No periods… a message from my body

Six years ago the doctor asked me if I wanted anti-depressants and suggested I saw a psychotherapist for eating disorders. I’d had some big life changes and reacted with a huge amount of emotional turmoil and stress. I lost about 12kg and went down to 42kg within a few months. My periods stopped and I had no energy or enthusiasm for anything in life. 

I thought I didn’t have an eating disorder because I wasn’t obsessed with my weight or my body – I just didn’t care, about myself or anything else. I shut myself down as a woman, to myself and the world, and gave up. 

In the last 6 years my life has changed massively. While a few things have changed on the outside, they are nothing compared to the inner re-vamp that has been – and is still – taking place on the inside. I have energy for life and I actually want to be here and I’m finally starting to love being a woman. 

Not that I wanted to be a man, more that I just didn’t want to be here at all in the first place and secondly, I didn’t want to feel and connect to the delicacy and power of how it feels to be myself, as a woman. 

Slowly, and with the support of esoteric practitioners, I began to see and feel that I wasn’t broken, and – amazingly – there was nothing to fix. I was just hurt, and I got the support I needed and the tools to start to deal with those hurts and to start taking care of myself. 

I got to see that I had been addicted to getting it right, and, underneath a perfectly calm-looking facade, addicted to stress: the drama, the rush, the working things out, the needing to ask 20 people the same thing… just to be sure it was the ‘right’ decision, and that nothing could possibly go wrong. 

Having designated myself as Head Girl of Nailing Life at an early age and made it a sort of secret life ambition, I had this fixation with getting somewhere, being better, and thinking I had to work hard to get there. I even tried to make the Ageless Wisdom teachings into rules and found that it didn’t work. To my disappointment, and exasperation, there was no dogma to follow, no rule book to abide by, no one telling me what to do… and no perfection to be recognised for. Instead, I started to find that the more I let go, the easier life became and the easier I am on myself. I can be in life as an active and responsible participant but without having to think about it, because there is no right and wrong. Just infinite moments of choices to be continuously made that are either loving and truthful, or not, and then naturally results and consequences of those choices. 

I made some changes to my life and started looking after myself; going to bed early, eating nourishing foods and not being controlling about food, generally letting go of that which did not belong in and around me and opening up to people more so I could let people in. 

But my body wasn’t just going to give me a period in exchange for a couple of early nights. It is asking me to make some fundamental and consistent changes to my life: like pay attention to the quality I move in not just once a day while making my bed, but 24/7… and to enjoy and bathe in how deliciously light and expansive it feels to move in and with that connection. 

I joined an online programme to look more closely at my period cycle, and discovered that even though I don’t have my periods, my body is still going through a cycle. Makes so much sense – just because we don’t see the Moon every night it doesn’t mean it’s not there and like its gravitational dance with Earth is not causing tide to ebb and flow. I had known that we’re always connected to cycles, but had chosen not to pay attention to it, or to practically apply it, and so it remained as knowledge in my head and nothing more. 

Following advice from my medical practitioner, I’m now applying bio identical hormonal creams to give my body the support that it needs and I can feel that there is a rhythm with that. My body is trying to ovulate. There are changes to my breasts, how connected I am to my body to be able to actually have a sense of my ovaries, differences in cervical mucus… Once I started to pay attention to it, I saw that my body is always communicating something to me and it’s up to me to listen or not. 

I learned that there are times of the cycle where we are naturally inclined to go more inwards, and other times where the focus is on outward expression of that depth. And I noticed a pattern: that often, when I felt the pull to go inwards, I would counteract it by making life and work complicated and stressful, when in fact, it needn’t be at all. 

Through charting how my body is feeling at the end of every day, I felt more aware of how I’m feeling at different times of the day, not just at the end when I was charting. To me this has been a revelation: it wasn’t something I had to put on my to do list or set an alarm to do, it just started happening without me even thinking about it. I experienced that it wasn’t that hard to connect to my body, just a choice to be made from moment to moment to remember to stay in the flow of that connection and not get distracted or lost in whatever I am doing. I’ve begun to see much more than ever before how much I have wanted to not feel things and not deal with situations, conveniently checking out into the perceived safety of my head whenever things got a little bit too intense. 

Paying more attention to the quality of how I am moving meant that I started to notice the quality of everything else: my thoughts, the space around me, energies coming through me and other people. In a really simple way… not good or bad, just… what does it feel like? 

I don’t have my periods back, but the whole experience is so enriching and supporting me to build a loving relationship with myself where I trust myself and what I can feel, and have my own back. I am loving learning to let go more and more and learning to live from how I feel in my body: do I feel a quality of space and lightness in my body and a steadiness and a consistency that I can trust, or am I in some kind of drama, delay or dilemma? When I stay with the steady consistency, I feel in the flow of life. Standing in the full flow of the stream of life and trying to build a wall, or even trying to send it back the other way is no longer quite the appealing game it used to be.

There is much more of an ease and a gentleness with how I move and am with myself now. I no longer resent my body for reflecting back to me something that I don’t want to see and patterns that I don’t want to let go of and change. I am discovering that being a woman is absolutely delicious and that this ease, grace and beauty in how I move is not something I have to try to make or be. It is already there, within me, and is now beginning to unfold, unfurl and truly blossom. 

By B, UK 

For further inspiration.. 

What do stress and stillness have to do with my menstrual cycle? 

Esoteric Women’s Health

Being truly ourselves and allowing the joy to flow again.. 

My journey with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome

Since my early twenties I have had severely irregular periods and could go three to six months, sometimes longer, without any.   

I was overweight, moody and had excess facial hair. 

I felt uncomfortable as a woman. 

I was diagnosed with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and so began my journey with ‘fixing’ my periods.  

For as long as I can remember I’ve tracked my periods, complete with my own shorthand, noting symptoms and any other details I felt to include. 

We’re talking 20 years here.  

Initially, the main reason was because I didn’t know when or if I’d get the period.   

What is PCOS? 

Internet search would inform one that PCOS was first ‘discovered’ in 1935. Estimates suggest between 5 and 10% of women aged between 18 and 44 are affected. 

Symptoms can vary and be more or less severe, but in general they can include irregular periods, hormonal issues, excess body hair, mood swings, weight and fertility issues. According to medical claim PCOS is not curable but can be treated and managed. 

I’m now 51 and for the last 15 years I’ve had regular periods which are less heavy and with less PMS symptoms than ever before. They just flow, and I genuinely love having them. No longer do I have all those terrible symptoms and the dread I’d felt for years around my periods is now gone.   

It’s been a huge celebration to get to a place where I have regular periods, usually every 30 days or so, and my whole body and attitude has changed. I’ve lost significant amounts of weight and those mood swings are now a thing of the past. I am more on an even keel than ever before. My whole approach to life has changed, and I now enjoy being me. I can safely say that I do delight in being a woman.   

For years I’d felt being a woman was a chore and my issues with periods and having to work so hard to have something close to regular ones, I took as a confirmation of that struggle. I’d have that inner voice which said, you’re born a woman, and it’s your natural state of being and yet, here you are with facial hair, which looks really ugly, periods you’re never entirely sure of, excess weight and a general clumsiness around how you feel about yourself and who are you. There wasn’t an ease or a joy in being who I was, rather a struggle and a tetchiness which wasn’t pleasant for anyone, not for me or those around me. Put it this way, you really didn’t want to cross me (!) 

What changed? 

After my initial diagnosis I tried many things following hormonal tests and consultations with endocrinologists and gynecologists. I was prescribed Dianette, a form of the contraceptive pill which addresses hirsutism and gives you ‘regular’ periods. For 8 years I took Dianette and it worked in that I had what you might call ‘regular’ periods. My facial hair became less whilst in addition I had electrolysis and laser to address it. Otherwise, I was still overweight and still had mood swings.   

Eventually I decided I wanted to find out how my body really was and how my periods were really going.  

I came off Dianette.  

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that my periods returned to being as irregular as ever, without the prop of Dianette, and that not much had really changed. 

Much research followed, as I wanted to find another way to address it and not just mask what was going on. I read many forums, talked to many people who discussed how important diet, and in particular sugar, was with PCOS. I began seeing a nutritionist who specialised in Women’s Health and started taking supplements, chromium in particular to help support me to reduce my sugar intake. For a while I dabbled in many alternate methods including homeopathy and herbs, which brought my periods under control to some degree, so more regular, but still up to 6 weeks in between. Nevertheless, it all felt like I was managing the symptoms and just scratching the surface of the greater, underlying problem. 

Having understood that diet and lifestyle were key for me, I continued experimenting with food – dropping dairy over time, cutting back on alcohol to reduce my sugar intake and dabbling with dropping wheat, all of which helped my weight. However, I lacked consistency and so I yo-yoed in my weight and continued searching for other ways. 

Finding the Esoteric Breast Massage  

In 2007, I found Esoteric Healing, and in particular Esoteric Breast Massage (EBM) and decided to try it. After all, all else that I’d tried had failed.  

My first EBM was revealing to say the least.  

During my session I felt very strongly how the left side of my body was rock solid, like concrete, and I had this feeling that my body was split into two halves. I was shocked, surprised and curious, and it stopped me.  

The woman practitioner was super considerate and treated me with a tremendous level of care and respect. 

I felt safe.   

Something in this experience asked me to continue, and this was the first time I had stopped to consider what might be going on underneath all the physical symptoms I had, what might be going on in my inner unseen to the eye world.   

Almost all of my work to date with my PCOS had purely been about dealing with the physical symptoms and getting to a point where I functioned right (to some degree), but nothing beyond that. I just wanted to fix it, and I saw it as a way to fix me as a woman. 

From having never looked beyond having things function ‘right’, I now began a series of both esoteric healing and EBM sessions slowly exploring what I felt and my connection to me and my body, and how I felt about being a woman.  

I continued refining my diet and beverage consumption over a period of time. There was no regime but as I experimented I found that the less I had certain foods and drinks, the better I felt. Without trying at all, weight just fell away. I started to feel more vital. All these changes I implemented supported me to accept myself more, and to not feel like I am my own enemy.   

How?   

Principally by bringing more understanding and beginning to have those conversations with myself where I questioned the ideals, standards and expectations I had and the associated harshness with which I applied them. This largely (if not solely) came about as I met people who inspired me to consider that it is possible to be loving with yourself and mostly that they did not judge me for how I was or had been, but gave me the space to consider that the way I had been operating did not have to stay, and that it was within my remit to change that.   

It was very important to be shown and to understand that I could be fragile and delicate, and that neither were dirty words and that others graced me with the space to see that. In addition, it was crucial to see and know that how I’d grown up and the harshness and survival I’d gone into, at that place and time, did not have to continue. That I did not have to be a victim, and more importantly, that I’d never been one at all. And that, that old way of being was not normal.   

It was a gradual process, of taking the blinkers off, and letting go of the rigidness with how I’d been and starting to see more of the horizon around, to knowing that no matter where you’ve been, you can be loving and seeing that you can try new things, and that you can fail, pick yourself up and start again. It was like allowing a shaft of light into my inner world, which offered a different possibility of being and once that was seen and understood, it became possible to consider that I too could live that true way of being.  

I moved differently, I allowed myself to enjoy life, to enjoy the people in my life and to deeply appreciate who I am. That being me exactly as I was, was something to nurture and cherish. 

This allowed me to look beyond those physical ways of being into considering how I’d been treating myself, how I’d been speaking to myself, and as I did, I changed, my body changed and my periods changed. Over time they became regular.   

But this was less about a goal and more about the general quality of how I was with myself and with all others around me, so in fact my previous drive was about being ‘normal’ and having regular periods, now it was more about living with and moving myself in a quality of care and love that deeply honoured who I am, not because of anything I did, but simply because I was me and worthy of this. 

As I embraced being the woman I am, exploring my unique flavour in how I wanted to express that woman, there were the physical things, with clothes, with make-up (yes, new ground that), but most importantly it was a change in inner attitude which said there is something here which is precious and to be honoured and it’s in my power to do that. In all of this my body responded, and flourished, and I felt a freedom and a lightness in me I’d not experienced to that point, something I could not and did not want to ignore, but wanted to live and express. That shaft of light just kept getting bigger! 

Having EBMs helped me to understand that I had not been valuing myself as a woman and felt something was innately wrong with me as a woman. I could feel and see that I’d despised myself and had not considered myself worth taking care of.   

During EBMs I connected to and felt in me a deep feeling of stillness, a tender pulse and something precious deep within me, something that was always there no matter what. It moved me deeply, and supported me in wanting to live and honour this more in my day to day life. It meant I started to choose to be less hard on myself and began to take even greater care of myself, my diet, how I thought of myself, not in order to fix anything, but because I got to feel for the first time ever something beautiful and gorgeous deep in me that I wanted to take care of.   

This did not happen overnight. It has been a continuing journey, and the support I’ve received from having EBMs and from its practitioners has been key. Having role models in my life who lived the gorgeousness of who they are as women was a huge support in allowing me to understand that this is possible for me and for all of us as women. 

I’ve discovered I am a beautiful woman and I now live and dress as one, more and more each day. For me, addressing PCOS meant that I needed to understand and feel that beauty in me. I needed to understand that underneath it all I have in me that preciousness, and in doing so I was able to make the changes outwardly in my life to live that inner knowing.   

By Monica, UK

Further inspiration.. 

Linda’s experience of PCOS: self-love and feeling beautiful.

Our choices in the way that we live affect our periods and our health as women. 

What is the Esoteric Breast Massage? 

Amenorrhea – Where do you look when your periods stop?

Amenorrhea is the absence of menstruation  

In 2014 I moved to London and my periods stopped.  

Within a couple of months the stress I had placed myself under to get a flat and job resulted in me eating very little and dropping from 50/55kg to 41.7kg.  

Prior to 2014, my periods came every month. I rarely had any symptoms in the week leading to my period, but when it came, it was nothing short of horrendous.  

If it came at night (which frequently it did), then I would have a mass exodus of everything and anything from my body leaving me sleeping on the bathroom floor in an exhausted heap because I was fed up of going from my bed to the bathroom every five seconds. If it wasn’t that, then I would get restless leg syndrome and my legs would constantly shake beyond my control or ability to stop it. Even when exhausted they would continue to shake.  

The cramping pain would be equally unbearable by day, living on painkillers for a week at the maximum dosage I was allowed, often having to take time off work.  

Moving to London was a huge step up for me and while I had lived away from home when I was 16 and was used to being away from family, now the sole responsibility of finding somewhere to live was on my shoulders. And yet, I wasn’t completely alone. In hindsight, I had tons of support but couldn’t see it and I had the belief that I had to do it all by myself.  

It wasn’t until my periods stopped that I realised how much I had shut myself off from acknowledging and claiming that I was actually a woman. I know – the oddity of this statement has not been lost on me. 

Once the periods stopped I had the space to see and feel what my relationship with myself truly was. I had a long-lasting momentum of constantly ignoring my body, where any messages would get smothered with gaming, my food choices, self-criticism or negative thoughts. It was through the support of the Universal Medicine modalities that I started to heal and see how my choices were impacting on my body and any future choices. 

I continued to live in a victim mode and acted like a small child for some time further because at the time it seemed convenient to absolve myself of any responsibility for the state my choices got me to, but things started to turn around with the combined help of Universal Medicine modalities, practitioners of esoteric healing modalities and conventional medicine.  

With the Esoteric practitioners, I worked through my hurts, expectations and beliefs. I joined a sacred movement class and during this time I got to see how my behaviour of throwing a tantrum as a kid and getting attention was still being played out in my 20’s. Eventually, I learnt that such behaviour only drained my energy and since it wasn’t getting the desired response, it started to fall away.  

My journey of rebuilding my relationship with myself started with the Gentle Breath Mediation once a day. Esoteric Yoga I later found to be a huge support in rebuilding a connection with my body and the essence within it. I began to see that at my core I wasn’t something to be ignored but actually very beautiful and worth taking care of. I laid a foundation to build a relationship with my body whereby I trusted and followed more how my body was needing me to live than what was coming through my head.  

Of conventional medicine, I had all the appropriate tests and scans and it all boiled it down to I had to gain more weight. At one point I tried to force the weight gain but it wouldn’t work, so I gave up. Within a space of about a year my weight stabilised at around 52-55 but still no period.  

Over the course of these four years, conventional medicine would suggest the pill to give me a fake period. I didn’t want to take the pill and carry on as usual as somewhere deep down I had a sense that the root of the matter wasn’t going to be healed if I did do this. Eventually, I would take the pill for one or two courses then drop it. Months passed then I’d pick it up and drop it again. However, towards the end I found that this resistance to taking the pill built up more hardness towards myself. In the end I went back to the pill when I felt it was supportive to prevent bone density degradation.  

When I did have a bleed from these induced periods the way I experienced them during my teenage/early 20s came flooding back in, waiting for me to address it. I found that while wearing pads, my pelvic floor and groin muscles would be super tight, and having become more aware and taken greater care of my body this behaviour felt very painful. Over time I learned to relax my muscles and not tense up and clench in fear of something bad happening. I found this to be a supportive aspect of the pill as it did get me to look at how I was with myself during my period.  

Over time and as my relationship with my body strengthened, the scared little girl persona dropped away. The weight returned naturally, I felt more steady in myself and found that the best place to be is not in my head (mind) but in the stillness of my body which without fail every time made sense and a massive difference. 

Between January and April 2018, I wanted to change jobs but couldn’t due to certain circumstances. In reaction, I started to eat more (working in a restaurant made this extra, super easy to do) and went up to 65k. Now I was well over the recommended weight from the doctor but felt this was not a true weight for me either. What did happen though was my natural cycle restarted.  

Since my periods came back I have had to relearn how to be with the process. It is still syncing itself as in, it is still taking time to regain a steady set number of days, but the way I am with it now has changed.  

Before the pause in periods, I would get no pre-menstrual symptoms. The week before my first returned period it felt like my breasts were constantly on fire and I actually thought I was becoming mentally unstable because I was so reactive. It was only once my first returned period came did I realise that I wasn’t going mad but it was pre-menstrual tension. I know now that these before symptoms are a message to be listened to and since I’ve been looking at that and as a result of observing how I live between the periods, each week before my period the tension has lessened in intensity, I no longer feel like I want to bite someone’s head off! Likewise, when my period has come, I have not had such extreme symptoms like I used to have. I have not experienced restless legs nor do I live on painkillers anymore.  

I now marvel at how supportive and responsive my body is back with me, either starting my period in the night, or just after work or on my day off, giving me the first day/hours a chance to rest. I also love how the flow works as well, very light in the evenings and moderate during the day and consistent throughout and over the months.   

These days I take far more care of myself while I am on my period than I did ever before and I know that how I am living will be all brought back to me in the periods to come. I have this in my consideration whereas before I did not. I never had any connection between how I was living and the symptoms I was experiencing. 

Knowing what I have learnt through this experience I consider having had Amenorrhea a blessing as it has allowed me to stop what I was doing and go deeper into the relationship I have with myself which ultimately then affects the relationship I have with life and everything and everyone else around me. There is far more to learn and this time I approach it more openly and want to enjoy getting to know and care for myself deeper as this then equally extends outwardly.  

By Leigh, UK

For further inspiration…

Periods and joy in the same sentence? Totally possible.. Shevon shares her experience.

A woman’s cycle is an opportunity each and every month.. what are the different phases of our menstrual cycle and what are they showing us? Check out this three-minute video.

Wearing a Cardigan of Protection

Recently, I have felt something changing within me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I noticed that my cardigans seemed to be too big or not sitting well on the shoulders. They were like an oversized coat that no longer fitted my frame and I started to question whether it was my posture, or my weight. Both remained the same, but something else had changed. Yesterday the understanding came fully as I was booking in for my monthly Esoteric Breast Massage – a super supportive modality offered by women practitioners trained by Universal Medicine.

Women are Magnificent

In my work as a midwife I have the awesome privilege to be with women when they can resource deeply their true magnificence.

Being pregnant and giving birth is a time in a woman’s life when she has a relationship with her body that is very real and full. A time when she can get to know herself and her true strength and qualities, as her body does some of the most amazing and miraculous things ever.

A Frozen Shoulder: Thawing my Resistance to my Inner Quality

Three days ago, I woke up with a frozen shoulder; I was unable to sleep the prior night or get out of bed. This has happened before, but this time, with the help of my amazing practitioner, Jenny Ellis, I really listened to the message being offered up. I came to understand the message along with fixing the actual physical pain. And this is what I discovered…

The Truth of a Woman’s Body

I can pinpoint the exact moment that I first encountered women’s breasts being portrayed in a sexual way. I was about seven years old and was in the little village post office, come newsagent, come hardware store, come sweet shop, in the very rural part of North Yorkshire where my family lived. I was having my usual quandary as to how best to spend my ten pence. I could either get a little white paper bag of 10p’s worth of sherbet pips or I could get 10p’s worth of assorted 1p sweets. Invariably I went for the latter, as I loved the whole process of choosing ten different sweets. Black Jacks, Fruit Salads and Outer Spacers were always a non-negotiable part of my mix. Whilst pondering the almost magical assortment of different boxes and jars of sweets, I looked up at the top shelf and saw the front cover of a ‘girly magazine’. I distinctly remember the photo on the front, not of the woman’s face, but of her bare breasts and the fact that her arms were above her head.

Me and my Wardrobe: Bringing out the True Beauty in me

I remember, even as a child, not caring about what I wore. Often what I did wear was really just to hide my beauty and I used clothes to make me look ugly. One time I remember choosing glasses similar to my Dad’s, which did absolutely nothing for me. As I did not care for what I wore I got all the hand-me-downs from relatives, friends and boyfriends. On reflection they did not support me at all in being me or as a woman – they were more masculine, very simple and completely random.

How We Dress … Why having Pictures does not Suit us

I went shopping the other day for some nice warm vests or sweaters. I have been having some trouble finding one as I find the fashion at the moment very ‘baggy’ for women. With that I mean that it is very wide and does not show much of our bodies. I would find myself wondering often if the clothing I had in my hands was really a size S or that it was tagged wrong? (It would be the first one – really a size S.)

My Underwear Story – from Practical to Pretty!

As a child growing up there was not a lot of money coming into our household so I would wear hand me downs that my mother altered to fit me, and as for underwear, it was plain and practical.

Our home life was not a happy one in any way. I lived for the day that my father would finally see me for who I was, or even talk with me. There was never any sharing or chatting with each other, and as children my sister and I only seemed to be spoken to when we were judged to be in trouble. Even Mum and Dad very seldom spoke to each other. At school the children used to chatter away to each other, but for me I was always on the outside thinking that ‘no one wanted to hear what I had to say’, and my self confidence and self worth slowly diminished every day.