Category > The Female Cycle, Women's Body, Your Body
The menstrual cycle – the ‘power plant’ of the female body
Could this be the reason, and would this explain why we have lived centuries of discriminating the female body?
You may have heard about the witch hunts, although historically there has never been much attention paid to the age of witch-hunting that spanned from the 14th to the 17th Century! Instead of knowing the truth about witch hunts it has been reduced to a folklore event that is now used for Halloween or children’s stories. The witch forever embedded in our cultural psyche as the ‘threatening’ or ‘evil woman’.
The true power of a women itself was considered witchcraft and many women in the past who served their communities as healers, midwives and counsellors were tortured, attacked and persecuted for having these skills.
After the witch hunt modern medicine arose and medical theorists at that time described the female reproductive organs as powerful. Some saying it was the uterus and other saying it was the ovaries that were considered the power centres of the female body.
But they only described them as diseased! Yes diseased! History labelled the female body as being weak, riddled with sickness and unreliable due to the monthly period.
Could it be that we have been disempowered in ‘forgetting’ about the power of our body and connection to it, particularly with the menstrual cycle? Understanding the female cycle is an important barometer of our overall wellbeing. In connecting with and listening to the body it supports us to not feel disempowered by period pains, mood swings and other health related issues we may experience, but instead to take them as a form of communication and learning, applying changes to our daily choices to support us more.
Although in history this connection and power has been denied it has never truly been taken away and lies instead within each and every one of us.
So, what supports us to come back to this truth?
Starting to have and develop a loving relationship with your body, making choices in life to support this reconnection can make a huge difference. For more support with this check out the article: Move in Cycles! Deepen your relationship with you
References:
- Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deirdre (1978) ‘For her own Good. Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women’, New York: Random House
- Federici, Silvia (2004) ‘Caliban and the Witch. Women, the Body and primitive accumulation’, New York: Autonomedia
- Llewellyn Barstow, Anne (1988) ‘On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions’; Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall, 1988): https://www.jstor.org/stable/25002078?read-now=1&seq=6#metadata_info_tab_contents
