Bloody Moves: Dancing in My Lunapads on My Period

Our friend and Luna-user Arielle Egozi is here sharing a lil period wisdom with us all. Self-care is the fuel of the resistance. Follow Arielle on Instagram at @ladysavaj.

For the last six years I’ve had a pretty intense yoga discipline — like waking up at five am, six times a week intense. In the last year, I practice before work, at the much more reasonable hour of 7:30am, since I’m sitting at a desk all day. Moving truly eases my anxiety.  As someone who experiences dissociation almost always, it’s an hour of my day where I’m really focused on getting back into myself. When I don’t take the time to shake it all out, I notice how much faster repetitive thoughts spin through my mind and how tightly my tummy knots. I really need the time to move stagnant energy out of me.

Although I do my practice every day, it’s become a pretty sacred ritual that on the first three days of my period, I don’t practice. Instead, I get creative and find other ways to move. Usually that means I dance, and I’m never more in the mood to dance than when I’m bleeding. When the three days are up, when back to doing my practice and still menstruating, I notice my thighs burning because without realizing, I’ve been dropping it real low for the last song and a half.]

When I’m on my period, it almost feels like my body’s begging me to dance so it can use my shaking along with gravity to flush out my tissue, my blood, and anything that’s been pent up in my body for the last month. I wear my Lunapads undies and can’t help but watch my beautiful body do its thing in the mirror. I’m usually super bloated and feel like my legs are made of lead, but watching my hips grind and shake as my belly undulates while I’m almost naked, knowing the process my uterus is going through, is serious magic.

That’s not to say that it’s my period that makes me powerful — people have intuitive powers that have nothing to do with a uterus or menstruation — when I feel myself own my body and its spirit, even while society continues to attempt to colonize it, it transforms me.

When I feel myself own my body and its spirit, even while society continues to attempt to colonize it, it transforms me.

I feel the softness of the cotton on my skin, and if I’m wearing the briefs, I feel like some period pin-up chick. My curves accentuated, my belly feeling safe while it’s held snugly (if I’m not on my serious bloat days — on those days I use the hipster), and my vagina free-bleeding into the cotton gusset. I feel invincible as Drake is singing in Spanish on my speaker, and I’m doing body rolls in my underwear.

It doesn’t matter what my body looks like when I’m dancing, I’m feeling what it feels like, and my body feels so good. It feels grounded and powerful, flexible in some parts, stiff in others. It feels smooth and soft and strong. It feels alive.

Sometimes on my cycle, I can’t even fathom that I’m powerful enough to have energy to breathe, let alone have a dance party in my living room. On those days, I’m chillin’ on my floor pillows, surrendering into my need to slow down, and feeling the ease of not having anything shoved up inside me. I can free-bleed and just let my exhaustion pleasantly take over. I don’t push my body, I listen — or do my best to. It’s always a fine line for me around body stuff, as I’ve dealt with accepting my body as it is my entire life. Somehow it’s easier to accept my body when I’m on my period. I recognize it’s doing it’s thing, that it’s healthy, that it does so much for me, and it deserves to be unconditionally loved at every moment.

How could something, my body, that allows me to sink into music and find joy every day of the month, be anything but incredible? How could anyone have ever told me any different?

This isn’t always easy for me to feel, but I’m working on it.

After I’m done dancing and take my Luna Undies off, I look for the blood. By using my undies, I’ve been confronting not only my period blood, but the part of me that didn’t love me. The part that told myself my body was disgusting, was ugly, was too much. I look at the sweet sticky redness swirling in the toilet bowl and think back to moments before when I was gliding myself all over my living room rug. How could that be anything but beautiful? How could something, my body, that allows me to sink into music and find joy every day of the month, be anything but incredible? How could anyone have ever told me any different?

They were wrong, and they’ll always be wrong, so I put my Luna Undies back on and keep dancing.