But it must be properly balanced with rest and done in a smart way to promote cyclical health and
avoid overly taxing the body when energy is needed for internal processes.
Solution: Building better communication with the body to respond to fatigue, modulating exercise routine to promote the best healing.
Emotional
In many modalities of healing its understood the body holds an emotional pain map. Unprocessed or unaddressed emotional experiences appear in the body if we have rejected or suppressed them. As psychosomatic illness registers, understanding the emotional anatomy of the body can help us track back to the emotional root of an imbalance or physical symptom.
Often simply acknowledging this can be enough to promote healing.
Solution: Creating space to process feelings and be receptive to messages our body is relaying to us.
Realigning and Rebalancing
Imbalance of the feminine is at a crisis point today. With advances in technology and changes in the way we live and work, the pressure be constantly active and achieving is high. This requires that we all must engage our masculine energy to a high level, often at the expense of our feminine energy.
It’s your masculine energy that will see you pursue your goals, tick off your to-do list, and muster up the courage to do it all again tomorrow, as we’re all under pressure to do. But the feminine energy to have space to feel, to be present and to enjoy and nurture, takes second place.
Meanwhile, in our efforts to achieve gender equality over the last 100 years, we’ve been forced to compete with men for our rights in a world where the default body, the default brain and the default needs are that of a man.
This has meant that in order for us to be present in the public arena outside the home, we have to ignore the fluctuations of our bodies, of our energy and our needs in order to fit into the gender biased criteria.
To be labelled as emotional/hormonal/premenstural has been used as a way to disempower women for being authentic, while we push ourselves to perform outside the needs of our bodies and emotions, and then hide our symptoms when our bodies and emotions start to show distress.
In order to regain and nurture our feminine energy it is important to incorporate time into our day and our week where the feminine principle is engaged fully. Adding small change habits that embrace sensuality, presence and experience to our day and use feminine qualities such as sensory experience, softness, stillness, water, earth etc. we can begin to feel back in alignment with ourselves.
Rediscovering and developing your feminine energy can be an epic and exciting journey within, that takes a subtle shift on the outside.
In keeping with the way of the feminine, this can happen without the need for radical or forceful change. An open mind and a sense of allowing and experiencing will draw you closer to the feminine everyday without hard work or struggle.
To begin with, we start on the outside, focusing on physical, tangible experiences that can nurture the feminine. First, we have to identify this and experience this.
At the core, feminine energy is at its height when we are
- Feeling
- Using our Senses
- Nurturing
- Appreciating Beauty
- Close to Nature
- Manifesting and allowing things to take shape
In physical qualities this can be found in anything soft, calming, indulgent, pleasing to the eye, sweet, nourishing, dark, chaotic, watery, earthy.
But make no mistake, when we engage our feminine energy, it isn’t always flowery. Feminine energy demands we feel our feelings, be authentic and expressive and in order to act this out, the feminine in us can be wild or destructive if the need is there. Just as in nature, the mother animal will embody nurturing and comfort until her young are threatened and
she becomes fierce.