Medicinalmeadows

THE PLACE WITHIN

Tag Archives: menstrualdoula


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Sacral Centre, My Sweet Abode

Today I am sitting within my 2nd house, my sacral chakra and it feels good to be connecting here at this point in my 49 life. I am reminded of my time, this time and of course, no time. When we put a structure on our time, doesn’t it soon feel restricted? Soon I will be in my 50th year, my 5th decade, a miracle in my ancient ancestry and a mile stone in my modern life. As I contemplate what this means to me, I am contemplating within my “own sweet abode”, the Svadhisthana, the sacral. Known in many traditions as the Dan Tien, the life force energy centre, the womb space, the void, the bowl, the ruler of water, the feminine aspect, the Empress archetype, the emotional and the creatrix centre.

As I sit within my sacral home it feels ripe and energetic. In the past when I have experienced a sense of fullness it was bloatedness, uncomfortable trousers and a reoccupation of the period about to come. I have a sensation of full bloom than boom! And it feels powerful. As I prepared to menstruate in my younger years I was conflicted with prementrual stress. I had a sense of urgency to prepare myself for some time with less and in the process I created greater stress to the point of manic cleaning house, arranging a just-so for others in my care. In the days leading to menstruation instead of winding down I got wound up! Over this last year my cycles have been slowing down, I bleed less, I miss some, and now I sometimes miss having the cycles, the pattern. Is that crazy to you? that I miss them? Now I have a sense of what I want to do, of where my focus is heading. I can see how far I wish to be filled to my edge, my boundary, rather than how far I can push to my limit!

The sacral is the centre of pleasure, of feeling nourished and fulfilled. It encompasses my need for creation and desires. Not just in the sexual sense, as it is most commonly portrayed, but as a desire to create all manner of things. It is where my personal desires feel connected in health, in abundance, to my heart desires. This is where creativity meets focus, in service to others as a Doula, or spiritual health with Reiki to reading of the women of sacral energies, the ancient texts.

The shadow side of the sacral energy is martyrdom. It is the feeling of deprivation, lack of joy, lack of creativity and ultimately lack of time. Time I create and time I can allow. Sometimes in this 49 life timing seems to be my main issue. Time is a luxury. It is no coincidence that sacrifice, to surrender, dates back to the Latin word, sacer, Holy. So just for today I will remain in gratitude and give thanks for this day of surrender and into the “sweet abode” of holy creativity. I will honour this fullness as a feeling for as long as I can.

Bless’d be the sacral bowl of life energy that I find today.


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Solar heat at 49

In my 49 life I am I am experiencing anxiety. This anxiety and me have a history coupled with PTSD. Recently I don’t always know what my physical body is telling me. A mix of anxiety, grief, overwhelm and menopause. This is my story from this week.

I was setting off in the car to visit a relative in hospital. I got into the car, the temperature read 38 degrees, I felt sick, hot, was it just heat? was it a hot flush? or was it anxiety! My thoughts jumped from one to the other, the truth of it ( which came later) was that my body had remembered something.

I needed to get out of the car and feeling like a failure and disappointed at letting others down I had to just stop and “Get out of the car”! Soon after as I cooled down I realised that I know this feeling, this reaction, it is when the body remembers. It is remembering a date, a past situation or a trauma. My body was not only messaging me to take a break but signalling patterns into my awareness. The body remembers dates, places, and the places can reignite triggers and the triggers can “fire up” to remind us that something from the past needs attention. Just like a fire starting in the shadows of our internal cave growing stronger so we go back, look, witness that situation again. The “issue” is that it comes up uninvited, unawares but the body has this internal storage that seems to just remember without the mind being involved.

As I uncoiled just enough for me to remember and figure this all out. I can give myself a break.  At this time of 49 I am considering that these “anxious” remembrances or triggers are relating to the menopausal symptom called hot flushes. They are literally fired up in my face. The date of my “heatwave anxiety” corresponded to a past trauma that my mind had not acknowledged. My mind hadn’t connected to the date and place but the body did.

So what is a hot flush? At the time of a surge, are we actually in the spiritual sense going through a fiery upgrade?  Are we actually re-membering ourselves? By that I do mean collecting our bones, our divided parts, which have been lost over time. Are we pulling ourselves back together in a newly fashioned way, a mature way?

To me this was a good reminder that my mind may think it is taking the lead with the logical stuff but my body is attuned to all that has been and will continue to message me from spiritual to physical body as I go forwards. In the wise words of Caroline Myss, the greatest power we have within us is the position we energetically hold as our power station, the solar plexus. This is the intuitive energy centre that messages us from “gut instinct”, or intuitiveness. We all have the ability to connect to the gut instinct and sometimes this power centre messages us in stronger ways. Is the menopause really a firing up of the solar plexus, our solar energy? Is the gut instinct being attuned? This chakra centre as it is known is after all the centre of our personal power, the seat of our inner compass. If I am actually having a solar upgrade then surely this is a positive thing for my mature years ahead!

Maybe, just maybe what is occurring in my menopause years is a gathering of my inner ability to discern all around me to assert my personal power. If this is the metaphysical change to the wise elder, then baptism by heat to burn away the old and transition into a new relationship with selfhood is what is occurring. The soul lesson is forging our life force, literally by forge or force, or both, a consolidating of past and present as our personal identity in full acceptance. Maybe I need to remember that it is my shadow and my light that make Gold.


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Rites of Passage

Sometimes the answers are so simple, what act of self-kindness helps me heal? Cake. You see I have been gluten free for over a decade and whilst I don’t miss such things as cake or toast anymore, I do miss the occasions. For so long I have not had that rite of passage that actually does mean a lot. I have had no Birthday cake, no candles to make a wish and no celebration for another year turning around the sun. These rites are important, they are a celebration of life.
A great woman wrote that when we are born we are not born alone. We are born with a placenta that becomes our guardian angel. The physical placenta we are born with is full of richness and nourishment and to honour this spiritual passage and guardian we have a placenta cake. We keep on celebrating that life giving connection. So this year I will gratefully be celebrating my spiritual connection, my nurturing, and whole self. I can bake a gluten free cake.
Thank you #robinlim
#placentatheforgottenchakra #spirituallife #ritesofpassage #glutenfreebaking #freeefrom #doveflour #guidance #intuitive #spiritualcoaching


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The Menopause, the Matrix and the Moon

For Christmas I gave myself adrenal fatigue. This feeling of minimal activity and maximum fatigue is not a new thing for me. I am well versed in how this goes. I am also well attuned to deep rest, hydration and good food to begin with, from a well oiled radar to the early signs. The “Holiday” in deep winter has me thinking that I am not as attuned to the seasons as I thought. My preparation for Christmas was not at all prepped appropriately. My inner vision was covered. I did not see the wood, literally, for the trees and here is why.

I got swept into the tangibility of it all. The Matrix was there with its all seeing eyes and I was lost to it. I got moved along with the to-do-lists, helped my elders with their food preparation, the lights and the tinsel. I colluded to buy and messy wrap the presents and all the time my energy levels waned and I knew it. I felt it, I recognised my bodily signs saying, slow down. I went out again and again when the fire side was calling with its soft golden glow and its warming invites. I left for one last trip with the Christmas cards.

All this was done out of love, but was it love for myself! And where do you draw the line with your loved ones at Christmas to say, I am done! I am menopausal, my instincts are saying I need to go inside and withdraw not do more. I am listening to my body and my answer is just one more thing! But the body knows the limits and has no cajoling from the mind, the body doesn’t say ok, let’s finish all this and high five. No, the body has a limit and when the limit is overstepped it shouts now, now is the time for rest and no more.

All this came home to me yesterday as we sorted, cut and piled the wood from the pruned trees in our garden. Here I was again, but this time the realisation was of my sacred rhythms with the trees and the land. As I over stretched once again I had this vision that my ancestors worked with the rhythms of the seasons. I thought I was doing so well with my menstrual practice cycling like the earth with my inner landscape then it occurred to me, what do we do when the cyclicity is gone.

Here I was without the clock, without the dial, the rhythms all gone. I was chopping wood in winter when this could have been done in preparation. My ancestors would have prepared for winter, just as I had prepared in the autumn of my cycle, my premenstrual phases, listing and smoothing things over so I rested in winter. My inner cyclicity had been musical even, never mind rhythmical…..and now as I arrive in this space of no cyclicity it began to look more like no-womans-land.

My world was not prepared for the winter. If I had looked, really looked at myself and my nature this would have been all in good timing. The cutting, pruning and gardening would have been put to bed weeks ago. If my body had been in a menstrual cycle I would have been prepared for this! But is it just me, or is the outer world out of sync? As I sit here typing, the window is open the hedges are green and it seems the earth herself is in a great flux of menopausal seasonal crisis of no-womans-land too!

When I close my eyes and think of my ancestry I see the high stocked wood stores, the jars of pickled fruits and veg, the importance of the harvest festival and the fire flickering and tended to day and night. Frosty mornings and sleet showers with streets of leaves piling up the brick walls. Houses with the lights on early and no more to do about the gardens but witness and welcome the returning of the light in weeks to come. Nothing kept for keeping sake and nothing needed but stillness and the flame.

My awareness is bringing up that familiar nervousness that all is not right with the world. I am aware of what has occurred on the inner landscape and I can accept that and find my path again. But what can be done about the outer landscapes, how do we assist the cycles of the season of this planet? Is this a greater task that we have as a collective? Is this a task for all women at menopause, as we sit in nature to nurture ourselves can we be in reciprocity at this time? Is it time to nourish both? If the earth is also out of cyclicity do we now look to the moon for our rhythms and reflect deep into our old ways, the wise and the well, the ancient and ancestral knowing once more?