The cycles of women’s energy bodies is a neglected area, within both traditional and new age spiritual teachings, and within both mainstream and alternative healing systems. Note that I am not a healer, so my principal interest in this subject is religious – how knowledge and application of our energy systems can result in our spiritual growth, largely through experiences which are only available while we have complete access to our personal power.
Take note
Such teachings are mostly found in Vajrayana Buddhism and Kundalini Yoga customs, but I also have discovered some in various shamanic traditions, pagan customs, the medieval Christian women mystics, Kabbalah, and Sufism. Generally speaking, women’s energy bodies are more open, absorbent, and fluid than men’s. Men’s are denser and have a tendency to work more naturally like a defense. We girls soak in a lot of the energies around us which may become the fuel for instinct, but could also become a source of dispersion and mental distraction.
The sensitivity of our energy body runs in cycles corresponding to our monthly menstruation cycle. During the first half, leading up to ovulation, our energy body is a bit sturdier, and we’re more outward-oriented in reaction. In the second-half, leading up to menstruation, we’re more sensitive to external energies and more inward-oriented. Adolescence is when these monthly cycles kick into gear. Along with being a phase of extreme hormonal and physical changes (such as in the mind ), it’s a period of extreme psycho-spiritual changes. Just as a woman’s body is changing to a women’s, her energy body is changing to a women’s body.
And the problem in our culture is that this is largely processed on a sexual level. Along with being absorbent, our energy bodies are more attraction-oriented. We’re like small magnets, pulling different energies towards us, especially in that first half of our cycle. So the main thing for us to concentrate on in this phase is developing an identity and connection to our power that’s not based on sexual attraction. Focus on recognizing that procreative energy isn’t only sexual; it is part of your total personal energy, and can be led into all your endeavors, especially creative ones. Our late teens and twenties are a period of creating our personal power, learning how to guide it through manifesting our objectives, and knowingly understanding our natural psycho-spiritual cycles.
Good to know
But if we have just come to have our personal power through our sexuality, our attention will be too heavily on bringing others. This happens to most people to a certain degree, and few people emerge from this period with our complete personal power at our disposal. We lose a chance to gather up ourselves, in a sense, for our larger life’s functions, including our spiritual understanding.
I feel that from a religious standpoint, owning our personal power is the most precious thing we could do during this stage – more precious even than explicit religious study or practice. And we could own our personal power through any action that we feel passionately about, and try and excel inside. Having concrete external goals in this stage helps educate us about the ebbs and flows of our energy cycles. That having been said, creating a meditation practice in this time period is particularly beneficial.
What to do?
Focus on developing personal power, and manifesting it concretely in your life, whether that’s through greater education, career, sports, the arts, hobbies, or (of course) spirituality. For the ones that choose to have kids (more on that later), pregnancy can be an wonderful time for developing your intuitive and creative skills (nausea, backaches, and constipation aside, of course.) Ideally, you’ve come into this stage with a well-developed feeling of your own personal power and cycles (if not, these lessons are more difficult to get.)
During pregnancy, your energy body slowly becomes more and more open, which may be disconcerting if you’re constantly around people. On the other hand, if you may draw into yourself, you can feel your increasing connection to’the other side’ (I shall leave this obscure, such as the term’energy ‘, so I can keep this non-denominational.) It’s like carrying a life within you’ve opened a door for this life to come through, and now you can go through that door the other way also. This is a excellent time to go inward.
Meditation
Meditate, read religious books, explore creative and intuitive pursuits, and naturally, get prepared for the challenges ahead. Focus on developing intuitive abilities and riding the bliss as part of becoming connected to the other side. The’door’ of pregnancy closes fairly quickly post-partum, generally at the first eight months. In addition to the hormonal fluctuations and sleep-deprivation, it can be brutal.
That having been said, some girls glide right through this transition stage (more power to them) For those who have developed your spiritual consciousness, this stage will be simpler, as you’ll be capable of continuing to’travel’ into the meditative airplanes you discovered during pregnancy by yourself. Whether you’ll have enough energy or time to do so is another thing! Your energy body is now actually stretched out of your body, to encircle your baby (they do not call it the’fourth trimester’ for nothing.) You won’t fully recover that energy for nearly two decades (and a few girls never do).
And the same is true for every additional child you have. On an energy level, motherhood is a forfeit, plain and simple. Hopefully, it’s a sacrifice of love. In that case, it can bring you as much back as you put into it. For it to happen, you must create peace with the forfeit, and you must pace your energy usage and development in keeping with your own children’s maturation. Ideally, at each phase of growth, your kids own more and more of their personal power, and you may take only a little bit more back on your own.
Gradually regaining this energy is crucial, and taking care of yourself that you’re not entirely consumed by motherhood, emotionally and energetically. This is mainly what spirituality is all about in this phase. Focus on striking the ideal energy balance between sustaining your child/children with energy suitable for their age, and reclaiming your personal power as he/she/they develop. For women who don’t have kids (by choice or circumstance), the pre-menopause mature years are a huge spiritual opportunity. I feel it’s extremely important to say this, because in most spiritual traditions, a women’s spiritual worth appear to be equated with motherhood. Those who put this forth appear to be forgetting that the majority of the better known mystics in most spiritual traditions, male or female, haven’t had families, and typically, have been celibate.
Take note
While lots of folks believe that is for ethical reasons, if you read the real teachings in mysterious customs, it’s apparent that initially there was a recognition of the energy advantage of celibacy and/or childlessness. In actuality, in the more complicated energy-based yogas, such as some lineages of Tantric Buddhism and Kundalini yoga, remaining childless is regarded as a benefit or even a necessity so as to get advanced teachings, particularly for women. That’s because in order to accomplish a few of the practices, you should have access to 100% of your procreative energies, and that these practices help you divert into meditative methods.
A woman who has kids simply has a lot of her energy spread for a lot of her life. This isn’t to say that we moms can’t achieve enlightenment, or spiritual liberation, or anything you would like to call it. It simply makes certain energy methods, and certain avenues, more of a struggle, for specific periods of our mothering years. And childfree women don’t have these particular challenges. So the sky’s the limit! Explore your own personal power, and spirituality of all sorts, especially energy-based ones. Intuitive areas, divination, energy recovery systems, and the arts draw on this energy. Focus on expanding your instinctive and energy understanding, and redirecting your procreative energies to the mystical teachings of whatever religious tradition you’re a part of.
Perimenopause
Perimenopause is the transition period leading into melancholy, which can last anywhere from 1 to 10 years (which for many women would fall in their mid to late forties and early fifties). Unfortunately, this phase isn’t even recognized as a stage by many physicians and healers, since the signs can be varying and slight, and because these customs were initially developed primarily by men, according to an understanding of men’s bodies.
Just because it is a period of physical transition with varying symptoms and signs, so it’s on the spiritual and energy levels. Ideally, a mom has recovered much of her energy for herself (or at least is from the extreme early childhood days), and a childfree woman has explored the mysterious heights of her awareness. Both are now preparing for what can be a whole rebirth as a mystic throughout menopause. On the energetic level, the whole perimenopausal period is a preparatory one. The monthly energy cycles are beginning to dissipate, and with proper preparation will settle into a permanent state of increased intuitive sensitivity and strength. Focus on developing or continuing to deepen a meditation practice, and on researching energy and mystics teachings that are appealing to you. I use the term’mysterious’ loosely, to refer to spiritual seekers and teachers that are dedicated to personal and direct experience of divinity. To be a mystic doesn’t signify enlightenment, but it does indicate a particular approach to spirituality – not a philosophical one, but an awareness-based one.
Our consciousness is infinite, but we’re usually too weighed down by our individual thoughts and emotions, and our own sense of self, to experience a lot of them. Put generally, mystic spirituality is all about getting outside of the human self, and travel through our consciousness, to other airplanes. This requires an unusual amount of knowledge and control over our energy and awareness body.
Conclusion
We can practice mysticism at any stage during our lives, but as I’ve tried to summarize here, there are distractions and challenges to our doing this at each prior stage of our lives. Ideally, at and after menopause, all of these are gone. If we have our personal power and have developed our understanding of the mystic heights of our consciousness, menopause is a time we could take this to the limit, if we have not already. Many Eastern and native customs acknowledge this stage as the most spiritual time in a women’s life. If we have not become a mysterious before this, know is your time.