Working with your moontime
I present these simple practices in the spirit of discovering more and supporting life through sharing experiences. As women we each carry our own alignments and unique ways of being in relationship to life. If we are interested and attentive to remembering the way of life we will each be carrying a part of this. I honour our shared journeys and our differences, our own experiences and the wisdom we can each hold and can unfold.
I offer thanks to the ancestors of all kinds who gave us life, especially to those that stand in support of us and carry the memory of healthy connection to themselves, one another and the land. I give thanks to the carriers of wisdom traditions of the many lineages that support and nourish us now in these times of challenge and potential.
I trust we all carry deep knowing in our bones and that we have medicine to share that is unique and precious to each of us.
Some of us may be totally new to these practices and others may have been working with them for many seasons. I believe we can come together to support one another bring forward the gifts of the feminine that are needed at this time.
The following suggestions are not dogmatic rules or definitive guidelines. The invitation is to find our own journey of relationship and re connnection through exploring them as feels right for us.
The essence of this is to honour our moontime as a ceremony. Surrender in these days, follow your heart and internal guidance. Dream, vision, do what you feel like. Allow the material world to slip away for as long as is realistic. Know you are in purification for yourself and all of life.
In this simple suggestion there is so much. You can peruse the women’s wisdom section in the resources for books and articles that relate to this subject.
Working consciously with menstruation and the moon supports -
Things that need to transform to move for ourselves, our families and the wider world
Connecting with gratitude for life
Deep listening to our inner guidance and spiritual connection, increased potential to receive vision, insight and spiritual connection.
Tuning of our sensitivity to the best actions to support ourselves and be in service to life.
A chance to break patterns and cycles
Connection to our creativity and power
Development of our relationship with the land and ourselves
Appreciation of our interdependence and connection to all of life
Opening to more love and the desire to protect and tend life
Expression of our longings to the forces of creation, which could be called prayer
Healing for our ancestors and the future generations.
Tending of grief
Bringing balance back into our own lives by taking rest and care of ourselves as we bleed or take a pause from our day to day
The whole of our menstrual cycle is of great value, offering us the opportunity to meet ourselves through the lens of different energy. I recommend the book Wild Power and the website Red School for a thorough explanation of the different phases. The more recent book wise power addresses the important topic of menopause.
As we bleed we vision and can “plant seeds” and see them grow from one cycle to the next. If we do not bring awareness to this we can tend to repeat the same patterns over and over. By paying attention to what happens as we bleed we can bring more awareness to what emerges as everything comes from something and what manifests is a result of the beginning of the cycle. We can notice how it goes if we honour ourselves, rest and tune in as we menstruate or override ourselves and find ourselves spent and unable to manifest in a healthy way.
Premenstrually we see our the results of this cycle. That is why it can both be a harvest and so often feel tight, critical or uncomfy. What does not work or serve us comes plainly into view. It is a time to integrate and reflect upon what we want to see emerge over the next cycle based on the experiences of this one. We can take this understanding into our menstrual time, giving thanks for the energies we wish to see blossom as we release our blood. This can be the transformed essence of what might not have worked so well. Better to cry for power and creativity than to lament “I don’t want to feel so stuck”, for example.
As we bleed it is an extraordinary time to listen and be open to messages from the depths of ourselves about the right path to follow and what might be inspired action. It may not be the time to act but to carefully nurture the tender shoots into fruition over the cycle or cycles that come. For women who are peri or post menopausal or breastfeeding and not bleeding these practices can be done with the moon. The most potent time for prayers of intention and seed planting is new moon and the optimal time for gratitude for manifestation the full moon.
So the bleeding time is the most amplified time for our capacity for connection. We are more receptive, more sensitive and connected to the phase of death, renewal and vision. Through our bodies things can move that need to be cleared for new life to re-emerge. In the Lakota tradition and many earth based cultures this was recognised as such a powerful ceremony.
It was honoured as such and the experiences of menstruating women were understood to carry wisdom for the people. The prayers made at this time where seen as particularly potent and energised.
Prayer can be a loaded word for some with many interpretations. I m sensitive to the potential for dogmatic associations and also don’t want to dismiss prayer because of painful distortions.
The meaning I take to heart comes from the Lakota word wocheykia, which means the reason we cry out.
To me this carries a relational quality of coming into relationship with the forces of creation and taking responsibility in co creative partnership with my life.
It is an opportunity to come close to ourselves, get in touch with and express our own longings and receive guidance. When we bring awareness to our cycle we can actively take responsibility for the patterns we wish to perpetuate, the changes we seek to grow in our own lives and healing for ourselves and all our relations. We can reclaim the medicine encoded in our biology.
Praying for something is not a pathway to a neatly wrapped bundle of outcomes. It’s a call to become and live into the possibility of what we are praying for. What we want we have to manifest through ourselves. Whatever we are praying about we can be guided to become, and we can receive support for that journey. It puts the burden to taking prayer requests seriously. What we are asking for we will be. So what do we want for ourselves and our beautiful world?
Some ideas for practice
Take your blood and offer it with prayer to a plant or the land, collect it or bleed direct. Don t put your blood near a ceremony site without discussing it with the ceremonial facilitator who uses that place as there may be unintended interactions that are not helpful.
Pray for health and happiness for all our relations
Take time off to rest during your bleeding time, carve some space as much as is practical to drop all other commitments and rest, listen and self care. Listen and act on the guidance received
If you are not menstruating work with the energies of the moon
Create personal ceremony at these times
Support each other as we bleed, cook for friends, help each other out to carve time
Create circles with friends to share experiences and reflections.
Develop connections with ancestors, pray that things that may have disconnected them from balance and harmony be resolved
Feel the prayer. Get in touch with the longing for what is wanted and feel it fully, allowing ourselves to really feel the possibility for change. This is the essence of prayer in my experience, not to think something, but to touch the felt sense of it then let go.
Sing, make art, chart your cycle and notice what arises.
Follow guidance, surrender, do what you feel like. Don t try too hard, just be.
At this time when the effects of us living so out of balance are in clear view I deeply believe that working with this medicine is something of great value we can bring in service to life.
If it’s new to you a warm invite to explore the experience and notice what arises for you. Please feel free to share your experiences and join together to create a web of women working in this way. I would love to include your stories, art and experiences to create a growing anthology to inspire and share wisdom.
With so much love, for all our relations, Jill