Moon Lodging

The past few months I've been quite OC with my period (well I am learning now I'm quite OC with a lot of things, my boss calls me the most organize person he knows and my flat mate thinks I'm a neat freak!). Thing is I haven't had period in a while, a big part of it is because I stopped taking contraceptives last year Decemeber, plus I change my diet to raw.

Ever since I can remember, I usually have the blues a good one week before my period upto a few days after of my period. So that's a good ten days of being 'fucked up' and not knowing why the whole world is crumbling down around me. Started realizing a few years back that it's not me, that it's just hormones and ALL WOMEN go through it.

That is why nowadays I respect this time of my cycle. Back in the times of our ancients, women of the tribes will have menstrual huts where they could gather for days when they have their menses, no men! Inside the hut they would swap stories, eat sweets, pamper themselves and do rituals.

The past few months since my period started again around September, I've been cocooning myself at home a few days before and during my period. A time for introspection for me, looking back at what I have learned the past cycle and my intents and wishes for the next. Also a time of listening to my body and little rituals to celebrate my womanhood.

Here are some articles I found online about our ancients way of honoring women's cycle:

WOMEN'S MOON LODGE

http://www.moonsurfing.com/moonlodge.html

Our intention is for this virtual moon lodge to become a gathering place for women's voices concerning the cycles of their lives... a coming together for renewal and visioning.

The Moon Lodge is the place of women, where women gather during their menstrual time to be at-one with each other and the changes ocurring in their bodies. Long ago, during this special time of moon cycles, women were removed from duties of family and allowed to retreat to the Moon Lodge to enyoy the company of their Sisters.

Traditionally, the Moontime is the sacred time of woman when she is honored as a Mother of the Creative Force. During this time she is allowed to release the old energy her body has carried and prepare for reconnection to the Earth Mother's fertility that she will carry in the next Moon or month. Our Ancestors understood the importance of allowing each woman to have her Sacred Space during this time of reconnection, because women were the carriers of abundance and fertility.

As Grandmother Moon is the weaver of tides ( the water or blood of our Earth Mother) so a woman's cycles follow the rhythm of that weaving. When women live together in a common space, their bodies begin to regulate their menses and all will eventually have their Moontime concurrently. This natural rhythm is one of the bonds of Sisterhood.

Women honor their sacred path when they acknowledge the intuitive knowing inherent in their receptive nature. In trusting the cycles of their bodies and allowing the feelings to emerge within them, women have been Seers and Oracles for their tribes for centuries."

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Reclaiming Menstrual Power

continuation of an excerpt from "Mysteries of the Dark Moon" by Demetra George

"In order to reclaim their menstrual power and liberate their bodies from menstrual pain, women must follow the cycle of the disappearing dark moon and enter into a voluntary retreat during their sacred time of month. Irritability, discomfort, and pain are the ways in which women's bodies continues to protest the menstrual injustices inflicted by society. Women's instinctual bodies demand that they pay attention to honoring the menstrual mysteries. The instinctual pull of the dark moon phase is to deliberately withdraw from the demands of others and worldly expectations. This step takes awareness and effort in a society that is constructed in such a way to deny and invalidate women's special needs during their moon times.

However, if a woman can find a way to take some time to be alone, in the bathtub, in bed drifting or reading, taking a walk in nature, praying or mediating in a sanctuary, she can reconnect to the deepest source of her feminine nature and psychic life. The body's craving to draw inward into quiet and stillness is a movement toward accessing the wealth of inner creative energy that peaks at this time. Women have the opportunity to transform this psychic energy into a flow of creative inspiration. A woman's moon time does not have to be an experience of depletion. It is when a woman stifles and blocks her pulsing, fiery red currents that the would-be creative energy turns to pain and depression. In a space of voluntary withdrawal, a woman can naturally remember or discover the ways to channel her red menstrual energy for a more fulfilling and richer life.

In order to redeem the dark moon menstruation gift of the Dark Goddess, we need to change our attitudes. Educating ourselves about the true nature of menstruation and the subsequent historical layers of distortion and suppression concerning women's blood mysteries is a starting point. We can continue the process by gaining new information about the body's physiological processes. This can help us to resensitize our awareness of our cyclical fluctuations. This knowledge can also enable us to evaluate the advice of the medical profession concerning our discomfort. We can experiment with herbs, nutritional supplements, acupuncture, massage, and other alternative healing therapies to alleviate the stressful symptoms of our bleeding time.

We can pay attention to identifying our habitual negative attitudes toward menstruation, and this awareness can liberate us from perpetuating society's falsehoods. We can cut through our concepts of menstruation as something dirty and undesirable by touching, smelling, and tasting our menstrual blood. In these ways we can reestablish our connection to the healing and rejuvenative powers of a woman's red elixir.

In Dragontime, Luisa Francia suggests a wide spectrum of rituals, ceremonies, and allies to help women reclaim the power and magic of their menstrual blood and to better use their menstrual abilities. Keeping track of our menstrual cycles and the phases of the moon can tune us into the monthly rhythm of our physical and emotional energies as they are regulated by the lunar cycle. By learning techniques of relaxation and meditation, we can induce states of trance, prophecy, inspiration, creativity, dream recall, hypnotism, and visualization. These capabilities are the birthright of the subjective feminine nature that are realized in menstruation. Finally we can take the risk of breaking the sexual taboo around menstruation by educating our partners, and thereby open our relationships to the ecstatic and transformative sacred dimension of lovemaking."

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Masterminding with the Moon

Masterminding with the moon is a powerful way to start off any new lunar cycle. Here’s how…

Get a group together and agree to meet for 60 to 90 minutes once a week starting as close to New Moon time as possible.

Download the lunar journal for the month.

Open your mastermind gatherings by repeating the affirmation for the month (on page one of your journal).

Select a time keeper. Each person then spends 1- 3 minutes talking about what’s going on for them and what they want to focus their energy on and accomplish during this lunar cycle. After going around the group, each person formulates an intention that will help move them towards their goal. The group can help them narrow this down so it’saffirmative, concise and focused.

Each person in turn states their intention and the group takes a minute to hold the intention and feel and see the person having accomplished it. This way, the static, blockages, and “how’s” you might personally run in your mind are circumvented and you also have the expansive power of several people holding this for you and with you.

Each week you review your progress and formulate an intention in line with the energy of that particular phase. Whenever you write in your journal (at least one time during each 31/2 days that a phase lasts) revisit the feeling of accomplishment you’re holding for each person in your group.

I can tell you from personal experience that this is very powerful.

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