Blood Blessings, Womb Conversations

In addition to talking about your menstruation in a way that’s most aligned for you, I invite you to talk to your womb and your menstrual blood. Inviting womb conversations is a powerful tool for those entering into conscious menstruation as well as those who have been in it for some time. Particularly those who have difficult cramping find making space to dialogue with and listen to their womb can be supportive to transformative process. If you’ve never spoken to or directly listened to your womb, a first step may be to make space for conversation to take place, suspending judgement about whether it is possible to hear your womb. What happens if you open space to imagine that the communication with your womb is possible?

As you enter into conversation, give yourself dedicated space and time. Turn off your devices, be somewhere you won’t be interrupted, give yourself a supportive, womb-like container to meet your womb. As you come into deeper attention and embodied presence, you might place your hands over where you understand, sense or imagine your womb to be. Let your hands listen bringing attention to inner being. You might greet your womb by saying hello. You might say hineni, ‘Here I am.’ My intention is to listen. Or, I want to share my experience and want to hear yours. I suggest first listening if you are able and seeing what emerges, what your womb has to say to you. You might ask questions: How are you today? What do you need? What do you want me to know? What have you been holding on to? What do you yearn to release? Is there a name you want me to call you? What are the ways you speak to me? How do you want me to take care of you?

Rechem, meaning womb in Hebrew, is the root of word for compassion, rachaman, which is also a Hebrew name for divinity - compassionate one - HaRachaman. In Arabic, the sacred phrase bismillah ar rahman rahim, in the name of the compassionate and the merciful, has similar roots in the womb.

What is it you want to say to your womb? What are stories you want share? Forgivenesses you want to ask? What is the frustration, anger, love, understanding or compassion you want to communicate? What do you want your womb to know? Let this communication flow through your womb through your hands, from your words out loud or internally, whispering a love story or some other story to your womb. Sharing and making room for your womb’s response, being in a dialogue, and making space for what emerges here.

Let this womb conversation not be a one time thing. Cultivate a regular practice of checking in with your womb. Maybe this is something you do every menstruation on your first day, maybe every day when you’re bleeding, maybe pre-moon time. Maybe you enter into womb conversation before or after a time of sexual engagement. Make a ritual of this practice. Listen to what your womb wants to share. Noting that many who we know or love may no longer have a womb, appreciating what it is to have a uterus in the place where a uterus is. When you speak with people who have bled it’s not a given that they have a womb. Hold wide appreciation for what it means to be in a body that bleeds.

You might have things in your menstrual tool kit that support your sacred womb conversation such as a special candle, scent, salves, soundtrack… things that support you courting your womb and honor your uterine space. Use them as a part of inviting this conversation.

The womb is understood to be an incredibly strong organ and at the same time to be an incredibly sensitive receptor, one that holds energy as it has capacity to generate new life. The uterus measures 3 to 4 inches by 2.5 inches. It has the shape and dimensions of an upside-down pear. Holding in your consciousness the multi-layered awareness that the womb speaks, that perhaps it may have been numb and is now becoming present on a deeper level.

For some, and in some cultural contexts, the womb is thought to be the center of gravity, the seat consciousness. Some push back against that, not wanting the reproductivity to be conflated with core power and yet there’s also so much wisdom in embracing the power in this place.

If practices of bleeding on the earth are too edgy or non-viable for any reason you might consider laying womb to earth, placing your body on the earth and letting your womb be held by the earth below. Letting your womb pulse with the pulsing earth.

Some find supportive practice in wrapping the belly and womb so that the uterus has experience of being held. In contemporary birthing communities, these are sometimes known as womb wraps, belly binding or even mummy tummy. In traditional cultural contexts, this practice has various names. In Mayan healing, a womb wrap is known as a faja (pronounced faha). In Malaysia, it is known as bengkung. While I’m not aware of traditional Jewish or Ancient Near Eastern practices of womb wrapping, the process of wrapping as sacred is one that is present in Judaism through the wrapping of tefillin, the leather boxes filled with prayer, that are wrapped on the forearm and forehead, as points of focus, as a support toward turning our attention to the sacred. Wrapping the body as tool for remembering, prayer, containment, focus and support of connection with the sacred is a Jewish practice, and I invite you to consider wrapping your womb if you need additional containment or support before, during or after your bleeding time. I find wrapping particularly energetically supportive during pre-bleeding time, and I prefer to leave my uterus and belly unconstricted when my blood has dropped.