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PhD title:​

 

The Embodied Menstrual Awareness (EMA) Toolkit; a prototype.​​

 

Field: advocacy via visual communication, social design, "Arts-Design Co-Physis", phenomenology, experiential, heuristic and haptic learning, embodied awareness, reproductive health (RH), research skills, arts-design praxis, data visualisation: drawing, diagramming, and encoding. 

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Research question:

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​Could “Arts-Design Co-Physis” methodology support menstrual education, in addition to understanding heuristic, menstrual cycle tracking and experiential, embodied menstrual awareness? Testing and improving the effectiveness of “The Embodied Menstrual Awareness Toolkit”, a prototype, and its dynamical method in a rigorous academic setting. 

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Abstract:

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Understanding menstruality is a human right, a socio-moral imperative, and in the UK, co-ed menstrual education is a curriculum “stat-

utory requirement”. Nevertheless, in schools there are no formal means to impart this knowledge, and, as clearly demonstrated in the research study, it is an unmet need. Ethical rights advocacy; the following research situates and addresses optimal access to menstrual knowledge for menstrual awareness entelechy. 

 

The Embodied Menstrual Awareness (EMA) Toolkit uses collaborative, Arts-Design Co-Physis (AD CP) methodology. Bifurcating from the co-design model, “arts-design” “co-physis” (with, by, in, nature), is riverly discursive – across a horizon of egalitarian, equitable interplay and expressive creativity. In Arts-Design Co-Physis, each project is reworked anew, responsive to a community of uniquely individual phenomenologies. The EMA Toolkit is a series of workshops about menstruality, featuring a choice of AD CP prompts for lesson plans, discussion points, and exercises. Using diagramming, geometry, and graphic elicitation, “co-researchers” can also learn to track, data visualise, and encode their uniquely singular menstrual cycle. 

 

Consisting of self-selecting, transdisciplinary, and matriculating undergraduate, master’s, and postgraduate research students, as well

as recent alumni and staff, the research study cohort tested the usefulness and transferability (rigour) of the EMA Toolkit and its method

across a wide heterogeneity of menstrual phenomenology. Ranging from adolescent to perimenopausal and postmenopausal, particip-

ating “co-researchers” presented an intergenerational, richly diverse, and international mix of ethnocultures and secular or non-

secular backgrounds. 

 

“I should've known all this earlier, it's too late for me”. 

   (Comment in the Research Study.)

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As corroborated by the research study, while The Embodied Menstrual Awareness Toolkit has inferred validity in women’s health comm-unity programmes, access to these initiatives is limited. Moreover, the research study found that adult (late) menstrual awareness peda-gogy is inopportune and not optimal.  

 

As “a vital sign”, understanding menstrual cyclicity is an intervention and life skill – supporting embodied cognition, menstrual wellbeing, reproductive health (RH), and RH autonomy and agency. Furthermore, earlier menstrual cycle tracking literacy (and self-monitor), intro-duces opportunities for pre-emptive medical engagement to protect RH and fertility, potentially lessening the severity and symptoms

of conditions such as amenorrhea, endometriosis, adenomyosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and heavy menstrual bleeding. Saliently, several research study participants self-reported experiencing these mostly progressive conditions. In a further finding, some

co-researchers positively shared their fertility awareness toolkit materials and daily, menstrual tracking diagrams with their male partners. 

 

Evaluating the EMA Toolkit, a prototype, “co-researchers” cross-examined evidence-based and empirical learning with the exploratory question: “What I should have known as an adolescent”. In the research study, co-researchers’ creative inquiry (Arts-Design Co-Physis), robustly supported arguments for an earlier introduction of a comprehensive menstrual awareness toolkit, specifically one that is co-ed,

inclusive, and within the school curriculum.  

 

Secondary school education is typical within the UK population, with 40% not acquiring “level three” (A-level equivalency) qualification.

For this reason (or possibly English being a second language), pragmatically, public health materials tend to communicate at an educat-ional level of Key Stage 4 (age 16). In 2022/23, 48.7% of UK menstruators under 25 were using long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) or oral contraceptives. Hormonal contraceptives and medications interfere with menstrual tracking, making the 15-16 year-old cohort optimal. So, for the most pervasive reach in menstrual education, this research, therefore, identifies and builds the case for a Secondary school Key Stage 4 and 5 (age 15-18) cohort within the Department of Education (DfE), Physical, Social, Health, and Econo-

mic (PSHE), Relationships and Sex Education, and Health Education (RSHE) – as PSHE RSHE has a whole school approach that is stat-utory for all pupils. Furthermore, once over 15, pupils gain the right to opt-in to sex education lessons and override their parents’ “right

to withdraw”.

 

Following PhD doctoral study, the next step would be funded research with a co-ed and inclusive cohort and/or a Fifth or Sixth Form cohort, (further) testing the toolkit's effectiveness in improving menstrual and reproductive health literacy. Intended to be free, the EMA Toolkit is a Creative Commons, low-tech toolkit that uses pencil-on-paper tracking, data visualisation, and encoding to increase phenomenological

or embodied understanding of menstruality. 

 

 

Introduction:

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Ethically, it is important to respect young people’s rights to access knowledge and awareness about reproductive physiology. Research findings indicate that globally, menstruation is a systemically neglected public health, social, and educational issue that requires urgent prioritisation, coordination, and investment. 

 

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and the UK government’s Department for Education draft “PSHE Joint Roadmap to Statutory RSE, 2020”, stipulate that menstrual awareness is a legal, adolescent human right. However, there are currently no dedicated PSHE Association accredited resources for schools to meet this statutory requirement. 

 

A group-based, Arts-Design Co-Physis toolkit, the Embodied Menstrual Awareness (EMA) Toolkit is intended to increase co-ed and inclus-ive understanding of menstruality, in addition to menstruating adolescents’ learning to track their menstrual cycle in PSHE, RSHE classes

in UK Secondary schools. Developed for Key Stages 4 or 5 (age 15-18), a series of practice-based workshops demystify female anatomy and the three stages of the menstrual cycle. A simplified version of the Sympto-Thermal Method, “the EMA method” tests the viability and efficacy of pencil-on-paper data visualisation as tool for understanding and tracking ovarian and uterine cycles – establishing their link to menstrual flow and connectedness to physiologically embodied changes. 

 

In the research study, through Arts-Designly Co-Physis heuristics, experiential learning, and reflexivity, co-researchers generated their

own design probes to visualise, encode, and track their menstrual cycle and uniquely affective data (rhythms, flows, and frequencies).

This supports notions of embodied cognition, a phenomenological, “as lived” understanding of menstruation, and encourages long-term care of the self, reproductive healthcare engagement, and agency. The value of this research is an encoded, paper-tracking diagram by each co-researcher for learning about their uniquely mutable menstrual cycle. Here, diagramming, graphic elicitation, and geometry are visual framework and interlocutor for menstrual awareness and wellbeing. 

 

The EMA Toolkit sensitively explores anthropological-historiographic and enculturated understandings of menstruality to allay menstrual-related taboo, stigma, fears, and shame.

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The EMA© Toolkit​