Related news

Do you really know your menstrual cycle? Do you know how the different phases of this process affect you? Thanks to the change of feminist perspective and the removal of taboos around something as natural as menstruation, a woman can know in depth what her body is like and learn to take care of it, respect it and take full advantage of the different states it passes through.

For many women, periods are one of the worst times of the month, but a new book can help learn in an easy and didactic way the body on these most special days and dismantle any negative connotation that has been applied to periods for years. With Journey to the menstrual cycle (Bruguera Publishing House), the ppsychologist in education and sexual health Anna Salvia teaches us to know our cycle, understand why we feel different ways throughout the month and make the most of the different physical and mental states in which women find themselves at different times in his life.

“Most Western women we don’t know our cycle We don’t even know how to handle it. We don’t know how to get to it, quite the opposite, we try to ignore it, fighting to always be the same and reducing it to a mere bleeding that must be hidden,” says the writer and psychologist.

The tools

According to the author of the book, we need to pay attention to two useful tools: maps and travel notebook. The maps are informative texts and illustrations that explain what the menstrual cycle is, how it works and how you can enhance all its phases. A masterclass very necessary and recommended to all women.

The travel notebook is a method of self-knowledge in which the reader can write down the observations and reflections she makes during the journey in order to know her own cycles and learn to cooperate with them. In this way, she can follow the explanations of the book while we experiment and observing how our body changes as the days go by.

As Salvia explains, women go through three different life stages: childhood, the fertile stage and maturity; with transition periods between them: adolescence and perimenopause. However, “we usually enter these stages blindly (…) women feel lost because we do not understand our revolutionized emotions or our changing body,” she says.

Break the taboo

Menstruation is one of the human processes on which patriarchal cultures They have loaded more taboos. According to Salvia, this may be due to “the fact that it is a material and periodic manifestation of women’s sexuality,” aspects that have always been tried to “keep at bay.”

“In our culture, the taboo has mutated towards invisibility and concealment. pad and tampon advertising campaigns illustrate and intensify this desire that no one notices that we are menstruating”, not even ourselves, as she herself explains. “In general, the lack of knowledge we have about this bodily fluid is tremendous. What do we know about your texture, density, color, smell, flavor, quantity, duration? We don’t dedicate a second of time to it, we just want it to disappear and pads and tampons are an ally designed so that we don’t have to touch or see it,” the author denounces.

For this reason, Salvia proposes observe the fluid and see how it changes. Stopping to observe and being interested in knowing gives women clues about what happens to their body as the days go by. With this book you create a cycle diary, so you can later analyze the changes that the body experiences and How it affects women physically and mentally. A journey so that women can finally know themselves, in every sense, and stop feeling ashamed or rejected for something so natural as it is a fluid that emanates from the body itself.

Follow the topics that interest you