22 Sacred Rituals for Honoring Your Menstrual Cycle

we all come from lineages that once upon a time revered menstruation as deeply sacred.

Blood mysteries are woven into the very fabric of all of our creation stories, of our world religions, and into the fairytales that whisper in riddles the mysteries of the long forgotten, shamed, and demonized red river of consciousness.

From the red wine sipped from the chalice (the womb) by Jesus and his disciples and in modern times sipped through holy communion, to the red apples that grow on the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, “nothing but the blood of Christ” can truly wash away and heal our sins.

This is the profound medicine of menstrual blood, that allows a woman to experience death and rebirth every month with the tides of the moon.

Ancient womb cultures all revered the womb as both the Cosmic Creatrix from where all is born, as well as a human woman’s individual power center. The place where she incarnates a soul into the Earth plane, and where she manifests her dreams into physical creations through her sexual desire.

A woman’s ability to bleed without dying was considered a magical power and it was understood that her oracular senses heightened during this dark moon time, when the mystical stem cells encoded with the wisdom of creation had peaked in their fullness and were being shed from her body to be offered back to the Earth for the well being of the entire community.

While our stories and current religious paradigms have been distorted to suggest menstruation is “unclean” and a woman is cast out of the temples during this time, originally women went into retreat during their bleeding cycle to allow themselves to channel the highest and deepest visions for collective healing. This was deeply respected and understood.

Can you imagine how differently you might have related to the onset of your menstrual cycle, all too often coined “the curse,” had this sacred gnosis been given to you in your younger years?

Despite what many of us have personally experienced and been conditioned to believe, our moon time is not a punishment for our “original sin,” a curse we inherited by product of being a woman, nor designed to be painful and insufferable. In fact, it is not only possible, but the right of every woman to experience menstruation as ecstatic, blissful, profound, deeply healing, and even orgasmic.

In Genesis the story goes that Eve’s punishment for eating the apple is to forever suffer through labor pains during childbirth and to bleed every month. When in fact, a woman’s fertility is the source of her power, her ability to create life from her own body, to gestate a sacred seed in the garden of her womb, and for our ancestors who lived in the times of the womb religions, both birth and menstruation were orgasmic initiations bringing a woman through the veil between the worlds.

Just as our Earth, the underworld, our feminine mythos, magic, and ancestral rites became barbaric, dirty, sinful, and shameful, so too did our blood, one of our greatest powers to restore and to heal, become a “curse” filled with taboo. The surest way to disconnect a woman from her own power is to convince her that this power is inherently impure and separate from God.

When a woman chooses to reclaim the holy nature of her menstruation, she heals not only for herself, but for her ancestors, our collective, and future generations.

There is an ancient Hopi prophecy that goes,"When the women give their blood back to the earth, men will come home from war and earth shall find peace.” Many women today are reclaiming the sacredness of their blood and choosing to rewrite the narrative that this time we’ve been told is a curse is in fact the greatest blessing we can offer our world.

It has been my personal experience that the physical pain, emotional turbulence, and challenges many women face during their moon time is the womb communicating through her the ancestral pain we have collected in a world that has forgotten our true nature. By remembering it once again, we not only alleviate ourselves from repeated suffering every single month, we open the doorway to profound connection with our Mother Earth and with the sacred cycles of creation. This is the immense gift, honor, and privilege we’ve inherited as women at this turning point in humanity.

Please enjoy these sacred rituals for honoring your own sacred moon time, share them with your sisters and daughters, and please do share with us in the comments any of your beloved menstruation rituals.

1
Yoni Steam A Few Days Ahead

I find that the enjoyment of my menstrual cycle largely depends on the preparations that precede it. One of the most beautiful, sacred, and ancient ways we can prepare for releasing our moon blood is through yoni steaming. If you’re new to yoni steaming, this is a self care practice dating back to ancient Egypt. Much like facial steams help clear skin, open the pores, release tension, and leave skin feeling supple and revitalized, yoni steams offer cleansing, healing, and revitalizing for the womb, vulva, and vagina (yoni). Yoni steams help ease pelvic tension or contraction, release emotions, balance hormones, heal yeast infections, and even clear memories and imprints of past sexual experiences and partners. Preparing for your flow with a yoni steam during the week before your menstruation will help release stagnation to support a more easeful bleed with less cramping and discomfort.

For more information on yoni steams, I recommend reading this article.

2
Rest and Allow Space to Go Inward

In the modern world it can feel challenging to create time and space for solitude, sacred pause, and inner reflection. Our agitation, anger, and emotional eruptions that can accompany our moon time can likely be attributed to our heightened sensitivity and need for more rest, alone time, and self care. As women our energy is cyclical and needs to be honored this way. Like our moon we are feminine beings that move through phases of expansion and contraction. Creating space and time for sacred rest, pause, and introspection during the days leading up to our moon cycle and the first day of our bleed can help us align with the magic and power that wants to be given to us during this time and lessen our frustrations and emotional overwhelm that are inevitable when we are not listening.

3
Create a Womb Cocoon in Your Home

Especially if you have children or live with a partner or roommates, it’s important to create a sacred private space only for you. Traditionally a woman would leave her family and go to sit in the red tent with her sisters on their bleeding cycle, to have privacy and solitude to go inward during this sensitive time. This “isolation” was later skewed to say that a woman was exempt because she was “unclean” when really a woman was honored in how powerfully she was open for channeling and receiving guidance from the divine. To honor yourself in this way, create your own mini-red tent, draping red fabrics in an area of your home where you can go and not be disturbed, a place to sit for at least a moment of rest in your day away from the outside world and outer demands. (More on forming a red tent with your sisters below.)

4
Wear the Color Red

You can playfully communicate that you are on your moon time for those with eyes to see and wombs that know, by wearing the color red or crimson on the days that you bleed. It could be as elaborate as wearing an all red outfit or as subtle as red lipstick or a ruby stone pendant necklace.

5
Free Bleed Throughout the Evening

Allowing your blood to flow freely, unrestricted by tampons, pads, or even a menstrual cup, can be incredibly liberating and open the doorways to profoundly powerful shamanic dreaming. To free yourself from worrying about bleeding on your sheets and bedding, get yourself a set of dark red sheets to use specifically during your menstrual cycle and lay down a big thick red towel or blanket to lay on as you bleed through the night. You can then soak the towel in water the next day to collect your blood and offer it back to the earth or your garden in sacred ceremony. You can also soak your menstrual cloths to gather your blood if you are using those instead.

6
Give Your Blood Back to the Earth

When we give our blood back to the earth in an intentional way, we engage in the sacred reciprocity that is our relationship with our original Mother, connecting womb to womb. By offering our blood we communicate, “Thank you for all you give me, thank you for my life, and now I give my blood back to you. I seed my intentions into your soil and as I watch you cycle the seasons I blossom through the seasons of my womb. As within so without.” Giving your blood back to the earth is a powerful way to reaffirm your connection with nature, honoring that you are not separate from her, you come from her, you are her, you are her daughter. If you use a moon cup this is very easy to do, as the cup will gather your blood and you can remove the cup while somewhere in nature or in your garden. Otherwise, as I mentioned above you can soak your cloths in a jar of water and then offer your blood this way. I used moon cups for many years until one day my yoni said “no” and I have since honored that through free bleeding and menstrual cloths. To offer your blood back to the earth, go somewhere that feels sacred and intentional to you. Infuse your visions, dreams, or whatever you wish to release into your blood. Give thanks to your womb for restoration, healing, and new life. Pour the blood into ground and offer prayers and blessings to our earth and our humanity. Seal with the words, “from my womb to the earth womb may all be rebirthed in love.”

7
Offer Your Blood to a Body of Water

Much like offering your blood to the earth, you can also offer your blood back to the great feminine womb of the waters, especially the ocean if you happen to be near one. This is when wearing a moon cup is especially helpful as you can just remove your cup directly into the water while swimming, restoring the connection between the womb of Gaia and the womb of your birth. I consider this a mermaid ritual, honoring the emotional self, the watery self, the lunar self. You could also simply bleed freely while swimming naked in the water and recite any blessings or prayers or invocations that come to you.

8
Make Love With Your Beloved

It may have been written in the bible that it is a sin worthy of abomination to lay with a woman while she is menstruating, and makes a man forever unclean, however long before these words were written many ancient cultures considered menstruation to be the most powerful time for love making, opening the sacred couple into the rivers of womb enlightenment. Menstrual blood itself carries of the codes of creation, as it is from the clotting of the blood that the fetus forms, and it was once widely believed that this blood could restore a man to his original innocence. Much of this symbology lives within the stories of the holy grail, an enlightened womb, that only a noble man arriving in true reverence and devotion could access, and there he would drink the elixir of immortality. Today, modern womb shamans and tantric practitioners describe accessing altered states of consciousness through love making during times of menstruation, for both the man and the woman. If it speaks to you and you feel supported and safe, explore receiving your beloved during this time as a powerful act of reclaiming the sacred red river and opening to what deep wisdom your menstrual blood wishes to awaken within you.

9
Anoint Yourself With Your Blood

Blessing and anointing yourself with your menstrual blood is a powerful way to reclaim what has been deemed dirty and impure as exquisitely divine. You may wish to create a ritual for this, along with giving your blood to the earth, journaling intentions, or anything else that connects you to your feminine nature, and either collect some of your blood in a moon cup or receive it directly from your yoni. Offer yourself a blessing or wish as you paint your third eye, throat, heart, or anywhere else that calls to you with your blood. You may also wish to create patterns, designs, or art on your skin with your blood. To feel your primal wildness in union with your pristine holiness.

10
Take Homeopathic Doses of Your Menstrual Blood

Isn’t it interesting that the liquid once considered the nectar of immortality and the blood of Christ now makes many of us squeamish? On one hand, our blood has been labeled and demonized as impure, while on another the way in which we live in modern society as well as stagnation accumulated through trauma has added toxicity to our bodies and in turn all of our fluids that we release. For this reason, while drinking menstrual blood was once a common practice among womb priestesses, yoginis, and tantrikas, I recommend proceeding with caution and only after some time with yoni steaming and womb healing. If it feels right for you, you can begin to place small drops of your own blood (when it is fresh and a bright red color) under your tongue like taking a homeopathic medicine (which you are.) Just as we can give our blood back to the earth in sacred reciprocity, we can also receive our own blood to support our cellular understanding of where we come from. Modern science is now beginning to prove what ancient cultures already knew, that menstrual blood contains healing stem cells that can rejuvenate our energy and heal disease.

11
Bleed Directly Onto the Earth

We were never meant feel separate or cut off from the Mother, Gaia, our earth, and yet many of us may ache from this wound. Bleeding directly onto the earth, whether through dark clothing or without clothing, can literally bridge the illusion of disconnect between us and her. Our menstrual blood becomes a red river of reconnection, a flowing umbilical cord that roots us back into the earth. A dear friend of mine Hannah Dyson of Soul Seed Gathering shared with me once that an indigenous elder of the Kogi tribe of Colombia explained to her how westerners feel ungrounded and uprooted because their placentas were never buried into the earth at the time of their birth. These words resonated with me deeply, and I often feel when I am bleeding onto the earth that I am planting my own roots deeper down into the ground, reaffirming my right to be a daughter of nature. You may enjoy this womb meditation that supports that connection, which will be very powerful to do while bleeding directly onto the earth.

12
Indulge Yourself With Cacao Elixirs

The sacred Mayan Goddess Ixcacao has long been celebrated for her powers to melt open the heart and reconnect humanity with the sacred dance of life. Ixcacao herself is a fertility and womb Goddess, connecting us to the roots of life, and through this sustenance and abundance we naturally blossom open our hearts. Indulging in cacao during your moon time can help you invoke the spirit of Ixcacao as well as nourish your body with magnesium and antioxidants that pure raw cacao is rich in. I love to make a warm golden milk blend with coconut milk, raw honey, maca powder for balancing hormones, and a big scoop of cacao to drink during bathtime.

13
Receive Gentle Massage and Loving Touch

Nourish yourself extra by massaging your feet, neck, breasts, belly, whole body during this sensitive time of the month. You may enjoy warming up sesame oil with some essential oils or rose oils and massaging your whole body before getting into a bath in the evening. You may also enjoy receiving a massage from a trusted healer, friend, sister, or lover, honoring yourself as the Goddess you are.

14
Journal Your Visions and Dreams

The distorted perception that a woman is “unclean” during her menstrual cycle and thus is banished from temples, ceremonies, and the community at large, traces back to the true sacred ritual of a woman retreating during her moon time not because she was “unclean” but because she was so tapped into otherworldly dimensions and so connected to her deep power that she needed time and space to integrate her visions, emotions, and downloads. Have you noticed your dreams being especially powerful during your moon time? Do deeper desires come through more strongly? Does ancestral, karmic, or childhood trauma and grief seem to surface? This is a potent time to journal the visions, images, and messages that come to you, especially in your dreams. The deeper underworld and upperworld self is communicating with us loudly, and great transformation and rebirth can occur when we listen.

15
Sing, Paint, Write, Create

As we are literally birthing the layers our wombs have created during the last 28 day cycle, when we bleed it can be a powerful time to be creative. Rather than pressuring ourselves to be productive which may trigger more anger and agitation and pain during this time, we can allow ourselves to be playful. To sing medicine songs or whatever soothes our hearts. To paint our dreams without it needing to be anything for anyone but us. To write our stories and our poetry and our visions that help us to heal. To cook ourselves nourishing foods as an act of self love and self care. Creativity that feels nourishing rather than depleting can be a very helpful way to ease some of the grief and sadness that can naturally accompany the death cycle of shedding our menstrual blood. As we die something else is being birthed. Always.

16
Cry, Feel, Emotionally Release

In a collective culture where many of us have been discouraged and silenced in our deepest emotional states, it’s no wonder these feelings can bubble up and full on erupt at the surface during our moon time. Emotions are energy in motion. They have a tremendous ability to transform when we allow them to do their business and harness them in healthy productive ways. Reaction and repression prevent us from true transformation, and as we enter the cauldron of rebirth while shedding our blood, we can also unwind our reaction and repression patterns to allow these emotions to be our teachers and guides. Music, dance, breathwork, yin yoga, laying on the earth, these are all ways we can tap into our deeper emotions in safe spaces and allow them to purify us. Often we simply need to create an environment for ourselves that feels safe, and then the emotions can move freely and reveal to us their deeper wisdom and power.

17
Let Go and Shed Past Relationships and Cycles

As our wombs are literally shedding and regenerating, it is an incredible time to consciously shed and release past patterns, cycles, karmic relationships, and lovers who have physically and energetically entered us through the womb. When offering your blood back to the earth you may wish to also offer anything you are ready to release. Womb meditations are also potent during this time, and you may find it very powerful to simply sit with your womb, offer loving presence, and ask for anything that she may be holding to be seen by you. You may be surprised by what is still living there. As you unravel deeper layers, continue to release entanglements and reclaim your sovereignty over your birthing powers, your creative potential, your lovers, and your right to consciously choose.

18
Attend a Red Tent Gathering With Moon Sisters

The ancient ways of the red tent are reviving themselves once again, as women are coming together in sacred circle to hold, support, and honor one another during bleeding time. Many towns, villages, and cities across the world now offer these events and gatherings (research them in your area) and you can also create your own. To create a red tent gathering, invite friends and sisters you feel safe with, create a womb cocoon by draping red blankets, sarongs, and shawls over chairs (yep just like when you were a kid creating a fort) and explore some nurturing ways to connect with one another. You may wish to go around in circle and share from the heart while practicing compassionate listening without feedback, to draw oracle cards, to massage one another, to drink cacao, to gently and sensually dance, or simply to rest in a cuddle puddle and receive the physical coherence of community.

19
Lay Under the Moon or Night Sky

Communing with the lunar self and the night time self, the dark yin qualities of life, is equally as important as connecting with the sun self and the day time self, the yang qualities of life. And yet, we live in a world that does not allow much space for the yin. When we bathe beneath the moon and the stars, especially during our moon time, it helps us to reestablish our connection with the night and all of her medicine and magic. If you wish to regulate your moon cycle with the moon itself, moon and star bathing throughout the month will greatly support this! For many years I bled with the full moon through moon bathing, and eventually my cycle changed to bleeding with the new moon as I was guided deeper into the red current and the shadow side of nature.

20
Take a Shamanic Womb Journey

Your womb is an oracle and while menstruating the crimson tides that govern our emotional and creative selves are at their peak. Vision questing through your own womb space is powerful any time of the month, but can be especially potent while bleeding. You can guide yourself through your own shamanic womb journey by listening to trance like music (I recommend listening to theta brainwaves or healing frequency tracks like 432Hz or 528Hz), placing your hands on your womb, breathing deeply into the space, and offering your deep full presence to the dark rich vastness of your womb. Ask to be guided, to enter into the deeper realms of your womb, and then simply trust and allow what you see. On one of my retreats years ago a woman asked me how she could see visions during our shamanic trance dance journeys to receive guidance from her intuitive self. I explained that everything we see is guidance from our intuitive self, we just need to trust it and allow it to take us deeper.

21
Birth a New Vision Into the Earth

This ritual came to me many moons ago while creating our divine feminine mentorship course Whole Woman, and I was delighted to discover it months later in the book Ixchel Wisdom channeled by Shonagh Home. What many of us may forget in the busyness of our lives and the normalcy of menstruating monthly, is that each time we bleed it is a birth. It is a full shedding of the lining that would have created a human being had insemination and implantation occurred at the time of ovulation. Releasing this blood into the earth as a seed of life, which it is, is a powerful way to birth our vision into the ground, to allow it to manifest in the outer world beyond our womb. Just as a child can seed and grow in our womb, our vision and can seed and grow into the womb of the earth. For this ritual, it’s very powerful if at the time of ovulation around two weeks before your menstrual cycle, you envision a dream or wish you have for your life or for our world. On the first day of your menstruation, go into your garden or out into the forest, and bleed directly onto the earth as an offering of that vision from your womb to the great womb of the Mother where it can be made manifest.

22
Allow Yourself to be as You Are

Choosing to simply be enough, as you are already, is a radical act of feminine empowerment at this time in our herstory. Perhaps the most important and healing thing we can do during our moon time is simply that. To just be. As we are. Here. Now. Worthy. Enough. As we are. Already.

How do you honor your moon time each month? Do you see it as sacred? A curse? A nuisance? An honor? Share with us in the comments below.

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