It has been nearly 7 years since my first period at the age of 13 and since then I have been on an amazing journey in my relationship with myself as a woman. During those years there were many changes taking place – it is generally known and accepted that puberty is a big time for teenagers as their physical body and hormones shift, but with the support of Esoteric Women’s Health and Universal Medicine practitioners, this time has been far more than a biological change for me – it has been an amazing journey where I have blossomed from a girl into a woman.
From almost my very first period, I suffered with extreme crippling pain and sickness. For the first few years my periods would be very heavy and would have me flat on my back in bed for several days, unable to stand, let alone go to school – I simply couldn’t function normally because of the pain I was in, and the sickness, shaking and fatigue that went along with the pain. Some months whilst screaming in agony, my mum seriously considered taking me to hospital to get some morphine to help with the pain.
I often worried what would happen if my periods never got any better and I wondered how so many women carried on their normal lives with painful periods. At the time, the only solution I was given by the doctors was to take the contraceptive pill – I wouldn’t be in any pain, but then again I also wouldn’t have periods. It might sound strange, but despite the pain and the sickness, I didn’t want to take medication to completely stop an innate and natural part of me being a woman – I wanted to find a way for my periods to be naturally less painful, and so I decided to seek some help from some of the women in my life. In particular, I decided to book myself in for some sessions with Natalie Benhayon, who is a practitioner that specialises in Esoteric Women’s Health.
Natalie is an amazingly wise young woman, and her support was very practical, sharing from her own experiences, not only as a young woman herself, but also from the hundreds of women she treats and supports on a daily basis in her work as a practitioner. Esoteric Women’s Health to me simply means reconnecting back to what it means to be and live as a woman from within me – not based on all the measures and pictures in life, but from a connection with myself.
Through her support, and the support of other practitioners, I began to look at and take responsibility for the way I was living on a daily basis as a woman – and in a nut shell what it showed me was that I wasn’t living as a woman, I was just walking around as a human, totally ignoring and overlooking the fact I have a woman’s body, and I am a woman first and foremost in all that I do.
When I look at some of the role models in my life of amazing women like Natalie Benhayon, I can see that in every way, from how they dress, do their hair, talk, walk or work they bring qualities to life of the woman they are.
It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women.
How often does it simply become auto-pilot to wear makeup and do our hair? How often do we dress ourselves and choose clothes that make us feel amazing, and because we feel amazing we naturally look it? I can’t count the number of times I have painted my nails because it’s just another thing you do, and because I am not really taking any time or care I always rush and smudge the polish.
But did it go deeper than that?
Was there a part of me that was rejecting living as a woman in life?
I was at the point in my life where I was growing from a girl to a woman, and in me I could feel a lot of resistance to this transition – I wanted to stay the little girl, not responsible and not on the receiving end of all the attention, comparison and measuring I was already feeling in the world – measuring myself to other girls at school, to pictures in the media, feeling the eyes of men on me and the pressure to be in a relationship. I could feel I didn’t want to grow up and become the woman that I was seeing modelled by society and so there was an inner tug of war going on between the natural call and transition to being a woman and the part of me that was applying the brakes and not wanting to go there.
I realized that this way of living, so disconnected and resistant to myself as a woman and just ticking the boxes, was bound to have an effect – could it be the intense pain and sickness of my period was showing me a month lived disconnected to and fighting myself?
Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?
As I became more aware of the way I lived I decided to start to track my cycles and symptoms using a period diary app called Our Cycles. The very simple act of actually recording when my periods started and ended every month, which days were heavier and which were lighter and what days I got cramps or other symptoms, slowly built a very uncomplicated and practical connection with this aspect of myself as a woman. As the months passed and my awareness built I would know when my period was due from the way my body was feeling, because I had taken the time to feel and track the symptoms in my diary. No longer was I left wondering why I suddenly felt more tired than normal, or why I was really craving sugar out of nowhere, or why my breasts or lower back was sore. When I felt these things I could connect them back to where I was in my cycle, and see them as the symptom or end product of how I had been living up till that point.
What I discovered was that, over time, my periods got lighter, shorter and less painful – I could tell you one week before and the day before my period started that it was coming, based off this new found relationship with my body – it was amazing!
Through this very simple tool of keeping track of my cycle, I had developed the beginnings of a very practical relationship with myself as a woman and in doing that, it eased some of the tension in me around growing up and becoming a woman… but there was still far more to go.
For several years I lived with periods that were so far improved from the pain I had experienced before, that a little pain here and there didn’t worry me – I could take some painkillers and get through it, and occasionally if I had a bad period it would typically only be for the first day.
I then attended some presentations delivered by Natalie Benhayon, who presented something deeper for me and other women to consider … Natalie spoke about ovulation, and for me it was one of the first times I had heard it discussed outside sex ed. or biology.
Did I know when I ovulated? The answer was a complete no; in fact I didn’t even know what ovulating really looked like or felt like on a purely physical level.
Natalie shared about ovulation openly and honestly so that it totally demystified it and in the end I was actually able to say that I did experience symptoms of ovulating, I had just never known enough to connect the dots and know that was what was happening.
And so I implemented the same program as with my periods, a very simple recording every month of this other aspect of my cycle, just to purely learn what my body’s normal was, and then from several months’ observation I could begin to tell when it was different. I tentatively began to explore the relationship between the kind of ovulation I had, how aware of it I was, and the kind of period that followed. How did I live in the cycle of the month, that may have affected my physical cycle?
What I discovered was that no part of my life was separate or disconnected from any other part – the physical cycle of my body was not separate to the cycle of the month or the day and how I lived in those cycles – I couldn’t push hard and just get everything done, placing myself second in life and not feel the fact in my period.
As time passed I realised that becoming a woman is far more than a physical change – that is a part of it but I also feel I have grown into a woman on many other levels. It has taken time, and through my teenage years I have learnt a lot about what it means to me to be a woman and how I express – I have tried fitting in and matching the pressure of school or the media, I have pulled away and tried to be more masculine, going hard and pushing through but in the end, the foundation I had with me the whole time was a very simple but profound connection to myself and my cycle. Around me I had amazing reflections from women like Natalie, showing me it was possible to be a beautiful, powerful woman without having to toe the line and fit the picture.
For someone who started off their journey with their periods shaking and crying on the bathroom floor in utter agony, to have come so far where having deepened and developed my relationship with myself as a woman has lead me to not only have relatively painless and symptomless periods, but a point where I feel I can say that I know who I am as a woman is amazing.
Thanks to the support of Natalie Benhayon and other practitioners, puberty for me has not just been a biological process, or a struggle – it has been an unfoldment out from within me what was already there, and in that process I have healed my own physical symptoms in the way that I live.
I look forward to a life spent unfolding my relationship with myself and the world as a woman.
By Rebecca, UK
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“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?”
Yes of course, this makes so much sense, medication can help but only on a superficial level – whats needed always is to look within and to change movements that create illness and pain.
Gosh what if all teenagers had access to this wisdom, care and love that would be pretty amazing in fact it should be the normal. I love your honesty here ‘I was just walking around as a human, totally ignoring and overlooking the fact I have a woman’s body, and I am a woman first and foremost in all that I do.’ how often do we truly connect with who we are within rather than just be a human functioning day in and day out. What you have shared here is really important and key for our whole and true well being.
I love knowing more about cycles and connecting with my own.
What an amazing body we have, if we listen we are reminded of our connection to the universe and the grandness of it all.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” This is so amazing and makes so much sense, and also reminds me of the absolute amazingness of our bodies and innate wisdom they hold.
When we feel and get a sense of the symptoms our period is offering us, do we listen and take heed or do we ignore and dismiss them because we make our life about the ‘doing’ and everything in life rather than the relationship we have with ourselves.
Growing up and entering puberty i never considered that our body lives in cycles. I could see the cycles around us, and see patterns for myself during the day or different seasons – but it never occured to me that my body is governed by cycles. Introduced to me by Natalie Benhayon, I have now began to develop this relationship and it is just so beautiful – I can feel my body going from one stage into the next, preparing for what is to come and discarding what has happened. It’s a real gift to have this relationship, one which I would wish upon every single woman.
It is fascinating connecting and listening to what our bodies and cycles are communicating to us. For us to be oblivious to this is such a shame, like you until I was at a presentation with Natalie Benhayon shared and I got full clarity of what each phase of our cycle is offering us as women not only on the physical and functional level but also the energetic level to.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?”
Yes and if only collectively as a society we acknowledge it, never again would there be shame in having a period.
I love this and am exploring this for myself. It’s great to really get to know our own cycles and then be able to notice when something is out or different. I am at the moment learning that when something is different it does not mean I did something wrong but that there is something for me to look at without that judgement.
“Esoteric Women’s Health to me simply means reconnecting back to what it means to be and live as a woman from within me.” Simple but so profound.
As a parent of an eleven year old girl I am becoming aware of the importance of addressing what comes up and is going on for our girls no matter what it is. To feel this connection with my daughter comes from a connection to myself and my willingness to commit to and love me.
The way we are taught to live as women is heartbreaking, we glorify the fact that women can be tough, we encourage young girls to compete and all of these ingrained behaviours leave women feeling incomplete, lacking a worth and in many self-abusive habits. If we truly care for the health of women, why have we come to this as a society?
A gorgeous and very honest sharing Rebecca, this blog could have been my own journey as well with my period as I had similar experiences as you, I often wonder where I would be now if I didn’t have the reflection of women like Natalie Benhayon living as a true and sacred woman, and the amazing support she offers with Esoteric Women’s Health and the ‘our cycles’ app, it has simply been life changing.
“But did it go deeper than that?
Was there a part of me that was rejecting living as a woman in life?” All women would be wise to consider this most deeply.
A very important question, and I for one used to reject living as a woman in this life.
These days you hear of so many women hating having periods and then having a tough time through the menopause – personally, I never had either. I put this down to never hating my periods or resisting menopause.
“It has been nearly 7 years since my first period at the age of 13 and since then I have been on an amazing journey in my relationship with myself as a woman”. It is a crime that this statement is an exception rather than the norm. We diminish this time into a purely biological thing, a time when you could get pregnant and learn that periods are at best an inconvenience. This journey should be a time of flowering into a woman and embracing the beauty of what that means.
Our relationship with difficulty, pain and our body has been completely corrupted. The addictions we have threaten us with pain but yet cause so much more the longer they are entertained.
What a beautiful understanding you came to with support from your practitioners, ‘ I began to look at and take responsibility for the way I was living on a daily basis as a woman – and in a nut shell what it showed me was that I wasn’t living as a woman, I was just walking around as a human, totally ignoring and overlooking the fact I have a woman’s body, and I am a woman first and foremost in all that I do.’
It is beautiful to read this article, I love the way that you were supported to know yourself as a woman.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” Ah ha! a million light bulbs come on this makes so much sense – I wish to share this knowing with all the women in the world.
“puberty for me has not just been a biological process, or a struggle – it has been an unfoldment out from within me what was already there, and in that process I have healed my own physical symptoms in the way that I live.” so beautifully shared Rebecca, a very inspiring reflection your experience presents to young women.
‘an unfoldment out from within me what was already there’ what an amazing way to spend your teenage years (or indeed any years) growing and sharing you with the world, and knowing it’s all there ready and waiting to be expressed.
I think you nailed it when you said we can either approach our periods and our cycle as a biological function or an opportunity to explore who we are, the latter is a much richer and more fulfilling way to live.
Rebecca you are now an inspiration and role model for many other young girls as they move into the beautiful young women they are.
There is so much that comes when we grow from a girl to a woman. The energy, looks, comments and sometimes physical challenges that come our way as we develop is quite a challenging and without adequate support we can harden and resist the process in our body and our cycle.
The pain and sickness that can be related to periods means we try to find a solution rather than look at the cause. The world seems to subscribe to that model as well which is so wrong because it makes it quick and simple rather than truly healing.
Yes I know I always looked for the quick ‘fix’ Lucy, I didn’t want to look at the way I was running my body and the disconnection I was living in that was all making my periods so painful and difficult.
“I look forward to a life spent unfolding my relationship with myself and the world as a woman” Rebecca it is super cool and inspiring you can say this.
It is sad reality that not too many young ladies can claim this too. Something that should be all of our birth right is often lost in a sea of emotions that disconnect us from the true beauty we are.
It is so awesome that despite the horrendous pain you chose not to go on the pill and have committed to getting to know your body and all that it is communicating to you and in sharing this journey you have given all other women an amazing resource to support them in starting to make different choices in support of their bodies.
If we look within and around we will see there are so many women who are rejecting living as a woman in this life.
When it comes to role models world wide we have very little when comes to a women living in her sacredness and knowing without doubt she is divine.
Hence why Esoteric Womens health is so important – we are seeing more and more women stepping back into their power and claiming the beautiful women they are.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” Yes absolutely! I know for certain my period is a way of clearing all the build up of negativity I have taken on throughout the month – when we have this understanding we can see periods as a time of deep healing and in truth celebration.
Super inspiring blog Rebecca. I love how your awareness has deepened as you have committed over time to discovering what it is to live as a woman. A gorgeous time in life to begin in your natural process from a girl to a woman.
Period pain is mostly regarded as ‘normal’ nowadays and it might be time to investigate whether it is natural and if not – what the pain or the clots and heavy flow tell us about the way we have lived and the take responsibility for the symptoms and find the answers, and not any solutions.
Great that despite the crippling pain of your periods, you choose to not take medication and instead look at your lifestyle choices. Such wisdom and level of responsibility for one so young. Shows that we need not be ‘victims’ and if we listen to our bodies much healing can take place. Visiting the hospital recently with a friend, I witness much suffering around me, none of which is necessary if we just choose love for ourselves.
I am developing a relationship with the moon cycle in my body as I am woman living post menopause. We live in more than one cycle and we can not separate one cycle from another. It is a work in progress for me and there is a lot to learn about my womanly body, the way I am with myself and how my cycle is part of how I choose to live.
Ah, the moon cycle. I am living the moon cycle too Annelies and the more sensitive my body becomes the more I can support it during the cycle, with the food that I eat, my sleep patterns, everyday consistency with exercise and being gentle with myself, and above all, not dismissing what I know to be true.
“it has been an unfoldment out from within me what was already there, and in that process I have healed my own physical symptoms in the way that I live.” I am finding more and more that we can use medicine to support, but unless we address the momentum and the patterns of the way we live, medicine has an uphill climb and is therefore can be used arrogantly by us to fix our problems and there is an abdication on our own part about our responsibility with our own healing.
This is very true Lucy, I know people who are on long term medication, therefore cannot truly feel the consequences of their choices past and present. Makes me wonder what would happen if we took the medication away…
I reckon there would be a tumbleweed moment and then a level of honesty which we would bring us to a standstill till we learned to move in a way that did not cause such tension in the body.
It is an extraordinary turnaround that you describe here, and it clearly took time and dedication. These are not overnight healings, they are re-discoveries that take a dedication to ourselves and I feel that is what brings about the lasting change. We cannot ‘bluff’ our own bodies.
Wow wouldn’t it be amazing to have Our Cycles explained in schools and the app shared with young adults as they go into puberty. What an absolutely amazing support this would be.
I love the quality that Natalie reflects and the way she cares for and holds herself, it is very inspiring and has supported many to look at and makes changes for themselves.
Amazing to feel the impact of our cycles on ourselves and others, my husband is very much impacted by my cycles too, my period is a time not just for my clearing and healing but also for his too.
I can feel my period coming, I am due on in a couple of days. I have learnt to honour this time and really appreciate what my body is preparing for.
What an amazing gift it is to have cycles.
I can so so relate Rebecca, I had many months rolling around the floor in complete agony wondering what I had done wrong to deserve such a fate! Now I realise the way I had been living, the harsh, judgemental and critical voice I had with myself all added up and resulted in the pain I was having. The pain stoped when I committed to dealing with the root cause, getting to know my cycles and deepening my level of acceptance for myself were all key to changing this around to now feel super blessed to have a period each month.
At the age of 41 I feel with the incredible support of Natalie Benhayon that I am truly learning and connecting to what all the cycles are showing me. That the more I feel and honour what I am feeling during the day things around me are supported. This is one that I am still working on and exploring but can say it is precious to have such a relationship. Thanks Natalie Benhayon for sharing your own lived process too!
This is true empowerment “I have healed my own physical symptoms in the way that I live.” To care for our body to such a degree that they respond and heal. What you describe is simple and this is beautiful, it is clear that your consistency and observation has made a huge difference to your overall quality of life.
I love the connection you hold to your periods, Rebecca. And how you are so aware of your cycles. I’d love to know more about how you were able to track your ovulation cycle. I have never really clocked these – I don’t really have an understanding of what ovulating feels like or when it happens. But as you say – it is such a huge part of an overall cycle.
How awesome it is as women to have access to a wisdom that stays with us for our lives and that we can continue to grow, nurture and explore through our movements and bodies constantly if we so choose. Thank you for the inspiration Rebecca, simply lovely to read and appreciate from my body and my movements too.
To think we have all sorts of pills and drugs now and in the future, that could have taken all your “pain” away and if it had of opted for them, you may not have looked into the deeper reason that your body was showing you these symptoms. It is so great really that you were being communicated to in such a strong way, that it made you stop and listen. Some women do not discover this their whole lives and you are leading the way discovering it so young.
What a beautiful time of our lives when we stop and truly consider what is being presented to us by the way of our cycle in our own bodies and how this is all connected the all the other cycles in the Universe. I have only really just discovered the power of multi-dimensional layers we are apart of yet it all comes down to the simplicity of our Love for and with ourselves and honouring what we feel all of the time.
True Natalie, we are connected to the cycles of the Universe and exploring the connection with these cycles is nothing more than connecting with our own body and surrender to what our body is presenting each moment. It gives me the opportunity to let go of the investments in human life and experience space in my body and in my day when I am honouring what I feel.
“For someone who started off their journey with their periods shaking and crying on the bathroom floor in utter agony, to have come so far where having deepened and developed my relationship with myself as a woman has lead me to not only have relatively painless and symptomless periods, but a point where I feel I can say that I know who I am as a woman is amazing.” truly amazing. Discovering the woman we really are – an awesome journey back to love.
Life is all about cycles, every day, every week, every month and year. It is all related to how we live our life on a daily basis and reflected back to us by our body.’
Another miracle stemming from taking responsibility for your own life and your choices and how you live it.
Beautiful to read what you shared about role models like Natalie, Simone, Deborah and Miranda: ‘It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women.’
The total acceptance of being in a female body and reflecting sacredness to the world is what makes these women true role models for me.
Beautiful to read how you listened to the wisdom we all have inside our body and because of that didn’t want to take any medication that would stop completely an innate and natural part of me being a woman.
Love what you share Rebecca our cycles are so powerful, what a waste it is that many of us can live most of our lives not connecting to this rich inner wisdom.
This is an invaluable piece you have shared about your journey with your periods since their onset. I say invaluable because the wisdom you have shared here is much needed in our world, so that other women and men may come to know the true meaning and purpose of a women’s menstrual cycle.
My periods are a clear indication of how I have been living. They always have been though I tried to completely ignore their very, very obvious messages of being absent for a very long time or painful. I have missed using this app but have felt to return to using it as it’s my conversation with me each day, something I can feel I can do from a place of observation and not judgement – looking at how I have taken on things that have affected my rhythm that are not my natural rhythm. Open to discovering what is my rhythm each day?
I too have found so much joy and wisdom by simply taking the time to observe my body in my day to day life and write in my journal how I felt on a day to day basis. Having this open dialogue with my body I have found a deeper awareness of my whole cycle and how every movement then gives us the opportunity to learn and observe more and more about our rhythms and how we either work with them or against them. Our female bodies really are amazing.
We think that by pampering ourselves we feel better and initially sometimes we do but this way of being is short lived. Unless we are in connection to ourselves as a woman in truth whatever we’re going to do is not going to support us as it is done coming from the mind. Connection to the body first is vital and then we know what is needed to support us in any given moment.
I was very disconnected to my cycles as I was growing up, I got my period each month and that was it, I didn’t really look or feel into it much deeper than that. But I have a different understanding now, one that is very different from the view I used to have.
I was remembering my first feelings of my first period today and I recalled this feeling of warmth and joy bubbling up, in felt like something amazing was happening….the perception in everyday life was however, that periods where messy, smelly and leaks where terrifying, and then as I grow older, they became very painful, I am returning to that place of joy and appreciation, warmth and yes it is bubbling once again! Self-Care and Observation are the keys to a return of a more harmonious and supportive way life.
Fantastic to share, a beautiful blossoming relationship with cycles in life, it is something that I have come back to after being separate from what my body was doing for years. Being aware, reading the body and understanding how my choices impact on my life has been a pure blessing.
Amazing journey of self-discovery. We can learn so much by observing our bodies and building a relationship with what we feel, so that it’s not a good or a bad thing, not a judgement or criticism, but just a reflection of where we have been placing ourselves in our lives, and how we have been living as a result.
This is so lovely read “…this time has been far more than a biological change for me – it has been an amazing journey where I have blossomed from a girl into a woman” A young woman claiming her path into womanhood with joy and appreciation. There are so many pressures and misrepresentations in life concerning women and their cycles and what our purpose is that many girls feel very overwhelmed and unsure. This is not the case here, there is a celebration of womanhood and that feels great.
Learning to be in tune with our cycles is one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves. Through the Our Cycles app I am learning so much about myself.
So so true Ariana, observing our cycles brings a deeper understanding; indeed a celebration of the true qualities of being a woman.
“What I discovered was that no part of my life was separate or disconnected from any other part – the physical cycle of my body was not separate to the cycle of the month or the day and how I lived in those cycles – I couldn’t push hard and just get everything done, placing myself second in life and not feel the fact in my period.” It makes total sense that the way we are with ourselves would be reflected in the quality of our periods, yet before Universal Medicine I lived in such disconnection with my body that I just saw my period as a burden that i had to live with. I now understand that our bodies are constantly offering us opportunities to support a naturally loving & honouring way to be with ourselves.
It is extraordinary that when choosing to take responsibility and look at how and why you were choosing to not live the amazing woman you are, that you exposed the disconnection and ultimately healed your resistance and as such have not only reversed your issues but are able to truly embody being a woman for yourself and the world to enjoy.
Imagine if every parent who sees their daughter with crippling period pain, not only took her to seek medical support but talked with her about how she was living and treating her body. I suspect there would be a lot less women’s health issues if we were brought up this way, to actually celebrate and adjust our way in response to the symptoms in our bodies.
When I was a teenager I had nothing like your period pains, just an overall feeling of being miserable which cast a shadow on everything I did and life was just a general struggle but no severe feedback from my body that I needed to live differently.
Reading this got me wondering about the symptoms my body gives me. Often I’ve only related it to my immediate choices (eat wrong food = tummy ache etc) but what if where I am in my cycle has a part to play? Something to explore here. Thank you.
My period always used to a thing that I found to be a nuisance but when I have my period today I absolutely love it. Even if there are things that are uncomfortable about it, I am learning to appreciate what my periods are telling me. How the way I live the cycle of my period is going to determine how it will transpire. So we do have a lot of power even thou we don’t think we do, interesting isn’t it.
What a beautiful blog Rebecca, as you know I haven’t menstruated in several months now but what you share here is always just so beautiful to connect to. What you say about the war between the natural unfoldment of a woman and desire to stay the little girl is something I can very much relate to – for me there’s a huge block, I am constantly convincing myself that I am doing everything that I can to be the woman that I am, when in truth I haven’t even accepted the fact that I am a woman and I feel huge resistance to do so. Something to ponder on – thank you for your beautiful expression ❤
That was great insight you had at such a young age to not take the pill, many teenagers would have opted for the pain relieve and not worried about missing their period, in fact many welcome not having to have a monthly period.
This is a truly inspirational blog for anyone starting their cycle, having painful periods but also wanting to develop a relationship with their cycles. We all have them and what you have shared is a dedication to developing that relationship. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we chose to do this before we were forced to find a way to lessen the pain we feel in our lives? I feel there is something for me to pay attention to here.
It is an unfolding journey to embrace what it means to be a woman and appreciate the sacredness that our bodies so innately hold.
What a beautiful sharing of coming into being a women and the love and honouring you have brought into your life with the inspiration of true role models and Universal Medicine. “It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women.”
There are so many things we can do as a woman on auto pilot mode. As is shared here – it can be things that make us look feminine but at the end of the day is about how you feel. So that’s what I have come to know is my strongest part – how does everyone feel and in that basis am I truly nurturing myself.
Two of the words in the title of this blog, ‘Discovering Cycles’ really stood out for me this morning and I feel the significance and importance of realising and appreciating the many cycles in our lives, big and small, and how we are constantly given opportunities to learn and practise, turning knowledge in our heads to wisdom lived in our bodies.
I got to appreciate this morning how everything has its own cycle – or our relationship with everything has a cycle.. it’s not only my body experiencing this but my relationship to other things, even as inanimate as a home, having its own development and purpose.
What a beautiful discovery that no one part of our lives is not connected to our others. A series of connections and cycles, allowing us to go deeper each time in harmony and stillness.
“My Journey with my Periods – Discovering Cycles” – and equally discovering oneself as a woman too within a cycle. What i’ve noted is the deeper self-relating with my body occurs, the more i’m appreciating to cherish it and also as it goes through the ageing cycle in my 40’s.
Thank-you Rebecca, what a gorgeous journey you have taken for yourself, and for all women on the planet. Beautiful.
It is interesting how many women don’t know when they ovulate, discovering this for myself was a game changer and allowed me to feel a deeper connection to my body. The ‘our cycles’ app developed by Natalie Benhayon has been a true blessing for all women bringing awareness and understanding around our natural and very beautiful cycles.
“I simply couldn’t function normally because of the pain I was in, and the sickness, shaking and fatigue that went along with the pain” – so relatable Rebecca, and the thing is, is that this example is what so many women experience and go through thinking it’s normal or part of being a woman on a period. The deeper the self-connection, the more this experience/these symptoms fall as an anomaly to confirm that in truth having a period and its flow is a silent graceful affair and one of great joy … when the woman is in this herself first. And therein our periods tell us everything about ourselves and the quality we’re in as women. The magnificence of menses, and to call it a curse, we see is a curse in itself.
The wisdom that is shared between women is priceless.
Thank you Rebecca. What strikes me here is how you discovered that you were not living as a woman because you were able to feel what living as a true woman actually is. So there was never a judgement or a condemnation of you – just an awakening to the true beauty and power that you are which in turn revealed all that you are not and as such it was a simple choice to let go of what is not working for you.
Natalie Benhayon is indeed ‘an amazingly wise young woman’ who has claimed herself yet she does not put herself above anyone else. She speaks from the humility of having made mistakes and been through the difficulties we face and she gives us practical examples from her own experience which every woman can relate to. Because she never gives mental advice but always speaks about what she has lived she makes things very simple and real so you feel that you can deal with issues in your life by being aware of what you are doing that is getting in the way and taking simple steps to replace old habits with consistent self-loving choices.
I love the expansive sense of a life lived in relationship with our bodies… guided and inspired by all that our bodies can show us.
“Through her [Natalie Benhayon’s] support, and the support of other practitioners, I began to look at and take responsibility for the way I was living on a daily basis as a woman – and in a nut shell what it showed me was that I wasn’t living as a woman” – what revelation Rebecca.. and to think that most women, myself included, go through life and many years enduring extreme period pain with no connection to this i.e to ‘living as a woman’ but instead more to ideals and in this going against their natural selves in the the process. With this simple realisation and through self-exploration you can change your life.
“Esoteric Women’s Health to me simply means reconnecting back to what it means to be and live as a woman from within me – not based on all the measures and pictures in life, but from a connection with myself” – beautifully said and written Rebecca, and reading your post here about ‘period pain’ is one way to support us women back to the true nature of ourselves, where connection to this is absolutely everything for without it we are not only running at great cost or expense, but also lost too.
Honouring our bodies in the relationship and honesty we build with our menstrual cycles is one of the simplest ways to connect to our purpose and the sense of life.
What an amazing unfolding Rebecca, to understand really what our cycle represents for us, it is such an awakening, going deeper to understand exactly what we hold as being women and how understanding our cycle can really support us as women.
I agree Raegan – is it any wonder that one of the most abused things in this world is the womans body – not just by men but also by women. Is it possible this is to try and shut down the amazing quality that is found within it.
Living with our monthly cycles and the cycles of the seasons and annual cycles, we realise there is a rhythm we can live by as we notice the changes. The body feels very nurtured and loves living in the cycles. Your understanding is very profound Rebecca and has helped you to connect to this rhythm of your body with very positive confirming results.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” This is such a great question Rebecca. It is all to easy to feel hacked off about being in a woman’s body when our periods feel so terrible. But your sharing shows there is another way and we can reclaim our bodies
Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your story, it is so different from mine, and I’m at the other end of the scale, in my 60s and hated having periods – I had no notion that they were there for anything other than reproduction. Now I understand more about cycles and the Full Moon.
After having focused on my cycle for quite a number of years from menstruation to menstruation and the clearing that brings, it was brought to my attention that if I focused on my cycle from ovulation to ovulation I would get to have a different relationship to my body and my cycle. My understanding is that there is a deepening of self value as a woman as this cycle focusses on the sacredness within. This is the first month I have set the intention to do this and only a few days in I can feel a deeper connection to my cervix and a more solid in claiming the power that is innate.
We seriously underestimate the power of awareness, as the simple connection and awareness of what is happening in our bodies opens us to pondering change, to actually initiating change. All from the choice to become aware.
I attended a workshop recently and periods came up in the conversation that the audience was having with Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon, and I felt a bomb had been dropped in the room, that what if we pay more attention to the period but it is actually the ovulation that if aligned to can support us to deepen our relationship with our sacredness as women. I had never heard that before and Natalie and other women have put a Video together which will go into greater detail than we had time for. For me this is a much watch video as we have for too long denied ourselves the right to live in the true sacredness as a woman.
Way to go, Rebecca… looking forward to the learning and unfolding that life has to offer… what is there not to love?
Thank you for sharing your journey with re-discovering your cycle. It was a joy to read about how your development through your teenage years was so much more than just a biological development. We are severely short-changed as young women in the way menstruation is sold to us and currently regarded in society and by medicine.
I agree Fiona, there is so much more to becoming a woman than is shared with us – I am so thankful for the fact that in my life I have true role modles of what is means to be a woman.
Becoming more observant and aware of my cycle has been very empowering, I had no idea that there would be so much on offer to learn and understand about life and how I feel.
What a beautiful supportive and real sharing Rebecca for all women I love reading it and there is always a reconfirmation to all you share to be felt .”Esoteric Women’s Health to me simply means reconnecting back to what it means to be and live as a woman from within me – not based on all the measures and pictures in life, but from a connection with myself.” a joy to read and relationship to build into ones life also.
Discovering that I as a man also have a monthly cycle which is in sync with the full moon was a very healing realisation. The way you have presented periods Rebecca is a healing for all and a blessing, rather than a burden.
This is a great question – “How often does it simply become auto-pilot to wear makeup and do our hair?” – Even if we’re wearing similar/ the same make-up each or most days it’s still possible to be present with how we’re putting it on and not just go into autopilot – this is a great reminder for me!
This is a beautiful and inspiring sharing. I love how you developed your connection to yourself by just paying more attention to your body and what was happening and when.. learning what it is and feels like to truly be a woman is not as hard or complicated as I’ve made it out to be but very simple: start with the body, and allow it to unfold from there. An ongoing and ever deepening process and expansion.
It is such a journey to go deeper as a woman, one in which I had never considered possible when I had rejected the inner beauty that is within us all.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” – this insight alone is a game changer, and it will differ from woman to woman depending on her awareness of her own body and how she treats it, speaks to herself and allows others to treat her.
An inspiring article and great observations Rebecca – ‘ What I discovered was that no part of my life was separate or disconnected from any other part – the physical cycle of my body was not separate to the cycle of the month or the day and how I lived in those cycles – I couldn’t push hard and just get everything done, placing myself second in life and not feel the fact in my period.’
Yes, and so funny that ovulation is the very thing we are most disconnected from as women – I know almost no one who was aware of their ovulation simply on a physical level until the presentation from Natalie Benhayon, and fewer still who had a relationship with what was being communicated to them by that aspect of their cycle.
It can be so easy to settle for better in our lives like when you did have manageable symptoms you could have stopped deepening and just go about life but you did take it deeper to also address this. The constant deepening is what makes life so beautiful and interesting as there is always more to learn, understand and to evolve to.
Great point, Lieke. we do not give up on our own development and evolution simply because things are cruising… there is always more inspiration and learning on offer.
I agree – at times the constant deepening can feel daunting – cant I just rest here and enjoy it? But that is because we consider it hard work or as if we need to get somewhere or do something when in fact we are simply deepening all of who we are
There is much to be observed and responded to in our cycles as women. I appreciate the opportunity to deepen even more the quality of presence that I dress each morning in, depending on what is called for or needed within each monthly cycle.
I know this sounds crazy to say, but I had to take a stop moment when I read the part where Rebecca talked about walking around as a human and not as a woman….let me explain the stop – I am a woman (I was after all born one and cannot change this!), yet when I read that sentence it made me realise that I still walk around most of the time as a human rather than as the woman I am! This might seem like an obvious statement, but to me, I got to realise I need to spend so much more time in the awareness of being a woman and allowing myself or giving myself permission to really live this each and every day. I work a lot, and I get lots done, and I love all that I do, but what if I were to up the ante for myself by still working lots, getting lots done and loving what I do whilst at the same time loving being the gorgeous woman that I am in every single moment and just celebrating me for this! Wowza…now we’re talking! I feel like the penny just dropped for me…come on woman, let’s have some fun now! 🙂
Rebecca this is a gorgeous blog that all women need to read as it has something for everyone – if we struggle with periods it is a great reminder that this does not have to be the case; and if we don’t struggle with them then it also reminds us why and how that could be and allows us to confirm those ways we are living on a daily basis that support us in our cycle. As women we are not supported enough by blogs and articles like this that remind us of our innate qualities as women, and how to tune into them and live as the woman. Thank you Rebecca!
I agree, we should not have to wait for crippling pain or physical health issues as women to stop and take greater care and live more in tune with our cycles – we can choose to do this at any time.
‘I couldn’t push hard and just get everything done, placing myself second in life and not feel the fact in my period.’ It would be great to do a study of women’s cycles so we have more case histories like yours Rebecca to demonstrate this fact. Then this could be part of sex education in schools so every girl then knows that her body is reflecting to her the choices she made during the month and the quality of the period shows the consequences of these choices. This introduces a new level of responsibility which is empowering once we accept that we are not a victim of circumstance and we can make different choices
I agree Sandra – I was talking with a girlfriend the other day about our periods and how I wanted to do the responsible thing and get my physical body checked out to ensure its healthy, but that in the few months since my last painful period I have been taking far more care and it is undeniable the change in my periods – when we respect and honour our health from both angles, the physical and energy we can live with true health.
Very beautiful and simple…”Women’s Health to me simply means reconnecting back to what it means to be and live as a woman from within me – not based on all the measures and pictures in life, but from a connection with myself.” It is something that many of us do not get support with as we grow up, I love that I am incorporating women’s health, how I feel and my expression into everyday life as a woman.
After 24 years of having my period I’ve only just understood what it means to be in a cycle. Natalie Benhayon and the Our Cycles app have been a huge support in understanding this and it has been life changing. Round and round we go in cycles, my menstrual cycle and my body communicating with me all the way.
So true – we can have these physical cycles but it is a whole other way of being to actually live in a cycle with yourself be it day to day or month to month
For most of my life the focus of my periods has been about the bleeding part of my cycle and yet through Esoteric Women’s Health and Natalie Benhayon I have learnt that ovulation is the most powerful part of our monthly cycle. Learning about my monthly cycle from this angle is completely changing my relationship with my body and what it is sharing with me.
I agree – ovulation is the big white elephant in the room – we cannot have a period without this step, making it the most important part and yet the least discussed, understood and tracked part of a womans cycle, reserved only for when a woman wants to become pregnant or avoid it.
Being open to what our bodies tell us is an incredible way of developing awareness of life and building our understanding of our true purpose.
This concept does turn everything on its head in terms of the ideas around a woman cycle – all the focus is on the period part, when this is simply a result of ovulation – it is the ovulation that is the peak or key in the woman cycle and yet is often the very thing we have the least relationship to because its not as obvious – it actually requires a connection to your body beyond the purely physical and seen.
I love the honesty and healing we can have from our periods. Seeing how every movement we make during our monthly cycle can show us so much in terms of our way of living and how we care for ourselves is deeply inspiring and something to treasure is amazing. When I first got my period at 13 I had no idea what having a period actually meant. A period was seen as something we had as women to bring babies into the world but never shown to be a loving part of our life cycle and something we can learn and live from. There are so many myths and misconceptions about menstruation which have held us back from the real joy and deep wisdom held within our very own bodies. I now love learning more and more about how my body works and to know that every answer to any question we have the answer held right there within.
I agree, a recent learning from my cycle has been around sore breasts – something that i have really noticed has been occurring in my cycle, with the support of a practitioner I felt into the hardness I was living and working with, and how this was then causing a physical manifestation of the pain. Slowly I am beginning to be aware of just how much I tense my chest and almost brace myself against life in my day to day and a whole month spent like that it is no wonder that my breasts feel sore.
I have had some very painful periods, I have been off work ,or in bed,, they did not happen all the time, but there used to be some level of pain and exhaustion and emotional lows alongside them, each month. Being more aware of how I have been treating myself over the month has allowed me to refine my choices and in so doing, each month when my period comes along, I do not feel pain or tiredness in the way I used to. It is a very empowering feeling to understand that we have a choice with our health in this way and being more aware of our cycles offers us so a deeper appreciation of where we are at in life.
I love this insight Rebecca – “Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” – could it be possible? I’d say yes, as I always knew that if I was stressed or ate badly, my period would be painful. And i know now this is just scratching the surface but it was a great insight during my 20s, even if I still chose to do those things, I had the awareness of the cause of my discomfort and pain.
“As time passed I realised that becoming a woman is far more than a physical change – that is a part of it but I also feel I have grown into a woman on many other levels”
I remember years and years ago being very impressed by how my body changed physically – i did not have any deeper level of apprecition for what was going on energetically- it took for me to be in my 40’s to realise the true richness within my development as a woman. I am so glad i can now take the time to develop this within myself with greater awareness.
I love the Our Cycles app, even though my relationship with it has been off and on, and I no longer have periods due to menopause, what I have discovered was that by taking the time to actually ask myself the questions of ‘How do I feel’, ‘What symptoms do I have’, ‘What mood am I in’ it gives me an opportunity to stop and feel my body. One part I used to dread was the nurturing journal which asks ‘How did you nurture yourself today’, and I would struggle to come up with something that I felt was good enough to be considered nurturing. So the more you sit with this app you start to see how your relationship with it deepens, and the words you use to describe yourself start to change also.
Although as a man I don’t have ovulation I most certainly experience cycles and feel the changes in my body.
What a beautiful journey you share and an inspiration for all women to truly look at our lives and the way we are living and making changes and building love from within with an honesty and commitment to ourselves and you are living proof of what this really means. “I look forward to a life spent unfolding my relationship with myself and the world as a woman.” Simply amazing and a joy to see.
Wow what a very deep and different relationship you now have with your body – in total respect of yourself as a woman and the enormity that is offered in a womans cycle. This is very honouring and beautiful.
Such a beautiful and honest sharing Rebecca on the journey with your periods and the amazing changes you have gone through since working with the ‘our cycles’ app. I also have had similar experiences as you with painful periods etc and it wasn’t until I started using the ‘our cycles’ app that things begin to shift for me in profound ways, it was like my body had missed this connection with myself and was finally pleased I was embracing my body’s wisdom and the messages it was trying to communicate to me.
As a man, the consequences of our living creep on us much more slowly, so it may take until our 50s until we are regular in pain and discomfort and by then we have much more momentum. Getting this feedback much earlier seems to be a blessing.
You describe a totally different relationship with dressing and choosing what to wear. We can be impulsed out of a celebration and appreciation for who we are as women, meaning that our dressing is no longer a chore or a way to seek attention but a confirmation of our inner beauty.
I am forever learning something new about my cycle and what it is offering me to look at, understanding how much more my cycle is than the burden I understood it to be when I was younger.
I agree – sometimes I am hesitant about the idea that we can take all aspects of life deeper – that there is never a point reached that is the end when it comes to developing that relationship with ourselves and life. And yet this is what I experience with my cycles – there is never a point at which I can say that I have gone to the deepest level of connection and understanding of them, for as I grow and life around me changes so to does what they communicate.
Young women have a much harder time with their body than young men but this also means they receive many more signals when their life is disharmonious than young men would. It may well be the better deal.
There should be so much more in the syllabus at school not just about the biology of how the reproductive organs work, the period cycle for a woman etc. but also how to BE with these cycles and understand what is communicated to us through symptoms, aches or how we feel at different points. Every month can be a fabulous reflection and self case study.
I agree Susie – we should from day one, boy or girl, be taught about the cycles of life – day to day, week to week, month to month, the seasons, a year or the phases of the moon are all cycles in which we live and can grow through understanding them. A womans cycle is another in this, one which we can not just understand physicaly but have a relationship.
Thank you for sharing your journey there is much to explore in our relationships with ourselves as women and the opportunity to reconnect with the natural cycles and harmonies of our body and life.
Rebecca, you have reminded me of my experience when I started menstruating. I would be incapacitated with such severe pain that I was unable to function. It was indescribable. My face already pale, would go sickly white. I would wrap my body around a hot water bottle in my bed and wonder how I was going to manage this for years to come?
My way of coping was the opposite of yours. I got tough, and pushed on through the pain and bone deep fatigue. I thought I was doing a great job of it and this approach seemed to work until my periods mysteriously ceased 4 years ago. Boy was I happy! But the ramifications for this were very serious for my health. Slowly, as an adult woman I started my own process of healing, much as you have described. I laugh about the fact that I have become a woman, at last, in my 40’s… My periods, now something I embrace, have restored themselves, leaving doctors scratching their heads. It really isn’t such a mystery. It was restoring my body to its wholeness and embracing myself as a woman in the most real, meaningful and practical way that made the difference.
I love that you discovered this so early and have shared it so that other young women may also learn and become women, true to themselves, from the very beginning of womanhood.
Beautiful – what I have discovered is that there is so much more to becoming a woman that the physical changes – as you say, you truly blossomed into the woman you are in your 40’s when you claimed a quality of living with yourself and others.
Walking around without the awareness of our womanly bodies is so very common place, and I feel that perhaps this is even encouraged in some ways through the push and drive that is expected as we enter in to the adult working world. How gorgeous then is it to have someone like Natalie Benhayon who shows that yes we can be very productive and vital members of society without disregarding our delicate female frames.
‘For someone who started off their journey with their periods shaking and crying on the bathroom floor in utter agony, to have come so far where having deepened and developed my relationship with myself as a woman has lead me to not only have relatively painless and symptomless periods, but a point where I feel I can say that I know who I am as a woman is amazing.’ This is beautiful Rebecca – when we embrace our true nature our body can be in the harmony it naturally is.
Thanks Rebecca for this extraordinary and very honest account of your journey with your period. I remember a talk about ovulation where a video was shown, which captured the egg when released during ovulation, it looked like a beautiful glowing pearl and had me in awe of what was going on in my body. It changed my relationship to my ovulation completely from that day onward.
I agree Judith – we can so easily be taught not in the disconnected way but in the awe of the beautiful cycle of ovulation that occurs within each woman.
‘I can’t count the number of times I have painted my nails because it’s just another thing you do, and because I am not really taking any time or care I always rush and smudge the polish’ – This doesn’t just relate to our nails, but a lot of how we look after ourselves as women. We can put on makeup, have a fashionable wardrobe but still feel ‘smudged’ within ourselves, because when we do these things to tick boxes or BECOME beautiful, attractive, smart etc. we don’t appreciate that we’re already all of those things naturally.
I agree, if we dont use those things as an expression of what we already feel, then they just become accessories we are trying to add to make ourselves look and feel a certain way, but take them off and what are we left with? Do we feel equally beautiful with no make up and comfy clothes as we do dressed up? For me it is begining to discover the quality that is the same no matter what I look like on the outside, and expressing that in how I dress or put on make up
It is highly commendable that you did not opt for the pill like many young women do. They prefer to just get rid of the symptoms rather then look at what the body is showing them and heal the underlying reason of the pain. You are a great role model for these women.
I am still learning to grow up from all that you have mentioned Rebecca that when a young girl enters womanhood, there is more awareness in responsibility of her expression. It felt unsupportive when I was young to do that, but with the knowing of esoteric women’s health, I now know that support has all long with me, the choices I make with my body and my life will be the support (or not) for me, and that feels empowering.
What a revelation here that a woman’s period could actually possibly be a clearing of any resistance to living as a woman in the month – I am sure many women and men would be interested to hear this take on periods!
It is quite a discovery to see that women’s health issues can actually be supportive to live a more harmonious life – perhaps this is one of the reasons women live longer?
I recently committed to regular use of the Our Cycles app. I’d been attending a course co-presented by Natalie on Being a Woman and suddenly I understood that my body goes through cycles. I wanted to track my cycle to see what repeated and occurs each month – stuff that previously I didn’t realise was actually part of a cycle, not just one off events. It now seems crazy as it is so obvious that round and round the body goes communicating all the while – but a few months ago I was quite blasé and oblivious to all of this going on – right here in my own body.
When cycles like the female period are truly understood and considered the way we are living will change for the better as it will be in sync and harmony with the greater rhythms that govern all of life.
Growing up and being part of someone´s life who is growing up can be a wonderful and rich journey when it is lived with the intention and understanding that we are all here to support each other to become who we innately are.
I agree Elizabeth, there is no real reflection of what it means to be a woman past the physical attributes considered beautiful by the current trends – and as the proliferation of the media increases so to does young women’s exposure to the sexualisation and pontification of women, and the unreachable standards of appearance, starting the cycle of trying to be something on the outside rather than connecting to who you are on the inside.
And I look forward to the impact of women like you embracing the blessing that our menstrual cycles are and reclaiming our true purpose as women.
Your article is very inspiring Rebecca and very empowering for women to know that bringing a greater awareness to how we are living in relationship with ourselves has a direct impact on our cycles and all they reflect back to us.
We are surrounded by nature that has very obvious cyclic patterns. We have day and night repeated every 24 hrs. Women go through a monthly cycle for a large part of their life… Hello? Things that we don’t deal with seem to come round and visit us again and again in cycles. We live a life of cycles. How come until I came across Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health no one talked about the significance of this in our lives?
I know the feeling of not wanting to take medication – I have had many headaches in the past and only a few times took painkillers – somehow I didn’t want the shutdown of the body that comes with painkillers unless I had to.
Rebecca, your experience is something that so many young girls would benefit from hearing as there is to my knowledge nothing available of this nature that makes such sense and gives such practical advice other than that which you have shared here. Natalie Benhayon has gifted so much for all women of all ages, enabling us to understand what it is to be a true woman and to honour these qualities that are innately within us all. And in doing so we are able to take responsibility for our own health and actually change the way our body responds to what naturally occurs for us all as we mature.
As you say Rebecca, ‘becoming a woman is far more than a physical change’. You speak about the tension you felt ‘around growing up’ which often occurs if we feel a pressure to try to fit in, though deep down we all know it is not true. Natalie Benhayon has been a wonderful support for many women of all ages in helping us reconnect to ourselves as women and to our cycles. She reminds us of what we already know and through practicing awareness and being consistent in our daily rhythm we can reestablish a harmony and flow in our lives.
Thank you for sharing your unfoldment into womanhood Rebecca. This is a beautiful post inspiring young and old to connect to what it means to be a woman. The Our Cycle App also works for postmenopausal women and for men to connect to their cycles. It is a brilliant tool
Thank you for sharing the amazing relationship you developed with your cycle and how easily you can read your body now – it is very inspiring and shows how all it takes is for us to deeply listen. And want to listen. The period is a great marker for the state of the body and the clearing it offers is huge for women, and the question is – how hard/much does the body have to clear each month based on how we are living.
I got this sense with my last period, with no doubt that a hardness, a way of being pushy and driven, was leaving my body through the bleed and I felt cleansed. I have gentle periods these days, they once where very painful, but they can still on occasion offer a big clearing of something I have chosen in the month, or something older that has no place in my body. This hardness being released without a doubt, enabled me to appreciate how much more gentle I am these days and aware I am of how I feel.
I agree – our periods offer an amazing opportunity to clear the body – when I finish my period I feel so much lighter and steadier, offering me the opportunity to hold that for the rest of my month.
It is a gift to be truly supported in the process of adolescence, the transition from girl to woman (or boy to man) in the most cherished way possible as for most it is quite the opposite, ie feeling completely left alone in figuring it out yourself with only peers, movies, tv shows, ads, magazines… which are all completely lost just the same.
I agree – I didn’t enjoy feeling as lost as I did in my teenage years.
That is so true Alex. We are generally left to flounder in a sea of lost images, while undergoing the confusing surge in hormones and physical changes to our bodies. Natalie Benhayon is holding a strong course in how to truly move from vulnerable teenager into responsible young adult, firmly connected to our innate innocence and playfulness, coupled with a true knowing of who we are. And consequently, I have been very privileged to watch young teenagers like Rebecca mature into striking young adults who are going to make a very significant mark in this world.
I feel there are a lot of parallels when it comes to our attitudes to periods and the menopause. The idea of holding on to a particular cycle of our life way past it’s time is one that is familiar.
What I love about these blogs is the sharing of everyone’s wisdom and experience. Each blog I read is like hearing another woman talking to me about a particular aspect of her life and how different choices have lead to significant changes. The comments are like being part of a conversation that then follows. Its a wonder resource for us all.
Yes. I agree, Debra. This is a well of insight, intimacy and sharing that supports us all to develop our relationships with our bodies and begin to have these conversations out and about in our lives.
What a powerful blog, it has certainly made me consider and appreciate what true women’s health care is. The detail in how Natalie supports women of all ages into a deeper understanding of their own bodies and their very natural cycles, is so beautiful to read about. Natalie does this not only with her practical app but with her strong presentations on woman’s health and well being, designed to educate us on the importance of connection to ourselves as woman first. And foremost.
‘I wasn’t living as a woman, I was just walking around as a human, totally ignoring and overlooking the fact I have a woman’s body, and I am a woman first and foremost in all that I do’ – I can totally relate to this, Rebecca. I feel I spent much of my life in the same way until I too met some amazing female role models, such as Natalie Benhayon who just epitomises what it means to claim yourself as the exquisite, powerful, sacred, tender, loving woman that you are, that we all are.
I agree Alison – the word ‘womanly’ which can be chosen under feeling when completing your Ourcycles app was and still is something that felt a bit alien, and yet I am a woman! But we have made life so much about the drive, the doing, the trying and the pushing, that those womanly qualities get put to one side and forgotten and its actually all too easy to go through a day and not have felt sexy or womanly or delicate even though they are what we innately are. And what Natalie Benhayon has shown me is that none of those things end up making you weak or helpless, but a kick ass amazing woman whose very strengths are her tenderness and love
‘It might sound strange, but despite the pain and the sickness, I didn’t want to take medication to completely stop an innate and natural part of me being a woman’ – it doesn’t sound strange at all. I too was put on the pill when my periods first started, to regulate them when my period didn’t stop. Like you, I felt I was being very dis-loyal to my body, that I was suppressing an integral part of what it is to be a woman. Even though it had been frightening when my period didn’t stop, I’ve always felt that things happen for a reason and on some level, my body was doing what it needed to do.
Alison, this is beautiful how you have described it (the feeling of ‘being disloyal’ to your body by taking a medication)…I too always felt not quite right about taking medications, but I also resisted taking ‘natural’ or complementary medicines too when I was younger (for various ailments) even though people would say ‘but its natural’…But on reflection, I feel that if I had accepted either of these, then it would have been about admitting that something was ‘wrong’ with me. I was like a part of me was not happy, could feel something was not right, but I was not sure how to handle what I was feeling and yet somehow did not want to take something that would dull that part out. I have never really stopped to appreciate this about myself before!
I just love the sheer feel of this blog – the tenderness, deep wisdom and knowing, and the preciousness claimed from a young and blossoming woman, which is a healing for all women and humanity as a whole.
I am very inspired by your experience and deep insight, understanding deeper the female nature (biologically and energetically) but also relating it to me as a man. It is the first time that I get a sense that I can relate to the moon cycle via my body if I honour my body´s sensitivity to feel into it. This comes from the realness you reflect by having made that connection with your body and cycles.
Having recently attended a course co-presented by Natalie Benhayon I’ve begun to take the time to write down each day what is going on for me. The impact of this simple step has been quite amazing. I’m far more in touch with me and my body and my cycle.
Yes, and this understanding allows us to choose to live in harmony with cycles and build upon the cycles. Quite wonderful, actually.
I agree – rather than it being an opportunity for indulgence or personal griping, I love the time at the end of my day to take stock and reflect on myself and what occurred, being willing to be honest and take responsibility.
Recently I have been attending a 6 week course called, ‘Being a Woman in the World Today’ by College of Universal Medicine. It focuses on bringing awareness to our cycles and the nature of cycles, understanding Menstruation and Menopause http://study.coum.org/enrol/index.php?id=47 I would highly recommend it for any woman who wants to develop a deeper relationship with their body and the messages it communicates.
Connecting how we live with the messages from our body supports a deeper level of awareness and communication and this affects every level of life. Our personal cycles clearly reflect the quality we are living in. It is a beautiful to connect to the wonders of being in a woman’s body. Thank you Rebecca your sharing brings the light of understanding that many women can relate to.
There are so many powerful examples in life that can be related to by young girls and women alike that you share here Rebecca “I could feel I didn’t want to grow up and become the woman that I was seeing modelled by society and so there was an inner tug of war going on between the natural call and transition to being a woman and the part of me that was applying the brakes ” the results of this causes the symptoms our bodies show us that are so widespread and extreme and far away from our natural rhythms and flow that we come from and our body knows. Connecting to our body and the support of true role models and Esoteric Womens health events makes all the difference offering us another true way to live from a natural care, honouring and sacredness within.
The reference here to noting how our body is feeling through our whole cycle, from our commencement of our period, to during our period, our ovulation and the days in between is very stilling for myself. The function of living my life has been more prevelant than connecting to the body that performs this function, especially on the level of connection that has been offered here. Thank you for this sharing Rebecca, the call to be more aware of my body has been heard.
I agree with you – life can very much feel like a never ending treadmill – these moments of taking stock, connecting to how I am feeling and tracking this in the app creates these moments of space and allows me to feel like I am the one doing or living life rather than life doing or happening to me.
It is not age that makes us young or old, but not wanting to grow up is a resistance towards the natural awareness that we can live.
Women and men alike are walking around totally cut off from their original nature and therefore from one another. Then out of relationships built on disconnection they have kids and so another generation of disembodied people are born. It’s time we reversed the cycle, we need to remember who we are in our essence and from that essence connect to one another and then from within connected relationships, raise kids who will live lives of connection, so that the next generation can build on that. Back and back we will go until eventually we will all arrive Home together.
‘Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?’ – When we start to truly open up and with honesty look at the cause and effect of the choices we make in our everyday lives, it becomes clear that every choice we make affects our bodies and our quality of being, much more than we could ever imagine.
It would be amazing and so supportive to have the wisdom that you share here Rebecca and that Natalie Benhayon presents included in biology in school; at the moment or at least when I was in school a women’s period was just part of her reproductive cycle and so only really linked with having children, end of story, but there is so more more on offer for us to connect to and be aware of with our cycles and our body than just reproduction…
“Natalie is an amazingly wise young woman, and her support was very practical, sharing from her own experiences, not only as a young woman herself, but also from the hundreds of women she treats and supports on a daily basis in her work as a practitioner.” Natalie has this superb gift of presenting us with very tangible ways to re-connect to our femaleness and fragility that can be established in our daily lives with immense effect, as you have proven Rebecca.
“….to live as a woman from within – not based on all the measures and pictures in life.” This is huge to build an awareness of the pictures we as women often are manipulated by so that they have no power anymore over ones life. Great sharing Rebecca.
“It might sound strange, but despite the pain and the sickness, I didn’t want to take medication to completely stop an innate and natural part of me being a woman – I wanted to find a way for my periods to be naturally less painful” – i can totally get this Rebecca.. on one hand as women we say we ‘don’t like’, or ‘find periods a inconvenience’, and so on, and yet when the period is late, or doesn’t come, we are ‘dying’ for it to come, or if we have the option of removing the cycle bleed altogether with contraceptive devices…we hesitate or find it odd to not have a bleed every month [menopause aside], because deep down as women it’s because we know the strength, power and cleansing a period does bring, and if we had the choice imagine very much most likely women would opt to continue with periods – and as you say Rebecca with cycles that are less painful naturally.There is such an all-round healing effect a woman’s period brings to herself in her connection back to who she is and how far she’s traveled from this place of true home, which also heals those around her. Periods are a woman’s grace and in this way certainly everything to celebrate, never negate.
What a beautiful blog Rebecca – thank you for sharing. If every woman developed such a connection to themselves and their cycle, I’m sure the world would be a rather different place.
This transition from girl to woman is so often not smooth and often fraught with inner conflict or angst, so to hear you declare “it has been an amazing journey where I have blossomed from a girl into a woman” speaks volumes for the support Esoteric Women’s Health offers and the efficacy of OurCycles app.
This is a sensitive area, but I feel is good to open up. Tampons are always promoted as a way to minimalize the ‘inconvenience’ of our periods, an attitude that can be a contributing factor to painful or dysfunctional periods. I found it a real support to my body to stop using tampons (which I always found very uncomfortable) and use sanitary towels instead. Using the towels has felt much more harmonious and supportive, allowing the blood to flow freely from my body and enabling me to have a relationship with the quality of the discharge, which has become an equally important marker in my relationship with my whole cycle.
Seeing the enormous shift in you Rebecca from
‘little girl’ to a women who knows who she is has been such a blessing to watch. You are so comfortable in your own skin and its a joy to see.
“Esoteric Women’s Health to me simply means reconnecting back to what it means to be and live as a woman from within me – not based on all the measures and pictures in life, but from a connection with myself” – Rebecca you write a great presentation of the intent, purpose and value of EWH, and equally of its founder, Natalie Benhayon, and all the many 100s of women she’s inspired who equally from the start have supported alongside her in the restoration of Women’s Health through this founded initiative. It continues to be my top go-to incredibly useful reference for all things relating to myself as a woman; and i’m deeply appreciative of everything it offers, as well as being a level of inspiration for other women from living in a ‘clearer, freer’ space.
A stunning post Rebecca, from your willingness to seek the support you needed to address your painful periods to your willingness to feel into what you yourself had been doing and needed to take self-responsibility for and then accepting what needed to be changed to allow you to claim the beautiful woman you are. “…puberty for me has not just been a biological process, or a struggle – it has been an unfoldment out from within me what was already there, and in that process I have healed m;y own physical symptoms in the way that I live.”
Learning about cycles Rebecca affects so many areas of our lives and brings so much understanding to the messages we get about periods, but also the learning is in the bigger picture about the cycles of each day, month and year and how we affect ourselves and others by how we have been in the previous day, month or year. Life is an ever evolving cycle.
“I began to look at and take responsibility for the way I was living on a daily basis as a woman – and in a nut shell what it showed me was that I wasn’t living as a woman” And so we are re-introduced to our innately delicate qualities that when nurtured, enable a healthy, harmonious relationship with our periods and so enable us to embrace the true gift of clearing and healing that they are.
One of the revelations of the last few years has been me discovering how much I am affected by cycles – not monthly period cycles, clearly – but other cycles and how helpful it is to co-operate with those cycles.
And maybe we can expand it to a whole school programme that has us moving faster to the point that we honour and celebrate all the cycles in our lives.
And having recently stopped my periods I can vouch for the ongoing-ness, discovery and beauty of the unfolding relationship with being a woman.
“I simply couldn’t function normally because of the pain I was in, and the sickness, shaking and fatigue that went along with the pain.” How exhausting this must have been month after month and this just emphasises the immense shifts you have accomplished simply by building a very intimate relationship with your body and respecting the feedback it gives you. You have proven Rebecca that the most fundamental medicine begins with us knowing exactly how our bodies feel at any point in our lives and how they are responding to the way we are choosing to live.
What an amazing blog. Your post should be in every woman’s magazine and available in all schools everywhere. Thankyou Rebecca.
“…I have painted my nails because it’s just another thing you do, and because I am not really taking any time or care I always rush and smudge the polish. But did it go deeper than that? Was there a part of me that was rejecting living as a woman in life?” – the rush and smudge of the polish.. reflective of the rush and smudging of ourselves as women, a great way to look at an every day activity many of us love to do, though not always aware of the quality in which we do it, in favour of the rush or mundane. How as women have we ever got to be or to hold ourselves as mundane?!
Many young women can feel very lost and disconnected at this phase in life. You have sharing how building a foundation of becoming a woman with understanding our cycles and what they offer us, and being connected to ourselves, allowing ourselves to blossom into who we are. As an older woman i am very inspired and appreciate you, sharing your story, as you have shown this is a beautiful opportunity to unfold into becoming a woman and the space for this with our cycles. It is in honouring ourselves as woman which can actually change our physical experiences of our womanly body cycles. Very powerful and very simple.
I love how this story of self awareness in relation to the monthly cycle has impacted. you chose to see another way and we are all blessed by the sharing of it. i agree that taking time to notice how your body feels is awesome, and i love how your symptoms naturally decreased with this commitment, simply to honour yourself as a woman.
What an awesome education it is to become aware of our cycles and the different qualities that our body expresses depending on where we are in the month. The more I began to tune and take notice of my body, the more tender and stilling my periods became and so I have been able to truly relish the first day of my menstruation, as I learnt to surrender to a deep and restful stillness within me. What a true joy our periods are and how awesome Rebecca that you have been able to restore such a joyful relationship with them when they once were so abysmal, a true marker of the power of the Esoteric Women’s Health modalities and the teachings of Natalie Benhayon.
Thank you for your honest sharing Rebecca. For me Puperty was the time in my life I liked least and therefore I love it how you went through this time and change from girl to women with such wonderful role models and support. It opened up the possibility to outgrow such pain and ideals and believes around being a woman and not being trapped – how inspiring is that!
I wish I had of had women like you Rebecca around me when I was young who knew the importance of connecting to themselves as a woman first and honouring that in the way you choose to live, and knowing there is a rhythm and cycle to our bodies that we can naturally follow, that is honouring of ourselves and considers everyone.
me too 💕
When I finally started to consider the possibility that my periods were useful and in fact they are a blessing, my menopause started. I kind of felt I had missed out. Then I realised that thanks to Esoteric Women’s Health and women like Natalie Benhayon, Sara Williams and Mary Louise-Myers who forge the Way it does not matter how old and at what age we are as a woman, there is always inspiration to go deeper and understand and appreciate more. Besides when we open our hearts we are all so connected and I feel deeply enriched by expansion and deepening awareness of women in menstruation. Thank you.
We tend to see life as a painful ordeal, randomly assaulting us until the day we die. We think it’s events are unfair and cannot work out why. We try with all our might to remove the pain we feel, and consider ourselves great masters if we reach a state of numbness to what’s real. We go off looking for this kind of ‘fix’ only to discover Esoteric Medicine. This helps us look again and understand that our body is our friend, that we weren’t alone the way we thought we were, that every strain and niggle has been guiding us back towards Love and the truth of who we are. So really life is the direct opposite of what we traditionally hold it to be. Thank you for sharing this huge awareness Rebecca – we can all take this forward knowing whatever difficulty that comes is not ‘bad’ but here to help us understand, grow and return to being universal, to being grand.
It is really beautiful to see adolescents mature into men and women – it is surprising how much suffering they can go through in the process.
Puberty was a long time ago for me but it is a huge time of biological change for teenagers as their physical body and hormones shift. What you describe Kate though is much greater than this, it is your awareness and development of the rhythms your body loves and responds to. This information is desperately needed in these times today where youngsters can have such a tricky journey.
Rebecca, what you share here is inspiring for women of all ages. We can all deepen our relationship with ourselves and others as women and as you have shared, when we do, the results are transformational.
It’s so valuable for all young women to read this blog, Rebecca, how using the Our Cycles app and deepening your relationship with your cycles has “eased some of the tension in me around growing up and becoming a woman”.
It is really glorious to know life is lived in cycles, I was noticing nature the other day as it has been spring in the UK and the blossom has been in full bloom, and now it is dying and the leaves are taking over the trees. And I thought nature doesn’t hang onto any stage of its life, a blossom doesn’t try and stay a blossom it just does its thing and then it is over, and nature doesn’t celebrate just one season as being the best but rather every phase is glorious in what it brings. We have so much to learn from the reflections offered by nature, we have a peculiar focus on being young as an optimum phase of life rather than celebrating and embracing every stage, like starting periods to stopping our periods, these cycles can be equally valued.
That is true, the movement is the constant and the continuity of the movement has a beautiful harmony to it.
Beautifully shared, I so agree there is a flow and an ease in nature where each cycle changes to the next with no delay and also not before its meant to – I know for myself this is a lesson to learn, to allow myself to live life with the flow of what is needed, letting go when something is complete and not moving on to the next before it time.
Natalie Benhayon is an absolute blessing to all women world wide and has empowered so many of us to resume a deeply loving relationship with our bodies and reclaim our expression as innately nurturing, very beautiful, sexy ladies. How awesome that at your age Rebecca, Natalie has empowered you to deal very holistically with your periods so that now you can appreciate and enjoy them for the true grace they are.
The way and reason why I paint my nails has totally changed since Natalie presented on this being a time to be with our self. Now when I an putting nail polish on it is no longer to show off my nails but rather to reflect a stillness and delicateness through my fingers.
This is such a gorgeous turn around and a time to connect more deeply with ourselves – who would have thought? This is allowing our true beauty to come through.
It takes commitment and responsibility to a process which allows me to surrender more deeply to the fact that I am born in a womans body and as such have other qualities than if I would be a man. This is an amazing evolvement you went through, Rebecca.
“My Journey with my Periods – Discovering Cycles”.. and discovering oneself as a woman in the process too … such is the real beauty of menstrual cycles or periods.
Spot on Jane and Rebecca – and one that i still use today each time I have my period…If I have any cramping or breast tenderness etc when I have my period, I ask myself what is it that I am clearing this time from the previous month? A very powerful way to be open and to learn all of the time.
“I couldn’t push hard and just get everything done, placing myself second in life and not feel the fact in my period.” – Every action has a consequence and this is not said in a threatening nor critical way, it is simply stating that what we choose comes with consequences that we then have to live with and deal with be they ‘good’ or ‘bad’. A very refreshing way to get us to listen and eventually make changes and choices that are more supportive for us and all.
I agree Henrietta – much like ripples on water our every move is registered and felt and eventually comes back to us, and so therefor the greatest and continued lesson for me is learning that investing in myself is actually worth while – when I am tired if I just take half an hour to lie down my work and productivity and quality after will be so much better, or if I’m feeling sluggish or overwhelmed a short walk in nature to come back will set me back on track
Rebecca, this is an absolute gem of a sharing that every girl and woman can read and learn from! The simple yet extremely powerful choices and changes that you made have been very inspiring and are a great reminder for me to keep developing this relationship with myself as a woman and refining how I am with myself all of the time.
I also love that it is never too late to surrender into the beauty of being a woman.
Matilda that’s such a beautiful line ‘ to surrender into the beauty of being a woman’.
I agree Henrietta, this document is a rich source of wisdom and true guidance in an arena that is sorely lacking in real education and one that young teenagers and adult women can both benefit from immensely.
How awesome is it that we have Esoteric Women’s Health and Women in Livingness to support us – from girls growing into women, ‘nice’ people becoming the true women that they are, women deeply supporting women… this is so needed in todays society and is something to truly appreciate.
This is so inspiring to read Rebecca… “I look forward to a life spent unfolding my relationship with myself and the world as a woman.” How many young women in todays world would claim this for their future – such is the lack of true education in what it truly means to be a woman… Thank God for Natalie Benhayon who is leading true women’s evolution.
The more we remain connected to who we are as women and live what is true for us, the easier it is to make very loving decisions about how we care for ourselves, thereby influencing our health.
There is so much that our periods reveal, I know that for me, there is still so much that I am learning about my periods, can you believe and I am 42. I can really relate to so much of what you have shared here, letting myself feel the impacts of the month I have lived, as my period does expose all of that exactly.
I agree Raegan – to me I look forward to the opportuity that each aspect of my monthly cycle brings me to reflect on the way I have lived and what I can learn and take deeper.
“It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women.” A way that to me felt very alien for a long time, but gradually with the consistent support of the Esoteric Healing sessions and Women in Livingness groups, I am now building a strong connection to myself as a woman. The more we surrender to and embrace this irrefutable fact born of our gender, the more our physiology can resume its natural, tender health.
I agree Rowena, for me to even consider myself as a woman in life beyond the obvious and very superficial things felt strange and it is still a learning to live all the qualities that it is to be the woman I am in life.
Stunning. What a beautifull foundation you have for yourself and unfolding into the women you truly are. It was exactly the same for me, in that over the years my periods became more painful and it wasn’t until I knew of the Esoteric Women’s Health modalities and from seeing practitioners Natalie Benhayon, Simone Benhayon and Sara Williams that things started to change for me. Particularly when Natalie explained that are periods are a reflection of how we have lived in the last month. I have said before this information is gold and will continue to say this because girls and women on the whole do not currently know this and therefore can feel on some level that we are at the mercy of our periods and cannot change how they are. Which is so false as you have clearly shown. Also I absolutely in agree puberty is mainly being taught about the physiological changes that happen with the body and not the relationship we have with these changes and with our body which is something we need to change as this should come first and foremost.
I agree – our periods become this thing that is our of our control, a nuisance and a burden of being a woman, rather than the joy and blessing it can be.
Completely agree Bryony, and we can even relate this behaviour to life, seeing ourselves as the victim or at the mercy of life rather than in the drivers seat.
I am becoming more aware how much I avoid the reactions of others, how much I alter my behaviour, how much less I am at times or, conversely, may become excessive in my behaviour.
It is interesting how we can reject ourselves as women and operate just as a human being. In this dismissal we disconnect from our natural cycles and preciousness that knows how to be in life without taking things on.
“I could feel I didn’t want to grow up and become the woman that I was seeing modelled by society and so there was an inner tug of war going on between the natural call and transition to being a woman and the part of me that was applying the brakes” – great self-observation Rebecca, as for myself i recall to be dying to have my period, i was the last one in our group to get it, to be a woman, and noted how my body shape was becoming rounder, though this was more a private observation, i certainly did not share such changes with people, not even my Mum really. Somewhere i felt a deep appreciation [longing] of being a woman/womanly though could only associate it back then externally i.e. through bodily changes. When the periods did come i felt shy and very self-conscious for the males in my family to even know i started. Everything was hidden, brushed aside, hushed up, kept behind a door, and thus my life as a woman followed this until a few years back where i learned that ‘being a woman’ is something that occurs externally with the body, and equally quality-wise too through the innate quality of stillness/femaleness. As a young woman i had no connection to the latter and hence no true connection to myself as a woman either. Stillness brought me home.
Absolutely beautiful Rebecca, so many of us women jump at the opportunity to numb the pain of our periods, so many of us see them as nuisance and want to ignore them. Is it possible that so many of us hate our periods because deep down we know what they are showing us?
I never really understood about periods and what they meant, except in relation to giving birth (or not). Despite being a Catholic I went on the pill at age 17 and stayed on it pretty much until the birth of my first child at 31. After children I used a coil for a while then nothing as my husband had a vasectomy. I grew older, fatter and felt uglier and my sex life ceased altogether. Menopause was a great relief, but still I knew nothing about periods. I noticed moods linked to the full moon thanks to using the Our Cycles App helped me to track day to day how I was feeling. It is only now, in my 60s and through the many presentations of Natalie Benhayon that I am coming to fully understand what periods are about and the healing, cleansing they offer us.
There is a way out of this very common syndrome without having to resort to the taking the Pill or other medication and your experience Rebecca is evidence that not only is it possible, but long lasting too. The Esoteric Women’s Health modalities are empowering many women to address their dysfunctional periods with resounding success by building an intimate and very respectful relationship with our bodies.
“What I discovered was that no part of my life was separate or disconnected from any other part.” It is one life… how we choose to live in one area of our lives will naturally impact another because it is all about the quality we bring to what we do – if we are consistently loving, nurturing and honouring then that will flow into all areas of our lives.
“I couldn’t push hard and just get everything done, placing myself second in life and not feel the fact in my period.” This is so true… our bodies are with us in everything we do and so naturally they will reflect our choices. Our periods are especially supportive in clearing our bodies of those choices when we place ourselves ‘second in life.’
“I wasn’t living as a woman, I was just walking around as a human, totally ignoring and overlooking the fact I have a woman’s body, and I am a woman first and foremost in all that I do.” I can so relate to this Rebecca… being a person, a nice person – but not connecting to or being fully the woman I truly am.
Have you ever thought of going into secondary schools and sharing your experiences with other teenage girls Rebecca? I wish I had heard someone come and talk about this at my school when I was a teenager.
When I was growing up the most i heard about cycles was that our periods should be a 28 day cycle but that was it, I had no concept of the affect this cycle had on my body or what it really meant. Understanding that we live in cycles was a totally new concept and has helped me to get to know myself more as a woman and not just a person doing life. At 61,I no longer have periods but knowing that my body aligns to the moon cycle has supported me in staying connected to who I am as a woman and offer a stop moment each month to reflect on how I have been living up to that point.
The start of our periods are not celebrated nearly enough it is a time when we start to develop and blossom as women and when we don’t our body offers a reflection such as painful periods, endometriosis and the many other illnesses that can affect women. There is much we can learn from our periods when we stop and feel what they are really offering.
Our body doesn’t just automatically transition into a woman in the same way that everyone else does, because as you’ve shared Rebecca the way we approach the process, embrace it and use it as an opportunity to deepen our relationship to ourselves really affects the transition in so many different ways.
Wow, if I had the Our Cycles App when i was a young girl wondering what was going on at the tender age of 9 when my period started. And then later in my teenage years when my body was changing and I was changing and the world all around me seemed to confirm to me that I need to be someone and get something always, forever more in order to let myself breathe…
It is such a joy to observe and be inspired by young women like you Rebecca for what it can be and ought to be for a girl developing into a woman, a sacred passage that ought to be regarded as nothing less than that by society as a whole. A sacredness that only we as women can return to ourselves and in so doing inspire that way once again in others.
For now that we have young women role models that remind us of the depth of innocence, beauty and preciousness held within the body of each young girl and woman, how can we walk away from this? How can we look outside of this onto a billboard image that dispels everything that is not that, something so many young girls and women continue to fall for – having not had, as yet, the reflection of the true girl and woman that knows the light of her love and endless beauty comes from within her, emanating with her every move.
Rebecca, your blog should be on the front page of medical journals, this is the story for so many women of all ages who have such painful periods. Who then get put on the pill but never deal with what is really going on. And there lives and pain don’t change.A bandaid to cover up what there bodies are truly telling them. The reflection that Natalie has given women of all ages to look and the way we are living and how we feel as women weither it is going through puberty or menopause .
When you expressed the wordswords
” I feel I can say that I know who I am as a woman is amazing.”
Is something that I could have never once expressed because I was not feeling amazing. But after years of going to these women’s groups I can now express exactly what you have expressed. I now value myself as a women and how I live as a women, taking time and care of myself with all the little things in life. By doing this I have changed the way I live and taken responsibility for what is happening in my life..thank you for sharing an amazing story that can now support so many other women.
Thank you Rebecca, I loved reading this blog. I love the dedication and commitment you had to finding another way to deal with your painful periods. So many young people are given the option of not having periods through taking the contraceptive pill but the problem with that is that they miss out on their periods and the enormous clearing that the periods offer. Natalie Benhayon has provided the amazing Our Cycles tool to support all women to get to know their own cycles. As a post menopausal woman I also use it and find it incredibly valuable to track how I am going as there is no end to the depth we can go to in claiming the woman that we are.
A woman in her fullness as a woman is very powerful which can lead to reactions from others and the reactions may be more obvious than the power. It is great that you have learnt this, Rebecca.
Amazing to hear the inspiration that one woman can provide to another in supporting them to claim and honour themselves as a woman.
“It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women.” How many times do we forget, disconnect, stay unaware of the living, breathing walking fact, that we are a woman, first and foremost? I know this is something I am connecting to more and more and rediscovering what it means to be in life and live our day and night from the quality of the woman. Esoteric Women’s Health and the modalities it supports have played a huge and supportive part of this unfolding discovery.
Rebecca, this is really amazing to read, I can feel how so often as women we do not live as women first, that we do not move in a womanly way of walk as the women that we are, I have been experimenting lately with feeling my womanliness as I walk as I was aware before that I was just walking but in a very masculine way, it feels lovely to moving more femininely and to be honouring and connecting more to my womanliness, also in the way I speak and dress and what I am willing to carry and tasks I am willing to do has changed, I used to be proud that I could carry as much as a man and do masculine things, now I love to honour my femaleness and not hurt and push my body beyond what it can naturally do.
Learning to listen to my body and rest rather than push hard when I have my period has been a huge shift in the relationship I have with myself and my body. It now feels almost impossible to push my body when I have my period as it is asking me so clearly to rest, when in the past I had no concept of this whatsoever as I pushed through regardless of what my body was telling me.
Fabulous description Rebecca of how we can each journey back, via the wisdom of our body, to reclaim ourselves as the women we are.
Thank you Rebecca for this amazing blog, with this you support women worldwide to look deeper into understanding why we have painful periods and what is can be causing this. It is a very common symptom. Also by learning to understand and connect to our body is the best way to heal and allow our body to return to its natural state by making loving choices consistently. Our body communicates very loudly when it is out of whack and doesn’t hold back in anyway.
The discovery of the innate prowess in being a woman is naturally all there within. Esoteric Women’s Health provides the platform for this awareness to build a foundation on this truth and love for yourself.
“Was there a part of me that was rejecting living as a woman in life?” – super question Rebecca, and a simple one that i never stopped to consider in my life until I came to Esoteric Women’s Health where the question was indirectly proposed albeit differently though with the exact same sentiment — do we (ever) reject being a woman, or in a female body?? Or in other words do we truly enjoy and accept being a woman?! Both are great to reflect on, and i know for myself i did not connect to the intricacies of my female body, cycles, rhythms for the majority of my life, and so in a way this lack of connection was indeed a rejection of myself as a woman, as we don’t reject what we are, or feel a connection with – we in fact love it because of the connectedness.
When I as a man live disharmoniously, the reminders I get are slow and only gently getting more firm. That allows me to hang on to certain behaviour much longer.
In the past, there was absolutely no loving focus or attention to detail when it came to getting myself ready for the day. Yes, I had a routine that I followed but never did it involve loving care and attention to everything little thing that I did within that routine. It was just ticking a box of what was needed to get to work or wherever I was going, and it totally revolved around the time. It’s so very beautiful to feel me within all of this now and take the time to be with myself and enjoying how that feels. And you really get to feel the impact of that loving choice and how this affects everything/everyone around you because you know you feel amazing and that just shines out, and others feel it.
Rebecca, I really enjoyed reading your blog and your experience of the Our Cycles app. I too have found it an invaluable support. Being post menopausal I have used the app on the moon cycle and just like the cycle I felt when i had periods I can feel how my body changes and clears with each full moon. It is a very beautiful way to be with our body when we bring our awareness to the cycles we live in.
Amazing sharing Rebecca – what a profound difference it makes when we connect to and honour ourselves as women first.
I agree Jane, a game changer indeed, for it calls us to be responsible for how it is we have chosen to live – and I certainly got caught out, making more loving choices one month and therefor having a painless period only to slide back to unloving choices again and have to be reminded next month that this simply doest work for my body.
“No longer was I left wondering why I suddenly felt more tired than normal, or why I was really craving sugar out of nowhere, or why my breasts or lower back was sore.” Being aware of these symptoms and how they correlate with our period is immensely supportive. It makes it easier to just surrender to what is going on in the body and take it a bit slower etc when needed.
Thank you, Rebecca. It is important to stop for a moment and appreciate the blessing of having a true role model such as Natalie Benhayon in our lives, inspiring us all to embrace our uniquely divine and womanly expression.
As a man I have definitely noticed a monthly cycle with my body also and there tends to be a period of clearing just before and around the full moon. I have also noticed that the intensity of this time is related to how I have been living the rest of the lunar month before each full moon. We are all living under these cycles so it makes sense to become more aware of them and learn from them, rather than to be oblivious to them.
This is Amazing Andrew thank you for sharing.
“Could it be possible that my period was having to clear the build-up of tension and lack of care in my body from the month?” And I would say a very big, fat YES to that question, as my own experience has proven too Rebecca. The more we address the quality of our self care and treat ourselves with tender respect, the more our periods are able to reflect back this quality to us every month.
If i had The Our Cycles App as well as the presentations by Natalie Benhayon on women’s health, when i first started my periods at almost 15, i can say with honesty that my life in those maturing adult years would be completely different. As it was i spent a heap of subsequent years in isolation and disconnection to my female body, mirrored by my heavy and excruciating periods, and i continued without any awareness or change to how i was living/working….When you’re ticking the box, why change… and this was what i thought even though it was clearly not working for me in regards feeling settled, together, steady. With awareness we change, take responsibility, and with this App i’ve enjoyed this change and re-connection to myself as a woman.
I agree Zofia, and what I love is just how simple and strait forward it can be – no fuss, nothign weird or our there, just a simple app and a commitment to take the time to reconnect.
A great sharing Rebecca. All young women could learn so much from what you express here, and save themselves so much pain, Natalie Benhayon is a great role Model for all of us.
This is a great sharing Rebecca. I have a 10 Month old daughter and today I got my period back – after 19 months of no period. And I can feel the absolute support that is offered here and the cleansing that a period offers. I never looked at periods like this until I met Natalie and started to hear from her that a period and my cycle offers so much.
Thank you Rebecca, for such a beautiful and open sharing on your relationship with your cycle. What’s interesting is that some women get extreme pain and some women get no pain, yet both can be equally disconnected to their cycles and body. It really does come down to the honesty and intimacy we are willing to have with our own body.
Completely agree Vicky, I didn’t have painful periods but I can totally say that I ignored my cycle, to the point of just taking it for granted. There was none of the appreciation that I came to have after hearing Natalie talk, or that is reflected here in Rebecca’s blog.
I agree Vicky – I have myself had months where physcailly, not much was going on – little or no pain and few symptoms and yet I could feel that it wasnt because I was super connected, in fact it was because I quite shut off to my body – for me I would prefer pain and symptoms because they are out and loud and honest about what it really going on
How our periods are are an absolutely gift, they offer us a physical and energetic clearing each month and they also let us know how we have been treating ourselves. I have no doubt that the cycle I experienced now, with little pain, exhaustion and emotional highs and lows has been altered because I have made choices that have been more caring for myself and begun to become more aware of the feedback I get each month from my period. It is well worth becoming more aware of it.
Such great insights Rebecca into how the way you lived and treated yourself, affected your periods and how using the Our Cycles app supported you to track this and see the patterns emerging over the months. This to me is science, philosophy and religion all rolled into one which forms the basis of The Way of the Livingness.
I love the fact Rebecca that you managed this journey so young. What an inspiration to other young women! How amazing would it be for you to share what you have learned with school aged girls going through similar experiences..
Although we may not have periods it is no less important for us men to be in harmony and in the flow of our natural rhythm. Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing so openly and honestly as by doing so you clearly demonstrate the connection between health and how one lives. Natalie Benhayon is an inspiration and so are you.
You have completely turned the tables on puberty Rebecca, embracing it as the passage from innocent girl into the all knowing woman you are, able to hold herself in a world that at present and at best ignores the deeply nurturing, exquisitely delicate and immensely wise beings we are. What a joy it is to hear how you have transformed such a dire situation not by suppressing the symptoms with the Pill, but by facing the pain, getting to the root of the issue and taking complete responsibility for yourself and your health.
When I was younger I was amazed how often the pill got prescribed for different ailments. Like you, it was never something that appealed to me as a ‘solution’. It is lovely to hear how you were supported by Natalie Benhayon to look deeper and go beyond the physical symptoms to find that there was much to be revealed.
I agree – when I was about 16, one of my friends starting their first ‘serious’ or more mature relationship and their mother carted them straight to the doctors to be put on the pill. From what I was told, it seemed that very little was actually discussed around what my friend wanted, if she was even ready to be having a sexually active relationship, did she want kids or not and what contraception did she want to use – the pill was just a convenient catch all method to ensure they didn’t end up with a teenage pregnancy on their hands – I’m sure in their eyes a very responsible move and yet I couldn’t help thinking how little my friend, her body and her connection to it was considered – the same end result may have been reached, but from a different starting point and with far more conversation in between.
What a beautiful blog post. Thank you very much for writing openly and honestly about menstruation. It truly is a wonderful thing when we go with the “flow” of our bodies, rather than resisting what we are designed to do. I hope you will continue to post about this topic.
“The very simple act of actually recording when my periods started and ended every month, which days were heavier and which were lighter and what days I got cramps or other symptoms, slowly built a very uncomplicated and practical connection with this aspect of myself as a woman” – so true Rebecca, and it’s this latter aspect you draw on that has totally changed and blessed the relationship i now have with myself as a woman… the daily journaling offers introspection and reflection, and that closeness to oneself as a woman filters to the people you’re in contact with too, at home or at work. The closer we are ourselves, the closer we become to others …. and the deeper the relationship we get to enjoy as a result.
I agree – that time to reflect, to appreciate moments of the day and look at the areas that need working on, looking at any symptoms, moods or feelings of the day and it allows you to develop that relationship and picture of my week or month and myself that I can then share with everyone else.
“…the daily journaling offers introspection and reflection, and that closeness to oneself as a woman filters to the people you’re in contact with too, at home or at work.” I absolutely love what you express here Zofia, about developing a closeness to yourself. It’s amazing how we can hear/read something many times but only fully feel it with a certain configuration and quality. Developing a relationship with myself has always felt more of an ideal until this moment, where now I feel it deeply as a closeness to myself. One word makes all the difference.
Wow Rebecca. I really felt the power of you as a woman when I read this piece. You show us that our cycles are an incredible reference that enables us to understand our relationship with ourselves on a very physical and practical level.
I always find it on some level strange but on another level very interesting that young women can have major menstruation issues – normally the bodies of young people simply work – why this major exception with many young women having the same really bad issues? The interesting thing I find is that the issues seem to reduce when the women lead sensible lives – perhaps there is a message here.
It really is remarkable and something to be deeply appreciated that as women we have an inbuilt ‘device’ that will not allow us to override our sacredness without sensing it. Of course, it is then our choice whether we honour this sensing or whether we ignore it but the truth is we are gifted with a way to measure the degree to which we either share our love with the world or withhold it.
There is a real wonderment in what you have written about the amazing unfolding of discovering you that will inspire so many to discover themselves too.
I am reflecting on why women just go with what is happening and printed in the papers or advertised by society about what a woman is. These reports are just a group of people offering opinions and seeking attention and reaction. We women live in the body of a woman and we underestimate our wisdom and knowing of what a woman truly is and her divinity. This blog shows that it is by enquiring within, bringing our loving attention within, by taking the time to truly be with the detail that is us every day that the ‘woman’ is truly known. This is a gorgeous blog and a true celebration of all that Natalie Benhayon has re-claimed on behalf of us all.
I remember being doubled up on the floor of my university in pain, not wanting to move or go anywhere and not knowing what to do about it. I remember being told that it was something I just needed to get used to and that childbirth would be a doddle in comparison. It’s so gorgeous to read about your unfoldment and the correlation you have been supported to see between living your truth as a women and the discomfort you were feeling from dismissing it.
I too feel so appreciative of what is on offer for women now like Esoteric Women’s health and the Universal Medicine Practitioners, and of course, Natalie Benhayon, as it is through all of this, that so many women are choosing to return to their natural loveliness and seeing their innate inner beauty and letting go of the ideals and beliefs that they have been carrying for so long. It’s like a re-awakening revolution that is happening within so many women and they are truly starting to let their sacredness out, which is very beautiful to feel and see. And Natalie is the biggest inspiration for us all, as when you see Natalie, you feel how she carries her absolute beauty and grace as this huge reflection of all women in the world and she deeply honours herself in her every move and expression.
Thank you Rebecca, your sharing is truly inspirational. Girls, teenagers, women of every age can feel the loving honouring you are offering, appreciating who we are in our innate loveliness as women. We are not functioning physicality that ‘oh by the way you have this biological process that occurs’ – with a subtext of ‘just ignore the side effects and deal with it’. We are so much more and we are never too young or old to have the truth you share become part of our everyday awareness and conversations.
Wow Rebecca, what a simply stunning and revelatory story you tell of your journey to becoming a woman, and just how simple it can be when we connect to our cycles. That is what I call taking full responsibility, and what is truly inspiring is the way your body responded to the fact that you were listening to it.
This goes to show that how we live is such a huge contributor to how things play out in our lives. Our bodies are amazing at telling us what is going on and your example Rebecca is very cool in terms of how well your body has responded to you making more loving choices. The keys to true health are always at our fingertips.
It has been a great joy to watch you Rebecca, and to see you beginning as a rosebud and now claiming your power and beauty as a young woman, blooming and offering your reflection to the world. When we connect to our body we can feel that innate call to treat it with love and respect and truly honour what we are feeling. This is still very much a work in progress for me but nonetheless I can feel the deepening, and with this deepening there is more to unfold as I allow others to connect to this unfolding and feel their own power within.
Wow, Rebecca I have friends who had very painful periods and when I started mine period I was worried I was going to go through a similar experience. But I only experience minor discomfort and I often wondered why some women go through so much pain and some hardly any pain at all. Your blog explains this for me. It is so supportive to girls/women of all ages to read and shows how our choices and behaviours can affect our body, our cycles and how we feel.
Thanks, Rebecca. To go from such agonising pain to mostly symptom-free periods is an incredible transformation, very much a testament to you and your commitment to your body as well as the amazing support available to us all through Esoteric Women’s Health.
Yes, it is an amazing achievement. No question.
I love the depth to which you chose to go into with addressing this. You decided not to mask the period pains as many might, and understandably so, when we don’t know why we are getting pain, we often want to dull it. But your awareness is so great Rebecca, you knew there was a deeper meaning and a deeper healing here. You can be such an inspiration to other young women undergoing the same problems, it seems that there are many women in the same position as you were.
I loved reading your blog Rebecca and to feel that someone in their early twenties has the opportunity to really embrace being a woman and not back any part of it …” to have come so far where having deepened and developed my relationship with myself as a woman has lead me to not only have relatively painless and symptomless periods, but a point where I feel I can say that I know who I am as a woman is amazing.” I would have loved to have been able to confirm this to myself in my younger years instead of going through most of my life unaware of the importance of accepting myself as a woman and embracing this in every part of my life, your blog will be inspirational to many especially anyone with painful periods
What I love about this Rebecca is that you felt supported and inspired to develop a curious and nurturing relationship to your cycle by Natalie Benhayon, and are now expressing this and inspiring others to do the same. Awesome that you’re passing this on and becoming a role model for many others.
Glorious claiming of you as a woman Rebecca and totally inspiring for other young women struggling with the tension of the transition into womanhood with all the false pictures of how that should look and the panacea of being offered the Pill to offset any pain rather than going deeper as you have committed to doing to understand what is truly happening.
“It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women.” And hence we have some true role models who are showing us what it means to live as a woman today, to deeply embrace and appreciate our innate qualities that so often we regard as failings or weaknesses within us. Embracing our fragility and treating our bodies in accordance, developing a deep relationship with our bodies’ rhythms and cycles does reap miracles, as we tune into and harmonise with rhythms so much bigger than we are lead to understand. The more we tune in and allow our physiology the space to re-align and run the right way, the easier the flow of our menstrual cycle becomes. You are living proof Rebecca that shockingly painful periods are not a curse, but a big sign that we have not connected to our true expression and that when we do, we can transform what has been such a dire experience into the most tender, precious and loving moment of our monthly rhythm.
Conversations, openness and honesty that support women worldwide to explore their relationship with themselves and their bodies, offering the opportunity to be in our driving seats as we navigate life… thank you.
“As time passed I realised that becoming a woman is far more than a physical change – that is a part of it but I also feel I have grown into a woman on many other levels” – yes that’s true Rebecca, we are already a woman by virtue of our female sex… though the issue is that we’ve morphed so far away from feeling and connecting to the female quality within, that of stillness, that in our motion and drive we think [and we’re told societally] we are to ‘arrive at being a woman’ typically through being married, having a kid, ticking the [many more] boxes. What falsity this is, and as a result what deep pain we do go though happily swallowing this as can be evidenced through things like painful periods, fibroids, ovarian cysts and other female health issues. Being a woman, is just this – being [not doing, achieving, accomplishing].
I think many of us have the same problem of being functional people but not embracing being a woman. Rejecting or dismissing this huge aspect of ourselves has to cause devastation in our bodies, as well as our relationship with self and others. The simple act of charting our symptoms has quite a profound effect, as shown in this blog. I am realising its not so much about the symptoms but making your body and your relationship with yourself central in your life. Being aware that our body is constantly in cycles brings a depth to life that is sorely missing.
The fact that you knew not to take the pill and superficially fix the period pain feels really lovely. It shows the natural wisdom a ‘teenager’ can have about their periods. Over and over I keep reading of women with menstrual issues, whose only medical option is the contraceptive pill. If this is the best we have on offer, we really need to start asking how we can actually heal what is going on for us as women, rather than apply a Band-aid.
I love the healing you offered yourself when you stopped looking outside to what it was to be a woman and started to explore a relationship with your body choosing awareness and connection to allow the unfolding which you now embrace. Your story is extraordinary yet should be ordinary, for as women we all possess the power to claim this for ourselves.
Wow, Rebecca, thank you for sharing your experience and learning with us. This line says it all really – “I have healed my own physical symptoms in the way that I live.” Every young woman should have the chance to read this and be inspired by how incredibly powerful it is to deepen your relationship with your body in these simple ways.
I have been attending a workshop on menstruation and menopause put on by the College of Universal Medicine and it has been great to talk about both of these subjects and all the myths and beliefs we have around them. I wish I had learnt what I have learnt in the last few weeks as a young woman because seriously, there is so much on offer in each part of our cycles. One thing that I can share… well I could share many so perhaps I will have to write a blog… but for now…. ovulation doesn’t just have to be seen as the time when we can get pregnant and we are fertile and that is it full stop. When we ovulate, it is a new beginning, a start of a new cycle within our cycle and the start of putting things into action. Each month, we get to start again. This to me is awesome! It can be a fresh start or a re start of anything in our lives and its the perfect time for it to grow.
Please do write that blog Rosie! I am ovulating at the moment and the feeling is very much to put into action what I am feeling I am being asked to do.. How awesome to be supported by the body in this way, but how even more awesome it is to be consciously aware of it!
‘I began to look at and take responsibility for the way I was living on a daily basis as a woman – and in a nut shell what it showed me was that I wasn’t living as a woman,’ It has become the norm for women to accept pain in their bodies and treat it as normal, masking the symptoms and simply getting on with life and pushing through. But what if the physical pain most women feel during their periods was simply an indication of how they were living each month? This makes so much sense to me and it is a wonder that before Serge Benhayon no one really came up with that one! Learning to nurture and self care has meant that I no longer get painful periods or any type of cramping at all and I actually look forward to my periods as I can feel the clearing it offers my body!
Wow Rebecca, such an inspiring blog to read and one that offers huge support to all women.
Thank you for sharing Rebecca – and what a journey you have been on. So often I hear the pill is the solution to many things, and I have been offered it too for skin conditions, but like you, my whole body said no. I love your sharing of what Natalie Benhayon has offered to you, and how you have made your life about the transparent, loving woman in every movement.
I have never really considered my cycle as more than the week of my period – I dismiss the other three weeks. This is something for me to look at – thank you,
Yeah, definitely worth looking at as there are cycles within our cycles and opportunities beyond our current knowledge. The cycle of ovulation is one that I am only now discovering and how awesome that is! I recently learnt from a presentation by Natalie Benhayon that for the 2 weeks after my bleeding starts, I am in a cycle of repose, time to slow down a bit, reflect on everything take stock, confirm and appreciate. It doesn’t mean I do nothing, but I do take a bit of time rather than be in the busyness that I am all to familiar with. Then when I start to ovulate I go into a cycle of motion, a great time to initiate new things, start new projects, complete things that I have confirmed in the past cycle. Its a forever opportunity to take things to another level.
It is an incredibly learning knowing that we live in cycles Rebecca. It makes so much difference to how we behave when we know whatever we do, will come back to us another time. It focuses us to live with responsibility and in truth.
Natalie Benhayon has brought something extraordinary to women worldwide: the menstrual pain or lack thereof is a feedback from the body regarding how were you living in a specific cycle. This information is crucial to adjust how they live in order to establish a relationship with the period that truly works for them. This is gold.
I love the simplicity of this, Eduardo – that the symptoms of menstruation are just feedback from the body about the month lived.
Yes because it just shows us that things don’t just happen, but we are making choices, and our body then just gives us feedback, results from what we have chosen.
Without Esoteric Womens Health, who knows what your periods and life would be like now Rebecca?
Rebecca, this is amazing, absolutely inspirational. You’ve inspired me to clock my ovulation cycle – thank you for that! But what you have shard here is so powerful, and it just goes to show the power of the Esoteric healing Modalities and the power we hold within, when we let ourselves be deeply honest, humble with ourselves and loving.
And the world now gets to have another real woman walk in its wake, ever single day, a woman who know who she is from deep within herself, and honours herself, her body and her cycles knowing they are just as sacred as the cycles of the universe itself. That is a healing for humanity now and beyond. Thank you Rebecca.
Very inspiring Rebecca. I could relate to not wanting to grow into a woman for the same reasons, as the role models around me, the sexual attention and other burdens really did nothing to invite me to womanhood – in fact I was repelled. Little did I realise back then that the truth was inside me of who I am as a woman, so it’s quite beautiful to have this chance to unfold it now with the support of Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health.
What a gift to women and to the world you bring with this blog. An absolute gem in the way it reflects a true way of being in harmony with one’s body and life, through making changes that your body was calling for (very loudly!).
You are totally awesome Rebecca.
What a gift to women and to the world you bring with this blog. An absolute gem in the way it reflects a true way of being in harmony with one’s body and life, through making changes that your body was calling for (very loudly!).
You are totally awesome Rebecca 😍.
When I look or speak to Natalie Benhayon the words Settled, Steady and Strong come to me as well as that feeling of womanliness. In a presentation a few years ago I remember her saying ‘A woman knows herself through her body’ and it’s stuck with me ever since as the more I take notice of how my body responds/reacts to life I feel more me, I feel more like a woman and less like a little girl that I can feel like when trying to please or fit in to whats around me in the world. I currently don’t have a regular cycle but the way you’ve shared this Rebecca it makes periods and ovulation feel very light and joy-full rather than something to dread, it sounds like having this type of relationship with your body is very fun! and from my own experiences it can be.
This is nothing less than a pure miracle. It is so refreshing to hear a story of someone truly healing and moving on with their issues and not one of simply managing and dealing with the symptoms which so many people are. What a blessing to read and feel. Thank you Rebecca.
In a world where your period is such a taboo and covered up subject it is so important to share with other women the fact that it is okay to talk about what is going on with the state of our health as women and what we can proactively do about it
I agree. The opportunity to talk honestly about what is going on in our bodies means we are able to see more clearly where we are at, not just as individuals but collectively, and then make the changes we choose.
Given most young women just want a pill to get rid of the pain it was very insightful that you at such a young age did not go for the societal norm and you opted to explored the underlying reason as to why so much pain during your period.
Very inspirational and shows how you are not swayed by others opinions.
What you mention about resisting womanhood because of what was role modelled in general, the comparison and unwanted attention reminded me of how I felt growing up. As I turned into a young woman, it wasn’t celebration I felt but fear, this is no way for a girl growing into a woman to feel, but I am sure many of us can relate to it. I have since as I have grown older, embraced more what being a woman and expressing this means from, it has been amazingly healing and it is now much more of a celebration. It is something to really ponder, how we support our girls to prepare and embrace the next phase of their lives.
I’m a 39 year old man – but I related to everything you said Rebecca. When someone speaks the truth it expands and touches on the every part of life, not just their own. What comes across so clearly in your words is that true beauty lives underneath and in between the tasks that we do – via the type of quality we choose. This could be building a house or brushing our hair – the care we imprint each move with is the same and carries with it an absolute power we should never forget or pretend is mundane.
“It might sound strange, but despite the pain and the sickness, I didn’t want to take medication to completely stop an innate and natural part of me being a woman” Same, same Rebecca, somewhere deep inside us we know that masking the symptoms does not empower us to truly resolve the issues with our periods. Being encouraged to build an intimate relationship with our delicate bodies, observe the effects of how we are living upon them and hence choose another way, does over time bring about deep healing and the potential to truly resolve the issue, an option that does not appear when we simply disguise the problem.
Wow your story Rebecca is incredible in the fact that puberty is normally seen as a difficult time of life for everyone that we would avoid if we could (but we can’t) however the way you are describing your experiences here shows that it does not have to be this way but can be a great time of self-discovery and a deepening connection with ourselves and our bodies.
I agree – in the same way we often dismiss the behaviour of boys as ‘boys will be boys’ we also often expect, accept and condone teenage years to be a struggle, rebellious and difficult and yet does it need to be this way? For me my experince was that yes, the teenage years where intense and yes, sometimes it was difficult choosing between what was true for me and what the pressures of everything around me told me to do, but what held me steady was this support around me, being raised to vaule my connection to myself first and formost and live from there.
Yes and conversations like this one support open and honest discussion rather than this incredible journey of unfoldment being something that is not talked about or shameful in some way. It is an opportunity for us to understand that we have the ability to make choices that change outcomes.
I would guess that 90% of women experiencing such pain would choose to go on the pill to regulate or stop their periods, but it’s so inspiring to hear your approach of looking at why this was happening in your body and seeing if your daily choices could actually change what your period reflected each month. An how amazing that they did!
That’s interesting Jane, I’ve never heard that before, I have always understood the pill to be very effective at reducing pain, acne and all sorts of things. It is interesting how often we would rather use medication to fix what is wrong than address how we are living, the food we are eating and rest we are getting.
Thank you Rebecca, the appreciation and love of being a true women and of my periods is something I did not share until I started to end this cycle of my life but the appreciation and love still came and the enormous offerings of being a women in the menopause and the transition with this has been so supported and brought a reality and joy to the ongoing stages and all I feel and treasure in my cycles despite not having periods any longer. The cycles of life never end and follow onwards and the connection and understanding of being a women blossoms and is to be treasured with a deep contentment beauty and ease from within that is an amazing gift and way to live and so different from what is written about and projected on women robbing them of their true essence, presence, knowing, innate wisdom, authority and natural joy.
Rebecca this is beautiful inspiring and amazing to read your true journey to being a women learning from the very beginning what this really means with your body guiding you and the support and reflection of Natalie Benhayon and all she is offering the world. The commitment and dedication to understanding your body and the relationship you have built up with yourself is such a gift to yourself and all women alike of the appreciation and honouring of who we are and connecting and living that in the world today.
The story of transformation in your body symptoms and intensity of pain Rebecca, deserves to be shared with all women – for how many of us get in touch with our cycles in the dedicated way that you have, and have experienced such profound change?
It’s deeply inspiring to read of this occurring through your teenage years, and the way in which you met the challenges that presented and were supported in this. As women, we need to extend these understandings far and wide – that others may also be inspired to take such a dedicated path and responsibility for their own bodies and personal healing, if they so choose.
A golden sharing Rebecca – thank-you so much. To be able to truly connect to ourselves as women is something that is so imperative – yet it seems, that the majority of us have been lost in regards to this… like rudderless ships in a vast sea, not knowing how to really develop a deep, honouring, ongoing and Celebratory(!) relationship with ourselves as women.
Enter Natalie Benhayon, Esoteric Women’s Health, the work of Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and so much more, and many women are now finding that there are indeed simple rudders to guide our way – and indeed also, that there are those who have re-discovered themselves as women and all that this means, as our guiding stars, ceaselessly sharing the knowing that we all actually hold deep within. A knowing of how to live as a woman in this world which has (for the better part) been buried for far, far too long…
Wow Rebecca. What you’ve experienced with painful periods is so common, and the medical answer is to go on the pill or take strong painkillers. There is nothing wrong with getting medical support, I’m all for it, but how you’ve connected with your body and deepened your awareness of your cycle is beautiful to read and very inspiring for other young women.
It’s thanks to Esoteric Women’s Health and the presentations by Natalie Benhayon on “coming back to being a true woman” via our womanly cycles and rhythms that i’ve got to love and look forward to having my monthly periods, embracing what they each share with me – about me, and my hold of myself as a woman. What’s not to love about this, even if pain or tension is experienced which is in truth a loving communication to us that we’ve lost our way a bit, though we can come back through self-loving and honouring choices.
A beautiful sharing Rebecca for many young girls and women alike on true commitment to self and the loving steps to reconnect to the beauty of our cycle and how it supports us throughout life. Thank you.
I find it amazing that, if you don’t live as a woman, you can suffer crippling pain (even though you can stop the pain at a cost) while as a man, there are no such consequences. I wonder how much in society is explained by this?
Thank you Rebecca for your beautiful sharing. This makes me really appreciate how my relationship to my period has changed over the years thanks to Our Cycles as well. Obviously when the period came and went – that I knew, but never not really having any severe pain or discomfort, I never felt the need to pay much attention to it. I find its lists of symptoms, emotions and feelings extremely useful as they prompt me with the things that I hadn’t been aware of or even considered, and support me to look at the way I live with deeper honesty.
We are all so lucky at this time now as we have all of these amazing supports to helps us come back to the gorgeous and very sacred women that we all are, through the presentations by Natalie and other women, and also the Our cycles app and practitioners who all help enormously to support us back to our essentially gorgeous selves. Something to be hugely appreciated.
I learnt about menstruation from my friends at school, it wasn’t something that was discussed, even privately, at home, which meant I always felt it was something slightly shameful, something I didn’t want to happen. How amazing it would be if every young girl had the opportunity to understand what a gift our periods actually are, the enormous clearing they offer the body each month, the opportunity it gives us to deeply honour ourselves as women.
The simple act of recording how we are during our cycle, creates a very precious window for us to deepen our relationship with our selves. As we start to clock certain changes that are taking place during each month and recording how we are feeling each day, we bring more understanding as to why we are feeling a certain way. Knowing there are certain days during the month that allow a deeper clearing from our body, we can prepare for this to give ourselves the deep support our body needs.
Awesome Rebecca and we too look forward to you un-folding more of your delicate, womanly qualities because you have so much wisdom and love to share. I too can confirm that when we take time to develop a relationship with our bodies, to appreciate and express our female qualities, we really can change the quality of our periods by the way we live. Smothering the symptoms with medication may bring temporary relief, but learning to build an intimate relationship with our bodies using the Our Cycles app empowers us to reflect on the quality of each day lived verses how our bodies feel and make different choices as a consequence, which is ultimately the most effective medicine of all.
Before sex ed what we should be teaching and discussing is the relationship we have with ourselves and our own body just as you have described. So many young women and women have painful periods and it should not be this way if we truly understood more about them, our relationship with our body and how we live reflects and affects this. Something I did not truly consciously know until Natalie Benhayon presented it. As you have shared by you doing this your periods and your relationship with your periods, your body and yourself as a women changed. Simple and Amazing ‘I began to look at and take responsibility for the way I was living on a daily basis as a woman – and in a nut shell what it showed me was that I wasn’t living as a woman, I was just walking around as a human, totally ignoring and overlooking the fact I have a woman’s body, and I am a woman first and foremost in all that I do.’
This is a great testimony to your new found connection with yourself Rebecca and is also a great testimony to Natalie Benhayon and the Our Cycles App.
An open, honest sharing that makes you consider your own body and how well or truly you know it. As the article is saying there is an ongoing, ever deepening relationship there waiting if we just learn to listen. We often have the thought that we don’t know this or don’t know about that and yet as the article explains you are already clocking everything you just haven’t joined dots to become aware of the fact. I will be sharing this article as I think it breaks a lot of things for young women and also brings men more understanding of the women around us.
How amazing to have this awareness when you are so young. And how amazing to be able to look forward to the rest of your life with this awareness. Just beautiful.
I didn’t know when I ovulated or what it felt like until I was in my late twenties and realised that it is mad that I have a female body but never connected to this beautiful part of my cycle. I love ovulating now, I feel great when I do and I look forward to it. How different is that to not even being aware of it at all!
This is a lovely sharing Rebecca and it would be great if younger women were able to have conversations such as you have had with Natalie so that they can put the dots together. We have an amazing body and we live with it quite often with no idea about how amazing its cycles are.
Thank you Rebecca for this deeply beautiful and inspirational blog. You herald in a new generation of girls who can know themselves through puberty.
Inspiring read Rebecca. Taking responsibility for how you live and how you are with yourself each month and look at the transformation – that’s amazing! It was passed down to me that periods were an inconvenience and a pain and I allowed that to be my way for nearly 3 decades over taking responsibility for how I was with me. What if this was taught in schools? What a difference this as a basis for every day life would make to women’s lives.
Rebecca the commitment and dedication you have shown yourself is inspirational, you have allowed yourself the space to make the links and join the dots, to listen to your body and its consistent feedback to the way you live. I can absolutely concur that building self awareness & connection to our natural bodily responses brings a grand sense of purpose and power to being a woman.
Getting to know self as a woman is not something reserved for puberty, but something we can at any point stop ourselves and begin to connect to our bodies and our essence, and literally begin to feel who we are and what we truly enjoy in life. I am discovering more every day of the beauty of the woman I am, and puberty was a long time ago.
This article is beautiful to read and feel. I so wish that what Rebecca has shared here could be experienced by all through puberty. Having the same support to know ourselves as women.
Rebecca this is very beautiful to feel your ongoing relationship with life in the knowing you are, first and foremost a woman. The wisdom and beauty you are letting out is medicine for us all.
‘I look forward to a life spent unfolding my relationship with myself and the world as a woman’ – Such a powerful statement Rebecca. Us women are always searching for the ‘one’ to have a relationship with, marry and spend our lives with, but if we really opened up to the magic of having an unfolding relationship to OURSELVES then we would be so preoccupied with this evolution and reflecting this to others and in all of our other relationships we certainly wouldn’t need a man 😉
I can relate to what you are sharing here Rebecca in your very personal and relatable blog, as a man, in that I also have resisted the transition into manhood (and still do sometimes) because I sensed the pressure from the world to be something that I know is not true that comes with all of this. The problem with this reaction and resistance to what I felt was not true about manhood however is that it also stopped me from expressing and claiming my true self as a man also and as you explain so well when we do this as men or women our bodies have to bear the consequences and clear us of these choices.
Cherishing our periods for the cleansing and opportunity they bring for deep healing – an unheard of concept when I was growing up. They were just something to ‘get through’, an inconvenient side-effect of being a woman, other than it gave the possibility of pregnancy and having children. Learning that there is so much more to having periods than just the physical outplay makes me wish I’d known about this when I was still menstruating! Next life!
How beautiful to connect so deeply to the woman you truly are at your age. So many women I know of my age – in their sixties – don’t have such a profound relationship. Looking beyond the physical to the cause, when we have symptoms, always pays off, and leads to true healing.
This is such a beautiful sharing of an amazing journey your body has taken you on. You have made incredible choices along the way too, you have chosen to look at why you had such period pain and I love how you have joined the dots, knowing everything is related and the body showed you it was all about how you had been living. If you hadn’t had such period pains initially, you may not have taken that journey.
Wow Rebecca, amazing to read, this needs to be shared with all teenage girls, I know I resisted becoming a women for years and even now I can fall back to behaviours that are from the girl who did not want to grow into a women. Thank you for sharing for sure Natalie Benhayon is one amazing role model for all women both young and old.
Wow, thank you so much for sharing this Rebecca. It’s beautiful and very inspiring to read of the changes you’ve made and the kind of relationship that you’ve developed with your body and how you are in the world.
Hi Rebecca, what I would love to celebrate with you is the relationship you now have with your body and the preciousness of what is offered when the time is taken to go deeper in looking at and enquiring into what was really going on. This is something that was not spoken of or considered when I was growing up – it didn’t figure on the radar at all. The development of the Our Cycles App by Natalie Benhayon has changed the lives of many women by bringing the space and awareness of the way our body and lives interact to bring about whole health. This is so wonderful especially for the young gorgeous women entering puberty and beyond.
Thank you for sharing this Rebecca. Your story mirrors my own in that with my periods I used to be immobile in bed through the pain and vomiting as a teenager. Pain killers wouldn’t touch the sides and the the only thing that would help with the pain at all was to get my cocker spaniel to lie on my abdomen, which she was very happy to do. I remember her perfect warmth and weight for the job! Looking back the reasons for the pain were the same too. I simply didn’t want to become a woman. However it took me a lot longer to reconcile, accept and then begin to love the fact that I am a woman, and like you I got there through the support of Esoteric practitioners. I have come to celebrate myself as a woman, celebrate my periods, celebrate what I bring by being a woman and generally celebrate and enjoy being around other women a lot more too!
I have found as well that being and celebrating who we are is a lot of fun – daunting at times, but very joyful.
Rebecca, your blog is gorgeous reminder that as women, we are all role models for each other, we have the potential to inspire, or not, the choice is ours and how we choose to live, as woman, has an enormous impact on us and everyone else.
Rebecca this is a beautiful blog to read. Deeply inspiring and reflecting the power of your choices to blossom forth as the gorgeous woman that you are.
“with the support of Esoteric Women’s Health and Universal Medicine practitioners, this time has been far more than a biological change for me – it has been an amazing journey where I have blossomed from a girl into a woman”.
Another incredible article about the power of tuning into our body and natural cycles, honouring yourself deeply in our everyday way with ourselves. AMAZING!
‘But did it go deeper than that?
Was there a part of me that was rejecting living as a woman in life?’ …. great question, Rebecca. There is no doubt that I resisted living as a woman in life for many years, I felt it was easier to fit in, but in reality, I gave up. There are so many false ideals and beliefs around being a woman, it can be extremely overwhelming and confronting. You have reminded me of the minefield young girls face as they transition to womanhood. But, as you share, it doesn’t have to be a difficult and agonising time, with the support of true role models, in can be a very beautiful time of self-discovery, acceptance and the start of the most important relationship you will ever have.
I can honestly say that I have spent most of my life resisting what it is to be a woman and lived as a ‘person’ and like you Rebecca I met Natalie Benhayon and found her to be super supportive to all women and is so encouraging to assist us all to claim ourselves back and develop a loving relationship with ourselves.
Very very cool blog Rebecca, there is so much to write about in it, this was a oh oh moment for me “I wanted to stay the little girl, not responsible and not on the receiving end of ” everything, for me sexual attention from men. I don’t like feeling this nor the jealousy of other women – so I play down myself, how I look act, walk, dress, dress being big one. I hide my body. But really I am harming myself and other people. This is massive for me to sit with. And good on you for showing the entire world there is another way to be wth our periods, we don’t just have to live with the pain, or put up with it. Many many women, men, boys and girls will benefit from this.
As a woman going through the menopause it is only through the Our Cycles app that I recently discovered that I could actually feel when I was ovulating. This was a revelation to me, and brings a wonderful feeling of connection to what is going on in my body. Its a shame we are not taught about how we can connect to our natural cycles and get support with the transition into womanhood alongside the biological facts.
Wow Rebecca, that was so inspiring to read. Periods for me were very much a biological event that meant I was now able to get pregnant. Once I was taught about the mechanics of periods, they were not talked about much and I was left to get on with it. What you have shared is about you embracing becoming a woman and all that it entails. It’s wonderful that you had the support around you from role models that were living in a way that honoured their cycles.
We tend to ignore or take for granted the transition from a young girl into a young woman but as you have shown Rebecca these are important years and should not be dismissed as something that just happens. I am now well into my later years but I would have loved to have had the support you found in Natalie Benhayon in my teenage years, as I had no real concept of what it meant to be a woman and live this every day. My periods were seen as a disruptive nuisance and not something to cherish and honour, and my choice to be continually busy and on the go meant I had no time to really care and self nurture and look after myself.
Thank you for sharing that the connection to living as a woman rather than as a person has made all the difference to how your periods are – it makes sense that our periods have an energetic and much deeper meaning than just the biology.
Very beautiful to read Rebecca. I love how you kept taking it deeper, for instance when you had less and manageable period pain, to not settle for that but see what the next thing to look at was – that goes with everything in life, there is always more to unfold. I find too that when I settle at a certain level and don’t go deeper, this can cause similar problems as I had before even though I am living much more loving than before. When our level of love raises so too do we have to deepen our relationship with ourselves more.
This is such a wonderful blog; one that I know will be of great support to, not only other young woman like yourself, Rebecca, but all women. I know that if I had the information and the support of Natalie Benhayon and Esoteric Women’s Health, plus the wisdom that you have developed through these beautiful connections, that my relationship with my periods, and in fact my life, would have been so much more enjoyable.
It is interesting, because even if we don’t get our periods anymore, we can still learn so much which we can share with others, or in fact, heal a part of ourselves just by learning more about it all.
Absolutely agree Rosie. Even though I had my last period over 15 years ago I have still learned so much, thanks to Natalie Benhayon, that I still have cycles in my life. Understanding this has been a wonderful opportunity to get to know me as a woman much more than I ever have.
I agree Ingrid – my relationship with girl to woman began with my periods very painful and being labelled as ‘the curse’ by everyone around, which did not offer any true support to make these amazing changes that Rebecca shares.
Rebecca, such a beauty-full sharing- very open and honest. It is great to see how you have taken responsibility for your own health, by wanting to find out the energetic truth about menstruation, the missing link from a medical perspective, followed by receiving esoteric healings from Natalie Benhayon.
The incredible change from now not experiencing much pain with your period each month, must be deeply appreciated.
This is such a beautiful story and absolute claiming of the true you Rebecca, and we can feel how super simple those steps were once you chose to consider and connect with you and your body and start making those loving and honouring choices for yourself. This then cleared the symptoms of disregard and now reveals the gorgeous woman you naturally are.
Thank you Rebecca, a beautiful understanding of cause and effect as to how we live and appreciate ourselves as women effects our physical body.
Your words are a blessing to read Rebecca and how blessed we are all that we have organisations and businesses like Esoteric Women’s Health that bring true change to the world not just solutions. Change that we all benefit from.
The kind of education you are sharing here is so badly missing in our society. Growing up I never had any role model of what it is to be a true woman. It was only in my late 40s when I met Serge Benhayon and early 50s when Natalie started presenting that I even discovered that such a thing existed and what a HUGE difference it make to our life to connect to who we truly are.
The same applies to men and role models. Why do we give more coverage to flying to the moon than knowing who we are – grand beings that contain the whole Universe within!
So true, Nicola. How different our world will be when this education is the norm, which surely in time it must become.
“It is not about what they looked like, but more the fact that how they live is with an awareness of and a connection to the fact that they are women” – and it’s this that makes a woman truly beautiful Rebecca – the connection to herself, as a woman. It’s a simple as that, and yet look how far the media and beauty industry go to, to let us fall for it being ‘all about the [youthful] look’. What a scam we’ve been fed, and hungrily eaten too. Coming back to our own connection we see this falsity and start to choose differently, truly, beautifully.
Wow Rebecca your living proof of what taking responsibility for how you live can completely transform, what many of us believe will never change, your life and body. What an amazing turnaround! Your commitment to listening to your body and your inner knowing that there was more to being a woman then what you saw modelled outside of you, is very inspiring.
Reading your blog, I remember how I felt so lovely when my breasts started to grow and other signs that I was becoming a woman, until I saw how other women reacted to me growing up. I saw disgust, sadness, pity, jealousy, embarrassment etc. so it didn’t seem like something I should show that I enjoyed or even felt joy about. When I found out my body would have a period each month it was another little explosion inside me of ‘wow that’s so special’ but again I didn’t express it because how it was portrayed around me was really serious, hard and a downright annoyance. Then when I listened to presentations by Natalie Benhayon my whole body went ‘yes’… this is exactly what I’ve always known within. Not saying I lived it before, and also like you Rebecca, I did the push, hardness and I was also very competitive playing lots of sport.
How supportive and honouring would it be for every young girl to hear the truth about what it is to be a woman, and how precious having a period is.
Absolutely Aimee, attitudes towards periods haven’t changed in years, my mother & her mother referred to a woman’s period as ‘the curse’ – at the all girls boarding school i attended this was what we all called it. Yet always i knew there was something ancient & powerful about what was happening to me, Natalie Benhayon has vocalised what so many of us have felt was true. Our periods are a treasured offering to deepen our relationship with ourselves as women and to the universe through energetic pull of cycles.
This is such an amazing account of how we can change our experiences through observation of ourselves and our bodies and how with dedication and a willingness to make changes we can support ourselves to live in a way that is truly supportive of who we truly are, and how we can express as the women we are. Thank you for sharing Rebecca.