Menstruation is a very mystical and enigmatic phenomenon that has been both feared and revered throughout history. The changes and happenings that occur in a woman’s body, mind and spirit throughout the month are both profound and deeply mysterious. As a woman experiences her body’s cycle, her emotions change, her body changes and so do her dreams. Menstruation has long been thought of as a very powerful time for dreaming for women. A woman’s moontime is also her dreamtime. Evidence supports that from ovulation to actual menstruation, dreams and “dream imagery undergo changes throughout the menstrual cycle.”[1] Hormones have an important role to play in the vacillating and cyclical patterns found in a menstruating woman’s dreams. According to the Carleton College Psychology Department’s study on “Sleep and the Menstrual Cycle”, “the dreamer’s physiological state, particularly resulting from hormonal fluctuations, contributes to brain activation, and thus, determines the dream contents.”[2] In this paper, I will analyze the meaning of menstruation, examine the phases of the menstrual cycle and their hormonal effect on dreaming and dream content, and assess the importance of dreaming at all phases of the menstrual cycle.
The actual word menstruation “comes from the Greek menus meaning both moon and power, and men meaning month.”[3] Women have realized from the beginning of time that they are innately connected to the moon, and women’s bodies and menstrual cycles are in alignment with the moon’s waxing and waning cycles. The moon controls the ocean’s tides as well as the ebb and flow of women’s monthly blood. Dr. Christiane Northrup explains that “scientific research has documented that the moon rules the flow of fluids (ocean tides as well as individual body fluids) and affects the unconscious mind and dreams.”[4] Like the moon that dies every twenty-nine days only to be reborn again, women also “‘die’ at menstruation; a part of us that hasn’t come to fruition or being conceived dies off and is released.”[5]
Before the onset of electricity and unnatural lighting, women used to bleed together with the moon, “ovulating at the full Moon and bleeding at the new Moon.”[6] Northrup explains that “Even in modern society, where we are cut off from the rhythms of nature, the cycle of ovulation is influenced by the moon.”[7] Rates of conception are still at their highest during the full moon, and at the new moon, “ovulation and conception rates are decreased overall, and an increased number of women start their menstrual bleeding.”[8]
Many different cultures have special instructions and taboos for women during their bleeding time. Many indigenous cultures had moon lodges or bleeding tents where women would retreat to during their monthly moontime. Spider writes that “in ancient times, the women’s Bleeding Lodge was a structure set apart from the rest of the community where women would go to dream and communicate with the Ancestors when they were bleeding.”[9] Dreaming was an essential part of menstruation. Judy Grahn explains that “dreams were believed to be given by the moon, and evidently also by menstruation.”[10] Different cultures also have had varied beliefs about women’s dreaming during this time. Grahn explains that “in many menarchal seclusion taboos, the menstruant was forbidden to sleep because she must not dream during this numinous time.”[11] In other cultures that honored menstrual seclusion, a woman was encouraged and expected to share her dreams and visions.[12]
So how does menstruation affect women’s dreams? One answer can be found in the fluctuation of key hormones during menstruation. The menstrual cycle is divided into two phases: the follicular phase, or the weeks leading up to ovulation and the luteal phase, or the weeks leading up to menstruation. During the days leading up to ovulation, levels of estrogen, or the chemical hormone that plays “an essential role in the growth and development of female sexual characteristics and the reproductive process,”[13] are at their highest. It has been found that “high levels of estrogen result in increased sense of wellbeing due to its effects on serotonin and norepinephrine levels in the brain.”[14] Ovulation is a time of action, social activity and mental and artistic creativity. Susan Roberts explains that in the “creative or “light” phase—ovulation—this power can be used to conceive artistic of intellectual offspring as well as actual biological children.”[15] During this ovulatory and follicular phase, it has been reported that women experience more positive emotions in their dreamscapes and during their everyday life than during any other point of the cycle. The most commonly reported dream imagery during this phase contains heterosexual dreams, aggressive themes, dreams of having babies or the fear of giving birth.[16]
According to Northrup, “the weeks following ovulation lead up to the menses; this is the evaluative and reflective time, looking back on what is created on the negative or difficult aspects of our lives that need to be changed or adjusted.”[17] The luteal phase gives rise to progesterone levels. Progesterone is responsible for preparing the body for either conception or menstruation. “Progesterone is sometimes referred to as the ‘feel good’ hormone due to its mood-enhancing anxiolytic, calming effects.”[18] Progesterone is reported as having profound effects on dreaming and dream recall. The Carleton College Psychology Department has found that “during the luteal phase, when progesterone levels are high, dreams are reported to have a higher degree of vividness, imagery, specificity, and concreteness.”[19] Progesterone also enhances dream recollection and memory function. “The enhanced memory activation produced by progesterone may result in a higher degree of incongruity of premenstrual dreams.”[20] Dream content in the luteal phase most commonly contains very high maternal content, anger, hostile and stressful themes, transformation and themes of change, as well as highly sexual content, particularly during the menses.[21] It is also found that “dreams become significantly lengthier and more complex during the premenstrual phase when both estrogen and progesterone are concurrently present.”[22]
There is a significant connection between premenstrual symptoms and the amount of sleeping and dreaming that occurs during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove explain that it has been discovered “that premenstrual symptoms are worse when women can’t sleep enough and improve when they are allowed to sleep more than usual.”[23] It has been found that the REM (rapid eye movement) dream sleep stage “increases towards the end of the cycle, around days twenty-five to thirty.”[24] As Rosemary Ellen Guiley explains, “we need to dream,”[25] otherwise we could “develop physical, mental, and emotional difficulties.”[26] It is apparent that the need to dream is even more dire for premenstrual women. Shuttle and Redgrove ask a very important question,
Since dreams are the ‘royal road to the unconscious’ and to our unrealized selves, what perilous matter do these premenstrual dreams contain that produces strong physical and nervous reactions during the day, when dreams are not being dreamed, and which when given more chance to be dreamed, reduces these waking symptoms of premenstrual tension?[27]
In my research, I have discovered that there are very few studies conducted on the topic of the menstrual cycle and dreaming. Perhaps this is due to the fluctuation of hormones in each different woman. Perhaps this in part due to the lack of research on women’s reproductive organs, cycles and health in general. Perhaps this is due to the oppression of women’s power, starting with devaluing women’s natural cycles and the power women contain within their own cells. Or perhaps, as Shuttle and Redgrove suggest, “is it because too few women are allowed to believe that dreams themselves are important, and therefore when they have dreams they do not consider them much, all the less so if they are strange and frightening?”[28]
As a woman that struggles with menstruation due to the physical pain and complications it causes, learning to honor, embrace and understand my own menstrual cycle is very important to me. Struggling with endometriosis over the past few years has made me very aware of my body’s cycles and its changes throughout the month. Learning to pay attention to my own dreams and dream imagery has made me even more aware of my body’s hormone cycles, which gives me insight into where my body is at any given point in time during my cycle. I have realized that my dream cycles are very much in alignment with what the dream imagery studies have shown. Understanding my own dreams and my connection to the moon allows me to become aware of my own fertility, creativity, and bodily happenings. I am also learning how to take better care of myself by understanding what my dreams are trying to tell me.
Roberts explains that “the menstrual cycle is the missing link between women and empowerment.”[29] The menstrual cycle allows women to access layers of their biology and their subconscious that only a cyclical feminine form can provide. The dreams across the month, the cycles of the moon, and the cycle of menstruation allow women to access the archetypal feminine energy that can provide self-empowerment, self-expression, self-healing, and self-awareness. Oswell adds that when dreams are “shared with others and acknowledged for their messages, they can be the active ingredient in our menstrual alchemy.”[30] Dreaming just might also be the cure for undesirable effects of premenstrual syndrome, for “menstrual distress seems to be at a minimum when dreaming and the sharing of dreams is at a maximum.”[31]
From a woman’s corporeal connection to the moon, to the influence of different hormones that are present at different times of the month, women are intrinsically connected to their dreams. I believe that women need to become attuned to their own cycles, including the magnificent changing dream cycles that entrain with the moon, in order to reclaim their full power. Reclaiming our dreamtime during our moontime is one of the most vital steps to reclaiming our power as women.
[1] Carleton College Psychology Department, “Sleeping and Dreaming”, Sleep and the Menstrual Cycle, accessed October 9, 2012, http://guenishi.wordpress.com/dreams/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Spiraldancer, “Myth, Magic and Mystery”, Menstruation.com.au, accessed October 11, 2012, http://www.menstruation.com.au/contributors/moonflow.html.
[4] Christiane Northrup, “Wisdom of the Menstrual Cycle”, Christiane Northrup, M.D., accessed October, 9, 2012, http://www.drnorthrup.com/womenshealth/healthcenter/topic_details.php?topic_id=138.
[5] Felicity Oswell, “Wombmoon Woman,” Menstruaion.com.au, accessed October 9, 2012, www.menstruation.com.au/contributors/wombmoon.html.
[6] Spider, “Excerpt from Songs of Bleeding,” Moonlodge Wise Woman Center, accessed October 10, 2012, http://www.susunweed.com/moonlodge.htm.
[7] Christiane Northrup, “Wisdom of the Menstrual Cycle.”
[8] Ibid.
[9] Spider.
[10] Judy Grahn, Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press Books, 1993), 113.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Joanne E. Manson, “Estrogen,” Healthy Women, accessed October 11, 2012, http://www.healthywomen.org/condition/estrogen.
[14] Carleton College Psychology Department.
[15] Susan Roberts, “Blood Sisters,” New Age Journal, May/June 1994.
[16] Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove, The Wise Wound: The Myths, Realities, and Meanings of Menstruation, (New York: Grove Press, 1988), 95.
[17] Christiane Northrup, “Wisdom of the Menstrual Cycle.”
[18] Carleton College Psychology Department.
[19] Carleton College Psychology Department.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove, 96.
[22] Carleton College Psychology Department.
[23] Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove, 91.
[24] Ibid., 92.
[25] Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Dreamwork For the Soul: A Spiritual Guide to Dream Interpretation, (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1998), 179.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove, 92.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Susan Roberts.
[30] Felicity Oswell.
[31] Ibid.
Bibliography
Carleton College Psychology Department, “Sleeping and Dreaming. ”Sleep and the MenstrualCycle. Accessed October 9, 2012, http://guenishi.wordpress.com/dreams/.
Grahn, Judy. Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Boston, MA:Beacon Press Books, 1993.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Dreamwork For the Soul: A Spiritual Guide to Dream Interpretation.New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1998.
Manson, Joanne E. “Estrogen,” Healthy Women. Accessed on October 11, 2012, http://www.healthywomen.org/condition/estrogen.
Northrup, Christiane. “Wisdom of the Menstrual Cycle”, Christiane Northrup, M.D. AccessedOctober, 9, 2012,http://www.drnorthrup.com/womenshealth/healthcenter/topic_details.php?topic_id=138.
Oswell, Felicity. “Wombmoon Woman,” Menstruaion.com.au. Accessed October 9, 2012, www.menstruation.com.au/contributors/wombmoon.html.
Roberts, Susan. “Blood Sisters.” New Age Journal, May/June 1994.
Shuttle, Penelope and Peter Redgrove. The Wise Wound: The Myths, Realities, and Meanings of Menstruation. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
Spider, “Excerpt from Songs of Bleeding,” Moonlodge Wise Woman Center. Accessed October 10, 2012, http://www.susunweed.com/moonlodge.htm.
Spiraldancer, “Myth, Magic and Mystery.” Menstruation.com.au. Accessed October 11, 2012, http://www.menstruation.com.au/contributors/moonflow.html.
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