How Healing Our Wombs Can Heal The Planet

The world we live in 

If you landed here, it is most likely because you are aware of the patriarchal society we live in, and the consequences it has for our dear Mother Earth and our health. But if you’re not, let me briefly walk you through it… and share my ideas on how healing our wombs could change and improve the quality of our lives and our planet.

What dominates in Western culture are tight structures, too much control, and fear of losing that control. Continuous violence spread across times and continents. Exploitation of natural resources without giving back. Profit-driven cruel businesses. Pressure for constant growth, productivity, and work without rest. Systems of education, finance, politics, and more that focus on the mind, logic, reasoning, rigid approaches, linear planning, and control. So much control! (My mind is spinning just listing all of this, and my body contracts.)

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying we all need to ditch structure and logic. We do need structure, for example, to hold the potential of ideas and creation. We do need logic too… (I don’t think I need to give an example of why here.)

But what I am saying is that we’ve reached a point where the rigidity of the system has gone too far and pushed away space for cycles, for the organic unfolding of life. For curiosity, for the unknown, for rest.

Remembering our cyclical nature 

When in fact, all of nature (including you and me — we are Nature!) is organic, fluid, cyclical, spiralling, flowing. Logic is the last word I would use to describe the divine unfolding of creation.

Women have become detached from the Earth and her rhythms, and from our own nature as cyclical beings moving through many different phases of life. From the cycles of death and rebirth that happen every month for menstruating women, to important thresholds like menarche, pregnancy, birth, motherhood, and menopause. We focus so much on being equal to men, when in fact we are so different — in so many ways.

The forgotten wisdom of rest 

Furthermore, rest has become such a commodity that it now needs to be taught by therapists and coaches, and the importance of rest has to be repeated again and again until we finally get it. Or worse, it gets scheduled into our busy diaries as another thing on the to-do list. (Well done, system! We became your little robots functioning 24/7.)

Rest is an inevitable part of nature and of our human experience. Nothing in nature lives forever. Everything is cyclical. Everything has a cycle of birth, growth, bloom, decay, and death. Yet death, decay, and ageing women are meticulously hidden, while youth, productivity, and “full potential” are prioritised. Rest becomes something we resist, and then we suffer — through burnout, depletion, and the pressure to constantly be on the go.

Pause… Rest…

Rest is an inevitable part of life. You can see it in the seasons each year. There has to be a moment of pause and reset, like winter. What seemingly looks dark, empty, and cold is in fact crucial for spring to bloom and summer to blossom, and for autumn to decay — making a whole circle and ending up in winter again, a time of rest and renewal preparing us for yet another yearly ride.

If we don’t create moments of pause, simplicity, and pleasure, we don’t fully recharge ourselves and end up running on empty.

Women’s cyclicality beautifully mirrors the seasons of the year. When we bleed, we enter our inner winter — a time of deep rest. Our womb is bleeding. It is like a little energetic death (or not so little, for some). When we come out of that phase, a new energy begins to stir: freshness, becoming, more openness, rising energy — that’s your inner spring. We socialise more willingly, feel confident, beautiful, capable, and full of energy when we ovulate — we are in our inner summer. Inner autumn is the time of inward attention, reflection, and sometimes the need to tidy everything up before our next bleed.

Throughout the month our energy levels change, hormones shift drastically, and even the brain changes throughout the menstrual cycle. Do you still want to perform in exactly the same way every single day?

Healing ourselves, healing the Earth 

I believe that when women start connecting with their menstrual cycle and honouring the different phases of their lives, things in our society begin to change. When we come back to the wisdom held in our wombs — the seat of creation, the bridge to the divine — we may begin to understand the importance of living in the organic rhythms of life. Of creation and death.

We may focus more on tending to our soils, because when the soil is fertile, our food is rich in nutrients, and we are nourished, strong, and healthy.

We may focus more on keeping our waters clean, because water is life… just like life is created in the womb.

A gentle invitation 

Begin your journey by placing your hands on top of your womb, in your lower belly. Take three intentional breaths into your womb. Breath in through your nose, exhale through your mouth, lips gently pursed, blow the air steadily and slowly. The key here is to extend your exhale. And feel into what’s below your hands… Don’t think it, feel it 😊

If this sparked something in your belly, in your womb, I’m a Menstrual Cycle Educator and Womb Massage Therapist. I’m devoted to helping women fall in love with their cycle, live more cyclically, and awaken the wisdom of their wombs. You can find out more about the way I work on my website.