When you think of the word "womb" what comes to mind? Pregnancy? Birth? Periods? Menopause? Or maybe nothing at all. Your womb does all of these amazing things without us even thinking about it. Yes, these are beautiful things and processes our body does for us, but that does not mean that these cycles are easy. Throughout my life, I have struggled with having bad periods from a young age. In middle school, I would bleed heavily for ten days straight. This cycle continued throughout high school, but my nausea had increased heavily. During the school year, I would have to stay home from school during the first 2 days of my period because I would be vomiting due to how terrible my cramps were and the intensity of my nausea. Naturally, I went to the gynecologist to talk to her about how terrible my symptoms were and how badly they were affecting my everyday life. And just like that, from the ripe age of 18 I was put on hormonal birth control. No tests were done to check my hormone levels, no ultrasound was done to see if I had polyps or cysts on my ovaries. I was simply handed a prescription that is directly linked to cardiovascular disease, migraines, hypertension, and so much more (https://doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2012.3955).
Even though I am against the use of birth control due to the medical studies that have been formed around the use of it, I absolutely condone the necessity of it in regards to the advancement of women and the LGBTQ community. Without birth control and access to family planning, women would not be where we are today. Women's access to contraception and education is directly related to the pipeline to poverty. In an article produced by the National Library of Medicine it states, "In pooled-survey estimates with all controls included, having not used contraception consistently is associated with a 42% higher odds of poverty after birth" (Zvavitch, 1). With this knowledge, what does this mean going forward? There are other ways to track your cycle and when you are most likely to be fertile. Your ovulation window, which is about 3-5 days out of the month, is the time in your cycle where you are most likely to be fertile. This can be tracked by taking your basal body temperature and your cervical mucus to tell when your body hits that point of high fertility in the month.
After years of being on birth control, I no longer had any symptoms of these bad periods. No cramps, nausea, or heavy bleeding. You would think that this would be amazing news, right? Wrong. I went back to acupuncture in 2023 after being on birth control for six years and slowly learned more and more about how birth control actually stops the natural flow of your period. Your first thought might be, "But I still get my period on birth control!". Yes you still bleed on birth control, but it is actually a withdrawal bleed. This is a "fake bleed" that your body produces while being on hormonal birth control AKA this bleed is not the one that is naturally produced from your body. The reason behind this is that birth control stops ovulation (remember ovulation is that peak fertility window). Ovulation is stopped which simply throws your natural cycle out the door completely. No ovulation= no period. This is where that fake withdrawal bleed comes into play. In conclusion, birth control is a band aid to any bad period symptoms you may have before going on it! After learning this, I stopped the use of hormonal birth control and began to track my cycle naturally. At first, all my bad period symptoms came back for several months and it was terrible. Going to acupuncture has provided me with the tools to slowly slowly heal my body one day at a time. My cycle is nowhere near symptom free, but I feel so much better knowing that I am continuing my journey to heal my body naturally through things like cyclical living and acupuncture.
During this journey, I have fallen completely in love with the energy that the womb space holds. The womb holds creativity, sexuality, sensuality, play, freedom, intuition, and so much more. Things like birth control, sexual shame, patriarchy, body dissociation, and so much more block us from tapping into this special wisdom that the womb innately holds. Due to the lack of knowledge around the physical and emotional aspects of the female body and womb space, I am absolutely ecstatic to help people connect with their womb space and all of the untapped potential it has to completely changed your life. From shedding shame around what society deems as beautiful, to tapping into your innate creativity and intuition, I am extremely passionate about holding space in my Womb Wisdom and Awakening the Feminine classes. More to come about everything under the sun, and I look forward to seeing you on the mat.
Citations:
Zvavitch, Polina et al. “Contraceptive Consistency and Poverty after Birth.” Population research and policy review vol. 40,6 (2021): 1277-1311. doi:10.1007/s11113-020-09623-6
Love always,
Karen
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