According to traditional Chinese medicine here are a few things you can do during your period to make it a more pleasant experience ✨

1. During your period, stay warm. Never sit directly on cold concrete or the cold ground. Do not swim in cold water during menstruation. Use a heating pad and mild stretching to alleviate cramps and low back pain. Avoid cold beverages and foods generally, but especially during this time. Drink hot herbal teas. Cold causes stagnation in the body as in nature. Cold freezes liquids by slowing down molecular movement.

2. Avoid vigorous exercise and sexual intercourse when bleeding. Meditative slow Tai Qi, gentle yoga, and walking are all excellent during the bleeding phase of your cycle.

3. Practice meditation, exercise regularly and use acupuncture to prevent pre-menstrual phase physical and emotional symptoms. If you need to, see a therapist. The anger and sadness that can appear and seem so “irrational” pre-menstrually are from your own mind and heart. The hormones may exaggerate what is there, but they can only work with what is inside you. They make it impossible to repress the stuff we otherwise ignore so as to keep going. Like the way, stuff comes up in dreams.

4. Use Moxabustion to warm the Uterus. You can have your acupuncturist do this, or do it yourself at home. Hold the moxabustion stick near your skin without burning yourself just over the uterus and ovaries. Have a friend hold it over your sacrum. It feels really nice. Otherwise use a heating pad. In Indonesia, after childbirth, they used to place women close to the fire to regain natural warmth lost by bleeding.

5. Take Chinese herbs that regulate your menstrual cycle if necessary, for heavy bleeding, irregular cycles, pain, PMS, ovarian cysts, fibroids, and endometriosis.

6. Use Sanitary Napkins, not tampons. Some women who dislike tampons like the menstrual cup instead of tampons. I am not sure that the cup causes any less stagnation of Qi than tampons–one collects the blood in a cup, the other soaks it up like a sponge. But many women I know say the cup feels less obstructing.

The bleeding period of our cycle can be a time of inferiority and reflection and should be treated with the same respect all of nature’s cycles deserve. Treat the emotional stuff that comes up seriously. Your period is a time for release and reflection. Take it as an opportunity to look at things you are normally too busy to.

This a time when a woman is the most receptive spiritually but also losing her life force energy at the same time. If you have a man in your life, this is a good time to ask him to step up to the plate and take over more of the domestic duties so you can rest, stretch, read a book, meditate, and take care of yourself. Probably you do that for him other times of the month, right? Teach your mate, male or female, to do acupressure massage on your mid back just below the rib cage along with the muscles lateral to the spine during or before bleeding. Gentle massage along the sacrum can be lovely, too.