For all women:Bye-bye period pains, PMS, heat waves, and all the rest – recovering your full power.

One of the reasons many women suffer from period pains, PMS, and other disturbances (also at the menopause phase) is rooted in the way women have learned and absorbed the notion of needing to control, suppress and reduce their power and presence.

It was a continuous process of suppression in our biography and one that we can detect in the biographies of all the women before us.

The female lineage of our family has passed on its triumphs and traumas.

The way they have learned to break free and the practices they had to repress themselves to be safe.

Most women needed to survive while being dependent on men. This dependency took away their sense of having agency over their own lives and bodies. They could not choose freely nor express themselves to the fullest.

It meant that they often could not simply refuse (not even to what was abusive and hurtful), and if they did, they had to pay a high(er price than men).

The need to find hidden ways to refuse. Secret ways to express themselves.

If you think about it, this message of repression is something all of humanity face. All children enter the world in a state of dependency. All are at the mercy of their caregivers and learn to twist or suppress themselves to survive better. Women face a continuous request to suppress. There were and still are many social structures, beliefs, and approaches that doom women to take a lower position in the power structure.

Women still learn and are often shown that their sexuality, for example, should be felt and expressed often regarding the will, need, and approval of men and their socially given authority.

The way women grow up and relate to that aspect of themselves is wounded. They carry centuries of violations and complications no matter what their choice of partner is.

All women still carry the results of centuries of trauma and power abuse. Centuries of having no true freedom in being. Centuries of needing to repress themselves. Not to disturb. Not to be too much. Not to insist. Many of us may have absorbed the bitterness our mothers have lived in. Maybe we saw their suffering, learned to harden ourselves, and feared our softness and vulnerability.

All of these conflicts and suppressions are expressed in our bodies.

The pains, the cramps, and the mood swings are the signs of what we fear to feel and express. So, as a result, we suppress. We do that by hardening, contracting, and disconnecting from our bellies and bodies.

The time of our period is the time in which our power and our bodies are waking up. Our capacity to create, our ability to perceive life fully, the healthy fear that shows us what to refuse, our anger, and our sensuality are just a few aspects of this awakening. Our belly is alive.

Internal conflicts, inner restrictions, and all the hidden wounds and burdens of shame are also stirred up.

If you tend to be moody, angry, and agitated, you may meet the residue of some swallowed and repressed anger.

If you find yourself quickly in tears, those are probably the tears you had to suppress.

If you eat a lot, you might be facing the need to unknowingly suppress all that power and sense of expansion into feeling more.

Cramps may be how you unconsciously fight all that is waking up within you.

We cannot separate what we feel, think, and do from our bodies.

We are one.

We express and move through life through and with our body and the consciousness it holds.

The need to separate from our bodies is an expression of helplessness.

It is when we feel incapable of facing what happens. We fall into fear and feel threatened by what is happening. To play dead and disconnect is an excellent survival ability in some moments of facing a danger we cannot escape nor master.

Sadly it is something we learn to do in an ongoing way. We stay stuck in the experience and belief that we are in danger when we express ourselves freely. We meet it in our intimate relationships and friendships. We believe it to be so at work. We benefit from approval, acceptance, and love when we fit the social structures in which personal freedom and power are not appreciated nor encouraged by all or for all.

We are trapped in the habit of living in internal suppression. But, being so typical and everywhere, we cannot detect it.

We all learn to submit our power. And even if we shout out for social justice and a change in the world, we still have to see how we carry these personal suppressions, wounds, and fears that keep us separated from our power and hold wounds, old fears, and layers of shame inside of our bellies.

These repression and inner conflicts show themselves at the time of our menopause as well. It will be different but reveal the same need to embrace our repressed power and release the waves of old fearfulness.

Taking the time to heal those wounds and release these fears is essential. Remembering that they are held deep down and need continuous attention to unfold.

Being honest about all the small moments in which we suppress our power. In which we are held by fear. We have the armor of harshness, closing in and hardening ourselves, believing this is the only way to feel powerful or refuse. The moment we lose the space and freedom within us. The moment we feel ashamed about aspects of who we are when we do not give space to what we need.

Today I want to share with you a few steps with which you may be able to build awareness better. To better sense and connect to your body, shift those internal structures, and heal those wounds while releasing those old fears to reconnect to your power and presence.

Take it as a challenge to unravel your power for the next 2-4 weeks:

1. Every day, when you wake up and before you go to sleep, put your hands on your belly, and for 5 min, breathe deeply into the belly, using your hands and touch to stay connected to the area.

Through the time you breathe, make sure that you also breathe into your chest so that the energy and feelings held in your belly can spread and move.

Some of the time, it may not be easy. You may drift away, discovering the constant need to disconnect and not feel. Sometimes it will bring emotions you try to avoid and sometimes even self-loathing that you will need to feel and breathe and remember that it is all the hate and refusal you had to swallow and turn against yourself.

Try to stay with it. Move with all layers of experience. Be patient.

Agree to meet and sense all that is there,

Let it move, meaning feel when this moves in your body, and you can move your body and not stay still or stiff.

2. Every evening, take 1-2 min. to think about where you disconnected from your power and self: when did you pull back, hide something, reduce, try to make it work for others without giving space to what you felt, could not say no clearly, or doubted yourself. Pay attention to how that suppression experience is still held in your body and belly. And then take a moment to breathe, move and expand, allowing every feeling or fear to be felt and flow.

3. Every morning, create a new choice of connecting to your power: from the night list, choose what you want to focus on and change. Think about what difference you want to do or what you want to train on expressing, being, or saying. Feel in your body and your belly. What does it mean—how does it feel? Let yourself know that fear and pushback will be part of the process. It is normal, and you have to be with it, breathe with it, and not expect to be perfect.

When you have connected to the feeling and state of being connected to your body, your will, your power, tell yourself: “This is me. And I will always come back to it today”. Breathe, and with that state, walk out the door as the way you start your day.

4. Write down your experiences before, during, and after your period. It can be PMS, cramps, headache, heaviness, etc. After you have written that, take a moment and breathe deeply into your belly, also trying to sense what is there now. It can also be the heat waves, moodiness, or panic attacks you may experience during menopause.

Then write the story of the woman who suffers from those symptoms and why she has to do these oppressive things to herself. Write about yourself as if you watch that woman from the side. You can let yourself write it like a stream of consciousness.

Don't worry about the outcome. Instead, write about what experiences this woman had: what she was taught, what hurts and shame she carries….and what did she have to do with her power, vulnerability, expression, her NO, and sensuality to better survive, which is now reflected in those symptoms.

After writing, feel and pay attention to what starts to shift in your body and experience of yourself and your space.

Write down what this woman can do or should do within herself to reconnect to her power.

When you have done that, be aware of the experience of being when you think of that state of being—the freed one.

Please take a moment to stay with it, breathe into it, and let it unfold and expand in yourself.

After that exercise, ensure you reconnect with that experience every evening and every morning.

5. If you get your period, be aware of the sensations around this time. Take time to perceive it, breathe into it and explore what is hiding under the moods, the pains, and the discomfort. The more you manage to take time to meet those sensations, rather than making them go away and run away internally, you will start to recover parts of yourself that you were unaware you held back.

6. Write a thank you letter to all the women before you for how they have sacrificed and managed to be for you to be alive. If there are waves of pain or anger regarding what you may have received and suffered from some of them, take time to feel it when you can continue to think of these women and include them in that experience. Remind yourself they were suffering from the same trauma, not knowing how to escape it entirely. They felt the same anger, pain, and frustration.

Promise to them and yourself and the women around you, and after you, you will do your best to reconnect to your power. Stay connected to yourself, no matter how uncomfortable, and find your freedom.

Promise to commit to taking the journey of living your own life and remembering that no one owns you. It is your life. That there will be difficult moments, frightening ones. Ones that confront you with old shame, hurt, needs, and false beliefs.

Ask those women internally to give you the power and remove all the burden they may have been putting on and in you.

You can do these steps to start and connect to your power.

In your interactions, when trying to maintain your presence and power, remember that most people you interact with are not your enemies. And your reconnecting to your power has nothing to do with becoming harsh and dismissive.

Your power is to maintain your own space, power, and will while not fearing that of the people around you.

Remember: it is a process and takes time. Remember that it is all experiential, and the more you dare to connect to your sensations, not fear or fight them.

They carry your intuition, your power, and your truth. They will allow you to act and be without the mind restraints that we tend to have.

The more you do, the more you heal, recover and thrive.

The more your surrounding will thrive.

Enjoy reconnecting to your power,

Anna

P.S

I have created a free audio-guided training for you- search for it on the site, my Pateron, or SoundCloud page.

Photo by Rafał Szczawiński on Unsplash