What is Menstrual Cycle Awareness?

Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) is a practice of embodied cyclical living

MCA involves cycle charting, or making daily observations of these five “Bodies” across the whole cycle: Mental, Physical, Emotional, Spiritual and Erotic. As you track the changes in your energy in these five areas across your cycle, you learn about your own tendencies, your challenges and your high points in your cycle. MCA is the practice of working lovingly with your body to support these cyclical changes, and aligning your internal world with the natural world around us.

Your menstrual cycle is SO much more than just having your period!

There are five distinct, predictable phases in each cycle, governed by predictable hormonal fluctuations, with your period at one end of the cycle and ovulation at the opposite end. These five phases are the Menstrual Phase, the Pre-Ovulatory Phase, the Ovulatory Phase, the Post Ovulatory Phase, and the Premenstrual Phase. You can also divide the cycle into two halves: The Follicular phase, which includes menstruation and the time before ovulation, and the Luteal Phase, which starts the day after you ovulate and takes you all the way until the day before you bleed again.

Learning your own patterns as you move through these phases each month leads you to a deeper understanding of yourself. It also gives you context and tools to address any challenges or take advantage of any high points in your cycle. If we’re not paying attention, it can just seem like a random, chaotic mess of emotions and symptoms. After you learn how to chart your cycle, and what to track as you do so, it all starts falling into place…

benefits of

Menstrual Cycle Awareness

Charting your cycle allows you to become familiar with your own unique patterns as you move through the four phases of your cycle. You learn where you are more vulnerable and need to up your self-care game. You learn where you feel more capable and can start to turn these times of renewal and increased energy to your advantage.
You learn to predict when your period will arrive by tracking your ovulation. You learn to plan ahead so that you’re not taken by surprise by a sudden change in mood, libido, or energy.
The simple act of paying attention to and aligning yourself with your inner seasons, as Alexandra Pope of The Red School calls them, can in and of itself help regulate your cycle. MCA provides you with a framework from which to address any underlying health issues that may be manifesting as unpleasant or even debilitating symptoms of your menstrual cycle.

When you come into alignment with your cyclical self, your life will open up in ways you never imagined possible.

Foster a deeper connection with yourself and with the cycles of our natural world.
Gain a deeper understanding of your fluctuations in mood, energy, appetite, libido, creativity, motivation, self-image, sense of belonging, and meaning in life.
Learn to navigate the lows of your cycle and take advantage of the highs.
Experience the peace of feeling embodied as you create a loving relationship with your body.

MCA Offerings at Body Sense

The Body Sense Period Revolution

In western culture, we aren’t taught to pay attention to the profound changes that occur within us throughout each cycle. We live in a culture obsessed with productivity, positivity, and progress. It is a linear, patriarchal society where the natural ebb and flow of the menstrual cycle is shamed and pathologized. As menstruators, we are instead taught to be ashamed of our period and hide it from others at all costs. We are rarely taught that there is anything more to having a menstrual cycle than bleeding once a month.

This leads us to feeling disconnected from ourselves and teaches us that something is wrong with us when we can’t live up to our society’s expectations. We feel that we are at the mercy of our seemingly random changes in mood, energy, appetite, libido, motivation, creativity, and self-image. We are exhausted by the effort of existing as cyclical beings in a linear culture, but we can’t put our fingers on why we feel this way.

At Body Sense, my mission is to validate your lived experience of your cycle, and give you the language to name your experiences and the tools to advocate for yourself. Embodying a deeper relationship with your cycle is a way to heal the disconnect that our culture creates in us.

Come home to yourself through Menstrual Cycle Awareness!

Your menstrual cycle is…

A compass for your life

The menstrual cycle provides a cyclical framework to guide your life, leaving room for activity and rest, light and dark emotions, growth and decay, inhale and exhale. In short, it gives us a framework through which to experience and understand the innate polarity of life, the real human experience. We cannot be balanced within ourselves if we only focus on action, light emotions, growth and progress. We need a framework to help us balance these opposites within ourselves in order to feel integrated and balanced.

A barometer for your overall health

Symptoms that show up in your menstrual cycle can be signs of underlying imbalances in your system as a whole. Our cycles tell us when we are out of balance, giving us opportunities to heal and restore our wellbeing.

Your questions answered

A menstrual cycle is a repeating hormonal cycle in our bodies driven by hormones that are produced in our brains and in our ovaries. Hormones are chemicals that travel through our bloodstream and tell our bodies all sorts of things, like when to fall asleep and when to wake up. They also tell our bodies when to menstruate and when to ovulate. These are the two main events of a menstrual cycle. A typical menstrual cycle is 25-31 days in length and the menstrual period is typically 3-7 days long.
Not all women menstruate, and not all people who menstruate are women. Having a uterus, ovaries and a menstrual cycle means that you have female physiology, but it doesn’t say anything about your gender. Gender is a social construct. Neither physiology nor gender are binaries. Humans come in all shapes, sizes, colors, sexes and genders, and all of these are beautiful expressions of the infinite variety of the human experience.
Learning your own patterns as you move through the four predictable phases of your cycle each month leads you to a deeper understanding of yourself. It gives you context and tools to address any challenges or take advantage of any high points in your cycle. If we’re not paying attention, it can just seem like a random, chaotic mess of emotions and symptoms. After you learn how to chart your cycle, and what to track as you do so, it all starts falling into place…
Practicing Menstrual Cycle Awareness doesn’t mean you have to love your period or your cycle. There are a lot of extremely challenging things about being a menstruator. You are living as a cyclical being in a linear culture where period shame is rampant. You might have extremely painful periods or other debilitating PMS symptoms. My job is not to make you like your cycle. My job is to guide you into better relationship with your cycle and to learn to take advantage of its high points and mitigate its lows. Coming into alignment with yourself can only improve your wellbeing.
Yes, but it is not a treatment for Endometriosis or PCOS. MCA helps you identify where in your cycle your symptoms are recurring, so that you can work with your doctor with more accurate information. MCA is not a cure for illness, it is a framework to help you understand your own patterns and learn where you need help from your doctor.
Wonderful! It is never too late to practice Menstrual Cycle Awareness. Knowing your bodies patterns as your cycle changes is super important for navigating Perimenopause. The premenstrual phase and menstrual phase of the cycle are like mini versions, energetically speaking, of perimenopause and menopause. Practicing MCA can help prepare you for these rights of passage.