PMS: Please Make Space

By Grace Escolme, Five Element Acupuncturist & Women's Health Practitioner

The collective rage, guilt and shame. Please make space, because we are in pain. We are reflecting on our boundaries. We have been pushed for so long, drowned, silenced and burnt before then. We do not want to keep up with your pace of productivity. This is not dysfunction. This is not a disorder to be managed. This is the body speaking in its oldest language, asking for what it has always needed. Space. Stillness. Permission to turn inward.

The Red Tent

Living in isolation from your menstruating friends or womb elders will leave you feeling like you are going mad. Like you are making things up. Like you are a fragile person who simply needs some help…

Do you know why women used to gather in circle?

We used to sit together in a red tent or an area of our community where we could go and bleed in peace, in a restful state. We would be looked after by other women at this time. '

Women were the proverb.

During menstruation, the two hemispheres of the brain draw into deeper connection with one another. This is what scientists now understand as heightened intuition, an increase in integrative, associative thinking as progesterone drops and the nervous system becomes more sensitised. I think we have forgotten how important our bleed time truly is.

The Neuroscience of Menstruation…

In the late luteal phase, falling oestrogen and progesterone alter activity in the left and right hemispheres of the brain, bringing them into closer connectivity. Research suggests this shift heightens emotional sensitivity and pattern recognition — the very qualities ancient cultures interpreted as oracular.

Cacioppo S, Bianchi-Demicheli F, Bischof P, Deziegler D, Michel CM, Landis T. Hemispheric specialization varies with EEG brain resting states and phase of menstrual cycle. PLoS One. 2013 Apr 30;8(4):e63196. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063196. PMID: 23638185; PMCID: PMC3640095.

On the Living Intelligence of Menstrual Blood

I was recently with a medicine woman in Cornwall. She told me a story of her time with the Aborigines in the Australian outback. She witnessed women collecting their menstrual blood in shells. When an Aboriginal man broke his leg or damaged his knee, they poured menstrual blood over the affected area and wrapped it with natural fibres. Within the same day, the man could put pressure on the leg, and within a week, he was walking. Menstrual blood is not waste. It is the most mineral-dense, stem-cell-rich fluid the human body produces.

What Menstrual Blood Actually Contains….

Menstrual fluid is a complex biological substance, not simply shed endometrial tissue and blood. It contains endometrial stem cells now classified as menstrual blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MenSCs), which have demonstrated remarkable regenerative capacity in early laboratory and clinical research.

Menstrual blood is also rich in iron, zinc, copper and magnesium, as well as growth factors including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), all of which play active roles in tissue repair and wound healing. The healing applications witnessed in indigenous traditions may reflect an intuitive understanding of this biology long before the language of molecular science existed.

Chen L, Qu J, Xiang C. The multi-functional roles of menstrual blood-derived stem cells in regenerative medicine. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2019 Jan 3;10(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s13287-018-1105-9. PMID: 30606242; PMCID: PMC6318883.

The Metal Element and the Autumn of the Cycle

Premenstrual symptoms occur in the luteal phase, also known as the autumn season of the menstrual cycle. Blending the menstrual cycle with five element chinese theory, Autumn is associated with the metal element.

The Metal Element governs our sense of value, our self-respect, and the quality of what we allow to enter and what we choose to release. Its two organs illuminate its nature perfectly;

If we follow the law of as within, so without, this is precisely what is happening in our emotional landscape during the Autumn season. The metal within us is asking us to reflect on what are values truly are;

The questions the Autumn season is asking:

— What makes me feel of worth?

— Where is my energy best given?

— What are my precious metals? What feels like gold to me?

— Are my relationships aligning with my values?

— Do I respect myself? Do I validate myself, the trash and the gold?

Why We Feel This Way in the Autumn season?

After ovulation, oestrogen declines and progesterone begins to rise. Oestrogen acts as an emotional buffer, so the fall in this hormone can leave you feeling sensitive. What once you could recognise as a teasing, silly remark in the preovulation, ovulation phase now hits home. Sometimes more than intended.

In clinical research, women report that during the luteal phase of their cycle, they experience a temporary lower threshold for tolerating what does not serve them. Emotions are not arising during your luteal phase, instead they are being exposed. Just as a tree extracts only the nourishment from the leaf and the rest falls off the tree and down onto the floor. This is whats happening to our emotional state, what doesn’t feel nourishing and valuable is exposed so we have a chance to let it go. This can be as simple as self-criticism. Functional medicine and integrative gynaecology increasingly recognise the luteal phase as a window of heightened self-knowledge. Making space to feel and listen to these emotions, is where our ‘productivity’ sits in this phase.

Life & Death & Grief

The emotion associated to the metal element in Chinese medicine 5-element theory is Grief. The lungs surround the heart, like angel wings and the metal element is drawn as a white circle with a red dot in the middle. Grief, misunderstood and mysterious, is the notion of the inhale and exhale so we can both protect, feed and communicate to the heart at the same time.

Grief is the notion of letting go to allow the hearts love to fill the space. It’s most loving memories of people and experiences who are in the past, however challenging they were there is love present because this is what grief does. There’s a correlation to this rythm with the menstrual cycle, there is a direct channel from the womb to the heart.

Women are beings of life and death. We carry the ability to create new life, not only in human form but in every creative project we birth. We also live on a polarity, a binary planet, which means if one exists the other must too. So just as we are creators, we are also masters in death and therefore grief.

When we give ourselves the boundary of space, disconnection time from the rest of the world, time to reflect, wrapped up warm and comfortable for a few minutes or hours each day during the autumn of the cycle, and we ask others to respect we give ourselves access to grief. You may find it becomes easier to heal painful or irregular periods, imbalanced hormones, unexplained infertility. Because you are giving yourself time each day to deeply listen.

Please make space, whilst I make space for myself.

Clinical notes are included for educational purposes and should not replace medical advice.