MEDITATE / SELF-REFLECT

What is meditation and what role does it play for women on their periods?

In simple terms, meditation (or self-reflection) is a body-and-mind practice that involves spending purposeful attention on a thought, state, moment, or experience. 

Women who practice meditation during periods promote positive mental and physical changes throughout their body, experiencing improvements in stress-related health symptoms. This results in a decrease of hormonal productions that trigger anxiety and depression.

There are different types of meditation one can practice to ensure healthy periods, including:

1. Mindfulness Meditation

In this kind of meditation, you create a safe place inside your mind, close your eyes, and process your thoughts as they pass through your mind – one thought at a time. You’re not to judge your thoughts or even become involved with them, emotionally speaking. This meditation gives you the moment to collect yourself, focus on your breathing, observe your way of leading particularly stressful situations, and take notes of any unhealthy patterns involved. 

2. Focused Meditation

Focused meditation involves diverting your mind’s attention from stressful thoughts to peaceful sensations by concentrating on other objects, using any of the five senses.

For instance, your focus could be internal, like counting your breaths, or it can be external, like counting stars in the sky or finding shapes in the clouds.

Some other examples include:

• Counting pearls/beads in a bracelet or necklace

• Listening to soothing music

• Staring at a candle flame

• Counting your heartbeats

• Moon gazing

While this practice may seem simple in theory, it can still be difficult for some beginners when they try holding their focus on something for longer than a few minutes at first.

Therefore, if your mind does wander elsewhere, you should simply return to the practice again and refocus.

3. Movement Meditation

Movement meditation doesn’t only include yoga, like many people may think at first. In actual practice, this particular type of meditation involves all of the items listed below:

• Yoga

• Walking

• Gardening

• Qi gong

• Tai chi

• Other gentle forms of movement

In this meditation, the gentle movements guide you into a deeper and comfortable connection with your body along with the present moment.

4. Visualization Meditation

Visualization meditation is an effective technique to be used during menstruation when one wants to enhance feelings of peace and reduce stress levels by visualization of positive moments or images.

In this meditation, you imagine a scene – one that makes you happy – in vivid detail, using as much of the five senses as possible. This could involve anything from imagining yourself accomplishing a goal that makes you ecstatic or reliving the past happiest moments of your life.