Managing PMS with Energy Medicine
When the miseries of PMS occur, keep life as calm as possible and be ready to use your energies to help ease uncomfortable symptoms away.
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) affects sixty percent of the women in the United States. It is a medically diagnosable disorder and, with extreme PMS, a women’s very sense of sanity may feel assaulted. Beyond the physical symptoms, it is for many women no less than a ferocious wrestling match with forces from deep within. Our culture has not been particularly adept in preparing us for this challenge.
Most women intuitively know that they are best served by going internal during the premenstrual part of their cycle. Cooperate! Do not schedule nonessential social activities. Keep life as calm and simple as possible. Applying energy techniques gives you powerful, simple tools for being more in charge of your life, more at peace and more able to deal with life’s challenges. Although they may seem like so many more chores added to your day, the thing is, they work. And they do not take long. They take less time than a brisk walk or most people’s driving time to the gym. Even practicing just one technique not only may help you feel better, immediately and palpably, but also may shift your body’s chemistry so that your journey through your monthly cycle is an adventure of the female soul rather than a fight with the female body.
Try familiarizing yourself with these techniques during the time of the month when you are not premenstrual so that you can use them with a minimum of effort. If you learn them during calmer times, you are much more likely to use them when you need them.
At the first bout of irritability, lethargy, bloating, or other sign of PMS, carve out some time and make yourself very comfortable. My preference is to be in a bathtub or hot tub. Immersing our bodies in warm water may be the closest experience we have to returning to the womb. It shifts your energy field so that your body is more receptive to healing and energy exercises that calm your hormones. Once you have relaxed a bit (lovely soothing music in the background enhances the experience), lie back in the tub, get completely comfortable, and do the Triple Warmer Smoothie.
When you are stressed, whether due to external circumstances or bodily disruptions such as those that are part of PMS, triple warmer steps into action. Triple warmer, you may recall, is designed to keep you safe by invoking the immune (or fight-or-flight) response and by maintaining survival habits. But because it evolved for a world that no longer exists, it is often on overdrive. During PMS, it is almost always valuable to calm the triple warmer energies that move through your body. This relaxes your entire energy system, releases tension, and reduces fear and anxiety. Fortunately, the Triple Warmer Smoothie is a quick and simple way to calm triple warmer and sometimes it is all that is needed.
The Triple Warmer Smoothie (time: 20 seconds)
Triple warmer energy starts at the tip of the ring finger, travels up to the neck, behind the ears, and ends at the temples. You can use the electromagnetic energies of your hands to readily calm overactive triple warmer energy by tracing part of this pathway backward. Here are the steps:
1. Place your fingers at your temples. Hold for one deep breath, again breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
2. On another deep in-breath, slowly slide your fingers up and around your ears, smoothing the skin while maintaining some pressure.
3. On the out breath, slide your fingers down and behind your ears, press them down the sides of your neck, and hang them on your shoulders.
4. Push your fingers into your shoulders and then, when you are ready, firmly drag them over the tops of your shoulders, and smooth them to the middle of your chest, with one arm resting on top of the other. This is the heart chakra. It brings you home to yourself.
5. Hold here for several deep breaths.
Techniques for Working with Physical Discomfort and Pain
Among the most common physical symptoms of PMS are bloating, breast tenderness, cramps, back pain, and groin pain. For cramps and many types of pain, people often instinctively circle their hand over the area of discomfort. There is a good reason to do this. Your hand can pull blocked or stagnant energy out of an area. Circling in a counterclockwise motion tends to draw out disruptive energy; circling in a clockwise motion tends to stabilize the energies that are there. Your hand does not even need to make physical contact with your body. Circle a couple inches above the area of discomfort in a counterclockwise motion and notice if you feel your hand pulling energy off your body. Shake your hand off from time to time, as if sending the excess energy into the ground. Once you are feeling even a little bit better, you can stabilize the improvement by circling in a clockwise direction.
Cramps
A procedure that specifically focuses on cramps is to massage the fourth acupressure point on the spleen meridian (see photo). Relax, position your feet so you can comfortably reach both, and simultaneously massage the points that are on the inside of each foot, halfway between your toe and your heel. Push up against the bone and massage in a counterclockwise direction for at least ten seconds and up to a minute. Then tap the points while taking two deep breaths. Meanwhile, massaging Liver 4 relieves pressure from the uterus and may also provide relief from cramps. Again, massage in a counterclockwise direction and then tap the points during a couple of deep breaths.
Sedating the Meridians Involved with PMS
Many of the uncomfortable symptoms associated with PMS are based on excess energy rather than not enough energy. This may seem counterintuitive because you may be feeling that you need more energy, which is also true. Here is how it works. When too much energy accumulates in certain areas of the body, the normal flow of energy is blocked, causing weariness and pain. When there is too much energy in one place, the flow stops, so there is too little energy getting to other areas. The reason too much energy may accumulate in an area is that when a meridian is being overworked (as happens with PMS), the meridian may overcompensate, or other meridians may feed it extra energy in an effort to support it.
A powerful way to help get blocked energy flowing again is to “sedate” the meridian pathway in which the clogged energy has accumulated. This makes it possible for the energy to start moving again and can provide tremendous relief while allowing your whole system to get back in balance. The procedure is similar for each of the meridians, though different acupressure points are involved with each. When you sedate a meridian, you place your fingers on the designated acupressure points, hold for a couple minutes (it is a firm touch but does not involve deep pressure or massage), and then hold a second set of points for about a minute. The meridians most involved with the physical symptoms of PMS include the stomach, small intestine, kidney, large intestine, liver, and circulation-sex meridians. Visit http://www.learnenergymedicine.com for more details and photographs of specific meridian points to sedate for various PMS symptoms.
Excerpted and adapted from Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine for Women (Revised Edition). New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.
Donna Eden is among the world’s most sought after spokespersons for energy medicine and her abilities as a healer are legendary. Her bestselling book, Energy Medicine, is the authoritative text in its field and recently won U.S. Book News “Book of the Year” award in the self-help category. Learn more about her books and classes at http://www.LearnEnergyMedicine.com.
