What You Need to Know About the 4 Menstruation Phases – Cora

I also didn’t know enough not to be shocked the first time I saw discharge in my underwear.

What in the…? Disgusted and scared, 12-year-old me thought my body was broken. Eventually I learned that discharge was normal, but I still had no concept for what it was or why it was coming out of my body during certain times of the month. I was in my late twenties before I began to understand that there are actually four menstruation phases—and that my cycle is so much more than bleeding.

In understanding these phases and harnessing the unique energy from each one (a statement I would’ve deemed ridiculous even a few years ago), I’ve learned so much about my body, my emotions, myself.

First things first. In order to understand how each phase affects you personally, I’d recommend tracking your cycle. This article provides basic information on how each phase may affect many women, but the information you’ll gain from keeping track of your own emotions, physical state, and mental wellbeing will be your most important data. It’s so comforting for me, on a day when my emotions feel particularly out of whack, to look back in my app and see that I was also {grumpy, vulnerable, angry, sad, anxious} on the same day in my last cycle, and the cycle before that. Once you begin tracking your cycle, you may find alignment with some of the characteristics of these feminine cycle archetypes: