by Sandra Dallimore, Melbourne, Australia
At the Melbourne presentation for International Women’s Day 2013 titled; ‘Nurturing the woman within: Reclaiming your natural rhythm within our modern times’ Natalie Benhayon presented a new app for iPhone, iPad (and in future, Android) called ‘Our Cycles’.
Natalie had tried various apps to track her own symptoms, moods and feelings during her monthly menstrual cycle, and due to the limitations she found with these apps, and the emphasis on them being for a woman to either become pregnant or to prevent becoming pregnant, she decided to develop her own app and the ‘Our Cycles’ app was born.
The ‘Our Cycles’ app is not just for menstruating women, it is also for women in Menopause and for all men, as they too have a natural monthly cycle which follows the full moon cycle – the full moon being a time of healing and clearing, just as the bleeding is for a woman during her menstrual cycle, (For more information about the full moon cycle, visit www.ourcyclesapp.com).
We were asked to consider: “What if we were educated in school that having a cycle comes first and getting / not getting pregnant is second?”. Would we then be more prepared for some of the symptoms we may experience, such as cramping, changes in our moods or changes in what we eat when we have our period?
And, what if we were given a diary when we first got our period, so we could record what is going on for us throughout the month? Would it not give us a totally different relationship with our bodies?
Many women in the group acknowledged that they weren’t taught about ovulation, so were not prepared for symptoms or pain around this time. One woman, who in her teen years was rushed to hospital with a suspected burst appendix, on further questioning was told to go home and take painkillers as she had ovulation pain. She had no idea.
If we had the understanding that we do have a cycle, and to not only focus on when we have our period, and just dealing or putting up with symptoms and changes in our moods and behavior, we may then be easier on ourselves at other times during the month, for example, around ovulation time. At this time, we may feel more tired and in acknowledging this, we may not work as hard and take more care in how we eat, sleep and look after ourselves.
So, the App is a tool that we can use to track what’s going on for us on any given day.
It enables us to keep track of our feelings, moods and any physical symptoms we experience each day. We may see a pattern over the months where the week before our period (or full moon) we always reach for chocolate, or overeat, have trouble sleeping or are very emotional. We may see that mid-cycle when we are ovulating, we always feel very lovely and sexy, or we have pain. Or, we may see that during our period, and the full moon, we do in fact feel really lovely and we honour and nurture ourselves with deep rest, early morning bubble baths and simple, light meals.
On being asked whether we felt a diary would be beneficial, the consensus of the group was a resounding YES.
One woman who is post-menopausal reported that she had been keeping a diary for 8 months and that she had been astounded at just how much change she had made during this time. She had identified through her diary that she was overeating at certain times of the month, and that she often felt very tired around the full moon and realised that she was actually overtired from doing too much throughout the month. She had looked back over her diary to see any patterns and if anything had changed. She was able to see a pattern of overeating for example, and had asked herself why she was doing this. What was going on for her? Without any judgment or beating herself up, she had lovingly made changes throughout the following months. So when she looked back in her diary, she could see just how much change she had made and the pattern of overeating had lessened considerably.
The menstrual cycle and full moon cycle give us a wonderful opportunity to see where we are at and what needs to change. If we feel moody (sad, depressed, angry) or have symptoms such as period pain, cramping or food cravings before or during our period or the full moon, it gives us an opportunity to say to ourselves: “I can work on this during my next cycle”. We can stop and say: “I don’t like how I’m feeling during this time so let’s see what is going on during my cycle that contributes to this”. Using the app, and entering how we feel each day, we build up a picture for ourselves to see our patterns. It’s most definitely not about judging ourselves or beating ourselves up, and it’s not about setting goals to get rid of something either. It’s about being honest with how we’ve been with ourselves during the month and then setting ourselves on a program for the next month.
For example, if we regularly stay up late at night when we feel tired but push ourselves to keep going – whether to watch a TV program, keep our partner company, or to entertain family or friends, we may decide to look at this and see if this is contributing to what we experience during our period or full moon time.
Please visit www.ourcyclesapp.com where you’ll find information about the period, moon diary for women and the moon diary for men, how to purchase the App, blogs from people who have been keeping a diary and blogs from various medical and health practitioners.
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