The Shakti School

Feminine Form Sacred Technology

Spirit

What’s Love Got To Do With It

What's Love got to do with it_

Whether you are single or in partnership, we're all in a constant state of relating to one another. Maybe it’s your lover, your husband, or your girlfriend, but it’s also your mother, your best friend, and your neighbor. The list goes on. Inevitably, as any relationship deepens, our emotions become more vulnerable, our fears and personal stories get in the way, and it can become increasingly difficult to approach conflict with love and clear communication, which is what we all ultimately desire.

If we could only take a moment to pause and step back it’s possible that we could have more success when it comes to resolving issues with the ones we love most.

One of the most typical causes of arguments comes from the patterned thought process of seeing the other person as the answer, or source, to your happiness. This is more common in romantic partnerships. In American society we have been taught through pop culture that our partner should be “our everything.” It’s quite a burden to place on one another when in fact our deepest sense of happiness should come from within our own independent well of joy. If we are unable to find our own inner peace and ease, every relationship we are in will suffer because of it.

Many relationships suffer due to our lack of understanding around our own pain and suffering. When we're hyperfocused on our own pain it puts us in a defensive position where from we feel attacked. This can be extremely harmful to the relationship and will be a major obstacle to overcoming the initial or root issue. When you find yourself in an uncomfortable conversation and you are in defense mode, either an argument with a family member or a fight with your husband, try asking the following questions:

What's the story I'm telling myself?

Who am I in this conflict?

What is this conflict truly stemming from?

Do I need to be more independent around this issue?

Only after taking a step back (maybe even taking several days) and answering these questions are you ready to enter back into the conversation with your loved one. At this point you will be far more equipped to clearly communicate what it is that you truly feel and in a way that will be expressed with love rather than coming from baggage, anger, fear, or any other negative emotion.

The issue may always be there, but as we evolve how we deal with the issue, it's possible that the relationship may evolve as well, and the issue may dissolve because of that. Try to see arguments as opportunities for growth for you and your loved one to strengthen your connection, and to align more fully on certain values. It's also an opportunity to examine and tell the truth. It’s always helpful to place yourself in the other’s shoes. Try to understand where your loved one is coming from and put their needs before your own. When we operate from a place of love and presence it makes space for deeper appreciation and understanding. And, could even lead us to embrace the differences that got us into the quarrel in the first place.

Key Take-Aways:

Take a step back

Ask yourself the above questions on how you play a role in the conflict

Communicate how you feel from a place of love

Think less about solving the conflict and more about evolving it

While researching this topic, multiple women came up with the same answer when asked what was the one thing they felt would create more ease in their relationships:

“communicating our needs regularly and finding the balance between getting our own needs met and helping the other person get theirs"

I have a class all about Polarity and Relationship Dynamics, including a powerful 20-minute Body Yantra meditation for igniting your animal magnetism in The Shakti School Subscription, February 2018 issue.

February2018

Login here to access the classes or sign up for one month free using the discount code FREETRIAL at checkout.

And, if you’re looking for ways to spice up your relationship in the bedroom or to give yourself some extra love, check out our favorite CBD intimacy fluid from FORIA wellness. Make sure to use the coupon code SHAKTILOVE at checkout 🙂

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The Secrets to Healthy Ovulation Part 2

Estrogen Dominance: Signs you may be estrogen dominant
& What to do about it

The Secrets to Healthy

Estrogen is an essential component of being a woman. It's because of estrogen that we ovulate, that we have breasts, that we have a libido, and that we maintain healthy bones and muscles. Estrogen is not the enemy. It actually regulates over a thousand genes in our bodies (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783169/).

So, you don’t want to have too little estrogen, however, when we have too much estrogen, and not enough progesterone, it can cause a lot of unwanted symptoms.

Unfortunately, we are operating in a time where estrogen is at an all time high. Living in our environment today we are constantly surrounded by xenoestrogens. Xenoestrogens are endocrine disrupting chemicals that mimic estrogen in our bodies. Xenoestrogens are in artificial fragrances, pesticides, plastics, unfiltered tap water, non-organic meat and vegetables, birth control, the list goes on... In our modern industrial world, it's difficult to escape the toxic overload of xenoestrogens.

Why don’t we want to have excess estrogen?

An overabundance of estrogen can lead to a number of problems in women (and men). If not treated it can cause things like hormonal cancers, thyroid dysfunction, autoimmune disease, candida overgrowth, and even obesity. And, as we age it becomes increasingly important to make sure your estrogen is as balanced as it can be.

Common Symptoms of Estrogen Dominance: 

  • Depression or Anxiety
  • PMS
  • Menstrual problems (heavy bleeding or light bleeding)
  • Sore, swollen, or fibrocystic breasts
  • Uterine Fibroids
  • Weight gain (usually in the hips/thighs/abdomen)
  • Loss of libido

Estrogen is metabolized through different pathways in the liver. If these pathways are blocked it can start to cause a lot of the negative side effects mentioned above. When it comes to balancing estrogen, your liver health is key. And, in order to keep your liver happy you have to make sure that your nutrition is dialed in, your stress levels are in check, and you’re getting an adequate amount of sleep. Other common causes of estrogen excess include: Perimenopause, impaired metabolism, and obesity.

Why don’t we want to have excess estrogen?

  • Reduce your exposure to xenoestrogens: check your personal care products carefully, avoid the use of plastics, buy organic, drink clean water, take walks in preserved lands!
  • Exercise to maintain a healthy weight
  • Get off hormonal birth control
  • Reduce inflammatory foods like cow’s dairy (cow’s milk causes your estrogen receptors to be hypersensitive)
  • Limit your consumption of alcohol
  • Incorporate more ways to decrease your stress: meditation, grounding in the forest, and limiting EMF exposure
  • Maintain healthy gut bacteria: Avoid antibiotics and eat in a way the supports your microbiome
  • Eat to support the liver: greens, cruciferous vegetables, sprouted grains and legumes, healthy fats, and organic sources of protein.

Our favorite supplements for lowering estrogen:

Calcium D-Glucarate

Iodine

Banyan Breast Care Balm

Women's Support Tablets

“Healing begins when we start to live the life we really want to be living.” — Dr. Claudia Welch

It’s amazing what can happen when we choose to be open to healing. It can be difficult to stay positive, inspired, or creative when our health is feeling out of whack or weakened, but sometimes we get stuck with a “dis-ease” in the body when we aren’t truly embodying the life we are meant to be living. One of the most powerful medicines can simply be to choose the life you know you are meant to be living out. Maybe that looks like taking a sabbatical to work on the book you’ve always wanted to write, maybe it means quitting your office job to pursue wellness coaching, or maybe it simply means allowing yourself to eat that french croissant at your favorite bakery. Whatever the thing is, before you buy the next supplement, make sure to check in and ask:

“Am I getting in the way of living my best life?”

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The Secrets to Healthy Ovulation

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What is ovulation? Why is ovulation important? How do I know if I am ovulating? And, what are the tips for healthy ovulation? 

Ovulation is when an egg is released from the ovaries. The egg is released by a surge of hormones that is regulated by the hypothalamus (located at the base of the brain). So, it’s your brain that is the main decision maker when it comes to keeping your body ovulating. If the hypothalamus is unhappy, scared, or stressed this could be the reason that you’re not ovulating (and in some cases, not having a period).

As women it’s extremely important that we ovulate: ovulating is the only way that we make the ovarian supporting hormones estrogen and progesterone.

E S T R O G E N helps with muscle growth, it helps keeps your bones and brain healthy, and increases the long term health of the entire cardiovascular system. Estrogen aids in producing serotonin, which is why you’re more energetic in the days leading up to ovulation.

P R O G E S T E R O N E reduces inflammation, it keeps your immune system healthy, increases the health of your breast tissue, and your thyroid. These hormones are also responsible for making you feel good, they aid in sleep, rest and recovery, and help in the process of releasing Dopamine, Serotonin, and Oxytocin which are essential chemicals responsible for your happiness!

So, even if you’re not planning on having a baby, you still want to make sure you are ovulating in order to benefit from all the gifts that having a healthy cycle has to offer. And, this process is one that the female body absolutely expects to have in order to maintain optimal wellness.

--- In the women’s health world we talk a lot about “balancing hormones,” but the reality is that if our hormones were always in balance  we wouldn’t have a period, we wouldn’t have that juicy feel-good feeling, be outgoing or energetic, and we wouldn’t ovulate. It is necessary for our hormones to fluctuate because that’s what gives us a flow every month. The key to keeping things 'in balance' is to ensure that progesterone and estrogen are rising and falling at the appropriate time. We can best achieve this through living a healthy lifestyle, eating nourishing meals, managing our stress levels, eating the appropriate foods, and moving our body (preferably outside). These balancing habits are what we discuss in depth in Ayurveda School. But, for now here are some simple tips on how to get your hormones back on track.

Signs you are ovulating: your temperature rises (you'll know this if you're tracking your basal body temperature, which we recommend doing whether or not you're trying to conceive), you are getting a period, you have cervical fluid (cervical fluid is not always a clear sign, but it’s at least always a sign that the body is trying to get back on track).

Ovulation inhibitors: stress, inflammation, thyroid imbalance, being undernourished or underfed (are you eating enough? Are you too low on carb?), PCOS, taking the pill (more on why alternative health experts are calling the Pill chemical castration in part 2 of this series).

Supplements and foods to support healthy ovulation and healthy cycles in general: Check out our products we love page and our store for our recommended supplements in addition to these food sources.

Magnesium - regulates cortisol, improves sleep, activates Vitamin D, slows aging,and  fuels cellular energy, helps with period pain, pms, and PCOS. Sources of Magnesium: leafy greens, pumpkin seeds, almonds, mineral water, and organic dark chocolate (fun fact! Chocolate cravings around the time of your period is actually your body saying “Give me magnesium!”

For more information on Magnesium check out: https://helloclue.com/articles/cycle-a-z/magnesium-and-the-menstrual-cycle

Selenium - good for progesterone production (link pubmed). Sources of Selenium: Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, mushrooms, and seafood

Zinc - reduces inflammation, clears skin, regulates thyroid, blocks excess androgens, regulates stress response. Sources of Zinc: oysters and grass fed red meat (unfortunately, if you are vegan/vegetarian you are probably zinc deficient unless you are already supplementing)

Iodine - regulates thyroid, helps prevent cysts, reduces fibroids, increases progesterone, regulates heavy periods and pms. Sources of Iodine: seaweed, organic wild caught seafood, grass fed butter (but only if they are fed from nutrient dense soil), mushrooms and leafy greens.

Our entire team loves these supplements for optimal health and ovulation success: Trace Minerals, Trace Minerals Electrolytes, and Magnesium Natural Calm

Read Part 2 Here

Learn how to heal yourself
with Ayurveda

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What is Enlightenment?

There is a lot of talk about Enlightenment in the yoga & meditation milieu. If you haven’t experience enlightenment or a ‘spiritual awakening’, you may think of it as some disembodied state, or something too mythical, an unavailable state for us mere householders.

While popular discourse makes it seem like enlightened individuals have something others don’t (like some magic download from the cosmos), it’s actually the opposite. Enlightenment comes from a shedding, an unveiling and a losing of our Shadow and patterning, and a great changing of these patterns as we start to see ourselves more and more clearly in-the-light.⠀
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Unwinding Karma, Shadow and en-Lightening ourselves, this is the work we’re doing and teaching in Shakti School. We have two options for online learning that I’ve poured my heart into because I want to make these technologies available to YOU:

✨) Lineage of Love, a super affordable yoga and Ayurveda subscription platform where you get to study with me every month and join at any time for the cost of 1 yoga class per month, and

✨) Ayurveda School! our groundbreaking year-long online 300hr Ayurveda health coaching certification program, the next school year starts in January 2019.⠀
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The true path is one of learning and awareness. We can all do and be this.

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3 Steps Toward Divine Feminine Ayurveda

A Movement Towards True Ayurveda and Healing

Feminine form Ayurveda is the true Ayurveda of ancient India. You might wonder—what does it mean for something to be the true Ayurveda? There are two answers to that question.

The first is that before India came under British rule, Ayurveda flourished not only as a system of medicine, but as a spiritual practice. Healing was known to be a spiritual affair, medicine and spirit were one. The influence of the West in India changed India’s approach to medicine. The wisdom of Ayurveda was all but lost under British rule. For Ayurveda to have legitimacy as a healing system, it needed to conform to allopathic (Western) medicine’s approach. Thus, it was stripped of its spiritual and feminine roots.

Second, it was the women of India who continued to practice the Ayurveda of pre-colonial times. There are two reasons for this: i) woman had always been the communities’ healers, both in the West and in the East. Their knowledge was passed down orally; and ii) In the age of modernization and patriarchy, women were excluded from the healing arts, medicine became institutionalized and one had to study for many years in order to “practice medicine”. This excluded woman who were mostly kept out of higher education and the sciences.

In the West, the eradication of feminine form healing arts was exhaustive due to the millions of women killed during the witch hunts that cycled through Europe and the Americas. We have of our Indian sisters to thank for keeping the flame of feminine form medicine lit for us.

That is why I refer to feminine form Ayurveda, and why my students have now come to call it Divine Feminine Ayurveda. It’s an approach to health that is radically different from the “traditional medicine” that we are familiar with in the West. It even differs from what Indians of the last few hundred years have known due to the Westernization of Ayurveda in India.

Begin Now: Divine Feminine Ayurveda

1. Intentionally cultivate and expand your community. The human Ātman, soul, desperately wants to be seen. Not necessarily fixed or saved, but simply witnessed and loved unconditionally. Organize a potluck and extend the invitation to your outer circle of acquaintances, plan a community activism meeting and get in the habit of regularly volunteering your time to a nonprofit. Feminine medicine comes through the oral tradition, through community, and through relationships. It’s not entirely taught and learned through a textbook, it’s learned through direct experience and relationship.

2. Honor your desires—spring is when we are intuitively most attuned to our deepest driving desires. We learn Divine Feminine Ayurveda not through the pre-frontal cortex alone, but through the back of the brain and body as well. This is foundational because it means that we first heal ourselves and learn the healing arts through our own practice of self-love and self-healing. It means digesting the material IN and WITH the body, not just the intellect.

There exists a culturally imposed need to be very masculine about our approach to health: What pills, what herbs, what’s wrong with me? With a feminine approach to health, we’re not adding anything, instead we are subtracting what isn’t real anymore, what’s not serving us. Divine Feminine Ayurveda ask us to find the place within our being that is already balanced, that needs nothing else, and begin the process of healing from there first.

A practice to connect with your subconscious self:

For 40 days, first thing every morning, write down your dreams. The more you practice this the more you will remember from your dreams. Our beloved Ayurveda father, Dr. Vasant Lad, explains in our Shakti Ayurveda School textbook: "Dreams are a discharge of the nerve cells, the drainage of incomplete thoughts, actions, and feelings. In a dream, you finish unfinished business and the brain is able to restore order”[1].

According to Ayurveda, dreams are classified as vata, pitta, kapha. Vata dreams are very active, includes: flying, death, autumn and are sometimes fearful; pitta dreams are fiery, includes: feeling of having arrived too late, being embarrassed, problem solving, summer; and kapha dreams are often romantic, includes: doing something slowly, eating, spring or winter.  Dr. Lad says “Classify the dreams, then treat the dosha and you will have good results”.⠀

Many times, studying our dreams gives us a window into the subconscious—our deepest anxieties and dreams.

3. Adaptability as health. The adaptability of our nervous and immune system is directly linked to the strength of our Ojas, the subtle energetic honey of our body. Think of Ojas as your psychophysical container or shield. When Ojas is strong, we have abundant energy, strong immunity and can adapt to the ever-changing circumstances of life with ease.

My go-to super ojas building plant is Shatavari (Asparagus racemosus). It’s a staple in my kitchen and I always recommend a student on the path of Ayurveda befriend this unctuous plant. Shatavari builds the tissues and fluids of the body. It’s a nutritive tonic, powerful adaptogen and a wonderful demulcent for vata-type bodies that struggle to retain water. It’s especially recommended for regulating and rejuvenating the female reproductive system. To stay hydrated, strong and lubricated, use Shatavari to make a tea. Let it steep as long as you like (a whole day even!) and then sip it warm, little by little, throughout the day.

Divine Feminine Ayurveda understands that there is no ideal health. That the mind/body complex is never in perfect balance, but always in flux. When we study Shakti, Life Force, we see that she is always shifting and changing. For that reason, she is not reaching for a standard of perfection, but instead concentrating on her own resources of adaptability. Feminine form medicine understands health as your ability to adapt to the changing environment and circumstances of your life.  Divine Feminine Ayurveda is subtle.

The Laws of Nature

Divine Feminine Ayurveda is the ancient wisdom of the body and the cosmos. It reminds us of what we have forgotten--it asks us to remember, Smarana, our ancient knowing. Divine Feminine Ayurveda is deeply connected to nature. It awakens the deep knowing: You Are Nature. You are Already Connected to Nature.

Our society has confused scientific opinions, social media, and advertising, with the limitless knowledge that lives in our hearts. Instead, feminine form medicine asks us to trust ourselves and our bodies. It’s a practice of radical trust, creativity and insight in ourselves: radical self-sovereignty. It asks us to claim our power, our experience and our understanding of our bodies.

Divine Feminine Ayurveda asks us to trust in OWN bodies, as our bodies contain the intelligence of the cosmos, the intelligence of nature. Nothing external can help us if we are not in conscious communion with our body. It posits that we can find balance through our OWN resources.

Divine Feminine Ayurveda bows to nature as the eternal feminine, the most creative and nourishing channel of this world. It is not static or idealistic. It has no preconceived notions of what our body should look like or our minds should be like. It is not authoritarian structures, it is not statistical averages and standards. It is fluid and adaptable.

With this self-sovereignty and trust in nature, feminine form medicine stresses the importance of asking—What do I need now?

It’s a meditation on self-love as the very first step in healing. It’s a mentorship with Self. We are in a moment of revitalization of the feminine. We are remembering Her and finding the courage to live from the heart. We are awakening the Divine Feminine Ayurveda.

 

[1] “Chapter Five Dhātus.” Textbook of Ayurveda, by Vasant Lad, Ayurvedic Press, 2002, pp. 161–162.

A version of this article appeared on Banyan Botanicals blog on June 20, 2018.

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Let’s Talk About Sex

I am so happy that as a society we're talking about sexuality. Sexual assault, sexual harassment, weird-awkward-aggressive-sex-we-fled-from, etc. Yes, these are all convos about sex, our society’s relationship with it + with power and the dysfunctional social behaviors that manifest from that disintegrated relationship our society has with human sexuality. ⠀

Let’s rewind: Ayurveda teaches conscious channeling of sexual energy, valuing what they called Bramacharya: the wise use of this vital sexual energy. When we are using our sexual energy in a harmonious way, our whole life is infused with more enthusiasm around creative projects—whether that be a business, an artistic expression, or a baby. We also have better health in general because sexual energy is the most refined aspect of our life energy. The more energy we have, the better we feel. ⠀

But human sexuality is about much more than just “sex”. It’s a major pillar of our overall health and wellbeing (I wrote a book about it for a reason!). How do we use our attention and our body? If we look at one of the meanings of the word Bramacharya, we gain insight into what the ancients understood. One interpretation of the word is “to walk with God”; engaging sexuality intentionality, from the heart (your conscience, intuition, or Higher Self) before decision making.⠀

Having a connection to your physical and energetic sexual centers, is key in boosting your/society's health. As women we need to restore the vitality of our sexual energy center & help engage conscious forms of sexuality. When a woman feels tuned in to her sacred sexual essence, a new aliveness begins to pulse within in her. Her health improves. All of us are more balanced and we can usher in a new era.

You can read more in my book Healthy, Happy, Sexy and in our year-long Ayurveda Program which is all about healing our own and our ancestor's inherited patterns.

Oh, and this is a beautiful photo—also a sex photo, cause sexuality is an integral part of our daily lives, including pregnant and mom lives 😉 Let’s talk about sex more, I think everyone on earth would benefit from it.

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Who Am I?

Two big questions that most human beings will ponder at some point in their lives: “Who am I?” and “How can I get more of what I want in my life?”

One of the things I love about the Tantric yoga tradition is its systematic approach to answering both of these inquiries. The Taittiriya Upanishad, one of the most important yogic scriptures, says that if we really want to know who we are, and get more joy and fulfillment in life, we have to get to know our subtle anatomy.

Why? Because we are, according to Tantric anatomy, not one, but a composite of five bodies (pancha koshas): the physical body, the energetic body, the mental/emotional body, the inner-teacher or wisdom body, and the bliss body. When we can bring awareness into the deep layers of each of these bodies, we gain access to our highest, most evolved, powerful Self. This concept shares a lot with what modern day neuroscience and somatic psychology understand about pain and perception.

The teachings go on to explain that what is hidden in these bodies is both our unconscious negative patterning, as well as our greatest gifts and powers. When the patterns that are hidden in the bodies emerge, we are no longer under the pull of the unconscious stuff. We can now get more of what we truly want as we bring the limitations and the latent capacities of the unconscious to the surface. In the end, when we penetrate the last layer of who we are, we are left with an endless power to create, act, and know.

Start to peel back the shadows, join us at our next event: learn more.

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Womb Wellness

It’s Cervical Cancer Awareness Week.

Cervical cancer, although treatable, is the 3rd leading cause of death of women worldwide. Ayurveda has a lot to offer in terms of prevention and treatment of cervical cancer. I want to start with the emotional and energetics first…

The womb area is our feminine heart. It is the seat of our creative capacity, as well as where our ability to heal and rejuvenate our own body. The feminine womb is also a storehouse for much of our past pain, whether it is sexual trauma, abandonment, or other forms of abuse. Ironically, it is the center of pleasure and watery, creative power. Think of your womb as an oceanic force—dark and healing.

I have found that this area tends to be quite numb in many women and that they have a hard time connecting with this part of themselves, particularly if they have experience trauma like surgery on or removal of reproductive organs, or abuse. Abuse depletes self-worth, our personal power. This especially effects the womb.

One of the most enlightening and surprising realizations I came to with Ayurveda is how the seat of female sexual power lies in the womb—the dark, fleshy home of our creative energies. What I learned is that in this sacred female heart, we create. Our creation makes babies, it births social activism projects, it produces art, it bakes bread, and it starts businesses. I also learned that the womb is the seat of our destructive powers. In this sacred female heart, we bleed, we feel pain, and we slough off a layer of who we are each month.

To expand into our fullness and heal energetic balances, we must first create an open, wide base in which energy can move. Many of the women I work with have a lack of prana moving in their pelvic bowl. How alive do you feel at your roots? If you close your eyes, what does it feel like “down there”? Assess the situation with love, and then practice this meditation for increasing prana in your sacred pelvic bowl.

Tune In

Close your eyes and sit comfortably with the spine straight, or lay down. Feel your whole body begin to relax. Take a few moments to watch your breath, let it become even, smooth and full. As you feel your body beginning to relax, take your awareness down into your pelvic root and bowl. Without judgment, look around down there with your inner felt-sense. Are there spots that feel alive, vibrating and full of light? Are there spots that are tense, scary, dark or numb?

Take a few moments to breathe your presence into the realms that feel stuck, numb or emotionally/physically painful. Feel that you can access energy from outside of the body as you inhale, and on the exhale, direct it into the stuckness, allowing it to dissolve. Do this for 5-10 minutes. As you begin to notice energetic shifts, there may be emotional releases that accompany this meditation. Try your best not to judge the release, but to let it unravel.

Come back to your practice, and back to your breath. After 10 minutes, begin to visualize a dark, downward-facing dark blue triangle, its apex pointing downward towards earth at your tailbone, and the base as wide as your hips. When you feel your body breathing in, sense your awareness, and energy, move through the dark blue triangle and down to the tip, concentrating there. As you feel your body exhale, sense any holding, tension, toxins or unwanted emotion leaving through the tip, and moving down into the earth. Repeat this visualization and movement of energy 8-12 times.

The mantra SOM (pronounced sohm) is an excellent healing tonic for this area.

The female womb is the seat of our deepest emotional mystery, pulling us down and out each month, asking us to deeply feel the truth of what we didn’t process the month prior, nourishing us throughout our lives with hormones. This center is the home of our unconscious lust, and in it dwells our secret desires, hopes, and loves. It’s why at various times of the month our sensitivity can be more intense—when we might feel our most vulnerable both physically and emotionally. If this center is blocked or numb, undernourished and unloved, you may feel disconnected from your creativity, sexuality and power. Through these practices, you will nourish this center, making it a viable home for your spirit to work and live.

Our menstrual cycle can be a time in which we can let go of any toxic emotions or holding patterns that we accumulated the month before. If we do not allow ourselves the necessary time and space for this to be felt as a visceral, emotional and spiritual experience, we dishonor the very power that we are, perhaps, longing for all month long. Not only can we slow down during our menstrual cycle, but we should also take exquisite care of ourselves. Practice inwardness and slowing down during the last week and first few days of your cycle, to honor the feminine energy working through you and cultivate intentional nourishing energy.

Ayurveda’s personal approach to nutrition, as well as following a healthy daily routine, and emotional wellbeing, are the first line of defense when it comes to dealing with all diseases, including cancer…

Recent researches have proved that many of the spices used in Ayurvedic cooking have anti-cancerous effects. Curcumin, the compound that gives Turmeric its yellow color, is a powerful antioxidant, which neutralizes free radicals that increase the risk of cancer and is said to inhibit the growth of cancerous cells. Ginger is particularly significant for cancers which show high levels of inflammation, a characteristic of cervical cancer. Holy Basil/Tulsi, an herb rich in Ursolic Acid is regularly included in a cancer fighting diet.

Another tool for prevention and relief is vaginal douching, steaming, and suppositories, prepared with herbs according to each woman’s personal needs. Suppositories are easy to make at home with a little coconut oil. You can find powerful yet simple recipes for making your own online. Goldenseal and coconut oil is a great one.

If you are on the pill, reconsider. I know that this is not a popular option, especially for modern career-minded women, but here is the thing—menstrual blood helps cleanse the organs and kill off any foreign invaders (and by the way, men’s sperm is rife with bacterial friends). With every period, you literally clean out any foreign bodies in your holy womb. This is probably why many of us actually feel “cleansed” from life’s experience after a good menstrual cycle. If you are taking a pill that alters or even eliminates this natural cycle, you may be missing out on one of the best immune-boosting, life-giving processes in your life.

There are many other reasons why we may want to reconsider taking synthetic hormones. New and emerging scientific evidence actually shows a clear link between taking hormonal contraceptives and depression and an increased risk of cancer. In 2005, the World Health Organization’s cancer research group listed hormonal contraceptives as “carcinogenic to humans.” Do the research, be informed, and know that there are time-tested natural ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy. What’s more, is that natural contraceptive methods will help you further tune into your body and womb.

And finally, keep your immune system strong. Certain strands of HPV can cause cancer. If your immune system is strong, you should be able to clear this virus within a couple of years. If you have a family history of cervical cancer, you should get a PAP smear every year. Otherwise, make sure you’re having one done every three years.

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