Menstrual Cycle Awareness (often shortened to MCA) is the practice of paying attention to the physical, emotional and psychological changes that happen throughout your menstrual cycle. Rather than seeing the cycle only as the few days of bleeding each month, we are acknowledging that we are cyclical beings, and the menstrual cycle as an ongoing rhythm that shapes many aspects of lived experience. For people who menstruate, the cycle is not just a reproductive process but also part of the...

The menstrual cycle, for those of us who live with it, is not as we have been taught; an inconvenience, something to be tolerated. It is a monthly invitation into embodiment, our emotions, our power, trauma healing, agency and Self-leadership. Yet so many of us have been socialised, implicitly and explicitly, to deny, override, or medicalise these rhythms. It still surprises me when I think about how I used to relate to my own menstrual cycle. Having spent years in therapy, having a regular...