Love Your Blood: How to Have a Next Level Period With Menstrual Cups

How enthusiastic are you about putting a small rubber cup in your vagina to collect your menstrual blood?

If your answer is not “Extremely Enthusiastic!!” then I invite you to reconsider, because menstrual cups are amazing and, I believe, the way of the future.

I started using a menstrual cup about a year ago. I was in Ojai, California, when I got my period for the first time in almost five years. I hadn’t so much as blinked at a tampon since before college, but something about leaving NYC and having lots of sex in the Joshua Tree desert apparently jumpstarted my lady parts, so there I was living out of a car, leaking blood and totally unprepared.

After my initial “OH GOD IT’S MURDER DOWN THERE” reaction, I ceded to my boyfriend’s suggestion that I get a Diva Cup. It sounded weird and awful, but he had a lot of weird ideas that turned out well so I went with it.

A lot of women are squeamish about menstrual cups when they first hear about them. I definitely was.

Yes, the cups are awkward to get in and out.

Yes, using one requires you to be a bit more intimate with your menstrual blood.

And I recommend them to anyone. I jump at the chance to talk about them to anyone who will listen, because I really believe they can improve women’s lives and make the world a better place.

1.    Budget. The Diva Cup costs like $40 at Whole Foods or $30 on Amazon. And then you’re done. No more buying boxes of tampons or pads. You can stop complaining about the stupid “luxury item” tax on women’s health products. (It is real stupid though.)

If you go through a box of tampons every two cycles, you’re probably going to spend like $80 on them every year.

2.    Environment. Tampons and pads are packaged in tons of plastic. All that stuff is just going to the landfill.

3.    Vagina health. Did you know that most tampons and pads are laced with dangerous chemicals? Chlorine bleach, pesticides, polyethylene, polypropylene, propylene glycol, etc. These are chemicals with serious, proven risks to your health.

You don’t want that in your yoni!! It is your sacred ever-expanding temple of bliss! It is a portal to the highest source of reality, embedded in your body! It absorbs stuff directly into your bloodstream! Don’t put chemicals there!!!

4.    No leaking. If it fits right! I’ve used the classic Diva Cup and a Mexican version that I got in Guadalajara, which leaked all the time and was much less comfortable to get in. (Sorry Mexico, I still love you.) But the Diva basically never leaks, even if I leave it in all day.

5.    Feeding your plants. Menstrual blood is an incredibly potent substance, filled with nutrients and vital energy. (It was going to grow a baby, right?) Instead of throwing it out, collect it in your cup, pour it on a plant and watch it grow. J

6.    Love your blood. Who said we have to be grossed out by menstrual blood? Why is the stuff of life, the materialization of creative power, something we should be ashamed of?

It’s no secret that our society has a problem with female power. The system of Western Christian/post-Christian capitalism runs on fear and suppression of feminine energy and sexuality. It looks so open and progressive, but scratch the surface and it’s the same old Puritan prudishness.

Women are either virgins or whores. There’s not much space for the Goddess when corporations are hijacking sexuality to sell stuff.

Anyway, this whole capitalist machine is telling women that we have to be ashamed of our bodies. We’re only acceptable if we fit into a neat little box with a pretty pink bow around it. Our feminine power has to be shut down, ignored, kept in the dark.

I’m calling bullshit. Love your body. Love your blood. Love Shakti in your body. Love Shakti in the rhythms of the world, the pulsing of the moon and the seasons, the swinging hips of elephants, the bliss of skin bathing in sunlight.

Look closely at your blood. Meditate on it. Watch the changing colors and textures, different every day as your cycle waxes and wanes.

Bless the liquid in your little cup, and never be afraid.

Cup tips

When I got my first menstrual cup in Ojai, I spent probably half an hour in the bathroom, trying to get the thing in.

I don’t know what I was expecting but it was much larger and firmer than I had in mind. Usually that’s a nice surprise when you’re about to put something in your vagina, but I’m not going to lie, putting the cup in for the first time is tough.

You have to kind of fold it and (very important!!) relax your muscles to let it slide in and pop open. The instruction diagrams actually make it seem more complicated than it is.

Once it’s in, you can kind of squeeze it or squat and hug your knees to get it to sit right.

It feels weird going in and out but once it’s settled you really don’t feel anything!

There’s definitely a learning curve though. Getting it out also takes some practice. It’s some combination of pushing, pulling it back and forth to break the suction and relaxing enough so you can pull it straight out. Be prepared for some blood spillage the first few times.

There are a lot of menstrual cups on the market now. TheSweethome.com has a nice review of different ones for different vagina shapes.

After your cycle, sterilize the cup in boiling water for 5-10 minutes. Don’t use soap!

So that’s the menstruation cup. You can get one at most health food stores, Whole Foods or online. And now, a poem from Yeshe Tsogyal:

The Supreme Being is the Dakini Queen of the Lake of Awareness!
I have vanished into fields of lotus-light, the plenum of dynamic space,
To be born in the inner sanctum of an immaculate lotus;
Do not despair, have faith!

When you have withdrawn attachment to this rocky defile,
This barbaric Tibet, full of war and strife,
Abandon unnecessary activity and rely on solitude.
Practice energy control, purify your psychic nerves and seed-essence,
And cultivate mahamudra and Dsokchen.

The Supreme Being is the Dakini Queen of the Lake of Awareness!
Attaining humility, through Guru Pema Jungne's compassion I followed him,
And now I have finally gone into his presence;
Do not despair, but pray!

When you see your karmic body as vulnerable as a bubble,
Realising the truth of impermanence, and that in death you are helpless,
Disabuse yourself of fantasies of eternity,
Make your life a practice of sadhana,
And cultivate the experience that takes you to the place where Ati ends.

Do Yoga Naked

Take off your shoes.

Press your feet into the ground. Feel the earth, the floor, your mat. Feel the pull of gravity, in love with your weight.

Take off your clothes.

Stretch and move without fabric nagging at your skin. Let the sunlight soak into your bones. Let air run over all the parts of you that are usually covered. Let the chill autumn air touch you. Let sweat roll down you.

Forget what you look like. Forget what you are doing. Close your eyes. Stay in your asana and forget everything else.

The breath comes in. Pause. The breath goes out. You are empty. You are full. You are empty.

Take off your lover’s clothes.

Look into his eyes, see how happy he is to see you naked with him, how happy you both are that there is nothing else in the universe. How long have you been looking for each other? How much have you both yearned to be alone together, breathing each other’s breath?

Take off your memories when you look into his eyes. Take off your identity when your skin touches, when you merge into a single being, turned inward, a complete circuit of energy running up your spines.

Make art when you make love. Fall into the infinite. Every door is open for you. You are whole, you are in the Garden, you can heal the world.

Make magic. Make bliss.

Take off your shoes, God said to Moses when he approached the burning bush.

Take off your habits, take off your expectations, take off your limits. Your patterns belong to the mundane world and they bind you to it, you must give them up if you want to enter the reality of the divine.

Take everything off when you go into meditation.

Be alone with God, be naked with your Beloved.  Don’t wear your personality, don’t hide yourself behind your thoughts and your history, all the little fragments of your being that push for attention. Don’t bring them with you.

You are here to make love with the Divine. Your soul is singing for it.

The Beloved wants to be alone with you. It is only You and You and You in the silent space between the worlds, a space made for You and for only You and not one thing more or less.

Anuttara. There is nothing higher. There is nothing lower. There is no second. There is nothing but this, in heaven and earth there is nothing else.