Excerpts from my upcoming free e-workbook. Sign up here to receive your free e-book when it is ready!
WHY CHARTING YOUR FLOW WILL BECOME YOUR BEST FRIEND!
Yesterday, I shared with you how our Ancient Sisters’ bodies (and thus Souls) were considered Sacred and their monthly bleeds were honored. Actually, not only were they honored, they were revered and communally CELEBRATED yearly in conjunction with the festivals that celebrated the Land’s fertility and abundance.
Can you IMAGINE a world where our bodies and our sacrifice of monthly blood were CELEBRATED instead of shamed, hidden and misunderstood?
I sure can ~ and I hope that by sharing some of my tools with you – that you can start to do this for yourself as well too!
My Quick Story
I started charting my cycle before I was married – after having horrible reactions in just a couple of months to the pill. I wasn’t super into health yet, but I knew enough then that I didn’t want to mess with my body’s hormones any more.
My Ob/Gyn at the time laughed when I shared my desire to go natural, told me I would be pregnant within 3 months and handed me some papers about Natural Family Planning that DIDN’T EVEN HAVE ALL THE PAPERS in it, and they were out of order.
Frustrated, I turned to a married-with-one-kid girlfriend who had just so happened to also hate the effects of the pill and found a book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility. We both gobbled this book up as soon as it arrived.
In a matter of months, as I took back ownership of my own body through charting ~ my severe cramps that lasted 2 weeks pre-period and the reason I had attempted the pill – started to subside in strength and length!
I had NO idea back then in my early 20s what charting would produced in my life. Yet, looking back now this was the foundation of beginning to learn who I was, who I was not and to form a very intimate relationship with myself, my cycle as well as my sexuality and even sensuality!
Since then, I have shared this book with friends and family members who were attempting to get pregnant and their own doctors were not helping much. Within a few months, many of them got pregnant – a story not uncommon for women who read and metabolize this book.
Oh, and by the way – I NEVER got pregnant until I wanted to using this method. So yes, you can use it for both conception and prevention – naturally!
A Few EASY Tools to Start You on Your Way
There is so much for me to share on this subject and hope you will join me for my 21-day online course (From Frumpy to Fabulous Radiant Mama) to learn a few more. I could probably spend an entire YEAR sharing on this subject and only touch the surface of it…it is THAT DEEP!
1) First consider rephrasing your words around your cycle. I lovingly call my period “My Moon Cycle” to remind me of my powerful connection to the Moon/Cosmos. I speak of my blood flow either as my “Moon Flow” or simply say “bleeding” to remind me to count my own blood as sacred – so sacred it can and has created new physical life!
2) Next, for the next month, no matter where you are in your monthly cycle, start bringing awareness on a daily basis to your physical rhythm. Keep a real calendar (or print one off) next to your bed and spend a few minutes upon waking and before you turn off the light tracking:
* Mark (if only roughly) what day you are on with Day 1 being the first day you started bleeding
* On a scale of 1-10 (1=low, 10=high) mark your energy in the morning and eveningill go more in depth with this in the online 21-day course. For now, simply notice where in your cycle these natural even
* What was your mood in the morning, in the evening this day?
* What physical body sensations (bloating, breast soreness, back pain, headaches, cramps, sleeplessness or extra tiredness) did you have that day?
* Mark any major life events and stressors (either positive or negative, like moving, school starting, arguments, etc)* If you cycle has not returned due to breastfeeding or you have had a hysterectomy, you can still use all the above information. You will use the 28 day moon calendar to start your new cycles. So the New Moon would be equivalent to Day 1 of your cycle with the Full Moon being 2 weeks later (Day 14ish) and day 28 would be the day before the next full moon.
I encourage using old fashioned pen and paper on a real or printed calendar so you can see in plain sight what a month looks like for your individual body.
I also invite you to continue charting your cycle for at least a full year – or the rest of your life – to give you a full insider’s view of your own personal yearly Rhythms that govern your personal energy level and moods.
Extras:
* Mark the New Moon and Full Moon on the calendar
The Full Moon is an energy booster and the New Moon is a time when extroverted energy is less available. We w
s are occurring and what your personal energy level is like on these days.
Resources for Developing Your Moon Flow’s Potential & Charting:
Besides Taking Charge of Your Fertility, check out my Resource Page and The Way of the Happy Woman by Sara Avant Stover.
I use Kindara’s app and thermometer now-a-days, but highly suggest pen and paper when you first start!
