by Jean Gamble, Sydney, Psychotherapist, Mother, Wife, Daughter, Sister, Aunt, Cousin, Student, Teacher, Cook, Cleaner, Car Owner and Blogger!
About 60 women of all ages gathered on Sunday (9th Feb 2012) in Sydney to participate in Natalie Benhayon’s presentation about her ‘Our Cycles – Period and Full Moon Diary’ app for iPhone and iPad, and to discuss what it means to be a woman in 2013.
Unlike most other period tracking apps, this app does not focus on fertility and / or contraception. Instead, ‘Our Cycles – Period and Full Moon Diary’ app makes it very easy for us to track how we are feeling at different times of the month and encourages us to assess how our choices are affecting our moods, vitality and our periods (if we are menstruating). We all know that it’s easy to blame and name others and / or circumstances when we feel moody. With this app we can see the direct correlation between our own unloving choices and our resulting moodiness and lack of vitality. Similarly, we can track our self-loving choices and the resulting increase in vitality and self confidence (when we have mastered making better choices (woo hooo).
The period tracker and full moon app can also be used by men, and by women who are not menstruating because they are pregnant or have been through, or are going through, menopause. Instead of tracking their emotional states during their period, non-menstruating women and men use the cycle of the full moon, using the app in the same way as menstruating women use the cycle of their period.
During the presentation, Natalie asked us to break into groups and talk about how we are conditioned to try to fit in with what we think society / parents / peers / media think we ought to be – and how we feel when we override our own body’s responses in order to ‘fit in’. Many women, from a surprising variety of cultures, openly shared their experiences of giving themselves away in order to fit in. This was not a difficult group to engage! Through the sharing of other women I became more aware of how I override my own feelings in order to avoid being complicated or difficult. The ‘Our Cycles’ app encourages us to acknowledge our uniqueness and find our own rhythms – rather than adapt to some sort of cultural trance of how women should be. Natalie Benhayon has made the app to help us tolerate not being part of the pack and to find out how each of us can honour our own individuality. Our feelings at the time of our period, or the full moon, are just an indicator of how much we are overriding (or not) our true responses in order to comply. Soooo… “Track with the App and Come Back… to you”.
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