Learn to listen to yourself during your period

Our modern pace of life often pushes us to our limits. And when we find ourselves in a situation of weakness, even temporarily like during a pre-menstrual syndrome for example, we can no longer bear all the pressure that is imposed on us. Unfortunately, our upbringing and our culture have not taught us to recognize or listen to the signals that our body and mind send us daily. However, we could derive great physical and psychic benefits from it.

Listen to our menstrual cycle whisper in our ear

Listening to your menstrual cycle can help us better understand our needs. It is difficult to find time, in peace, to understand the subtleties of our feelings and our emotions. But difficult does not mean impossible. It may be interesting to keep a menstrual diary in which we will note our emotional states and our physical desires (food, need to move, libido, etc.). Over time, patterns will emerge and it will be easier to identify the different phases of our menstrual cycle. Effective mobile applications can also help us achieve this process of listening to ourselves.

Mindfulness Applied to Rules

Mindfulness is a practice particularly suited to listening to oneself. It's about trying to connect as much as possible to the present moment. To do this, we must stop thinking about the past, the future and “elsewhere”. Thoughts must be fully focused on what is happening here and now.

To successfully achieve this elusive state, several techniques are used. For example, we can focus on our breathing but also on all the sensations present in our body. During menstruation, it can be contraction of the uterus, tension in the breasts, blood flowing, etc.

It is also possible to put your body in motion and achieve a high level of concentration on the action you have chosen. We are thinking here of yoga, active walking, manual activity or even cleaning. When you do the dishes, you think about something else, like everyone else. Mindfulness invites us to focus on the sensations experienced during this innocuous daily act: the temperature of the water and the well-being it causes, the movements made, our posture, the sound of the dishes clashing , etc.

When it comes to menstruation, you can try to take care of yourself mindfully: take a shower, clean your period panties , prepare a natural remedy for stomach aches , etc. This awareness allows you to fully live your rules and better accept them.

Adapt your lifestyle to your periods

Once the needs and desires have been detected, we can move on to the adaptation phase. After all, why try to surpass yourself even on days when our body is asking for a drop in activity? What prompts us, see compels us to do this? For centuries, the physiology of women has been little respected. Today things are changing. Western women are beginning to be able to say loud and clear that they are on their period and that a break would be welcome.

Periods are often synonymous with fatigue. This phenomenon, unknown to men, should allow us to adopt a lifestyle different from theirs for a few days a month. Of course, every woman experiences things differently and not everyone has the same life goals. Some don't feel the need to change anything during their periods, while others go through hell of having to carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

What if we respected our own needs? Shift your work if you are independent. Have your children looked after when the need arises. Staying in bed all day with a hot water bottle on your stomach if that helps and so many other things. Taking the time to listen, analyze and adapt our way of life allows us to justify to ourselves the decisions taken and to definitively remove any impression of weakness or guilt. Because let's not forget that this process of listening to oneself aims to live better in general and should therefore not be accompanied by any negative feeling.

By Emily