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  • Today we’re sharing one of our most popular episodes from the archives - to tune into the outer winter here in the northern hemisphere… it’s all about how the inner winter of the menstrual cycle awakens feminine leadership…

    So the thing that originally inspired this conversation was that Sjanie’s period came very early the month before we spoke. She suddenly found herself bleeding on day 12 and she sad that the experience was akin to a zen meditation master slapping their student on the back when they’ve momentarily gone unconscious.

    She said was reminded that there is a wild intelligence within her that was outside of her control. This is one way that menstruation offers us a way into a radical kind of leadership. The reality that we don’t control it reminds us that we belong to something greater.

    So, in today’s conversation we explore inner winter as a gateway to leadership and why giving time to yourself at menstruation is positively dangerous! It will change your consciousness - and I think maybe that’s why this conversation has been so widely shared and enjoyed. It’s all about how menstruation can wake you up to what life wants from you.

    In this episode, we explore:

    How we understand the term Feminine leadership, and how the menstrual cycle leads us to it.

    The specific leadership powers that awaken at menstruation, including clarity about our purpose, an embodied experience of love and belonging, as well as expanded state of consciousness.

    A key next step for you, if you want to activate more of the power of menstruation in your life.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • Guided by the wisdom of deep rest at menstruation, Alexandra and Sjanie do a 'Big Bleed' retreat for Red School every year, a kind of short sabbatical. Even though Red School is a big eco-system, with a community of 1000s of people and a whole team taking care of many different pieces, they take the bold leadership move of pressing pause on it all, to allow for deep rest, and new inspiration.

    In last year’s winter Big Bleed, they had a big realisation - that they are both feeling called to take a much longer sabbatical, for three reasons. Firstly, because Sjanie is heading towards the end of her menstruating years and wants to plan for a year of menopause sabbatical.

    Secondly, because Alexandra is heading towards her mid-seventies and is ready to change the pace after the intense creativity of the past few years, and lastly because they want to start passing on the legacy of the menstruality work they teach at Red School.

    So today we explore the inspiration behind this sabbatical, how they are preparing for it, the impact it is going to have for Red School, and how you can take your own sabbatical too.

    We explore:

    Alexandra’s passionate desire for each of us to make the most of every single bleed we have as a mini sabbatical where we have an opportunity to enter altered states of consciousness - and the sobering truth that we only each get on average 451 cycles in our lifetimes!

    Why we must be disruptive and carve out time for real rest, because relentless productivity is addictive, it’s celebrated and to our egos it’s much safer to stay the same and keep trucking along.

    How Sjanie feels as she plans for her menopause sabbatical, and the challenge of having no idea what she and her Calling will look and feel like on the other side.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

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  • In Chinese Medicine, life progresses in seven-year cycles for female bodies, and each of these phases correlates to one of the five elements; water, wood, fire, earth and metal.

    Today Chinese Medicine Practitioner, Kris Gonzalez describes what it means for us to move from the earth element in our 30s to the metal element in our 40s, and what this transition can teach us about how to create more health and wellness in perimenopause, or The Quickening as Alexandra and Sjanie call it.

    Kris shares how by the age of 35, our bodies become less forgiving of unhealthy choices, and habits that once had little impact in our 20s may no longer be tolerated by our body, mind, and spirit, and she shares a wealth of practical guidance about how to take care of ourselves, with a special focus on the three major organs that come into play in perimenopause; the kidneys, the spleen and the liver.

    I especially appreciated her wisdom around how Chinese medicine gives us a map to explore what is happening beyond our hormonal changes in perimenopause - and dive into the spiritual dimension of this rite of passage.

    We explore:

    The “Three Golden Opportunities” for those of us with menstrual cycles (menstruation, postpartum and perimenopause) and why it’s so important to take care of ourselves during each one.

    How the metal of perimenopause gives us a metaphorical sword to cut away the overgrowth of the earthy years of our 30s, so we can see a clear picture of what truly matters to us, and where we want to use our energy.

    The importance if replenishing your ‘jing’ essence, what happens to our jing in perimenopause, and why we all need to live a ‘jing-centred life’, especially in our 40s by resting when we bleed, nourishing ourselves well during ovulation and protecting our boundaries in the inner autumn.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:

    Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Kris Gonzalez: @thewayofyin - https://www.instagram.com/thewayofyin

  • Today we’d love to invite you to dream with us for a moment… Imagine we could look ahead twenty years, to a world which fully honours the power and magic of the menstrual cycle and menopause… a world where the menstrual taboo has lifted fully, and the menstrual cycle is honoured as the sacred source of life for us humans.

    As you may well know, there’s a powerful menstrual revolution at work in the world… and today we’re exploring how it’s going to impact every aspect of life in the years to come, and how we each have a role to play.

    (And if you’d like to explore your role in this revolution, how you can channel your passion for cyclical living into your life, your work, and all the roles you play, we also share an invitation to join us for a free event on December 10th: What Could Your Menstruality Leadership - and Career - Look Like?)

    We explore:

    How Alexandra and Sjanie got started with this work, and went on to co-create their menstruality body of knowledge.

    A potent vision for what a truly cycle aware world could look like, and all the different ways that cycle awareness can enhance different professions and life roles.

    The impact of a world that honours the cycle and menopause for ourselves, our communities, and our planet.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • Menstrual cycle awareness has the capacity to create meaningful change in all areas of life, and today we’re exploring an aspect of our collective human experience which isn’t talked about enough...

    In a couple of days, it will be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and today our guest is Tamsin Fagan who has been doing the difficult, courageous work of ending violence against women and girls since she was 19.

    Tamsin is a women's safety advocate, womb medicine woman, a menstruality leadership programme graduate and ceremonialist and today, she shares her personal story of domestic violence in her childhood, how she is applying menstrual cycle awareness in her activism, and how she has worked with her own cycle to heal her trauma.

    We explore:

    How working with the playful curiosity that comes naturally in inner spring has helped Tamsin to reclaim the lost, innocent play and exploration of her childhood.

    How cycle awareness can help to prevent violence, help women who are experiencing abuse, and support survivors to recover and heal their trauma.

    What all space-holders and facilitators need to know about violence against women and girls, and how to create safety and belonging for a woman if she discloses violence or abuse.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • In a world that can overly prioritise the linear and rational, so many of us long to connect with and express our instinctive, intuitive knowing, and today we’re exploring how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can help us to hone the art of intuitive living.

    Alexandra and Sjanie unpack how the first half of the cycle has an outer-focused thrust which takes you out into the world (it almost takes you out of yourself if you’re not careful) where your rational mind is at its peak. And then the tide turns, and in the second half of the cycle, your energies contract and you’re naturally drawn back into yourself, and the instinctual, intuitive, psychic knowing within each of us.

    Then, at menstruation your intuition can reach its greatest expression. The left brain retreats, your capacity for rational thinking goes offline, and you’re opened up to a much more holistic way of knowing, sensing, and feeling. Your subtle senses are blown open, you have access to something way beyond yourself… and you can feel the deep meaning of your own life.

    We explore:

    How to follow the intuition instructions that your cycle is giving you. We need to pace the contracting energy in the premenstrual phase, and allow ourselves to adjust, slow down and allow a greater sensitivity to happen.

    The intuitive knowing that Alexandra and Sjanie received at their Big Bleed this year, and how it has totally changed the trajectory of Red School, bringing Menstruality to thousands of new people.

    The menstruality leadership skills which help us to hone our intuition, including intentionality and interoception, which are a key part of the curriculum on the Menstruality Leadership Programme.

    ---

    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • What do we do when we’re experiencing significant changes physically, emotionally and spiritually in the years running up to menopause, all we want to do is run far, far away, but we still have kids at home who need our care and support?

    This question is coming up a lot in our community and that’s why I’m so grateful to be talking with Matrescence expert, journalist and coach, Amy Taylor Kabbaz, who also happens to be smack in the middle of perimenopause, with three children at home.

    Over the past decade, Amy has interviewed hundreds of authors, maternal health experts, and teachers, trying to decipher why so many mothers feel burnt out, overwhelmed, and addicted to being busy. Over the past year she’s been exploring how we can support ourselves through the huge transition of perimenopause, and she shares the fruits with us today.

    We explore:

    How the ‘fork in the road’ of perimenopause is helping Amy to change deep patterns, including shifting her old go-to approach of “give me the pill, I’ve got sh*t to do”.

    Perimenopause as a kind of ‘pregnancy’ which prepares us for the rebirth of ourselves through the spiritual initiation of menopause.

    How to manage perimenopause symptoms including exhaustion, irritability and anger, brain fog and the often overwhelming ‘motherload’ of care and responsibility, and still show up for our kids.

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    Find out more about the Red School Menstruality Leadership programme: www.menstrualityleadership.com

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:

    Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school

    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Amy Taylor Kabbaz: @amytaylorkabbaz - https://www.instagram.com/amytaylorkabbaz

  • Through their decades of sitting with women and people undergoing the menopause initiation, Alexandra and Sjanie have seen that no part of your life remains untouched by menopause, including your relationships with your loved ones and community. Everything needs to undergo a shift, however subtle, as you move into a greater sense of authority with clearer parameters about yourself. As Alexandra says, it’s called The Change for a reason.

    Today we’re speaking to a guest who knows this to be true firsthand, and is generously sharing her experiences with us. Autumn Saunders is post-menopausal Menstruality and Menopause mentor at Red School and holds space on our Menopause: The Great Awakener course.

    Autumn is a mother, a healing artist, and embodied feminine leadership guide and the creatrix behind the Rhythmic Life Circle & MotherArts Sanctuary for Creativity & Wellbeing. Today we walk through the five phases of menopause that Alexandra and Sjanie teach in the Menopause: The Great Awakener course, exploring how all of her relationships transformed during her menopause.

    We explore:

    The hardest parts of the first phase of menopause, Betrayal, in her intimate relationship, the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously deeply questioning her relationship whilst also enjoying it, and the core practice that saved her relationship

    How old traumas resurfaced throughout her menopause process, including understanding how Autumn’s relationship with her partner reflected her relationship with her father, and how they found her way back to trusting him, receiving his support and allowing him to protect her.

    Autumn’s keys to creating flow between her and her kids through menopause.

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    Join us for a our Menopause: The Great Awakener course - www.redschool.net/menopause

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Autumn Saunders: @wisewomanspirit - https://www.instagram.com/wisewomanspirit

  • Menopause, and the years running up to it, can be a time of real challenge and transformation. Without wise guidance and a framework to understand what’s happening, we can be left feeling lost, alone and crazy.

    Luckily, there are those who can serve as guides, like our guest today, Dr Danielle Arabena, who brings her extensive experience as a medical doctor and a shamanic healer to stand at what she calls the “crossroads and altars we stand before as women” including menstruation, birth, menopause, death, and our topics for today: perimenopause.

    Dr Danielle is a descendant of the Meriam Mer peoples in the Torres Strait. She is a GP and healer whose nurturing approach integrates evidence-based medical care with the profound wisdom of 'women's business' as seen through her Indigenous Knowledge lens.

    We explore:

    How Danielle was guided as a young girl to give her blood back to the earth (which back then looked like soaking tampons in a bucket and pouring it onto her suburban garden).

    How women who have had ACES (adverse childhood experiences) have a more challenging experience of menopause and how to ride the deep initiations to meet our shadow selves.

    Perimenopause and menopause as a reorganising process where we are clarifying our legacy for future generations; whether that’s making the world a better and safer place, tending to our relationships with our kin, or doing quieter, more intimate, inner work.

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    Join us for our Menopause: The Great Awakener course - www.redschool.net/menopause

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Dr Danielle Arabena: @drdaniellearabena - https://www.instagram.com/drdaniellearabena/

  • It’s world menopause month, and we’re continuing the menopause conversation we began two weeks ago, where we explored how to navigate the dark night of the soul of the menopause process (it’s episode 166), and we’re continuing by looking at the powers that the menopause initiation can awaken in us, if we refuse to abandon ourselves during this betrayal phase of menopause.

    In their book, Wise Power, Alexandra and Sjanie talk about menopause as being a pHd in power. When it is respected, honoured and dignified, the initiation of menopause can bring you to a place of deep peace within yourself. And even more than that, the menopause process can actually help you to grow new capacities, powers, and kinds of intelligence. It’s a huge learning curve - a massive upgrade in your skills, ready for your life’s third act.

    In today’s conversation we’re looking at how these powers can change us personally, and through us, how they can change the world, including;

    How the current conversation about menopause is unfolding in the world, why there is so much suffering and what is missing.

    How to work with shifting energy levels in menopause, as a gateway to more discernment, empathy and authority.

    How menopause enhances your imagination and intentional capacities as well as supporting you to potentise all that you do.

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    Join our free event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power - www.redschoolmenopause.com

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • Today on the podcast we’re exploring how menopause can be an initiation into greater self-love, self-compassion and self-mothering. This is our third conversation with Chameli Gad, the founder of Awakening Women. Each year she’s come back here to generously share her menopause process, which unfolded throughout the pandemic and included the death of her son, and her divorce.

    In our chat today, she explores the fruits of her menopause process, from the other side, and she is as honest about her current peace, ease and ecstasy as she was with her mid-initiation pain and suffering.

    Chameli is a mystic and Goddess Wisdom Keeper. Rooted in earth honoring, devotional women’s spirituality and goddess-centered tantric yoga, she is especially appreciated for her love of mythology and storytelling as a key to spiritual awakening and embodiment.

    We explore:

    What it means to ensure that your inner “mama is in the house” in menopause, in three different aspects: the witnessing mother, the nurturing mother and the guardian mother.

    Chameli’s ‘baby dolphin’ menopause dream and how it has radically transformed her capacity for self-compassion.

    What Chameli learned about boundaries in menopause, and how she moved from using boundaries as a way to control others, and instead as an act of leadership that arises from within us.

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    Join our free online event: Awaken The Power of Menopause - Oct 21st-23rd 2024 - www.redschoolmenopause.com

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Chameli: @chameligad - https://www.instagram.com/chameligad

  • Many of us are turning up at menopause stressed, exhausted, overworked and under-nourished, often managing multiple care and work roles simultaneously. And then we hit the “death” moment of the menopause initiatory death and rebirth process.

    The challenges of the menopause initiation can often be compounded by key relationships ending, bereavement, or other extreme life changes. It can all form a kind of perfect storm that leaves us feeling shipwrecked.

    Alexandra and Sjanie refer to this as “Betrayal”, the first of five phases in the psychospiritual process of menopause which they’ll explore in their upcoming course, Menopause: The Great Awakener. Today we unpack how the challenge here is to meet this great betrayal, this great dark night of the soul, and let yourself be undone without annihilating or abandoning yourself.

    We explore:

    How your main task during this dark night is to dare to trust that the complicated messiness and the imperfections of the life you’ve lived to date is somehow the perfect alchemical mix for really stepping into who you are.

    The big question that is being asked of you here: are you going to abandon yourself? When you find your way to stay with yourself, you can turn this process into a radical opening of self-acceptance and self-responsibility.

    The key self care practice to bring into the forefront of your life at this phase of menopause: saying no to others, and yes to yourself.

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    Join us for a free even on October 23rd: How Menopause Awakens Your Power - www.redschool.net/menopause

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • What do you do when you’ve discovered the incredible power of menstrual cycle awareness, and you’re keen to share it with your loved ones, colleagues and community, but whenever you try to talk about it, you receive reactions that range from disinterest to disgust?

    The truth is that menstrual shame is real, it is pervasive and overcoming it is a key part of restoring the power, beauty and magic of the menstrual cycle at the heart of our world. Luckily we are standing on the shoulders of giants here, like the menstrual trailblazer, Jane Bennett, who has been busting through the menstrual taboo for 40 years.

    Jane Bennett is social worker, researcher, writer and educator as well as the founder of the Chalice Foundation. In our first Menstruality podcast episode with Jane, we explored how to navigate create a positive menstrual culture, and what she learned from gathering the stories of over 3000 women and girls about current attitudes to the menstrual cycle to write her book About Bloody Time: The Menstrual Revolution We Have to Have.

    Today, we explore:

    The historical roots of menstrual shame in a patriarchal society, and the compassionate, smart ways that Jane overcomes it in her educational work.

    How Jane works with Brene Brown’s guidance around cultivating shame resilience, and the importance of loving presence and curiosity in the face of menstrual shame.

    Jane’s top tips for how to support your loved ones to have an aha moment about the menstrual cycle so they can get onside and support you with your menstrual cycle awareness practice.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Jane Bennett: @chalicefoundation (https://www.instagram.com/chalicefoundation)

  • Menstrual Cycle Awareness gives us a direct line to our deep selves, to what we’re here for and what we most deeply love.

    As Alexandra and Sjanie say in Wild Power: “The journey to realizing your Calling, or purpose, is made possible by the process of initiation, which is encoded in your menstrual cycle. Initiatory change happens through the archetypal pattern of death and rebirth – which is exactly what we experience each month at Menstruation.”

    Today’s conversation feels like a wild safari into the messy day-to-day reality of how the menstrual cycle helps us to live our Callings, with a woman who knows a thing or two about archetypal patterns.

    Grace Winteringham is the co-founder of Patternity, a conscious Creative Organisation dedicated to sharing the positive power of pattern with the world. Along with her co-founder Anna Murray, she was named one of Evening Standard’s 1000 most influential people. She’s also a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme, and is currently immersed in a process of accelerated transformation as she navigates her own quest to follow her calling.

    We explore:

    Grace’s journey from premenstrual rage and depression to feeling most at home in her inner autumn.

    The menstrual cycle as the fundamental pattern we live by.

    How cycle awareness holds us through the natural process of the ebb and flow as we ‘learn to live by our own code’, and Grace’s story of navigating a confronting sense of deep uncertainty when she stepped back from Patternity after a recent experience of burnout.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Grace Winteringham @grace_winteringham - https://www.instagram.com/grace_winteringham

  • Have you ever had to show up in a big way on day one of your cycle and felt exposed, then - like me - totally exhausted afterwards? Today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness can help you step up when you’re on your period; whether you have to do a big presentation at work, a speech at your best friend’s wedding, host a PTA meeting, or be visible in another way.

    A few days before we recorded this, Alexandra and Sjanie presented a menopause workshop at a festival, and Sjanie’s menstrual cycle set it up perfectly so that she would start her bleed late, on day 29, on that very morning.

    We explore:

    How Sjanie prepared for the event beforehand by creating space, calling in support and recognising the power of the creative and pre-bleed void.

    The pre-bleed, void superpowers that Sjanie channelled; including heightened intuition, trusting emergence, being in the unknown,

    The one thing that Alexandra and Sjanie prioritise more than anything else, in all their creative work.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • Are you (or your friends or the people you work with) struggling with menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, spotting or heavy bleeding, menstrual pain, PCOS and intense mood changes in the premenstrual phase? Would you love to understand how you could work with food and dietary shifts to create menstrual health?

    Our guest today is Lisa Hendrickson-Jack, the author of The Fifth Vital Sign, and teaches women’s health professionals to use the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices, so they can empower their clients to optimize their hormones, menstrual cycles.

    She is the co-author of Real Food for Fertility with Lily Nichols, which contains a wealth of information about how food can support cycle health and in today’s conversation Lisa shares her top tips for healing menstrual health challenges.

    We explore:

    The dietary changes helped Lisa heal her period pain from fibroids, including a simple switch with her dairy consumption, reducing inflammatory foods and increasing green leafy vegetables.

    Why balancing our macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) is key to hormonal health, and how the calorie counting, breakfast-skipping culture hasn’t done any of us any favours.

    The foods to include, eat more of, or go easy on if you’re experiencing intense mood changes in the premenstrual phase (hint: a real game changer for PMS is ensuring you’re having enough protein).

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Lisa Hendrickson Jack: @fertilityfriday - https://www.instagram.com/fertilityfriday

  • Have you ever noticed that your intuitive sense of knowing is heightened when you are premenstrual? Today we’re exploring the radical honesty that can be invoked in inner autumn, asking the question: what if our unadulterated, fierce, premenstrual truth speaking is actually exactly the medicine our world needs at this time?

    My guest is Maya Luna, an artist, channel and creator of The Venus Path™, a modern adaptation of an ancient Fertility Goddess Spiritual Path that works with Sensuality, The Body, The Deep Heart, Passionate Energy and the Incarnate Human Experience.

    Today she shares how she navigates what she calls the 'dark goddess truth serum' that pulses through her in her premenstrual phase, and how she is learning to skillfully and artfully share it in the world.

    We explore:

    How we can feel truth or untruth in our bodies and somehow “smell dishonesty” when we’re in premenstrual truth-telling mode.

    The 40s as the inner autumn of our menstruating years, where our premenstrual powers can come online even more, and how the world can react when women stop playing nice and being “good girls” and start bringing the power of our sacred truth in this life phase

    The toxic femininity we see in our culture and ourselves today; the fawning, people pleasing, being a doormat, not speaking up, letting people use and abuse us, and how our premenstrual capacity to see through bullshit is a powerful antidote.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

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    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Maya Luna: @thevenuspath - https://www.instagram.com/thevenuspath

  • Today we’re exploring Black cyclical wisdom through the lens of the life story of an extraordinary woman who left a profound legacy of cyclical heart and body intelligence, with Dr Cre Dye, who serves as the Menstruality Justice and Inclusion Educator at Red School.

    Dr. Cre has served her local, national, and international communities with heart, mind and body activism for over 25 years as a mental health therapist, yoga teacher/trainer and university professor.

    This is part two of a series of conversations with Cre about the cyclical wisdom she received from her Grandmothers. In episode 138: Indigenous Cycle Wisdom and Menstrual Rituals, we heard the story of Cre’s first nations Granny, and today we’re hearing what she received from Mama, her Black grandmother.

    We hear how Mama grew up picking cotton in Mississippi, was widowed young, then left an abusive relationship and travelled alone in the 1960s with her eight children all the way to Missouri, to go on to foster over 60 children and become a force of love in her community. And how, through every single moment of adversity she faced as a Black woman, she found her way to claim rest, rise up and embody hope in the face of hate.

    We explore:

    Menstrual Cycle Awareness as the “sacred study of me”, how we are all sacred texts, and our cyclical wisdom is the words on the page.

    What Cre learned from her interviews series with Black women and their menstrual cycles, about how we can all reclaim the cyclical wisdom that we’ve known all along.

    The ongoing medical racism that Black women and Women of Colour face, including the myth that Black women have higher pain thresholds, why Black women are two to three times more likely to develop fibroids, and 50% less likely to be diagnosed with endometriosis than white women, and what we can all do about it.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

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    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Dr Cre Dye: @credyeyoga - https://www.instagram.com/credyeyoga

  • How do you feel about inner summer, or the ovulatory phase of the cycle? For many in our community, it’s the easiest and most joyful part of the cycle, but many also find it to be challenging and confronting.

    Today Alexandra and Sjnaie respond to your questions about inner summer and ovulation, including; how to approach physical symptoms around ovulation, such as headaches / migraines, acne and nausea, how to stay grounded and focused amidst the big energy of ovulation and why you should never put your inner summer self in charge of your schedule!

    We explore:

    How to know when you’re in inner summer, how long ‘should’ it last (and why there are no shoulds when it comes to cycle tracking).

    The connection between rest at menstruation and fulfillment at ovulation, and how inner winter restedness unlocks inner summer powers.

    How to manage a sense of disconnection from yourself in inner summer, particularly if you’re doing a lot of caring roles or mothering in your life.

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    Receive Red School's free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

  • For a decade, our guest, birth doula, menstrual coach Jules Alma has been mapping her Yoni. It’s soothed and regulated her nervous system, healed her pain during sex and brings her back to her centre. She even uses it after she has attended a birth to regulate after all the beauty and intensity of the experience.

    Yoni is the sanskrit word referring to our vaginas and vulvas, and in our conversation we track the history of the practice of yoni mapping, from Taoism in ancient China, to Tantra in ancient India to modern day pelvic physiotherapy.

    Jules explains how healing it can be, on all levels, to create an intimate relationship with this part of our bodies and live what Jules calls a 'yoni-led' life.

    She’s also a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme and it was wonderful to hear how the course has supported her to live into her calling to guide women to find healing and joy through the way they bleed, birth, pleasure, and nourish their bodies.

    We explore:

    The shame, trauma and collective wounding that prevents many of us from cultivating a relationship with our vulvas and vaginas, and the powerful healing that can take place when we reconnect to this sacred part of our bodies.

    How Jules was at war with her body and her yoni for years, blowing past boundaries, experiencing health symptoms and feeling pain during sex, before she began to reclaim her rites of passage as a woman, and learned how to map her yoni.

    A step-by-step guide to beginning your own yoni mapping practice, as well as how Jules used the practice to soothe menstrual cramps.

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    Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

    ---

    The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

    ---

    Social media:
    Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
    Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
    Jules Alma: @jules____alma - https://www.instagram.com/jules____alma