I had my periods this week.
I don’t have an internal clock or tracking, so they often arrive as visiting guests: “Oh we were visiting your friends in the neighborhood, and it’s been a month since I have seen you so here we are!”
On the night before my periods, I was reading an article [1] on Substack about unclenching. And I have long known clenching to be my default state. Eighty percent of my waking time, I am clenched, the article was a reminder and how it affects our body, I read half of it and fell asleep.
I woke up the next day with period cramps and decided to apply the article? And I am weirded out by it, that it worked?! I personally cramp a lot on my first day of periods, they are the worst and I hate them. They can be painfully debilitating at times. So I lied down and consciously relaxed my body and put my hand on my stomach, the self-touch was gentle, warm and caring and when the cramp came instead of fighting it internally, I let it through and it felt better. But when I was not paying attention I’d reflexively fight back the cramp making it worse, so it took me some time to relax and let it wash over me. It was good in a weird way.
Since the first day was a huge success and I was “filled” with weird wholesome feelings, next day I decided to work! And that backfired, as I was sitting on my desk and looking at the nvim code, I started to cramp real bad, I realised that while working I had started clenching again, which aggravated the cramps. I took a break and focussed once more on relaxing, which helped.
I was using a heat pad on the side, I have macho-ed through this for the past twenty-seven years of my life, I am gonna provide whatever help I can to my body.
My first experience of unclenching, I’d like to think of it as full body relaxing, was when I came back from Vipassana, my chest-support straps kept falling off my shoulders, which was weird because they could not all have worn out at the same time. I realised that my shoulders were relaxed, and the size of the strap was adjusted for tensed up state.
I know how weird it is say, but I had a good run of periods this time. Touchwood! I am planning to repeat this experiment and post an update.
Cheers,
Calra
P.S. a mini-rant (Note: this bit was added later in the article)
I hate how the period adverts when I was growing up were mostly around, wear these magical pads with wings and play all the sports, it is not impossible, but trust me, it’s very physically taxing especially in the first two days. The body is still doing the hardwork, think if there were an advertisement for fever going like, “hey wear this icepack for fever and go play football!” the body is still exhausted, you can still play football but it is not recommended, it’s an exaggeration, I get it, but you must understand where I am coming from. I am sure, the original ads were trying to fight against the older traditions and taboos of “keeping women (read it as people who menstruate) indoors”, reminds me of a line from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, either women are treated as divine or inferior, protected, never just human. Sad.
[1] How to Unclench
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