The Menstruality Podcast

View Details

Today we’re continuing our journey into traditional and indigenous womb wisdom, by exploring African earth-based teachings about the womb as a temple. Our guest and guide is Chanana McGarry, who is a Medicine Woman as well as a certified Fertility Awareness & Sexual Health Educator. She’s been exploring how to bridge ancient wisdom and modern science for two decades, helping people to navigate their sexual health with clarity, sovereignty, and reverence for their body’s innate wisdom and power.

Chanana is a direct descendant of South African Mujaji Rain Queens, and her ground-breaking work is also inspired by her paternal lineage of medicine women in Botswana. In our conversation she shares what she has learned from sitting with her elders, tracing her lineage back over hundreds of years to matrilineal communities who understood women’s bodies as holders of magic.

The womb wisdom teachings that have long existed across the globe, transcending culture and location, including the traditional feminine wisdom technology of mothers giving their daughters river stones, when they came of age, so they could track their own fertility. We explore:

How two unplanned pregnancies initiated Chanana into fertility awareness and connecting to ancestral womb wisdom.
Cervical fluid as the secret language of your womb and the importance of learning your own patterns.
The womb as a portal - the place where invisible things come into existence; ideas, desires, and visions; the place where we create everything, from babies, to businesses to the lives we dream of.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Just like our physical, emotional and mental energy, our erotic energy also ebbs and flows through the menstrual cycle month. Today we’ve invited the brilliant psychotherapist and somatic sex therapist Carly Mountain back to the podcast to explore the connection between the womb and our erotic cycles. Today Carly guides us on a journey through the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle to explore the erotic challenges and gifts of each phase.

Carly has recently released a new book called Untamed Pleasure, which is a treasure trove for anyone wanting to experience more sexual freedom and pleasure.

We chat about many of the beautiful teachings from the book, including; how to manage protective parts that come up around around sex, how we can’t produce sex hormones and stress hormones at the same time, the power and sensitivity of the cervix, perimenopause sex, untamed aging and how to access more pleasure in every stage of life.
We explore:

Why it can really help to take orgasm off the table, and focus instead on sensation and pleasure to relieve pressure and change the erotic landscape we’re exploring.
How to cultivate your connection to your cervix, to deepen the sensation, move through numbness, and awaken more pleasure, and why it’s vital to move slowly and take our time.
How the experience of eros can shift as we enter midlife.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re having a fascinating conversation with the woman who pioneered the role of intimacy co-ordinator in TV, film, opera and theatre. Ita O’Brien has worked on numerous high-profile productions including Sex Education on Netflix, and I May Destroy You on the BBC, and is the founder of the Intimacy on Set guidelines which have been widely adopted across the industry, advocating for safe, fair and dignified work.

Ita recently took all of her learnings and experience, and she’s shared them in her brilliant book, Intimacy: A field guide to finding connection and feeling your deep desires. Today we explore the vital role that an intimacy co-ordinator plays, and why safe, honouring and real-life depictions of sex on screen are so vital.

We also draw on Ita’s wisdom around listening to our bodies in order to create deeper intimacy with ourselves and others, the need for all of us to understand the cyclical anatomy of female arousal and why we need more women writers creating truthful intimate scenes for women and people who menstruate.

We explore:

Ita’s experience of being an intimacy co-ordinator on trailblazing scenes involving period sex in Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You.
The importance of true consent, and how to access the power of no in intimacy, so that we can find our true yes.
The archetype of the enchantress and how she can support our intimacy explorations as we approach, move through and enter our third act post menopause.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Although the inner summer of the menstrual cycle has a reputation for being easy-breezy, for some of us, this can be a real hotspot in the cycle month.

So, this episode is for you if the ovulatory cycle phase is intense or overwhelming, or you feel a sense of pressure to show up and ‘get shit done’ inside an already over-full life. It’s also for you if inner summer brings a sense of being all dressed up for the party, with nowhere to go if you have lots of creative, sexual or social energy but you don’t know where to direct it, or if ovulation brings disconnection and grief due to challenges with trying to conceive.

Through our personal stories as well as generous shares from the Red School community, we explore the challenges of inner summer, and how to reframe them as meaningful limits that support us to access the power of the ovulatory phase. We also explore **the cyclical self care practice which can support us to claim and show ourselves exactly as we are in inner summer.

We explore:**

Sjanie’s ongoing journey with visibility in inner summer
What Alexandra has discovered about the libratory power of limits, as a post-menopausal women.
How to grow the emotional muscles of allowing more and more of yourself to exist and be seen in the world, as you truely are.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

The spiritual power of the cycle and the womb is core to Red School’s teachings and offerings, and we’ve explored this topic on the podcast through the lens of many different faith, spiritual, traditional and indigenous traditions including; Maori womb wisdom with Hinewai Waitoa, Andean womb wisdom teachings with Dr Cynthia Ingar, Anishinabe cyclical wisdom with Asha Frost, and ancient African womb and birth technologies with Latham Thomas, as well as a conversation with Meggan Watterson about relevant mystical christian texts.

Today we’re exploring how the Islamic faith reveres the womb, with Holistic Menstrual Health Educator, Womb Steaming Therapist, and author of ‘Peaceful Periods: Holistic Womb Care for Teens’, Chantal Blake.

Chantal recently gave a learning session in Red School’s graduate community, The Hive, and at the start of this session, she asked a question which moved me deeply; “how does your womb impact your spiritual reality and practice?” Many of the community said that no one had ever asked them that before, and perhaps the same is true for you? So, as an extension of Chantal’s beautiful question, this conversation is an invitation to you and participants of all faith and cultural backgrounds to contemplate the wisdom of the womb as sacred.

We explore:

The ancient, worldwide history of womb steaming and how it can support womb and pelvic health.
The Arabic word raḥim—meaning womb—shares its root with raḥma, or mercy, and in Islam, the womb is honored not only as a physical center of creation, but as a symbol of divine compassion and relationality and a vessel of divine mystery.
How our wombs support us to gestate our creative ideas, and Chantal’s experience of working with her womb to birth her work projects, including her book.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

The Menstruality podcast is devoted to restoring cyclical intelligence at the heart of our world, and we center our conversation on the menstrual cycle as a teacher, guide and ally in this quest. But what do you do if you encounter this work after you’ve been through menopause and no longer have a menstrual cycle?

We receive many questions from post-menopause women and folks in our community who are curious about how to practice cycle awareness, such as; what cycles should I track now? Should I track with the moon, and how do I do that? And importantly, what do I do with the regret, grief and anger I feel at missing out on menstrual cycle awareness earlier?

So, in today’s conversation, we weave stories from some of the post-menopause women in the Red School community with Alexandra’s personal experience from many years of tracking with the lunar cycle to **share practical guidance and inspiration for how you can bring cyclical wisdom into your life in your third act.

We explore:**

What to do when you feel grief and / or rage about not having had access to the wisdom and power of the menstrual cycle during your menstruating years.
How to work with the lunar cycle phases to recover menstrual cycle wisdom and embody it, and especially how the new moon can give you permission to rest when you no longer bleed.
The ‘quiet medicine’ of post-menopause cycle awareness, and how it can support your healing processes and repair work, particularly trauma healing.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re exploring how to bring cycle awareness to psychotherapy and mental healthcare.

Our guest is MaryClaire Decker (known as MC) who is a Registered Psychologist. MC created Mindful Cycles after seeing a gap in mental health care, and after her own struggles with chronic menstrual migraines reinforced the need for an approach that works with our cycles, not against them.

At Mindful Cycles, she combines evidence-based therapy with an understanding of cyclical health to help women and people with menstrual cycles navigate their mental well-being with greater self-awareness and resilience.

We talk about how menstrual health symptoms change across the cycle, the neurological and hormonal shifts that cause mental health symptoms to worsen in the second half of the cycle, how to adapt therapeutic approaches based on the phases of the menstrual cycle, and the incredible impact of cycle-informed trauma therapy. We explore:

Three reasons why mental health care hasn’t been cycle-informed so far; menstrual stigma, the patriarchal, colonial historical context of psychotherapy and the huge gap in research when it comes to women and people with menstrual cycles.
Why we risk pathologising people’s experiences, or even misdiagnosing them when we don’t take the fluctuations of the menstrual cycle into account, for example; 25% of people who eventually get diagnosed with PMDD are misdiagnosed with bi-polar disorder first.
The beneficial impact of cycle-informed therapy for anxiety, depression, PTSD and trauma, addictions and other mental health challenges.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

1 in 2 girls in the U.S. say they feel embarrassed or ashamed about their period and only 22% of U.S parents feel “very comfortable” talking to their kids about puberty. We need to rewrite this script, and our guest today, menstrual educator Amy Wilding, has written a book to do just that.

Amy has supported hundreds of families through her Period of Change programs, helping them reclaim menarche as a sacred and empowered transition. She’s also a queer and inclusive author, and today we’re chatting about her latest book, Period Of Change: Welcoming Your Daughter’s Period with Care and Confidence.

As Amy says, this is not just a practical guide to puberty and periods. It is a call to reclaim what is our birthright: an understanding of our bodies and the framework for seeing the power and wisdom of our cyclical nature.

Our chat today is full of practical guidance and tips to support the teens and tweens in your life through their menarche and beyond - my favourite were the conversation starters, especially when Amy shared the most important thing to say (and not say) to your child when they get their period for the first time.

We explore:

How to throw a Red Party for your child, and all kinds of ideas for how to celebrate together in big and small ways.
The importance of how we speak about our bodies in front of our kids, and affirmations to help your daughter move through generations of cultural shame, silence and discomfort, and model how to honour our bodies and cycles.
Amy’s journey supporting her trans kid and guidance for how to show up as a supportive parent and maintain a connection of trust with trans kids when they’re starting their periods.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re sharing a replay of one of our most listened to podcasts ever - and it’s all about how getting to know your cycle can be a vital foundation for mental and emotional health.

Alexandra and Sjanie, the co-founders of Red School are both retired therapists, and today they share their learnings from their own personal cycle awareness practice (as well as working with thousands of students over several decades) about how mental and emotional health rests on us knowing ourselves, feeling our value and worth, and understanding the nature of cyclicity. All of which are skills we learn from connecting to our cycles.

We also explore how the root of much of our collective menstrual and emotional turmoil as women and people who have, or have had cycles is the cultural denial, shutting down, ignoring, belittling, and suppression of our cyclical nature.

We explore:

Alexandra’s personal journey with dissolving the shame of her early years and claiming her worth through cycle awareness and menopause, so that now she is emotionally resilient to the extent that she is immune to toxic shame.
The two stable poles of the menstrual cycle, and the two transitional phases and how to work with them all to understand ourselves better and create emotional and psychological wellbeing.
How following the call to stop and rest at menstruation is medicinal for us emotionally and psychologically.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today it’s our great pleasure to be joined by Chloé Zhao. Chloé is an academy award winning filmmaker, and amongst many accolades, Chloé is the first Woman of Colour to have won an academy award for best director for her film Nomadland.

In this conversation, Chloé chats with Alexandra and Sjanie about how menstrual cycle awareness has shaped her creative process, including how she worked with the wisdom of her menstrual cycle to create and direct her most recent film, Hamnet, which received eight Oscar nominations.

When Chloé turned thirty seven years old, she started to get menstrual cramps for the first time. Although it wasn’t comfortable, she felt something important was coming to life within her. This coincided with what she lovingly calls a ‘midlife crisis’ that ultimately led her to discover the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, which she says helped her to learn a language that her body had forgotten to speak.

We explore:

Intuition as our greatest currency, and how becoming more aware of our menstrual cycles prepares the body to be a vessel to receive deep intuitive knowing.
The cyclical advice that Chloe has for all young filmmakers about the importance of wintering, and the power of seemingly non-productive work of rest, tending to your inner soil, and composting (even in the middle of a film set!).
How the premenstrual and menstrual phases of the cycle have taught Chloe to embody creative death and rebirth, and how this played out in the creation of Hamnet.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

As we enter our early forties, we step into a new life phase with a very different atmosphere and tone. We’re shifting into a new paradigm, often accompanied by changes in our menstrual cycles and ourselves, some of which may be startling or very tricky to manage.

Brain fog, memory issues, irregular cycles, heavy periods - the list goes on. You might notice that you have less tolerance for stress, tire more easily, and that your trusty sleep pattern isn’t quite so trusty anymore.

Today I’m chatting with Alexandra and Sjanie about how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can be a vital source of support as we navigate these challenging years.

Sjanie shares generously about her own experience of perimenopause, or as she calls it, the autumn of the menstruating years; from experiencing new levels of love, to reckoning with childhood trauma, and how her recommitment to the fundamentals of cycle awareness has supported her.

Whether you’re experiencing the psycho‐spiritual shift in the years running up to menopause, or you’re supporting women and folks in the thick of it - perhaps your clients, family members. friends or colleagues - we hope this conversation helps to plug you into the practice of menstrual cycle awareness as a vital perimenopause resource.

We explore:

How to practice menstrual cycle awareness when your cycle is very irregular and how to claim your rest, even when you don’t know when your next period is coming.
What is at work on the psycho-spiritual level in the forties, and how the lens of the ‘quickening’ can help to make sense of the challenges of these years.
How Sjanie has navigated her trauma healing process in perimenopause, and the importance of community support in this life phase.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re replaying one of our most popular episodes - a frank and feisty chat about one of the hot topics in our community - premenstrual and menopausal RAGE.

Have you ever been driving in your car and felt compelled to wind the windows up and actually roar because you felt so wildly angry on day 24?

Or, if you’re navigating menopause, have you experienced your own ‘burn-the-house-down’ moment when your fury threatened to destroy everything you’ve built so far in your life?

What is going on with this rage? Why are so many of us feeling it? And what is it trying to tell us?

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

This episode is the first of a four-part series exploring the common challenges of each of the four cycle phases or inner seasons of the menstrual cycle, and Alexandra and Sjanie are going to reframe these challenges as meaningful limits that support us to access the power of each phase.

This first episode in the series is the inner spring, preovulation cycle phase and we’re looking at the challenge of anxiety, overwhelm, and scattered focus. And as the outer seasons unfold here in the UK, we’ll we continue with an exploration of the limits and challenges of the inner summer, autumn and winter.

Through our personal challenges, and stories from the community, we explore how the limits of inner spring help you to access the big powers of this cycle phase, including play, innocence and enthusiasm.

Above all, this series is an exploration of how the challenges you experience in your menstrual cycle aren't necessarily problems to fix, but can also be seen as meaningful boundaries that actually enable the transformative work of each cycle phase.
We explore:

The key practice to support inner spring challenges: making space and time when you’re coming out of menstruation to cherish your sensitive nature.
The deep river at work in the menstrual cycle each month as our energy rises towards ovulation and descends as we head towards menstruation, and how this gives rise to the limits of each cycle phase.
What the challenges and limits of inner spring can teach us about what we need at the beginning of everything; relationships, jobs, creative projects and anything new we’re embarking on.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re exploring how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can help us to stay engaged, resilient and resourced as we meet the challenges of today’s world.

Our guest is the brilliant Dr. Cre Dye who is the Menstruality Justice and Inclusion Educator at Red School. Cre has served her local, national, and international communities with heart, mind and body activism for over twenty-five years as a mental health therapist, yoga teacher/trainer and university professor.

Together we practiced deep listening to a now-famous speech from one of the most powerful voices of love in our world today, the Sikh activist and lawyer Valarie Kaur. In the speech she asks: what if this darkness isn’t the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?

In the emergent and far-reaching conversation that followed, we chatted about what it means to sit within the generative darkness of the womb, Valarie’s birthing and labour analogies and how they can guide us in dark times, and how the different phases - especially the premenstrual phase - of the menstrual cycle can grow our capacity to be with discomfort.

We explore:

The importance of using our imagination to romanticise, and how the menstrual, inner winter cycle phase can support us to rest and restore ourselves, so that we can step back into action with renewed energy and vision.
How our premenstrual cycle phase shows us that we heal where we are loved, how to grow our capacity to be with discomfort, and how to hold the tension where there is challenge and difference.
What we can learn from Black feminists like Toni Morrison, bell hooks and Audre Lourde about how to cultivate resilience in times of crisis, and how white women have a particular role to play in meeting the challenges at play in the world.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

Historically, trauma research has been done primarily on men, and then applied to women’s bodies as if it’s going to work in the same way. But as our guest today, Somatic Emotional Processing facilitator Veronica Rottman, shares, women currently suffer from twice the rate of anxiety and depression, make up 80% of the population with autoimmune disease and are much more likely to experience burnout.

Veronica is the founder of Soma School and has devoted over 40,000 hours over the past seventeen years to trauma resolution. In the conversation today she explores the female nervous systems; including how women and those socialised as female experience trauma differently inside a patriarchal culture, why the female nervous system is more prone to the freeze response and and why it’s important to think carefully about how we use the term ‘regulation’ when it comes to trauma resolution and our nervous systems.

Veronica also has her own personal trauma healing journey from complex post-traumatic stress and in her earlier life, she experienced PMDD, menstrual pain and other symptoms, which she describes as her body revolting against the patriarchy. After practicing menstrual cycle awareness for many years, she now no longer has pelvic pain and today she shares how the practice has helped her to have a more embodied relationship to her pelvis, and to understand her cycle through sensations. We explore:

The fact that Veronica hasn’t encountered a woman or person experiencing PMDD who doesn’t have a history of trauma whether it’s more subtle, low-level and chronic, or more extreme experiences.
Why somatics and wellness need to be less focused on regulation for women, and more about being with and softening into what’s happening in our cyclical bodies.
The role of oxytocin in the trauma response, why women experience trauma relationally, and the importance of cuddle puddles.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

After being guided by her doctor to take the pill for twenty years to manage painful periods, breathwork practitioner Harriette Wight was still dealing with challenging bleeds and decided to try something different. She was guided by a friend to try seed cycling, then learned how to track her menstrual cycle and then - via her Yoga teacher - she discovered breathwork. The combination of breathwork and cycle awareness changed everything for her.

Breathwork, as Harriette defines it, is the practice of using the breath to consciously change how we feel physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. And today in our conversation we explore the ancient roots of breathwork and the modern day expression, and why it is such a powerful tool for health and wellbeing, particularly when it’s used in combination with menstrual cycle awareness.

Harriette is a graduate of Red School’s Menstruality Leadership Programme, and through her own intimacy with her cycle, she’s created a body of work designed around specific breathwork practices to support each of the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle. In our chat today, she shares her MLP experience including how it changed how she sees herself, how she wants to show up in the world, and how she delivers her work.

We explore:

How the inhale and exhale correspond to the two movements of energy within the menstrual cycle, which Alexandra and Sjanie have named: the via positiva and the via negativa.
Simple breathwork practices to support you to rest when you bleed, manage the rising energy in your inner spring, to help you feel confident in your inner summer
A ‘recovery breath’ practice to manage premenstrual emotional reactivity.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

One of the most beautiful and practical gifts of menstrual cycle awareness is how it awakens a newfound capacity to know and assert our boundaries.

As we track our shifting emotions, mental state and energy levels through the cycle month, we get to know our unique strengths and our limits. This helps to build confidence in ourselves and our nature, so that when we become aware of a boundary that has been crossed, we’re more able to find a skillful way to use the power of NO.

So today we’re exploring the power of menstrual cycle awareness for setting boundaries, especially when you’re highly sensitive, in the premenstrual phase of your cycle, and in the years running up to and during menopause, and how this is potentially a life-changing and even world-changing act. We explore:

How to work with the inner critic voice that invariably wakes up when we decide to claim a boundary and take care of ourselves.
How the initiatory times in our menstruality life arc; like matressense, perimenopause, menopause, illness, loss require even stronger boundaries to hold ourselves through liminal times.
Why we all need to re-write the story of the emotional messages of inner autumn as boundary signals rather than irrational outbursts.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

To help you ease into 2026 purposefully, we’re talking about how the cycle helps you to live in your zone of genius today, which is to say, how practising menstrual cycle awareness helps you to know your own nature and stay close to what you’re really great at.

We go through the inner seasons of the cycle one by one, sharing how each one can help us to do the courageous, radical act of claiming ourselves and what we love in a world that celebrates constant productivity over joy. We get practical too by sharing a specific zone of genius practice to each cycle phase - enjoy!

We explore:

The power of doing absolutely nothing in your inner winter at menstruation, or the dark moon, and how it anchors you into connection to your purpose.
Why it’s so vital to have periods of time where you can experiment in inner spring, to be messy with no inner critic allowed.
How to work with your premenstrual discerning energy to take stock and to reflect on what is working and what isn't in your life, so you can stay close to yourself and your zone of genius.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Happy New Year! We have a gift for you to help you start your 2026 infused in cyclical wisdom.

Everything that Alexandra and Sjanie create at Red School is focused on inspiring us to connect to the power that lives within our cyclical nature, so that we can know and claim our own leadership roles in our lives. So, in service of this, today Alexandra and Sjanie do a power card reading with the Red School power cards, to help you choose a menstrual cycle power to guide your leadership this year.

And by leadership they mean what you’re built for, your gift for the world. And as Sjanie says in this conversation - your unique way of leading in your life is sourced in your connection to your menstrual cycle. Alexandra added a beautiful visual, saying that it’s like an umbilical chord to the source of your being, to the mothership of you.

We had so much fun doing this, and our hope is that you feel like we’re all sitting together round the kitchen table playing! There are three cards to choose from… which one will be your menstrual cycle power ally for the year to come?

We explore:

How the menstrual cycle helps us to live our own unique leadership (including Sjanie’s latest premenstrual example of how her cycle is helping to grow her up through her journey with self-responsibility).
How the menstrual cycle holds us in a sustainable rhythm of self-care, particularly through inviting us to stop and drop our bundles
The Red School power cards as a tool for understanding the different menstrual cycle powers that live inside the four inner seasons of the cycle - and you’ll have an opportunity to choose one to guide your year ahead.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

The moon is a big topic of conversation within the Red School community. Many who aren’t menstruating practice lunar tracking in place of menstrual cycle awareness, and those who have a menstrual cycle often bring moon-inspired questions, such as: ‘should I bleed on the full moon or the new moon?’ And ‘what to do when I’m bleeding but the moon is full and I feel pulled in two directions?’.

So today we’re exploring how cultivating a connection with the moon can support us to enter circular and cyclical time. Our guest today is visual artist and mother April McMurtry. April has been lunar tracking for twelve years, and describes herself as a guide for repairing our relationship with the cyclical nature of time by attuning to the moon.

In today’s conversation we explore how following the ebb and flow of the moon can help us to transform our habits of overriding of our cyclical nature, as well as break free from the myth and tyranny of consistency.

We explore:

April's fascinating response to the question of whether we should bleed on the full moon or the new moon (and it might be different to what you think).
How motherhood brought April to burnout, which led her to step back from teaching and lean into the wisdom of the moon as a way to get grounded in rhythms, rest and stillness.
The beauty that can be found in darkness, and how the end of all cycles deconstructs, dissolves and empties us out in preparation for the new.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

When you practice menstrual cycle awareness, you start to feel more connected to yourself. This process of remembering and embodying more of who you truly are means that you may come into contact with parts of yourself that have been disowned, or that you’ve been shamed out of claiming.

Our conversation today is especially designed to support you if you’ve been encountering or unearthing memories or experiences related to trauma as you track your emotional, physical and spiritual ebb and flow throughout the cycle month.

Whether you’ve experienced acute trauma, developmental trauma, ancestral trauma or collective trauma caused by sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism and other forms of othering, discrimination or prejudice, Alexandra and Sjanie explore how cycle awareness can create a grounding of presence and self care to support trauma healing, through the lens of Sjanie’s trauma healing journey, as well as stories from the Red School community, We explore:

How the dismissal, suppression and denial of the menstrual cycle, and our cyclical nature is a form of subtle gaslighting that in itself is a form of trauma.
Why certain phases of the cycle, such as the premenstrual phase, as well as perimenopause and menopause, open you to your shadow side and your trauma.
Some practical steps to get started with working with your cycle to support trauma healing.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Whether it’s at work, in our relationships, as parents or carers, or in our interaction with our community, life regularly invites us to summon up the courage to have difficult conversations. Today we’re chatting about how cultivating an intimacy with our cyclical nature can support us to show up with skillful expression and heart.

Our guest today is Sarah Rozenthuler is a world-renowned speaker, chartered psychologist, leadership coach, and the author of many books, including ‘Now We’re Talking‘. Sarah first discovered menstrual cycle awareness over two decades ago when she read Alexandra’s first book, The Wild Genie about the healing power of menstruation.

She shares her journey with irregular menstrual cycles, her experience of running her own business in the world of leadership development as a cyclical being, and how her cycle awareness practice has supported her in some of her recent tough conversations. We explore:

How menstrual cycle awareness can help you attune to your inner energetic state, which means you can pick your moment to talk, or stay silent so that conversation flows rather than derails.
How the premenstrual phase and menopause helps us to set boundaries effectively in difficult conversations, and the importance of knowing your red lines.
Why Sarah feels like she’s driving a Ferrari in the premenstrual phase of her cycle, and what this means for her capacity to have big, meaningful conversation.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

One of the questions that comes up again and again in the Red School community is this: how can I free up my voice and share my truth? So many of us, particularly women and those socialised as female feel stuck, silenced or disconnected from our true expression, so today we’re exploring how the practice of checking in every day with your menstrual cycle and how it’s influencing your energy and mood can support you on this quest.

Through our personal stories as well as stories from the community, we explore how menstrual cycle awareness is a discipline that keeps you close to yourself, and how this practice organically awakens an inner warmth, connection and confidence which lines you up to receive inspiration about what it is that you’re here to express and share with the world.
We explore:

How menstruation cocoons you so that you can step away from the noise of the world and rest into a sanctuary of connection with your voice - the inner winter silences the world so that you can finally hear yourself.
Tools for working with your inner critic and self expression - such as containing the critic in the premenstrual phase of the cycle - so that you can practice experimenting and paying with sharing your voice in the preovulatory phase, your inner spring.
How to support ourselves when the holding back of our voice comes out as premenstrual rage or implodes inside as depressive cycles.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

For many of us menopause announces itself in our lives through some kind of betrayal. For today’s podcast guest, that betrayal came in the form of a dismantling of identity that provoked one particular emotion on a whole new level - rage.

Our guest today is the brilliant trauma-informed embodiment guide, facilitator, and heart activist Tanya Forgan. She explores menopause as a series of portals which show us where we’re holding power and where we’re not. Her initial ‘betrayal’ phase of menopause rocked her to her core, coinciding with the pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and catalysing a dark night of the soul where she faced the harm she has experienced as a dual heritage woman in the UK.

She goes on to illuminate the healing power of the repair phase of menopause, describing the rituals and community support that helped her to find the grace in the raging fire of the initiatory process. She shares what supported her to alchemise her anger and understand grief as the most exquisite expression of love in the revelation phase, and all she’s discovering in the visioning and emergence portals where she is exploring the kind of grandmother she now wants to become.

We explore:

How cycle awareness helped to prepare Tanya for the dismantling of menopause.
What helped Tanya when she lost her trust in her body and in society, including her amazing nervous-system-regulating yoga bath ritual!
What menopause taught Tanya about the power of circles for creating belonging, especially when it comes to race, gender, sexual experience, ability in body, power and oppression.

---

Join our menopause online course: Menopause: The Great Awakener

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

As we enter our forties, many of us start to experience signals from our body that show us that we can’t override ourselves anymore. We become more permeable, our energy levels shift, and we tend to have less capacity. If we don’t clock these changes and find ways to adapt our lives, we’ll start to experience trouble inside ourselves often in the form of stress, overwhelm and other physical, emotional and mental symptoms.

Alexandra and Sjanie call these years the “autumn” of our menstruating years, or the Quickening, and in the collective conversation many refer to these years in the run up to menopause as perimenopause. Today we’re exploring these perimenopause years and challenges as a kind of sacred preparation or apprenticeship for the great initiation of menopause - a series of unveilings that allow us to see what has been unconscious within us.

Through stories from the community we explore why many of us feel scared of and unprepared for menopause, how the forties are preparing our psyches for the massive spiritual awakening ahead and why menstrual cycle awareness is our greatest ally through the twists and turns of perimenopause

We explore:

The importance of relishing your forties, and the authority and sense of self-knowledge that can come with this decade.
How menstrual cycle awareness, and particularly paying attention to your premenstrual phase - the inner autumn of the cycle - can prepare us for the autumn challenges of the forties and perimenopause.
How old trauma can resurface in perimenopause, and how to deeply meet what is arising and support yourself to encounter the big emotions so that healing can take place.

Register for our menopause online course: Menopause: The Great Awakener - Starts October 31st

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Our guest today is Tamu Mosley, who is a student of Alexandra and Sjanie’s Menopause: The Great Awakener course, and is an initiated Sacred Woman, wholistic wellness facilitator, teacher, and mama. Tamu was guided by her mum to track her cycles from her very first bleed, and now, a few years post menopause, she sees how cycle awareness guided her through her menopause initiation.

When Tamu was entering perimenopause she was studying with the world renowned spiritual teacher from Burkina Faso, Sobonfu Some, who said that when a woman enters menopause, she becomes the carrier of the water of life for the community. In our conversation Tamu shares about the water medicines that supported her through the fire and heat of the five phases of her menopause process, and have become core to her life purpose in her third act.

Tamu is the founder of Wholistic Shine and Uchū Botanical and is a kitchen alchemist, a home herbalist, a flower essence practitioner and a student of cha dao (the way of tea). Tamu is guided by a deepening relationship with and devotion to the sacred element water through daily practice, prayer and intention.

We explore:

Hot flashes as an invitation to burn away self-defeating thoughts.
How Tamu honours the anniversary of her final menstrual bleed each year with a water and tea ceremony, and how sitting with tea for over 300 days in a row has supported her relationship with her partner.
What it has meant for Tamu to move from her earth body as a mother, to her water body during menopause, and how it has helped her to slowly and steadily create a new creative and work life, post-menopause.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

Tamu Mosley: @wholistic_shine - https://www.instagram.com/wholistic_shine

View Details

Menopause is an immense life event, a great initiation. Not only is it a complete hormonal shift in the landscape of your overall health, it’s also a psycho-spiritual transformation, which can bring with it a huge emotional rollercoaster.

Rage, grief, emptiness, exposure, hurt, anxiety - they can all create a sense of groundlessness in menopause, to the extent that many of us feel that we simply don’t know ourselves any more. This emotional heat can include a sense of despair - you had a sense of what you were about, who you were, what was important to you, and suddenly it all fell away, leaving you questioning the meaning of pretty much everything.

Today we’re exploring how to navigate the emotional heat of menopause through the lens of honest and vulnerable stories from the Red School community and Sjanie’s own personal emotional rollercoaster in the run up to menopause. We explore:

Alexandra’s personal experience of moments of existential terror that can arise in menopause.
How trauma can show up in menopause, and a reframe for when you feel like you’re unravelling and it feels like you’re going mad.
What happened when Alexandra experienced her most vivid memory of incandescent menopause rage in the car park under the library.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

It’s world menopause day later this month, and throughout October we’ll be sharing on social media about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. On October 21st - 23rd, Alexandra and Sjanie would like to invite you to join them for their free three-day online menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And their online course, menopause the Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.com

Today’s bonus episode is a replay of a delicious conversation I had with Chameli Gad, mystic and Goddess Wisdom Keeper and the founder of Awakening Women, who has been a teacher for me for the past fifteen years. Chameli’s menopause initiatory process unfolded throughout the pandemic and included the death of her son, and her divorce.

She’s been generously sharing her menopause process with us here on the podcast over the past three years, and 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. 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.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event:How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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 Gad: @chameligad - https://www.instagram.com/chameligad
Awakening Women: @awakeningwomen - https://www.instagram.com/awakeningwomen

View Details

It’s world menopause day later this month, and throughout October we’ll be sharing on social media about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. On October 21st - 23rd, Alexandra and Sjanie would like to invite you to join them for their free three-day online menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And their online course, menopause the Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.com

Today’s bonus episode is for you if - like me - you long to feel more calm, rested, peaceful and grounded. Both because it feels better, but also because you know the gold that lies in this state of restedness; for your health, your relationships, your worklife, and your journey through menopause.

Our guest is Tracee Stanley, the author of the bestselling book Radiant Rest, and the recently published The Luminous Self. She is a post-lineage yoga teacher, inspired by more than twenty years of study, and she’s devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidra, rest, meditation, self-inquiry, nature as a teacher, and ancestor reverence.

We chat about how to set up a practice that allows for rest inside a mainstream culture that says we’re not worthy unless you’re pushing through; whether that’s pushing through grief, illness, exhaustion or menopause. Through it all, Tracee illuminates how deep rest, peace and truth are our birthright. We explore:

The importance of unveiling the messages we received about the value of rest from our parents and ancestral lineage; particularly for Black, Brown and Indigenous people.
How the practice of Yoga Nidra is a way to know our true self, as well as a powerful act of rebellion in a culture that wants us to keep endlessly grinding
The story of Mataji - a female yoga teacher in her 90s, who was famous for never sleeping, and became one of the first people to teach the wisdom of yoga nidra.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event:How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

In today’s bonus episode, we’re exploring the immense capacities that open up to us as we move through menopause, and Alexandra is your host. Her guest is Prune Harris, an energy expert, a consciousness educator, and soul activist, who has trained with healers, elders, and wisdom holders throughout the world.

Prune shares her personal experience of navigating the great threshold of menopause, and how it can collectively awaken a new, immense capacity to reclaim our deep worth as human beings, beyond concepts of gender and status, but as a lifeforce that is part of the great web of life.

They explore:

The different cycles that Prune is tracking now post-menopause, and how our life force moves into different expressions of wisdom once we’re no longer being held in monthly cycles.
Menopause as an identity death process which brings us face to face with our inner soothsayer, to hear deep truths about ourselves, our relationships and the world, so we can choose the new identities we want to embody in our third act.
How menopause is helping to meet the modern day crisis of separation and call us home to our essential place of belonging, so we can radiate it into our lives and into the world.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event:How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today’s bonus episode is a replay of my conversation with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist, Dr Sharon Blackie called The Myth, Magic and Metamorphosis of Menopause.

When you explore old European myths, it’s the elder women and grandmothers who run the world. In Greek mythology, there are the Fates - three elder women who make the world go round. In Easterm European mythology, the crone Baba Yaga initiates young people and facilitates transformation. In ancient Gallic mythology it is the Cailleach who created and shaped the land, from the beginning of time.

In today’s episode Sharon explores the gold that these myths and archetypes hold for us as we navigate the shape-shifting crucible of menopause and enter the second half of our lives as elders. We explore:

The Greek myth of the ‘Furies’, the sacred role of their rage, and the necessity of the comparable anger many of us feel in menopause.
Why our world doesn’t allow us the time to ‘do menopause properly’ and the impact this has for us on a soul level.
The Jungian archetype of the ‘Medial Woman’ who doesn’t define herself according to anyone else, is whole unto herself, and chooses to dive deeply into the mystery of the world.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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 Sharon Blackie: @sharonblackiemythmakings - https://www.instagram.com/sharonblackiemythmakings

View Details

Their online course, Menopause: The Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.com

Today’s bonus episode is a replay of Jane Hardwicke Collings’ conversation with Alexandra for the Wise Power Series, and it’s called - The Transformation of Menopause: Stepping into our Responsibility to Life.

Jane is a teacher, author, former homebirth midwife and creator of the School of Shamanic Womancraft, and in the conversation she shares how she prepared for menopause, the gifts it gave her of intuition, vision, confidence and courage, and the new responsibility she feels post-menopause - to be the archetypal grandmother stepping into her power and using it for the good of all, and the earth.
We explore:

How menopause is the most transformational process we can experience. Jane shares all it required from her; the presence, the energy, the leaning in, the stamina, the self care, as well as the size and magnitude of the transformation, hormonally, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
How to take care of yourself through menopause; including strength training, reducing stress, reducing alcohol, learning nervous system regulation practices, and paying real attention to your mind chatter
How Jane’s intuition was enhanced by menopause, awakening a new visionary capacity and skill in receiving downloads of information.

---

Register for our free three-day menopause event:How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

In a world which is moving too fast, we have to claim our rest, which is why I’m delighted to share this conversation with an incredible woman who sees herself as a Chief Operating Daydreaming Officer and Dream Keeper. Octavia Raheem is an award-winning author, rest coach, a yoga and meditation teacher, and speaker. Yoga Journal magazine has recognized Octavia as one of fifteen experienced yoga professionals who have elevated and changed the field on a global scale.

Today we chat about her most recent book - Rest is Sacred, and Octavia shares her personal, extreme journey to claiming her sacred rest, which included overworking and exhaustion to the point of hospitalisation. She describes what her mother taught her about how to carve out space for rest as a single mum in the rural south of the USA, and the profound reclamation of energy she’s experiencing now in her journey towards menopause, reclaiming the rest that her ancestors were not safe to take. We explore:

Rest as a refuge when we’re grieving the loss of people we love, and Octavia’s Yoga Nidra rest story after the loss of her mother.
The power of “closing our eyes to see” as a direct line to knowing our innate worth.
The wisdom of the earth that is revealed in winter, and how the most transformational movements of now and the future will be sustained by the pause, and by people who are resourced by rest.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

In a world where fast-paced technology and artificial intelligence are on the rise, where each day brings fresh news of global injustice and conflict and where radical shifts are needed to create a sustainable future on earth, it’s no wonder that we can find ourselves overwhelmed and numb.

But, the daily practice of menstrual cycle awareness can serve as a powerful antidote, and today we’re exploring how cycle awareness can create a ground of connection to ourselves and our sense of agency and power in challenging times. They also illuminate menstrual cycle awareness as a cyclical, soulful leadership model which can help you step more fully into your leadership and live into your unique way to contribute to the future you long for.

Through teachings and stories from the Red School community, Alexandra and Sjanie share about the power of the daily cycle check-in as a fundamental leadership practice, the cycle as a living rhythm of rest, renewal, energy, and release, and how the power of the second half of the cycle invites you to trust your inner voice over the noise of the outside world. We explore:

Menstrual rest and connection as the ground of our Feminine leadership, where we can reconnect with our purpose and our innate goodness.
Menstrual cycle awareness connects you to a kind of power that is sourced in the Feminine.
How the cycle guides us home to what we were made for - to our calling and the deep meaning at work in our lives.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

As we’ve explored a lot on the podcast with the women and folks who have shared their own menopause stories, it can be a disorientating, deeply challenging, and very messy process. And today we’re hearing from a woman who is generously sharing right from the messy middle of her menopause journey.

Ruby May is a coach, facilitator and community weaver, passionate about midwifing a culture grounded in the wisdom of the body. She is also a Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme graduate and is the community catalyst of the Hive graduate community at Red School. Most recently she has been co-creating Sabia, a platform with a vision of menopause as a transformative life stage.

This conversation was born from my listening partnership with Ruby, where she shared a voice note which powerfully illuminated the many challenges of her menopause initiatory process, including the multiple emotional descents she’s taken, the rock bottom places she has hit, (particularly when she has had very little sleep) and how menopause has shone a light on all the parts of her that still want to be rescued, and validated. We explore:

The importance of having allies who mirror your goodness back to you, even in your darkest times, without having to sugarcoat anything or find the silver lining.
How her menopause doula aka fairy godmother, Kate Codrington (a fellow Menstruality Leadership Programme graduate) is following the pulse of her journey alongside her, and how her ‘go-to-crone’ - a rabble-rousing rebellious healer - is offering her acute support in the moment.
How Ruby is navigating her own journey around whether to get HRT, and what do we do when we’ve created a life that we no longer have capacity to live out?

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

What do you do when your experience of the cycle doesn’t match the archetypal description of the inner seasons? Many women and folks with cycles experience sporadic, irregular cycles which are very challenging to track, particularly if they’re dealing with health challenges like PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

Our guest today is Menstruality Leadership Programme graduate Shalize Giane, who shares generously about her two decades of dealing with PCOS, and the infertility challenges that have accompanied it. We explore her long and winding journey to getting a diagnosis, and how practising cycle awareness has transformed her experience of her cycle and her body, as well as inspiring her to reassess and reorganise her entire life to remove stressors and give her body what it is asking for.
We explore:

How women and folks with PCOS can feel excluded from the cycle awareness and cyclical living conversation, and why it’s vital for everyone working in the menstruality field to create belonging for all.
How Shalize experiences her inner seasons, even with an unpredictable cycle, and what they have told her about what her body truly needs; rest and slowness.
Her experience on the Menstruality Leadership Programme, and how it helped her get in touch with and process the childhood trauma, emotional suppression and parental neglect that was contributing to her PCOS challenges, as well as inspire her to start helping other women with PCOS to heal.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

Shalize Giane: @misstomadame_ - https://www.instagram.com/misstomadame_/

View Details

Today’s conversation is an exploration of what happens when women’s stories and voices are suppressed, and how we reclaim our power in a world which has historically denied our worth. It’s the story beneath the story of menstruality, the foundation for all we’re reclaiming with menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. Our guide in Harvard-trained feminist theologian, Meggan Watterson.

When Meggan first encountered the new testament she broke out in hives. For years she studied the female saints, gurus, poets and mystics throughout history in all the world’s religions, got a master degree in a comparative world religion view of the divine feminine. As she says, our ideas about the divine and who gets to speak on behalf of the divine effect the status of women the world over, as well as our own relationship to our sense of spiritual authority and trusting the voice of love we hear inside of us.

Meggan is also the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of Mary Magdalene revealed, and her new book, The Girl Who Baptised Herself, explores the erased story of one of the first female ministers in the pre-patriarchal, Christ movement, a girl named Thecla who reclaims her power from within her, inside a society which entirely denies her worth, so that she can ascend to the life that’s meant for her, and what her story can teach us all about how to claim our worth, and the lives that we desire. We explore:

Why Meggan often gets called a whore - as well as a lot of other colourful names - for teaching about the ancient gospels that were erased from the new testament by Constanine in the 400AD, so that the idea of male succession could have legitimacy.
Writing as a spiritual practice, and how Meggan became the woman she needed to be to write this book.
What Thecla’s story can teach us about how to honour the divine in a way that includes the female body, particularly in a world where the reproductive rights of women and people with wombs are being taken away.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re sharing part two of our conversation about PMS - premenstrual syndrome - and PMDD - Premenstrual dysphoria disorder. We began this exploration in episode 202, How Menstrual Cycle Awareness Can Transform PMS and PMDD, where we discussed the premenstrual phase of the cycle as a gateway to our power, and premenstrual symptoms as a truth-telling signal or a warning sign from the deepest part of ourselves about all that needs to be healed within us, and in our world.

In part two we get practical and look at how menstrual cycle awareness can help you if you experience extreme pre-menstrual disturbance, through the lens of some brilliant questions and stories that the community gathered around this podcast have sent to us. They include what to do if you’re in premenstrual hell right now, the most important practical actions to take that genuinely help with symptoms and why cycle-aware therapy or professional support is often essential, especially if you’ve experienced trauma. We explore:

The three menstruality ‘medicines’ which can help PMS and PMDD: cycle tracking, premenstrual power and rest at menstruation.
The small, repeated acts of self-care and boundary-setting can shift everything; and we share our favourite personal examples like dealing with premenstrual rage by roaring out of the car window and smashing plates!
The power of writing a love letter to yourself in your ‘good’ part of the cycle.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

I don’t know about you, but rest can be an elusive thing for me. I know I need it, I know I want it, but how do I actually get it? Enter Lou Perham who is rest-obsessed and has devoted her recent years as a Cyclical Living Mentor to helping people, and especially women get more rest.

Today we start by exploring Lou’s powerful personal story of the healing power of cycle awareness. When Lou was diagnosed with PCOS - polycystic ovarian syndrome - in her late 20s, she was crushed when her doctors told her that she was unlikely to be able to have children. Having always wanted to be a mother, she responded by trying several holistic healing approaches to heal her heavy, painful periods, eventually committing to a two-year Yoga teacher training which supported the regulation of her hormones, and also included teachings about menstrual cycle awareness.

Wonderfully, a year after she started tracking her menstrual cycle she had pain-free bleeds and six months later she was pregnant with her son. This led to her joining Red School’s Menstruality Leadership Programme, and since then, she has been applying the healing power of cycle awareness in a new way, using it to craft what she calls a rest-centred life, and guide others to do the same. We explore:

Today she shares the ten types of rest we all need, and how to access more of them, including; physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.
How Lou created her own map of self-care practices based on the inner seasons of her menstrual cycle, and it all started with the vital cycle awareness question; what do I need on this cycle day?
How Lou practices cycle awareness and lives the wisdom of her cycle as a single working mother.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

Lou Perham: @louperham - https://www.instagram.com/louperham/

View Details

What if there is a direct connection between your pleasure and your power? And what if harnessing the magic of inner summer of the menstrual cycle - the ovulation phase - is the key to unleashing a deeply pleasurable, full expression of who you are in the world?

We believe that both of these statements are true, but - as we explore in this podcast - a profound reclamation of the true power of inner summer is necessary, in a world which demands us to be in an endlessly productive summer-mode all of the time.

As a result of all the societal projections created by hustle and beauty culture, the power of summer is much misunderstood, and many people struggle with it. In this replay of our popular episode from two years ago, we share ideas for how we can free ourselves from the narrow band of experience within which we’re told to operate, so that our unique magnetism and authenticity can be fully inhabited. We explore:

The shadow-boxing that can take over inner summer when we live in a linear world which neglects our cyclicity.
How being with the instinctual aliveness of our animal bodies helps us to unleash and express our power in the inner summer, as well as hold the charge of our Calling in the world.
The direct connection between dropping deeply at menstruation and the full claiming of our inner summer selves.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Did you know that 3-8% of women and people with cycles experience PMDD, which stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder? If you are one of these people, or you are close to or work with someone with PMDD, this episode is especially for you. It’s also for you, if you - like me - have experienced intense, debilitating, dark and challenging emotional disturbance in the premenstrual phase of your cycle, often known as PMS or premenstrual syndrome.

Today Alexandra and Sjanie explore the inner autumn of the cycle as a gateway to our power. As they share, our premenstrual symptoms aren’t a design flaw, but can be better understood as a truth-telling signal or a warning sign from the deepest part of ourselves about all that needs to be healed within us, and all that needs to be healed in our world.

Part of the challenge we all face here is that we live in a world that dismisses and denies our cyclical experience, which creates a disconnect with our cyclical wisdom. In other words, what if it’s not the menstrual cycle that is the problem, but rather it’s a culture that pathologises, shames and denies the power and value of our cycles, and especially the power of the premenstrual phase? We explore:

How the premenstrual phase of the cycle gives you feedback about your sensitivity and how to tend to it, so it can be in service to your power - because the world needs your depth of feeling.
The emotional spirals that PMDD can evoke, where intense feelings arise, attack becomes your best defense, you lash out at others, and then, a couple of days later, often once your period has arrived, you have to pick up the pieces and negotiate the aftermath of self-hatred and shame.
Why we all need to take what we feel in inner autumn more seriously. The premenstrual phase of the cycle is the emotional ‘novocaine’ wearing off, a time where you come to your senses, and you have heightened intuition and insight.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

A few months ago, our guest today, the founder of Cycle Seeds Iris Josephina Verstappen, was hosting a retreat in a goddess temple in Malta when she began to miscarry. Having accompanied many women through pregnancy loss, both as a doula and a holistic hormone and cycle coach, she’s witnessed the storm of emotions that can arise with miscarriage, as well as the taboo surrounding it. So she decided to publicly share about her experience with her 60,000 followers, to be a permission slip for others, so that they don’t have to suffer in silence.

In our conversation Iris shares generously and vulnerably about how she has navigated the grief, loneliness, confusion and earth-shaking fear that it could all happen again, as well as the paradoxical feelings of love, possibility, and gratitude for how the experience of pregnancy opened her up. Our hope is that if you’re one of the one in four women and people who experience pregnancy loss, this conversation helps you to feel less alone with whatever you’re feeling.
We explore:

The imposter syndrome that arose for Iris when she tried to go back to work, and found herself questioning how this could have happened to her when she was doing everything “right”, especially as an educator in the field of cyclical living and women’s health, and how the antidote was simply to lie with her belly flat on the earth.
The lack of community support around grief and loss, but especially in the post-partum window after miscarriage where the body is still recovering from the pregnancy, and Iris offers some great ideas for how to support a friend going through this.
How Iris is navigating the identity crisis that comes with inhabiting the liminal space between maiden and mother, between becoming and unbecoming, as well as being in a body that looks and feels different after her pregnancy loss.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

If you’re curious to explore natural approaches to support menopause health symptoms today’s episode is for you. Our guest, Melinda McDougall, is a registered Medical Herbalist specialising in women's health and menopause. She combines the latest scientific research into botanical medicines with the traditional knowledge women have used for centuries to manage their health.

Melinda shares a treasure trove of herbal information about how to improve sleep and brain function, reduce stress, and help your body to feel better, as well as how herbal medicine supported her own healing process with erratic and incredibly heavy cycles in the years running up to menopause.

One of my favourite parts was when Melinda described how our brains get totally re-shaped and remolded during menopause, as we wake up from the fog of estrogen people-pleasing hormone, drop into a different way of seeing the world, and become less inclined to put everyone else first.

We explore:

A powerful ayurvedic herb that helps your body adapt to stress and is very supportive for insomnia and sleep disturbances, as well as herbal medicine for night sweats and hot flushes.
A variety of useful herbs for mental focus and brain function, if you’re experiencing brain fog, or feel like your brain isn’t working like it used to, as well as herbs to support you through the intense rage that we can experience during menopause,
How to use herbal medicine as a viable alternative to HRT or as a way to support your body alongside HRT, like adaptogenic herbs, and herbs that support gut and liver health and can help to reduce side effects like headaches, weight gain and breakthrough bleeding.

---

Order our menopause book - Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Our guest today, energy expert Prune Harris sees the womb as the deepest house of wisdom that we have, and today we explore how to work energetically to cultivate womb health, as well as menstrual and menopause health.

Since birth, Prune has been able to see energy - the energy of humans, animals, trees and the Earth, and she sees this energy as vibrations, colours, and connective patterns. She has trained with healers, elders, and wisdom holders throughout the world and for the past fifty years, she’s been tracking, understanding, and now translating this world of energy for us all to experience, as a consciousness educator, soul activist and author of her book, Your Radiant Soul - Understand Your Energy to Transform Your World.

Today we explore how to work with energy for menstrual, menopause and womb health, why pain tends to stem from congested energy, and practical energy work tools to help you to increase flow in your energy system to ease menstrual or menopause challenges you’re facing, starting today. We explore:

The spiralling energy of the womb, how to have a “wombgasm”, and how it can open us up to a tender, vulnerable kind of power.
How to work energetically to help with the symptoms that can come with hormonal fluctuations, such as hormonal headaches.
How Prune worked with her menopause hot flushes by guiding the heat to move horizontally through her energy system.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

As part of our ongoing series about the connection between menstrual cycle awareness and our health & wellbeing today we’re exploring how getting to know your cycle can be a vital foundation for mental and emotional health.

Alexandra and Sjanie are both retired therapists, and today they share their learnings from their own personal cycle awareness practice, as well as working with thousands of students over several decades about how mental and emotional health rests on us knowing ourselves, feeling our value and worth, and understanding the nature of cyclicity - all of which are skills we learn from connecting to our cycles.

Alexandra’s personal journey with dissolving the shame of her early years and claiming her worth through cycle awareness and menopause, so that now she is emotionally resilient to the extent that she is immune to toxic shame.
The two stable poles of the menstrual cycle, and the two transitional phases and how to work with them all to understand ourselves better and create emotional and psychological wellbeing.
How following the call to stop and rest at menstruation is medicinal for us emotionally and psychologically.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Menstrual cycle awareness can guide us to create more rest in our lives, including a mini menstrual sabbatical each month to renew us and restore our connection to joy. Our guest today, author, poet and teacher Edveeje Fairchild has been a devotee to rest for her entire life, having been raised in a spiritual tradition that honoured the weekly sabbath. And this non-negotiable rhythm of rest has been one of the key practices that has formed her philosophy of joy as a compass for our lives.

Edveeje’s first book, Joy as the Compass: Freeing Yourself from the Seven Activist Addictions has just been published. Today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness is a vital ingredient to a joy-focused life, through the lens of our environmental activist work together, and how we applied menstrual cycle awareness and cyclical living within the reforestation non-profit TreeSisters to plant a million trees.

Edveeje also shares generously from the midst of her menopause transition, which has included the trauma of the sudden loss of her beloved twin sister, as well as the devastation of her small mountain town due to hurricane Helene. We explore how her connection to the ancient trees and wild nature in the ‘Mother Forest’ around her have held her in this sacred menopause territory, even when life feels like death.

We explore:

What it means to be the ‘dream of the earth’, how our menstrual cycles can help us to reconnect our inner nature with our outer nature and show up in our full glory, on behalf of Life itself.
How Edveeje used menstrual cycle awareness to create all the policies, procedures, internal operations and organisational planning tools at TreeSisters, and anchor the theory of menstruality in very practical ways inside an emerging international non-profit.
How Edveeje’s discovered that her inner spring was her challenging hotspot in the menstrual cycle, and how this eventually led her to take a long sabbatical and follow the promptings of her menstrual cycle towards deeper joy.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

When Toko-pa Turner first started to experience signs of perimenopause, she was simultaneously diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis, and the combination led to severe insomnia. Sleep deprivation is challenging for all of us, but in Toko-pa’s case it was especially disorientating because for over twenty-five years she has been working with dreams in a mythopoetic way to answer life’s deep soul questions.

Sometimes called a Midwife of the Psyche, Toko-pa is the author of The Dreaming Way, and her work focuses on belonging, restoring the feminine, reconciling paradox, elevating grief, and facilitating ritual. She founded the Dream School in 2001 and has now grown a network of more than a hundred thousand dreamers worldwide.

Toko-pa’s journey with her dreams as her guide began when she was orphaned in her teens and entered the care system, and in our conversation today we track Toko-pa’s personal dreaming journey, as well as how we can all take an intimate, deep-dive into the magical world of our dreams as a gateway to a different kind of intelligence. We explore:

Why our cultures often dismiss the power of our dreams and how to reclaim your dreaming capacities in a world that has been stuck in a centuries-long patriarchal phase of worshipping rationality and materialism.
How to ‘court’ our dreams, and why we don’t need to hire an expert to help us interpret our dreams, but rather to follow the wisdom of indigenous cultures and reclaim our dreaming as our mother tongue.
How to keep a dream journal, and the key practice to do when you wake up after a big dream to ensure you remember it and can connect to the power of the symbols and wisdom within it.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

Today we’re in conversation with the brilliant community gathered around this work and podcast in our part two episode about how to work with menstrual cycle awareness as our own in-built energy management system.

This conversation is for you if you struggle to follow the impulses of your cycle around the modern-life juggle of responsibilities, or if you’re dealing with low energy levels and you’re not sure why. It’s also for you if you’re feeling good, but want tips to work with your cycle to enahcen your vitality and feel even better.

It’s for you if you’re new to cycle awareness - it will help you get set-up with the foundations for setting up your cyclical rhythm of sustainability. And it’s also for you if you’ve been practising for a good while as we get into many of the nuances of the practice, including how to get the limitations of your inner seasons working for you, how to navigate your energy through your crossover days in between the seasons, and how to set cyclical boundaries.

We explore:

How to do a ‘movement’ cycle check-in to get an honest, unfiltered information, directly from your body about how your energy levels are on any given day (without your mind getting involved telling you all the things you should be feeling and doing).
The core truth when it comes to managing your energy with cycle awareness: the way you bleed sets the tone for your whole cycle, and some tips for claiming menstrual rest (even in a world that is not at all interested in you claiming this).
How slowing down is the secret to accessing the power of the premenstrual phase of the cycle, especially when we’re feeling exhausted and vulnerable.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

We’re experiencing an epidemic of chronic fatigue and burnout, especially for women, and people with marginalised identities. It’s part of our modern day polycrisis, and in many ways the exhaustion we’re experiencing in our individual bodies mirrors the environmental challenges that are ravaging our earth, our larger body. We’re driving both to the very edges of their capacity.

Beautifully, the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can help us to live in alignment with our natural rhythms, to embrace rest and prevent overwhelm and burnout. We can connect with the four phases of the menstrual cycle as our own personal energy management system.

And when we listen for and cooperate with the natural ebb and flow of our inner seasons, we rebel against the subtle but pervasive messaging that we should be more, bigger, faster. We feel better, we’re more creative, more powerful and we model the much-needed art of sustainable living.

We explore:

What Sjanie learned about sustainable, cyclical living from a fierce lioness she encountered in a dream.
The creative power that opens up within us when we dare (and are able) to step out of hustle mode, stop producing and surrender into non-doing at menstruation.
Alexandra’s personal story of discovering the power of stopping, through years of intense menstrual pain, which she was eventually able to heal through the power of rest and listening to her body.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

When we enter the autumn of our menstruation years in our 40s and start to experience what many call perimenopause, we can easily think we should keep pushing through even though our bodies, minds and emotional landscape are transforming profoundly.

(Alexandra and Sjanie, the co-founders or Red School call this phase the Quickening, or the autumn of our menstruating years).

Our guest today specialises in helping women in midlife recover from burnout so they can rise stronger and thrive longer. Jolinda Johnson is the author of Resilience: 10 Ways to Recover from Burnout and Exhaustion, and works as a Life and Health Coach, as well as a Menopause Coaching Specialist.

In today’s conversation we explore the four phases of burnout; from feeling wired and tired, to health challenges to full-on exhaustion, all the way to an official burn out diagnosis and major life changes. Jolinda explains how tracking these phases offer us many opportunities for course correction before we find ourselves flat on our back. So this one is for you especially if you’re in perimenopause, but it relevant to anyone experiencing burnout in any life phase. We explore:

Jolinda’s definition of burnout, which is chronic stress without recovery, is characterised by exhaustion, cynicism, and decreased capacity for your life roles.
What menstrual cycles changes, as well as other health symptoms can show us about our current levels of burnout.
Why we need to set better boundaries with ourselves, and how to do it.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re continuing our exploration around the fundamentals of the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, through the lens of some of the frequently asked questions from our community, such as what to do if your menstrual cycle doesn’t look like the archetypal cycle, how to track your cycle if you have menstrual health challenges, and how to talk about cycle awareness with your loved ones.

The golden thread running through every response from Sjanie and Alexandra is the one and only rule of Menstrual Cycle Awareness which we call the Big Red Rule: that your own unique experience of your menstrual cycle is the most important thing, with all its quirks, strangeness and challenges. As Alexandra shares in the conversation, your job as a student of your cycle is to stay loyal to exactly what you’re experiencing.

In other words, there are no ‘shoulds’ with menstrual cycle awareness, and there is no perfect cycle to achieve. The practice of menstrual cycle awareness is a homecoming to yourself, in a world that conditions us to look outside of ourselves for the answers. The power of the cycle rests in you experiencing your own cycle, and trusting your experience of your unique strengths, vulnerabilities and needs, exactly as they are on each cycle day.

We explore:

The ‘crossover days’ - the shift from one inner season (menstrual cycle phase) to another and how to track and manage the disturbance that can arise, particularly between inner summer (ovulation) and inner autumn (the premenstruum).
How to practice menstrual cycle awareness when you have menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, period pain, endometriosis, PCOS, PMS or PMDD, infertility challenges or other issues, and how your cycle awareness practice can be integral to your healing journey.
What it can look like to share your menstrual cycle awareness practice with your partner, family, friends and even your work colleagues.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

In our forties, many of us hit a wall. It can be a time when our responsibilities are at an all time high, just when our bodies are telling us - sometimes very loudly - that it’s time to change the way we’ve been living and working so far.

Our guest today, renowned visionary, coach and catalyst Dr Joanna Martin helps us understand how to navigate this phase of life which is often called perimenopause, and which Red School founders Alexandra and Sjanie call the Quickening, through the lens of the archetype of ‘superwoman’.

As the founder of One of many, Jo’s organisation has supported over 70,000 grassroots women leaders to have a greater impact without burnout. She recently published her book, Superwoman - Escaping The Myth and in our conversation today we explore how the superwoman archetype shows up in our lives, as well as how to step out of superwoman mode, embrace community and get your needs met, even with all the responsibilities you hold.

This conversation is for you if you’re in your forties and looking for ways to show up without burning out. We speak a lot about parenting, so it’s especially for you if this is your path. However, it’s also for you in any phase of your life, if you recognise that you have a tendency to try to push through and do too much, and you want to work cyclically to honour your needs.

We explore:

The origins of the superwoman myth, and why it drives some of us to embody anti-superwoman, which means we don’t activate our impact potential.
Why we can only burn out if we’re not in our body and Jo’s practical approach to get your needs met - the 'Needs Creed'.
Jo’s personal Quickening story of meeting her increased need for sleep and alone time, and navigating big emotions as she journeys into perimenopause.

---

Join our free online course - Love Your Cycle: Discover the power of menstrual cycle awareness to revolutionise your life here: www.redschool.net/love

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Joanna Martin: @drjoannamartin - https://www.instagram.com/drjoannamartin
One of Many: @oneofmanywomen https://www.instagram.com/oneofmanywomen

View Details

When people hear about menstrual cycle awareness, they’re often surprised, confused and baffled by the idea that there could be a connection between the menstrual cycle and your creativity, power and wisdom. It’s no surprise given current cultural attitudes around the menstrual cycle and menopause, which are largely ignored or dismissed.

So today’s episode is designed to both build a bridge for you if you’re new to the practice as well as offer a refresher for you if you’ve been tracking for years and want to rediscover the fundamentals of tracking your cycle, as your unique rhythm of power.

As you may know, Alexandra developed the early prototype of this practice as she worked to heal her own menstrual pain over forty years ago, when she dared to listen to her body and began resting at menstruation. The practice evolved over many years working with groups, then Alexandra and Sjanie founded Red School to teach it, and wrote about the practice in their book Wild Power, and now guide thousands of students to deepen their practice through their Cycle Power course, as well as teaching next level cycle awareness on their Menstruality Leadership Programme.

We explore:

Some frequently asked questions, including the difference between fertility awareness and menstrual cycle awareness, how to listen to your body if you’re more used to paying attention to your mind, and how to respond to what you discover in your cycle check-ins.
A demonstration of how to actually do a daily cycle check-in, including listening for your physical sensations, your emotions, and your thoughts. And for those who are postmenopausal (or don’t have a menstrual cycle for another reason), Alexandra shares how she works with the moon in her lunar cycle check-in.
Other cyclical elements you might want to pay attention to, including your dreams, your habits, your sexual energy and even the arguments you tend to always have at certain times of the cycle month.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

In many indigenous communities across the world, people have long honoured menstruation as a sacred time. Today we’re lucky to be exploring the beauty and wisdom of the ancestral moontime medicine of the Andean people, and our guest is Dr Cynthia Ingar, who is an anthropologist and Andean keeper of Woman Medicine wisdom living in the Sacred Valley in Peru.

In her late twenties, Cynthia was guided by a mentor to do thirteen traditional Andean moontime retreats where she was in silence and eating a special diet for four days and four nights while she menstruated.

Cynthia has dedicated her life to teaching a woman-centered approach to women's health, to traditional midwifery and to revitalizing Andean Woman Medicine including menstrual cycle and the Andean Moontime traditional practices. In this rich, magical conversation, we explore how her moontime retreats prepared her to live her calling, both asa keeper of this Woman Medicine and as a mother to her children. We explore:

How we travel to the ‘Ukupacha’ when we bleed, which is the realm related to the Feminine, where we perceive life differently, experience altered states of consciousness, and receive insights and wisdom.
How Cynthia works with the ancestral Andean practice of praying with her menstrual blood, as an offering to Pachamama, to mother earth.
What she has learned from grandmother mentors about how they worked with the ancient menstrual practices to give them inspiration and guidance in their work as the keepers of ceremony and the rituals of life for the community.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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 Cynthia Ingar: @hampiwarmi - https://www.instagram.com/hampiwarmi

View Details

Befriending our menstrual cycles and wombs and coming home to the root of our body, and to our pelvic bowls often means negotiating any trauma that we’ve experienced in that part of our bodies, or other traumas that we hold in this part of our bodies. As our guest today, the brilliant Dr Jeevan Singh shares, the pelvic bowl is an organ of relationship that has the capacity to guide our personal and collective.

Jeevan’s locates itself at the intersections of mindfulness-based somatics and mental health, traditional earth-based medicines, personal and collective liberation and the pelvic bowl. She is a lifelong student of traditional East Asian medicine, has a masters in integrative mental health and an advanced training in the Hakomi method of mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy. She founded Womb School and the Somatic Womb Path together with Kris Gonzalez (who was a guest on our podcast on episode 175) and Marissa Coreia.

In times that can feel very destabilising, Jeevan brings a deeply grounding presence, and I hope this conversation soothes you as much as it did me. We explore:

How Jeevan navigated a series of three traumatic experiences after her Saturn return in her late 20s, and how the the trauma healing that followed catapulted her into her body.
The womb as a guide out of the rugged individualism we see in our world. It is an organ of relationship - the first relationship we all ever experienced was in the womb of the mother, the person who birthed us.
The earth as an attachment figure, and how we can work with trees and other bodies in nature as a partner in nervous system regulation and how we can co-regulate with the ocean as we co-regulated with the salty waters of the womb in utero.

---

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 info@redschool.net

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Jeevan Singh: @dr.jeevansingh - https://www.instagram.com/dr.jeevansingh
Womb School: @womb.school - https://www.instagram.com/womb.school

View Details

Spring is just beginning here where Alexandra, Sjanie and I are in the UK, and due to popular demand, this time two years ago we rode off the springtime momentum to create a couple of podcast episodes all about the inner spring - the preovulatory phase of the cycle.

Many of you have been sharing questions about this pre-ovulatory phase of the cycle (which correlates to the waxing moon phase if you’re lunar tracking), so we thought we’d share this episode as a replay today.

This one is especially for you if you find it challenging to plug back into the world after your bleed, if you can tend to feel overwhelmed and stretched in this cycle phase, or you start to lose touch with yourself as you feel the rising energy of inner spring.

We explore:

What are the gifts of the inner spring for our leadership? What is needed to access the power of the inner spring?
Leadership calls for us to stretch, and often to be more vulnerable and public - how we can hold ourselves in this stretch through the dark art of pacing and trust our own timing
How inner spring can help us to meet the urgency of the world and bring us back to our medicine and our unique way of contributing to the world

Join our free online course, 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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re exploring the immense capacities that open up to us as we move through menopause, and it’s a special episode as Alexandra, the co-founder of Red School is your host, and it’s our next Wise Power series conversation...

The Wise Power series began with our Wise Power retreat when S+A’s book Wise Power was published and Alexandra is continuing to have sporadic conversations about what menopause awakens and reveals within us all.

Today her guest is Prune Harris, an energy expert, a consciousness educator, and soul activist, who has trained with healers, elders, and wisdom holders throughout the world.

We explore:

The different cycles that Prune is tracking now post-menopause, and how our life force moves into different expressions of wisdom once we’re no longer being held in monthly cycles.
Menopause as an identity death process which brings us face to face with our inner soothsayer, to hear deep truths about ourselves, our relationships and the world, so we can choose the new identities we want to embody in our third act.
How menopause is helping to meet the modern day crisis of separation and call us home to our essential place of belonging, so we can radiate it into our lives and into the world.

---

Order our menopause book - Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

In our 40s, many of us begin to experience a variety of health symptoms and challenges, as well as emotional and psychological shifts. Some call this perimenopause. At Red School, Alexandra and Sjanie call it, The Quickening…

So for today’s podcast episode - we’re re-sharing a conversation from a couple of years ago - one of the most listened to and shared episodes ever on the podcast. It was the fourth in our menopause summer series when we were launching S+A’s Wise Power book and it’s called perimenopause - what’s going on?!

We look at how this life phase in the run up to our menopause process is slowly awakening new levels of power within us, and how to navigate all this can bring up for us, and beautifully, Sjanie shares generously about how she is negotiating this transition personally.

We explore:

How we receive a report card on the state of our health in our 40s, which is inviting us to up our self care and set ourselves up for a healthy post-menopause life.
Why the power that is awakening in us in the Quickening requires deeper responsibility as well as deeper self care.
How to handle your new, increased critical capacites (cynicism, discernment, judgement) wisely and cleanly, rather than use it to annihilate and destroy!

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

As many of you will know, Uma Dinsmore Tuli has been a powerful force for good in many fields for decades, including Yoga, Menstruality, and women’s health. She describes herself as a writer, an educator, a Hyperactive Yoginī, a mother of three and a devotee to the Dark Mother. Today we chat about the cycles that guide Uma’s life, from the planets, to the moon, to her early relationship with her cycle and how it led her to develop Womb Yoga and write the best known of her six books, Yoni Shakti, a feminist retelling of yoga. All the way to Uma’s menopause process, which happened during the crucible of Covid and being silenced due to a legal battle, and the unstoppable flow of creativity power it awakened within her.

The golden thread we track throughout the conversation is how we can experience our blood, our orgasms, our pregnancy and pregnancy losses, our lactation, and our menopause as extraordinary portals to power, but only if we’re conscious of them, and if we respect them. We explore:

What happened when Uma showed up to her yoga sessions, as a new mother, with a postpartum body, how the practices - as they were being taught - didn’t meet the needs of her bleeding, lactating and how this inspired her to write the book that she needed: Yoni Shakti.
The healing power of circling as women as a radical act of resistance to patriarchal and colonial oppression, and as a pathway to recultivating our trust in each other.
Why we need to decolonise our sleep - as a way to recover our menstrual and menopause health - which is one of the reasons why Uma wrote her new book, Nidra Shakti: the Power of Rest - an illustrated, decolonial encyclopedia of Yoga Nidra.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Many of us feel more intuitive and connected to the mystical and the magical in the second half of the menstrual cycle and today I’m directly exploring the connection between menstrual cycle awareness, witchcraft and psychic capacities.

Our guest is Mimi Young, a Taiwanese-Canadian, Daoist, animist, spirit worker and medium, who serves her community through ancient Chinese esoteric practices, dream interpretations, unconventional tea ceremonies, and occult education with her witches coven community.

Mimi first experienced her intuitive and psychic gifts as a child, but they went underground until five months of bed rest while pregnant with her second child. And together we share a very unfiltered, raw and wild conversation about how Mimi works with the different skills and capacities that awaken in the four phases of the menstrual cycle in her divination and spellwork. We explore:

Why you can’t work with spellcraft or psychic gifts without being fully present and connected with your body, and how menstrual cycle awareness supports this.
How to work more consciously with the premenstrual phase of the cycle as a gateway to your intuitive, psychic, magical and shadow work capacities.
Mimi’s animist approach to building a relationship to your menstrual blood as a conscious, alive, intelligence, and some ideas for working with our blood in magical ways.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

You can explore Mimi's work on her website here: https://shopceremonie.com/

View Details

When our guest today, Sarah Jenks was in her 20s, striving to get it all right, and be a good girl, she quickly found herself feeling exhausted, empty and struggling with emotional eating. One day, she stumbled upon sacred feminine ceremony and her life changed.
She was inspired to dig into the history of sacred feminine ceremony, where she discovered how it has been branded by the oppressive patriarchy as evil and untrustworthy, and she connected the dots with the way many modern women don’t trust our own magic, and are actually afraid of ourselves and our truth.

Today, she shares the story of how she made it her mission to devote her life to get women into sacred feminine ceremony and weave the sacred feminine back into their everyday life. She now leads a community of over 100,000 women as an ordained priestess, and we explore how Sarah connect with the cyclical intelligence of her menstrual cycle to guide her life, relationships and work. As she shares in our playful, joyful, enriching conversation today; “my menstrual cycle helps me to track my process of becoming more and more myself.” We explore:

Why Sarah doesn’t organise her life around her cycle, but rather gives herself radical permission to show up exactly how she is on every cycle day.
How she sources energy differently in her inner seasons; from her body in the follicular phase, from her sensuality when she’s ovulating, from her wild, critical energy in her luteal phase, and from the earth and the deep feminine, in her bleed.
What Sarah has learned from her study of ancient sacred feminine practices from many different traditions, with the moon and the menstrual cycle.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

We live in a world where we so often feel that we need to live like men, work like men, and push ourselves like men in order to be valued. When the truth is that we are more-or-less twenty eight different women each month, and there is immense power and magic in this innate ebb and flow. As our guest today, Usha Anandi, the Founder of Womben Wellness says that women and people with cycles have four personalities every month, and each one has distinct spiritual gifts. Today we walk through the four inner seasons of the menstrual cycle, exploring the spiritual powers that become available to us as we move through the cycle month.

Usha who is also known as Erin Foley, is a devoted Mother, holistic nutritionist, childbirth educator, full-spectrum doula, and herbalist committed to changing the status quo by alchemizing modern scientific information with ancient, energetic practices to serve the whole woman. We explore:

How Usha didn’t plan to work in this field, but her menstrual pain continually led her to her Calling to heal herself, and guide others to do the same.
The importance of avoiding the capitalist, patriarchal traps of pushing ourselves in inner spring and summer by ‘bio-hacking’ our bodies to get the most out of them, and instead embrace our natural pre-ovulatory playfulness, and our innate ovulatory capacity to be at the centre of our family and community lives.
How connecting to our inner autumn truth-speaking powers can school us in expressing our calling and taking a stand for what we most love.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Happy New Year! Today we’re back with our first live episode of 2025, and we’re trying out something new and fun - we hope you love it: a ‘power card’ reading for the year to come.

Our theme for today is how menstrual cycle awareness can help us all to tap into our visions and dreams for the coming year, and how the daily practice of checking in with our cycle can help us to make them real. So we start by unpacking how the menstrual cycle - and especially menstruation - can help us tune into our deepest longings and dreams, and then how each inner season has different powers that help bring our dreams into reality.

And in the second half, Alexandra and Sjanie choose three different cards to offer you a menstrual power ally on your quest to apply your cyclical intelligence in 2025. We explore:

How our cycle can support us through the evolutionary process of bringing dreams to life. Our visions are big and they invite us to grow up and stretch into the new capacities we need to fulfill them - and our cycles can be our allies on this growth path
How the menstrual cycle can be your ‘oracle’ - an invitation to commune with the deepest and wisest part of ourselves.
Three different powers from inner autumn, inner summer and inner spring, to inspire and support you to bring your dreams to life this year, in a cycle-aware way.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

As we enter 2025, we explore what menstrual cycle awareness can teach us about how to begin things well. This is an episode we recorded a couple of years ago, when we were each navigating a bumpy beginning to the year, and we used this as a lens to explore how the deep intelligence within the cycle is guides us through life’s highs and lows.

Whether you’re wanting to start the year with intention and a clear vision, you’re in the midst of a new beginning such as a new job, a new relationship or creative project or you’d like to learn how to work with your cycle as an ally for all the beginnings of your life, this episode has both deep insight and practical advice. We explore:

The implicate, deep intelligence at work in the cycle, and how it lays an the archetypal blueprint for all beginnings.
How each of the five chambers of menstruation prepares us to start new things.
Practical ways to look after yourself if you - like us - find beginnings challenging!

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re sharing a conversation we had a couple of years back at the close of the year and it’s all about what cycle awareness can teach us about all of life’s endings; the smaller, more surface level ones like the end of the year we have coming up, and the bigger more profound ones, like ending relationships, moving house, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones.

For those of us with menstrual cycles, each month we have an opportunity to practice ending the cycle well, aligning with the deep intelligences at work within us as we descend towards menstruation. (Or the dark moon if you’re tracking with the lunar cycle).

And, as quite often happens, Alexandra and Sjanie have totally different ways of approaching endings - which we chat about in-depth!

We explore:

How conscious endings make all of life feel sacred.
The surprising gifts of the premenstruum when it comes to endings - how this phase of the cycle prepares and tenderises us to feel deeply and acknowledge what we love and treasure.
The deep wisdom that lives in the ending of the menstrual cycling years - the death-and-rebirth of menopause - and how we can all weave it into our lives.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

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.

Join us for a 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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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/

View Details

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.

---

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

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

---

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

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

View Details

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.

---

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

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

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.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

**---

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)

View Details

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.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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).

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

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.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

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.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

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.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

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.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

As you may know, we often talk about the amazing powers available to us when we’re able to rest at menstruation. But in a world that likes to see us active 24/7, how do we create the time and space to truly fulfill this glorious potential?

Well, Alexandra and Sjanie have a remedy they call The Big Bleed. Essentially, this means giving yourself a one-off ultimate menstrual experience. Because this is likely to blow your socks off, leaving you full of revelations, and inspiration to plan another Big Bleed as soon as possible.

We explore:

How to do a Big Bleed retreat; where to do it, what to bring, and what to do (hint: nothing!) as well as how to manage the challenges that can come up when we try to carve out pockets for deep rest.
Sjanie’s recent magical Big Bleed experience; how she managed to pull it off, what she discovered about herself and her leadership, and why it mattered that every time she checked the clock it said 11.11.
How Alexandra and Sjanie do a creative Big Bleed ritual retreat for Red School twice a year, in August and December, to allow the organisation to have an inner winter, and receive visions for the months to come.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

How can you practice cycle awareness in your relationship? We get asked this question all the time, so we’re especially grateful to our guests today, Lucy Peach and Richard Berney for being willing to invite us right into the heart of their cycle-aware relationship.

Lucy Peach is a period preacher, author, and folksinger. She’s a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme, the author of Period Queen, and a long-time champion of the power of the menstrual cycle. Her theatre show, My Greatest Period Ever has educated and empowered thousands of people to shift the period narrative in our culture from one of shame to one of pride.

Her husband Richard Berney is a creative director and co-performer in the show alongside Lucy, with his amazing live illustration. They were just about to begin a 25 show run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when they sat down with me to speak about the joys and challenges of practicing cycle awareness in their relationship.

We explore:

The strategies Lucy and Richard use to honour Lucy’s cyclical rhythm in their relationship, from practical details like how they use a shared google calendar to how they both work with the same acupuncturist, to how they’re navigating a long fertility journey.
How Richard embraced Lucy’s menstrual cycle awareness practice as a new language - like a weather forecast! - that has helped him to get more perspective during tough moments between them.
How they collaborated to create My Greatest Period Ever - Lucy’s award-winning theatre show.

---

Registration is open for our 2025 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lucy Peach: @lucyspeaches - https://www.instagram.com/lucyspeaches

View Details

24% of women and people who bleed in the UK suffer from chronic pelvic pain, it’s 1 in 5 in Australia where our guest today, gynecologist Dr Peta Wright lives and works.

Dr Peta wrote her book Healing Pelvic Pain: transforming the trauma of period pain, endometriosis and chronic pelvic distress to explore a wide range of treatments which often aren’t prescribed, including lifestyle changes, stress management and particularly therapeutic work focused on locating trauma in the body.

Because, over years of extensive research and working with women and menstruators with pelvic pain, she she’s seen a huge correlation between nervous system dysregulation, early childhood trauma, chronic stress and chronic pain.

She says, “as I began to see more and more women through this more holistic lens, I realised that time, care and love were just as important as drugs, surgery and physiotherapy - if not more so. This is, in essence, the first part of establishing safety and stability for the traumatised nervous system - which nearly every patient with chronic pain has".

We explore:

A brief history of period and pelvic pain - from ancient female healers like Hildegard von Bingen and the wise women of Egypt, and how the mind-body dualism birthed with Descarte's “I think therefore I am” philosophy impacts the way we understand pelvic pain today. (Including modern medical racism where Black women’s pain is regularly dismissed).
How the nervous system acts as a mind-body bridge in the healing process. As Dr Peta says “your pelvic pain is not simply the result of a lesion or all in your head. We need to learn to listen and uncover the missing pieces that live in the space between mind and body”.
The research that documents the connection between pelvic pain and trauma, starting with the famous ACEs study from the 1990s, all the way to the latest cutting edge science including polyvagal theory and how our perception of danger effects how we experience pain (as well as every other system in our bodies).

**---

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 info@redschool.net

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 Peta Wright: @verawellness.com.au - https://www.instagram.com/verawellness.com.au

View Details

For many of us, the inner autumn can be a provocative, messy and painful part of the menstrual cycle, where old traumas and wounds can surface, and for some this becomes deeply debilitating and disruptive.

Our guest today, Menstrual Cycle Support founder Kate Shepherd Cohen, shares generously about her personal experience of PMDD (Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and how menstrual cycle awareness gave her the skills to manage the fear, rage and meaninglessness that can arise in the premenstruum, so she could find the power within them.

This is part-two of my conversation with Kate who is a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and the founder of a ground-breaking programme which is bringing menstrual cycle awareness to thousands of people on social prescription via the NHS.

We explore:

PMDD as a signal of our power awakening.
Approaches to support ourselves through challenging premenstrual times, including how rest at menstruation is key to accessing our premenstrual power and the importance of practicing the art of ‘holding the tension’.
How Kate redirected her rage into her calling to change the world and end the injustice of menstrual suffering for all (and the interesting nudges she is receiving from her calling these days).

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Speaking about the menstrual cycle and menopause is becoming less and less taboo. You can see it everywhere you look; Instagram is wonderfully full of women teaching cycle tracking for health and fertility. Our recent podcast guest Dr Lara Owen is busy co-creating international menstrual and workplace policies. You can buy menstrual cups in supermarkets. This podcast has been listened to 246,235 times! And this surge in the menstruality movement is ushering in a whole new wave of career possibilities for those of us who feel drawn to the power and wisdom of menstrual cycle. In today’s podcast we explore many of them, through the lens of some of our Menstruality Leadership Programme graduates and the brilliant careers they have gone on to create. The doors for our 2025 MLP have just opened, and we’d love to have you with us for this - world’s first - leadership training rooted in menstruality. You can find out more at www.menstrualityleadership.com.

We explore:

Menstrual cycle and menopause career possibilities including menstrual cycle coaching, doctors and psychotherapists specialising in all aspects of cycle health, people helping tweens with their first periods, creating cycle-aware products like journals and self care tools, as well as menstrually inspired authors, artists and activists.
Some of the myriad ways that our graduates infuse menstruality into their existing careers, including; in business, crafting, Yoga, school teaching and even sailing.
How menstruality can also inform the often invisible and (frustratingly) unpaid caring, earth-ending and energetic work that so many of us do, which weaves this world together.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re delighted to welcome one of the original menstruality trailblazers, Dr Lara Owen back to the podcast. We’re exploring a topic which comes up regularly in the Red School community - how to practice menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause at work, and how to create workplaces which honour our cyclical needs, particularly during menstruation and menopause.

Dr. Lara Owen is recognised internationally for her pioneering and continuing work on menstruation. She is the author of the ground-breaking book, Her Blood Is Gold, holds a PhD in menstrual organization, and is a founding member of the Menstruation Research Network (UK).

As we explore today, she recently helped to birth the new British Standards Institute Menstrual and Menopause workplace policies which are going to have a huge impact, and will soon be rolled out internationally.

Her new book, Reorganising Menstruation explores what happens when menstrual stigma starts to be disrupted in a mainstream way, and I left this conversation feeling so much hope for the truly cycle-aware world that is on it’s way - I hope you inspires you too.

We explore:

How the Covid pandemic - and the normalisation of working from home - ushered in the exciting new British Standards Institute Menstrual and Menopause workplace policy - a 40 page document with guidelines for employers and management for how to accommodate the menstrual cycle and menopause in the workplace.
How menstrual cycle awareness can become a way to optimise or ‘hack’ our energy in the workplace and the importance of asking ourselves if we’re unconsciously supporting commodified materialistic worldview or helping to create a world where we can menstruate in the way we want to at work.
The power of ‘post-menopause zest’ at work.

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 info@redschool.net

View Details

In February 2016 our guest today, author and teacher Sara Avant Stover was coming out of a season of intense creativity and output and was preparing to enter into a cycle of rest and recovery, when one evening she received shattering news. Her former fiance came home one evening and confessed that he had been cheating on her, with many people, for many years.

This turned out to be the first of many serial heartbreaks that Sara experienced over the coming five years. Ironically she had just published a book about the heroine’s journey, which described the necessity of cycles of death and rebirth when we enter the underworld, just as she was personally thrown into this great descent.

Sara’s work integrates Buddhism, embodiment, and psychology and has uplifted the lives of countless women worldwide. She has transmuted her heartbreak into her new book, Handbook for the Heartbroken: A Woman's Path from Devastation to Rebirth, which we explore today. We explore:

Sara’s heartbreak stories; including abortion, relationship breakdown and a financial crash and how they have prepared her for what we have experienced collectively over the past four years, and particularly the pandemic.
The core action that Sara took to heal from the gas-lighting experience of long-term infidelity.
Guidance for you if you’re currently negotiating heartbreak, or are still healing heartbreaks of the past.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

As with your early years of cycling, your later years of cycling are a transitional time.

Your 20s and 30s are all about discovering your rhythm and firming up your sense of self. But from your 40s onwards, the focus begins to shift. Subtly, you start to feel that you're stepping up to a bigger game. It's as though the clock on your life is now ticking. That's why Alexandra and Sjanie call this life phase "the Quickening".

You may start to find that your inner autumn, premenstrual energies seem to dominate more of your whole cycle experience, and as challenging as this may feel, something powerful is being worked within you.

That’s exactly what we’re talking about today - the inner autumn powers that wake up in your 40s and the potent self care practice that helps you to channel them into your life.

We explore:

How to hold ourselves when the anesthetic wears off in our 40s (just like in the premenstruum), so that we can invite in greater depth and self-responsibility.
How the inner autumn in the cycle and our lives calls us home to our natural authority and power
Why the practice of ‘gearing down’ is vital in the Quickening and how to do it in a world which wants to keep us hustling.

---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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Do you catch yourself measuring your worth by how much you do, and how much what you do benefits others? If you do, you’re not alone. And, as our guest today, Tamu Thomas, says - it’s not your fault.

In her groundbreaking new book, Women Who Work Too Much: Break Free from Toxic Productivity, Tamu challenges the societal norms that glorify relentless productivity and burnout, shedding light on the systemic, emotional and psychological factors that keep women trapped in a never-ending cycle of productivity.

In our conversation today, she shares practical strategies for liberation, centering cycle awareness as a way to resist the drive to do-do-do, and instead reclaim and honour our natural rhythms. We explore:

How cycle awareness has enabled Tamu to find freedom from her inner critic (whilst allowing her to channel the power of her premenstrual analysis to offer critique of the systems that oppress us).
What Tamu learned from her Auntie Aminatta, a Sierra Leonian international business woman about how to create a life where - as Tracee Ellis Ross says - “my life is mine”.
The profound spiritual, primal breakdown and breakthrough that happened in 2017, when Tamu’s body reclaimed her energy back from what she calls the ‘oppressive trinity’ of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Is there a particular point of your menstrual (or lunar) cycle where you tend to fall into a metaphorical ‘hole’? For many it’s day 5/6, coming out of the bleed or day 19/20 as you transition to inner autumn.

These are two of the four ‘crossover days’ of the cycle. We like to think of these days as mini gaps in the fabric of life, or the ground giving way under you.

Whatever metaphor works for you - and in this week’s podcast episode we laughed ourselves silly coming up with at least 20 metaphors - your crossover days are a little-known key to bringing the powers of the inner seasons of your menstrual cycle - or the lunar cycle if that’s how you track - to life.

Today we go one by one, exploring today’s the gifts and challenges of each of the four crossovers, through the lens of your stories and questions.

(A note for you, if you have irregular cycles and you find it hard to track your inner seasons, let alone the transitions between them, you’re not alone, and Sjanie speaks beautifully about how to work with this cycle awareness challenge.)

We explore:- How to hold the power of your menstrual insights as you crossover from inner winter into the rising energy of inner spring.

The one crucial task for you to do as you move into your ovulatory energy in inner summer to ensure you don’t spin off out of orbit and get frazzled by the heady heights of the metaphorical sunlight!
How slowing down and taking time for self-recognition and celebration as you enter the premenstrual phase of your cycle in inner autumn prepare you to meet your critic.

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Many of us in the Red School community have an intuitive longing to connect to the wild Feminine within us. As our guest today Michaela Boehm says in her book, The Wild Woman’s Way, we’re longing to connect to “the ancient part of us that knows the rising of the moon, and the movement of the tides. The instinctual, deeply connected aspects in each of us that has survived and thrived in the wilderness for many 1000s of years”.

Today we’re exploring how to rewild ourselves, how to come back to body and pleasure, and how to move from doing to being, amidst the challenges of modern life. Our guide is the wise and wonderful Michaela who is known for her work with high-performing individuals, including Oscar-winning actors, and Grammy-winning musicians.

She’s the founder of The Non-Linear Movement Method®, a powerful somatic release modality. Her work has recently been featured in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix Show “Sex, Love & goop” and Will Smith’s bestselling memoir ‘Will’.

We explore:

The story of Michaela’s childhood longing to become a witch, her early years apprenticing with her mentor, and how she eventually became the holder of an ancient, female held, tantric lineage.
Why we need to be able to access both our ‘Go’ mode and ‘Flow’ mode as women living in our modern world.
The embodiment practices that enable Michaela to live a huge, wildly creative life without burning out.

**---

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 info@redschool.net ---

Social media:**Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Michaela Boehm: @micboehm77 - https://www.instagram.com/micboehm77

View Details

Today we’re talking about power, and it’s a word that comes up a lot at Red School. It features in both of Alexandra and Sjanie’s book titles, as well as the title of our new course coming up in June - Cycle Power. But what exactly do we mean by power?

In our conversation, we explore how Alexandra and Sjanie define and understand power, why so many of us feel scared, confused or suspicious about power, and **how the menstrual cycle wakes us up to our power.

So, if you’re longing to feel more agency and power in your life,** if you notice yourself suppressing your power, and if you’re curious how menstrual cycle awareness can help you to claim your power and live it, this one is for you.

We explore:

Alexandra’s lifelong fascination with power, her current experience of power as an elder who has lived a lifetime of cycle-awareness, and her current power-edge; undefendedness.
Vulnerability as a gateway to healthy expressions of power; it allows us to feel, to know ourselves, to empathise and to move towards ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’.
The importance of acknowledging and claiming the power that we do have, exactly where we are, and how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness helps us to notice and lean into this innate power.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

The deeper we go with our menstrual cycle awareness practice, the more it can resource us as we heal our deepest wounds. Cycle by cycle, we step into deeper intimacy with our needs, which in turn enables us to take clumsy steps towards clarifying healthy boundaries.Today we’re speaking about a core wound which effects all of us, with the woman who first comprehensively defined the term a decade ago, Bethany Webster and the Mother Wound. As Bethany says, the Mother Wound is the place inside us where we compulsively cause ourselves to be small, self-sacrificing and silent as a means of loyalty and love and approval with other people.Today we explore how, if we’re persistent and committed on both the path of menstrual cycle awareness (or conscious menopause), and working with the Mother Wound, we can create boundaries which can help us to feel less disconnected and more like we belong to this messy, old life. We explore:

How your deep ‘why’ can help you to hold clear boundaries when you face criticism.
Bethany’s three tips for holding strong boundaries with challenging family members.
How menstrual cycle can help us to discover what we really want (rather than what we’re making ourselves do) so that we can ride off the power of these desires to courageously set necessary boundaries.

**---

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 info@redschool.net **---

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

View Details

Today we’re exploring a vital topic to all of us who are looking to evolve, wake up and live in a way which is honouring and life-affirming - decolonisation.When you look at the modern wellness industry in western countries, you can see that it borrows heavily from the ancient traditions of cultures from around the globe - **from turmeric lattes, to cacao ceremonies, to yoga classes, to burning sage.

There’s an important, growing, decolonisation movement** which is asking all of us to look more deeply and critically into our own practices, and to ask ourselves how we may be causing harm, and to work to correct it.

Our guest today is at the leading edge of this movement, and in our conversation she shares generously about her personal decolonising journey with us, so that we can all work towards - as she says in the intro to her brilliant ‘Decolonising Wellness’ podcast - appreciating, not appropriating.

Jyoti Rani is a Menstrual Cycle Coach who practices, teaches and embodies a decolonised approach to wellness - rooted in inclusivity, diversity and an honouring of indigenous wisdom.

She is also a Yoga Teacher and a big part of her decolonising journey has been reclaiming her Indian heritage and the rich wisdom of Yoga and Ayurveda - “the knowledge of life”, India’s ancient healing system - so as an added bonus, we begin and end the conversation learning about Ayurvedic menstrual health.

We explore:

Dozens of ways to begin decolonising your mind, your life and your wellness practices.
How we can decolonise our menstrual cycle - by stepping away from cookie cutter templates of how our cycles ‘should look’ and instead cultivating an intimacy with the cycle we have.
What Ayurveda recommends we eat on our period

---

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 info@redschool.net ---

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

View Details

Do you have a menstrual cycle that doesn’t fit within the archetypal menstrual cycle maps? And are you - or someone you know - wondering how to practice cycle awareness when you have unpredictable, irregular cycles and are never sure when your period is going to arrive? **When cycles become unpredictable it’s natural to feel uprooted, frustrated, powerless, confused, and even experience a sense of betrayal from your body.

Today, Alexandra & Sjanie explores the three main reasons why cycles become irregular,** how Menstrual Cycle Awareness invites us to exercise the muscles of inner listening, sensing and knowing, so that new kinds of embodied, cyclical intelligence can be revealed within us, and importantly, how to actually practice cycle awareness when you are off all the usual maps.

We explore:

How to cultivate trust in your body and your cycle process, especially if you’re feeling lost, angry and experiencing self-blame in the face of your unpredictable cycle.
How giving attention to all of life’s rhythms and cycles can support us when our menstrual cycles are unpredictable; including your circadian rhythms, the lunar phases, your overall life cycle and the creative processes you’re inhabiting (particularly in the years running up to menopause).
Why life’s big transitions can cause irregular cycles, the deep initiatory wisdom at work inside the disturbance, and guidance for how to work with life’s ‘void’ moments.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

**---

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

View Details

How easy do you find it to express your truth? On the podcast today, we’re exploring the connection between the womb and the voice, why so many of us feel blocked in our expression, and how we can literally talk and sing our way back to our power, so that we can use our voices to create the world we want for ourselves and future generations.

Our guest is Alycia Camacho - a spoken word artist who is passionate about supporting people to activate their own voices. She’s also a Hormonal Health Coach and the founder of Embracing Cycles and has taken a long, challenging and ultimately liberating healing journey with emotionally and physically painful cycles for the past decade.

Alycia shares what has supported her to transform from being the shy kid who didn’t believe she had anything of value to say, to becoming an artist with a powerful impact today - as you’ll hear for yourself from the excerpts of Alycia’s spoken word art we share throughout the episode.

Trigger warning: We talk about Alycia’s abortion experience in depth in the first half of the conversation, so take care of yourself if that isn’t a topic that is good for you to connect with at this time.

We explore:

How Alycia’s cycle healing journey - including a traumatic abortion experience - ultimately led her to a profound freedom of expression.
Some simple, practical, accessible ways to begin using your voice as an instrument.
How Alycia’s is reclaiming her indigenous lineage, and how we can work with our wombs and voices to connect to our ancestors, and bring our unique medicine into the world.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

We’ve all been there at some point. A shocking challenge disrupts our lives - a loss, a health crisis, a great disappointment - and we become the caterpillar in the cocoon (ie: we turn to mush).

But - as those of you who have been through it may well attest to (!) - nothing turns us into primordial goop like the initiation of menopause.Today I have the rare honour of speaking with a guest who is not only mid-menopause-initiation but has also been deeply involved in the menstrual movement for two decades, and can therefore share a transmission from the leading edge of this work.

Psychotherapist, author, activist, and ordained Priestess, Elayne Kalila Doughty, has been negotiating the transition of menopause for a fifth of her life - the past ten years… today she shares the story of her menopause ‘reckoning’ - the core-wound truth she was forced to face when she was hospitalised in October last year, and began an intense inner and outer healing process.

We explore:

Why menopause is designed to slow us down, and how this is in service the the dismantling of the inner patriarchal structures within each of us.
How Elayne’s menopause process began with her experience of baby loss at 46, and what she's learned from being an unmothered daughter about how to mother herself (and our planet).
A hilarious moment - at around 35 minutes - where we meet Elayne’s brilliant East London cockney grandmother, Olive, and hear about her feisty menopause reckoning, when she was done being compliant. HOLY YES!

**---

Receive our free Wise Power Retreat** menopause conversation series: www.redschool.net/wise-power-retreat

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re tackling two taboo topics at once. Firstly, sex - an area which many people find charged, challenging, confusing and sometimes shameful and we’re pairing it with menstrual cycle awareness - another topic so often shrouded in shame.

Our guest and brilliant guide is Alexa Bowditch - the founder of sexandlove.co and a cycle aware woman who has a gift for welcoming people into their sexual expression so that sex can feel more safe, intimate, fulfilling and even epic.

We look at the sex challenges that can arise in each inner season of the cycle, and how to work with them to cultivate more intimacy with yourself, and your lover and move towards the kind of sexual experiences you’re longing for.

We start by exploring how Alexa’s personal journey to becoming a sex coach who is now widely known and celebrated as That Sex Chick - and how she’s actually having less sex now than ever before, largely due to her current pregnancy, and how she’s navigating this with her husband...

We explore:

How to have a variety of conversations about creating more intimacy with your lover - including actual scripts for sharing vulnerable longings.
Ideas for approaching intimacy in inner autumn and winter, to support you to get your needs met (including how to move through shame if you’re someone who loves menstrual sex).
How to use sex to heal and feel more safe, both with yourself and in partnership.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

**---

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

View Details

Our first period - or our ‘menarche’ - is a big initiatory moment, which sets us on the path of menstruality - the path of awakening to our Calling.

During menarche we are each birthed from the ‘womb of our family’, into the womb of our menstruating years. We’re coming into the holding, guidance and wisdom of our menstrual cycle, month after month.

In today’s conversation we unpack what menarche means, why it is such a pivotal life transition, and how we can re-write our own experience of the chasm of unknownness and exposure that we must each navigate as we make this transition of menarche, so we can each claim our uniqueness and honour our true nature.

We explore:

The deep connection between menarche and self worth, and how re-writing menarche can liberate a profound sense of self-belief and self-confidence.
Guidance for how to do a personal menarche ritual (including what to do if your experience of your first menstrual cycle was a let-down, a non-event, or a shaming experience).
We share many different menarche stories, including how Sophie’s reframed her ‘non-event’ first period, how a menarche ritual helped Louise prepare for menopause, and how Sjanie is holding her daughter in the tender approach to her menarche.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

When Dr Cre Dye was in her early 20s, she began to feel called to explore the power of her cycle - or as she describes it, her moon, flowers and power.

Over our series of two conversations, we’re exploring the cycle wisdom she has learned, unearthed and received over the last three decades through the lens of her relationships with her two Grandmothers; today her Granny of hidden First Nations descent, and in part two, her African American Mama.

Dr Cre Dye 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. She is also part of the Red School team as our Menstruality Justice and Inclusion Educator, facilitating inner change for social change on our Menstruality Leadership Programme, supporting us all to work with the power of the cycle in a way that is just and inclusive.

We explore:

Why women gathered together in Moon Lodges, in many indigenous cultures to listen for the dreams of bleeding women, and how Cre has followed this lead to embody the sacred through her cycle and her body.
A wide range of indigenous menarche rituals, including the Anishinaabe rite of passage known as the Berry Fast, the Navajo Kinaalda ceremony and the Hupa Flower Dancers coming-of-age ceremonies.
What Cre has learned from her research about how to honour and trust her menstruating body, and guide her clients to honour the moon cycle.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

We’re thrilled to be welcoming mythologist and author, Dr Sharon Blackie back to the podcast today, to take another journey into the mythic imagination together.

We explore how the ancient myths of our land weave us into connection with ourselves as natural, cyclical creatures, to our place in the world, and to the wisdom of our ancestral lineage.

Many of you will have read and loved Sharon’s 2016 book, ‘If Women Rose Rooted’, and today we look at three of the ancient stories through a menstrual cycle awareness / conscious menopause lens, including;

What the ‘Well Maiden’ shows us about how to act as a bridge to restore the Feminine in our world, particularly by cultivating the skill of listening to the wisdom of our dreams.
How the wild character of ‘Mis’ can guide us to find solace in the wilderness, particularly during the phases of our cycles and lives which can be full of grief and are often misunderstood by "civilisation", like the premenstruum and menopause.
How the story of the ‘Selkie’ can inspire us to reclaim our wildness, our authenticity and our sense of belonging.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we're having a frank and feisty chat about one of the hot topics in our community - premenstrual and menopausal RAGE.

Have you ever been driving in your car and felt compelled to wind the windows up and actually roar because you felt so wildly angry on day 24?

Or, if you’re navigating menopause, have you experienced your own ‘burn-the-house-down’ moment when your fury threatened to destroy everything you’ve built so far in your life?

What is going on with this rage? Why are so many of us feeling it? And what is it trying to tell us?

In this episode:- Anger as an indignation of soul, bringing us closer to our essence.

Sjanie, Alexandra & Sophie's personal journeys with rage.
How to work with rage in the menstrual cycle by practising the menstruality Leadership skill of 'holding the tension'.

---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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re actually replaying Dr Lara Briden's first episode with us, How to Feel Better in Perimenopause, because it’s the most popular episode we’ve ever shared, listened over 3500 times, and shared widely, and because we receive more questions about perimenopause than anything else.

In the conversation Lara demystifies this major transition that happens in our bodies in the years that lead up to menopause, when many people are left wondering if they’re going crazy, experience symptoms which can seem to come out of nowhere; including anxiety, depression, irregular cycles, insomnia, night sweats, hot flushes, migraines and more.

Lara is a naturopathic doctor and the author of The Hormone Repair Manual, Every Woman's Guide to Healthy Hormones After 40, a practical guide to navigating the change of perimenopause and relieve symptoms with natural treatments such as diet, nutritional supplements, and bioidentical hormone therapy.

We explore:

The four phases of perimenopause and how to navigate them, including the ‘waiting room’ where your periods are very irregular, but you haven’t yet reached the 12 month pint which defines the beginning of menopause.
The science behind this life transition and the hormonal events that can drive symptoms like irregular / heavier cycles, sleep disturbance and hot flushes.
Lara's rescue prescription for peri-menopause and how it can help you to look after your whole being, and especially your brain and nervous system - Lara assures us that there is always a way to feel better.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Lara Briden: @larabriden (https://www.instagram.com/larabriden)

View Details

What causes menstrual pain? Why do periods go missing? Why do we get PMS and how can we treat it naturally? What is happening in our bodies when we're on the pill? What is a good alternative to the pill?

We hear questions like these all the time from our community, and in today’s episode we’re talking with a great ally of Red School, Dr Lara Briden who answers all of these questions and more. The conversation is an amazing resource, and one that we hope you’ll share with your friends who may be experiencing challenges in these areas.

Our guest, Dr Lara Briden is the author of the Period Repair Manual: Natural Treatment for Better Hormones and Better Periods. She’s also the author of a second book - the Hormone Repair Manual: Every Woman’s Guide to Healthy Hormones after 40.

She has treated 1000s of women with menstrual health symptoms, and has a wealth of wisdom and experience as well as an amazing capacity to make complex health topics and challenges seem simple.

We explore:

Why ovulation is so important, the common false narrative that the pill can regulate the cycle, and Lara’s five favourite alternative forms of contraception.
Lara’s lifestyle and diet approaches for menstrual pain - they have supported 60-70% of her patients to relieve their pain. (And when to know if you could be dealing with endometriosis).
Underlying health factors that can cause PMS, and how to make it a thing of the past through natural approaches.

**---

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 info@redschool.net **---

Social media:**Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Lara Briden: @larabriden (https://www.instagram.com/larabriden)

View Details

Around 20 years ago, in London, Sjanie was living her life with great abandon. Bold, confident and out there…she was invulnerable.

But she had no menstrual cycle - she had been on the contraceptive injection for seven years.

It was only when she started to have intense pain after orgasm that she suddenly sensed something was missing and that she needed to get her cycle back… and today we hear the amazing story of what happened once her cycles returned.

We also hear the full story of how the menstrual cycle also changed everything for Alexandra, including her long journey to heal debilitating menstrual pain, and the immense gifts she received along the way, by surrendering to the power of menstruation.

We explore:

What Sjanie’s mentor Maggie meant when she said that Sjanie was living life with her gloves on?!
What happened when Alexandra’s partner held her through the worst of her pain, even as she was cursing the patriarchy.
And how the intimacy with the menstrual cycle awakened a profound sense of purpose for both Alexandra & Sjanie.

Join our Cyclical Wisdom Quest - Feb 20th - 22nd: www.redschool.net/quest

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today's episode is for you if you’re curious about how to maintain healthy boundaries when you are working to create change for a cause that you deeply care about. It’s especially for you if you self-identify as a highly sensitive person. Many people come to cycle awareness because they are feeling burnt out from a system that pushes them beyond their natural limits. Our guest today, Dorcas Cheng-Tozen is someone who knows burnout intimately, and - luckily for us - has devoted herself to a study of how we sensitives can find our way to contribute to creating a more just and beautiful world, which doesn’t break us in the process.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozen is an award-winning writer, editor, speaker, and communications consultant whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and today we’re diving into her brilliant new book: Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways.

We explore:

The "Activist Ideal" and the peer pressure that exists within activist circles to be ‘on’ all the time, willing to sacrifice mind, body and soul on the altar of the cause.
A wide variety of activist approaches and roles for sensitive, introverted empaths; including research, art as activism, record-keepers, builders, and what Dorcas calls relational activism.
The ‘seasons of activism’ and how to find your own natural ebb and flow as you work to increase the love, compassion and justice in the world.

---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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

From finding oneself again through perimenopause, to helping to move through depression, to transforming communication with loved ones, today we’re exploring real life stories of how menstrual cycle awareness has changed the lives of our listeners.

We explore:

How discovering cycle awareness supported Melanie to move through a bout of severe depression to a sense of deep alignment with her true self.
Erin’s journey from feeling lost in perimenopause to returning home to herself, making sense of the process and finding grounded clarity.
How cycle awareness has brought Rebecca back into a sense of belonging to the earth, and it was such a life-changing realization (and a gift) that she’s made it her life's work.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

It walks us home to our own natural rhythms. It keeps us close to what truly matters to us. It’s a innate self esteem builder. It even prepares us for menopause…

Menstrual (and lunar) cycle awareness are a huge game-changer, and powerful spiritual practices for our wild times. But the truth is that most of us live in cultures that value productivity over rest and profit over health - so we all need inspiration to stay committed to our personal cyclical rebellion.

That’s why today’s Menstruality Podcast episode is devoted to all the ways that menstrual cycle awareness can transform our lives. (And ok, we may not have quite reached 100, but we easily could have given a couple more hours!) We explore:

How cycle awareness helps us to pace our our bodies, energies and unique nervous systems, rather than allowing the culture around us to dictate who we have to be.
When we lean into our own cyclical experience we help to deshame the menstrual cycle and menopause, and instead dignify and honour them as powerful sources of wisdom.
Cycle awareness as a foundational wellness practice, bringing soothing and ease, and helping us clarify and hold our boundaries.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Welcome to the final episode in our Wild Power Bonus series - today we're creating a new life-affirming menstrual story.

It’s time now for each of us to fully reclaim the power of our menstrual cycle. To do that we have to get smart in a world that doesn’t yet recognise or celebrate it. In this episode we share some of our key Red School cycle savvy tips and strategies for restoring the cycle’s wisdom and creating a new life affirming menstrual story.

In this episode you will:

Get to know your four undercover agents for a cycle savvy life
Learn practical ways to create a cycle centred life
Hear us talk about the crucialness of women and all people who menstruate gathering together to change the world.

**---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com ---**The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Our guest today, Lazola MaDuka lives a homesteading life on a biodynamic farm amongst giant mountains and trees in South Africa.Her life is utterly wedded to the land, the weather and the seasons - her land tells her what it needs and when.

Lazola is also a Period + Menstrual Cycle Embodiment Coach, a Red Tent Facilitator and a certified Menstruality Mentor - she’s a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme. So, in our conversation today, she connects the dots between her relationship to the seasonal landscape around her, and her relationship to the cyclical landscape within her own body.

Along the way she illuminates how menstrual cycle awareness can be a pathway home to our body’s ever-changing needs, as well as to creating **sustainable ways of living personally and collectively on our earth.

We explore:**

What the soil and compost has taught Lazola about the power of inner winter and how to claim rest as a natural birthright.
How cultivating more intimacy with both our inner seasons and the seasons in nature around us creates a vivid sense of belonging (and what Lazola’s baboon neighbours have taught her about belonging together!).
Lazola’s vision for how the practice of cycle awareness could transform the way we live on earth.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

View Details

Welcome to our penultimate Wild Power conversation series. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.

Episode seven is about how to enter what we call the ‘Temple’ of Menstruation. Inside each of us lies a hidden ‘temple’, a place of bliss, love and deep belonging and today we reveal how your menstrual cycle prepares you to enter this ‘temple’ each month at menstruation.

In this episode you’ll:

Discover how you’re wired for bliss, love and ecstasy when you bleed
Learn how your menstrual cycle prepares you enter your inner temple at menstruation
What you can do to get a full blast of this blessing

---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Our guest today is Kimberly Ann Johnson, who has been working hands on in integrative women’s health and trauma recovery for a decade with 1000s of women, as a Somatic Experiencing™ Practitioner, sexological body worker, educator, and author.

She’s the author of many books including The Call of The Wild, and her work has been featured in the NY Times, Forbes and Vogue. She’s a sought-after teacher it feels like an extra special treat that she opened up and shared generously about her journey to understand the impact of her own trauma experiences in her body.

We explore the teachings of Call of the Wild book, about what we can all learn about the healthy predator expression of the jaguar in the journey to heal trauma. As Kimberley says on her website, “if you can learn to speak your body’s language, and transmute trauma into positive, reparative experiences in the present, if you can make the shift into acting from a stance of your deepest, truest self … everything changes.”

We explore:

Kimberley’s menstrual cycle journey in the years running up to menopause; how she has navigated her symptoms and what the journey has taught her about resting, movement and how to tend to herself at this phase of life. .
How having a baby and navigating the post-partum period transformed her life.
Kimberly’s fresh approach to nervous system repair, and how women can learn to step out of the prey role that we are conditioned into - and which puts us in a default fawn, freeze or flee nervous system response - and awaken their inner healthy predator.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Welcome to our sixth Wild Power conversation. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released in 2017 when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power.

They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.

Episode six is all about the inner seasons of your menstrual cycle - where the initiatory action takes place. We call it the workhorse of your journey to come home to your Wild Power.

In this episode you’ll:
- Learn about the inner seasons of your cycle and the natural powers they hold

How to get into gear with them to capitalise on those powers
And how awareness of the inner seasons can reveal your strengths and vulnerabilities

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Happy New Year from all of us at Red School 🥳 May your entry into 2024 be full of everything you most long for.

This conversation with Alexandra and Sjanie today is especially for you if you’re very much in inner winter mode, we’re exploring a topic which we’ve been wanting to since the podcast began, which is the deep spiritual power of menstruation, and how it unfolds in five distinct phases.

Alexandra starts by sharing how she came to understand the five chambers of menstruation starting with a story with a lover in Stockholm, then together with Sjanie they map out the profound gifts of these chambers as a gateway to the 'inner temple' of menstruation.

We explore:

What to do if you want to explore the five chambers of menstruation, but are dealing with menstrual pain and symptoms - including Alexandra’s story of how the chambers were a key part of navigating her extreme menstrual pain.
The one key practice that opens up the way for the five chambers, even if you can only carve out 10 minutes to be with your menstrual process.
How to work with these five phases in other ways - such as the turn of the year that we’re all currently experiencing, as well as during the great inner winter of menopause.

Join us for our free, online, New Year retreat, "Your Menstrual Cycle, Your Oracle" on January 11th - https://www.redschool.net/oracle

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Welcome to number five of our bonus Wild Power series. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.

Today we're diving deep into an exploration of the "cosmos" inside you. We reveal the basic pattern of this cosmos - the two energy dynamics (the way of the Feminine and the way of the Masculine) - that form the underpining of your cyclical life journey.

In this episode you’ll:

Learn about the energy dynamic of the menstrual cycle
Discover the two creating currents that underpin your initiatory journey through the menstrual cycle
And how you can come into right relationship with both the Masculine and Feminine within you

---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof )

**---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net ---

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

View Details

We just passed the darkest night of the year here in the northern hemisphere - the dark moon before the solstice, and it feels like a good moment to explore how cycle awareness can hold us during dark times; personally, collectively, and seasonally.

Like many of you, we’re grieving the suffering and conflict in the world, and doing what we can to educate ourselves, take meaningful action and contribute to building peace.

So, as Sjanie says beautifully in this episode, the menstrual cycle is such a profound teacher in the mystery and the darkness - and if you’re going through a dark night of the soul personally at the moment, or are needing sustenance as we navigate these dark times collectively, we hope this episode is balm for your heart.

We explore:

What Alexandra learned from painful encounters with her inner critic just before menstruation. (She would always find herself sitting in the bath with her inner critic at the other end tearing strips off her! And feeling strong self-rejection just before the ecstasy of her bleed).
How the wisdom of the second half of the menstrual cycle held Sophie through a recent time of personal grief and hopelessness.
How we can each yield to this phase of darkness as we complete the cycle of this year, so that we can be deeply regenerated and receive new visions at the beginning of the next annual cycle.

---Please join us on for our free New Year retreat: Your Menstrual Cycle: Your Oracle on January 11th https://www.redschool.net/oracle

---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

This is our fourth bonus Wild Power conversation. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.

In the fourth installment of this bonus series, we explore the initiatory process that is unfolding from menarche to menopause, leading you ever deeper into embracing your Wild Power. We illuminate how this initiatory path is working you - an amazing hidden intelligence that is leading you Home.

In this episode you’ll:

Learn about this initiatory journey takes us from ‘me’ consciousness to a participatory ‘us’ consciousness.
Find out how to reframe your experience of your first period (menarche), if it was slightly less that perfect.
Discover the steps of this initiatory path that helps you to fully face yourself, understand your Calling and grow into new levels of maturity.

**---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme.** You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof ) **---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School.** We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Chloe Isidora is the creator of My Moon Power, a set of essential oils to help you connect to yourself and your inner seasons. She's also the author of 'Sacred self-care: everyday rituals for a more joyful and meaningful life' and is a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and has a deeply devoted practice of menstrual cycle awareness.

We invited her to the podcast to explore her creative process over the past several years, through a cycle-aware lens. It’s a beautiful, inspiring and very relatable journey from self doubt, uncertainty and low self esteem, through a series of unexpected twists and turns to a wildly creative life.

We explore:

The surprising underground spiritual influences that have sustained Chloe’s connection to herself, her womb wisdom and the soul of the project.
How to practice letting go into deep self-acceptance throughout the inner seasons, as a way to prepare for the great letting go at the bleed.
How Chloe is navigating the bumpy, challenging ‘birthing’ moment of this project; including holding herself through increased visibility and staying true to the visions through moments of slower momentum.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we're excited to share our third bonus Wild Power conversation. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.

In this episode we dive into the detail of how to live menstrual cycle awareness as a spiritual practice - your path to power - on a day to day basis, and the magic that unfurls from that.

In this episode you’ll:

Discover how to restore your cyclical inner ecology
Learn the four steps to charting your cycle as your spiritual practice
Understand how to harness the powers of your cycle to boost your health, increase your creativity and productivity and restore sacredness to your daily life

---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof )

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Five years ago, when women’s educator, storyteller and songstress, Tara Brading was burnt out from the hustle culture of the non-profit world, she dropped everything and went on a pilgrimage to Ireland to connect with her Irish ancestral lineage. This trip changed her life, setting her on a path of studying mythology and honoring the earth based feminine wisdom left in her blood and bones.

This episode is for you if you feel a call to reclaim the wisdom of your ancestors, to return to a way of living on earth which is balanced, to heed the call to the wild that you perhaps (like me) hear each cycle month when you bleed or during your menopause process…

It’s also for you if you are committed to decolonising your mind and your life as part of your leadership path. I’ve been lucky to have had conversations with several Black and Indigenous educators for the podcast who have clarified the connection between reclaiming the cyclical wisdom of our wombs and bodies, and dismantling colonial systems of oppression (such as Latham Thomas in episode 77, Asha Frost in episode 63 and Hinewai Waitoa in episode 87). With Tara, I explore how, particularly as white women of European descent, reconnecting to our ancestral lineage goes hand in hand with the journey of decolonisation.

In our conversation we explore;

What the ancient myths and stories of Ireland and England tell us about the connection between women’s bodies, and the earth, as well as the leadership role we claim when we recognise that we embody the land (and how our cyclical nature gives us a direct line to this remembrance).
How to reconnect to the wisdom of your ancient, ancestral bloodlines when you menstruate.
The connection between our wombs and our voices and how to work with song as a way to connect with our ancestors.

---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof )

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

While there are many wonderful spiritual practices available today, the one thing we are not taught is that we have our own unique way or practice encoded in our being that changes everything. In this episode we restore menstrual cycle awareness as the original spiritual practice, and how it can support each of us to evolve, every day.

This 2nd bonus episode in our Wild Power series was recorded when Red School founders, Alexandra & Sjanie first launched their Wild Power book - and have a buy one get one free offer on the Wild Power book until 21st December, if you’d like to buy one and get one for a friend or as a gift for a loved one over the holidays.

(We’re also running the offer for our menopause book, Wise Power).

See below for the link to get your free copy.

In this episode you’ll:

Discover how our bodies come coded with our own original spiritual practice
Learn how we came to discover the power of the female body
And how you can begin to activate this uniquely Feminine practice

---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof ) ---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

At the heart of the menstruality leadership path is the power and wisdom of menstruation. Slowly over time, bleed by bleed, we have the opportunity to experience a profound kind of homecoming when we menstruate - we remember who we are and what we’re about. This sense of purpose and meaning can fuel us up for another cycle of leading with heart, power and courage in our lives.

In today’s conversation we look at three secrets for successful leadership that can emerge from conscious, rested menstruation (however much we’re able to do that within the structures of our world and the responsibilities of our lives) through our own personal stories, menstrual dreams and trying to articulate the often wordless and deeply mysterious knowings we’ve experienced during our bleed time.

We explore:

How Alexandra’s menstrual pain in her 30s opened her up to her life’s purpose (and how orgasmic menstruation eventally became for her).
Our favourite menstrual dreams and what they taught us about ourselves, our worth and our leadership.
Why the first chamber of menstruation ‘separation’ is so key to accessing the leadership wisdom within menstruation; separating from the world, but also from what we have previously known ourselves to be, so that we can be fully available to encounter the mystery and infinite possibilities available to us.

---

Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof )

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

For centuries we’ve been taught our menstrual cycle is a liability, something we must ignore or reject. In this special bonus episode we’re going to upend that old story and celebrate the power of loving your cycle or at least making tentative steps towards befriending it, and the inner resources you unlock when you do that. This conversation was recorded when we first launched our Wild Power book - and have a buy one get one free offer on the Wild Power book until 21st December, if you’d like to buy one and get one for a friend or as a gift for a loved one over the holidays. (We’re also running the offer for our menopause book, Wise Power). See below for the link to get your free copy.

In this episode you will:

Learn how the menstrual cycle is our #1 resource for self-care
Explore how it is your natural rhythm of power for living a wholesome, creative life
How loving your cycle can lead you to loving yourself more

---
Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

To get a free copy of Wild Powerto gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof

(We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof ) ---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today’s episode is for you if - like me - you long to feel more calm, rested, peaceful and grounded throughout your days. Both because it feels better, but also because you know the gold that lies in this state of restedness; for your health, your relationships, your worklife, and your leadership.

Our guest is Tracee Stanley, the author of the bestselling book Radiant Rest, and the recently published The Luminous Self. She is a post-lineage yoga teacher, inspired by more than 20 years of study, and she’s devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidra, rest, meditation, self-inquiry, nature as a teacher, and ancestor reverence.

We chat about how to set up a practice that allows for rest inside a mainstream culture that says we’re not worthy unless you’re pushing through; whether that’s pushing through grief, illness, exhaustion or menstruation and menopause. Through it all, Tracee illuminates how deep rest, peace and truth are our birthright. We explore:

The importance of unveiling the messages we received about the value of rest from our parents and ancestral lineage; particularly for Black, Brown and Indigenous people.
How the practice of Yoga Nidra is a way to know our true self, as well as a powerful act of rebellion in a culture that wants us to keep endlessly grinding
The story of Mataji - a female yoga teacher in her 90s, who was famous for never sleeping, and became one of the first people to teach the wisdom of yoga nidra.

---

Registration is opening tonight for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

When Alexandra began to experience monthly outrageous period pain in her 30s, she made a radical decision. She thought “my body is talking to me, and I’m going to listen”. On the podcast today she reflects on this moment as a pivotal step into leadership… one that led to the development of everything that Red School has created.

The pain forced her to give space to her bleed time, which allowed her to slowly, cycle-by-cycle discover the spiritual powers of menstruation, and cycle awareness as a pathway to leadership.

It was the starting point for many of the cycle-inspired leadership skills that we now teach on our Menstruality Leadership Programme - it’s exciting because the doors for 2024 are opening again later this month - and through our conversation, we illuminate how the menstrual cycle and menopause can awaken us to a new (timeless) kind of consciousness which inspires a way of living and leading that is life-affirming, inclusive, and rooted in belonging.

We explore:

How menstrual cycle awareness, matresscence and menopause are calling us home to our power, and the responsibility that comes with it - a responsibility to care for all of Life.
The ‘ghost self’ that we each carry around with us - the ‘me I should be’, how it drains our power and how we can disengage from it, so that we can accept our humanity, our vulnerability and our messiness as a pathway to leadership.
What we mean when we say that menstrual cycle awareness and consciousness menopause awaken a leadership which is in service to the feminine.

---

The doors for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme will open later this month. If you're curious to learn more about it, please join us for a free introductory webinar: How to Channel the Powers of Menstruality to Step into Your Leadership. You can register here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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)

View Details

Menopause awakens us to the vulnerability of our humanity. The structures that have long held us safe begin to crack, and we lose the mechanisms we’ve used to hold ourselves in place; our bodies change, our shifting hormones rewire our psyches, our long held identities are shaken.

It’s no wonder we can start to feel that we’re “losing it” - all the layers of certainty that we’ve come to depend on are being deconstructed; from our health, to our careers, to our marriages, to even the deep meaning of our lives.

The radical idea we explore in today’s conversation, is that this process of ‘losing it’ is a necessary - albeit very challenging - part of the menopause spiritual initiation. If you’re in the middle of this messy process, may this episode offer some supportive context, meaning and even solace to you today.

We explore:

Why your mind needs to be decommissioned for the spiritual awakening of menopause to happen. It’s not that you’re going mad, rather you’re finding a new kind of intelligence within you; a heart-mind knowing.
The fear that arises as our minds change in menopause - particularly living within a consensus culture that values the mind above all and is rooted in a millennia-old collective denial and suppression of our intuitive gifts.
The punchline of menopause… and it’s not what you might expect…

Join us for Menopause: The Great Awakener - an online course (with lifetime access) at www.redschool.net/menopause

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re carrying on a conversation about the initiatory power of menopause which we’ve been having with Chameli Ardagh, the founder of Awakening Women, since the beginning of her menopause process. Last year she emerged from her challenging process of descent and is sharing the fruits of her brutal, yet beautiful menopause underworld journey; which included divorce, the reshaping of her Calling, and the death of her son.

Chameli Ardagh is a yogini, mystic and Goddess Wisdom Keeper. Her work is rooted in earth honoring, devotional women’s spirituality and goddess centered tantric yoga. One of the things I most love about her is her gift for storytelling and ability to bring ancient myths alive for our modern world.

We explore:

How the dismantling and transformation of menopause demands that we break age-old contracts based on self-sacrifice and learn to set new boundaries, as well as how these shifts ripples forwards and backwards in time.
How cultivating compassion with ourselves is not optional through the menopause process. It is needed to embrace even the parts of us that are totally out of alignment with who we want to be.
What happened when Chameli took herself on a honeymoon with herself during her early menopause dismantling, to a wild Hawaiian beach with a pod of dolphins!

---

Join us on for our Menopause: The Great Awakener course, starting Nov 3rd: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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 Ardagh: @awakeningwomen - https://www.instagram.com/awakeningwomen/

View Details

Our guest today, Lisa Schrader, is the founder of Awakening Shakti and the author of Getting Started with Tantra and has impacted the lives of thousands of women for over a decade as a workshop leader, author, speaker and coach.

She joined us for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener - last year and today, she shares how the course supported her through the 3-year post menopause dismantling-shedding-rebuilding re-birthing she’s currently emerging from. It’s been a deep process of dismantling old identities and recovering from a lifetime of over-achieving, pressure, performance, and people pleasing, to awaken the Queen archetype and a new kind of sovereignty. In our conversation we explore;

Her long process of dismantling her inner “Overachiever” that was born when she was chosen to be the first Tantra and sacred sexuality teacher to appear on Oprah.
How her garden has helped her reset her nervous system and attune to the new pace that menopause was inviting her into, slowing right down to reclaim her natural rhythm.
What has helped her to navigate her body image demons, including how she is embracing pleasure and allowing her sensual connection with nature to guide her.

Registration is now open for our menopause online course: Menopause: The Great Awakener - the early bird price is available until Oct 25th here - www.redschoolmenopause.com.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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 Schrader: @awakeningshakti - https://www.instagram.com/awakeningshakti

View Details

My guest today is one of many people who felt like she was losing her mind as she entered menopause.

Dr. Arianna Sholes-Douglas is an integrative healthcare practitioner and visionary in the field of women’s health. She has practiced medicine for three decades and is the author of The Menopause Myth: What Your Mother, Doctor, and Friends Haven’t Told You about Life after 35

The menopause was intense for her, and inspired her to reassess everything in her life, including her long career in medicine, eventually making the decision to transform her work life and start a practice supporting women in menopause with an integrative, holistic approach.

In our conversation:

We walk through Dr Arianna's 'signs you’re healing in menopause' and how they showed up for her personally, including the patterns that she broke through menopause, how to find our way to self forgiveness, and how to set boundaries.
How our brain chemistry changes in menopause and how this is reflected in the shift from people pleasing to ‘what do I need?’.
Dr Arianna's 'Jewels for the Journey' and the sacred role of menopause in our lives.

**---

Join us for a free webinar on October 18th: How Menopause Awakens Your Power - www.redschoolmenopause.com ---**

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

There's lots of confusion about how to define menopause and the years running up to it, making it difficult for people to clarify where they're at in their menopause process.

At Red School, we stand for a reclamation of our cyclical experience in a world which denies and demonises our cyclicity. We see this menopause confusion as a symptom of the way we have been shut out of our true experience as cyclical beings. In order for us to reclaim the place we’re in, both in our menstrual cycles and the larger cycles of our lives, we need to be able to feel, name and claim our own experience, as well as having a dignified and meaningful context for it.

So, in today’s episode Alexandra and Sjanie walk through the Red School way of contextualising menopause, through the lens of the seasons of your menstruating years—including the autumn of your menstruating years (‘The Quickening’), the Menopause Hinterland in the approach to menopause, and the long inner winter of the five phases of the spiritual initiation of menopause. We explore:

Some of the signs that you’ve arrived in menopause - including the increasing feeling that you’re living in a parallel universe!
A different way to understand the cycle disturbances that can happen in our 40s - which many refer to as perimenopause (which itself has multiple definitions, depending on who you’re speaking to).
How to navigate the tricky period when your cycles are unpredictable or breaking up - the menopause ‘hinterland’ - before you enter fully into the menopause initiatory journey, which has its own order or holding.

---

Join us on Instagram for 13 days of Menopause Power, starting Oct 5th - https://www.instagram.com/red.school

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Those of us who are passionate about the power of menstrual cycle awareness can feel a little crazy in our world. Not only does our culture overlook the power of the menstrual cycle, but it continues to perpetuate an atmosphere of shame around all things menstrual.

That’s why I love meeting women like Jasmine Alicia Carter.Jasmine is a Menstrual Artist and Feminine Empowerment Mentor. She’s been painting with her period blood since 2016. It’s become a sacred art and ritual that has changed her life and the lives of thousands of women across the globe, through the budding Menstrual Art Movement! In our conversation we explore:

How Jasmine paints with her blood, and the healing, de-shaming power of working creatively with your blood.
What happened when Jasmine’s menstrual art went viral via an article in the daily mail - how she transformed the hate she received into fuel for her practice.
The ripple effect of her menstrual art, for her son, partner, family and the wider community gathering around the menstrual art movement.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

When Lucy Pearce published her book about the power of the menstrual cycle, Moon Time: Harness the ever-changing energy of your menstrual cycle 11 years ago, she was one of very few people talking about periods, and it was one of the first books in print to speak about the Red Tent movement.

Over the past decade her loyalty to her cycle has helped her as a multi-passionate creatrix to write twelve books, found Womancraft - a paradigm-shifting publishing house, edit and publish over 50 books, teach courses, create beautiful art and parent three children. Five years ago she received an autism diagnosis, and in our conversation today we explore how this had helped her to understand herself far better, have tools to care for herself and manage her life as a cycle-aware creative in an all-too-linear world. We explore:

How to process a neurodivergence diagnosis, renegotiate your life and relationships and create a protective bubble to safeguard yourself.
How Lucy navigated years of crippling shame which shut down her creativity entirely, by saying yes to her creative expression in small ways.
The truth that real creativity happens outside of our comfort zones, and how we can lean into the stretch to meet what is truly authentic, and unearth that which has been shut down within each of us.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today I’m speaking with someone who knows in a very embodied way how to ride the creative waves of cyclical living… mainly because she knows how to ride actual ocean waves, and in some cases we’re talking 30 foot waves.

Easkey Britton spearheaded women’s big-wave surfing in Ireland and is a five time national champion surfer as well as being a marine scientist, holding a Doctorate in Environment and Society and an activist - she was named an ‘Agent of Change’ by Surfer magazine.

She’s the author of two beautiful books about our interconnection with water, Saltwater in the Blood and Ebb and Flow. She was writing her first book when she joined Alexandra and Sjanie for the Menstruality Leadership Programme and it is woven throughout with celebration of her own bodily cycles.

We explore how water supports Easkey through the cyclicality of her creative process including,

The importance of honouring the ebb, the out-breath, the inner winter. She interviews indigenous wisdom keepers throughout the book, and here she shares Lakota skier and activist Connor Ryan’s teachings about how it’s the ebb that allows us to tap into a state of flow.
How the cycles of water in our world can anchor us in the natural cyclical wisdom that has been at pay since the beginning of life on earth. The water you drink today has always been present - it may have been drunk by a tyrannosaurus rex!
What Easkey’s cycle has taught her about how to hold the tension as she wrote her second book, and how surfing in the ocean has helped her to trust the creative power of showing up, and being present.

---

Join our new Your Creative Power online course. We start on September 21st: www.redschool.net/creativity

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today on the podcast we’re chatting about a tried-and tested antidote to the biggest creative challenge most of us face, a challenge which came through in dozens of versions of this question in our inbox during our summer creativity series…How can I make space for my creative expression when there’s so much else going on in my life?

Do you relate? Perhaps you find yourself making exciting creative plans, only to get caught up in the flurry of day-to-day life and never really get started? Maybe you are wary of diving fully into a creative project—amidst everything else you’re caring for in your life—out of fear that you’ll burn out (again)?

Today’s podcast explores the deep, underground magic of cycle awareness, and how it helps us to understand everything we experience in our lives as part of the biggest creative act of all—being an ever-evolving human in an often-challenging world.

We explore:

The incredibly creative shift that happens when we dare to trust that everything in our life has meaning - even the things that feel that they’re getting in the way (the job, the caring role, the responsibilities etc)
How cycle awareness grounds us in who we truly are, which helps us develop new emotional skills, inner discipline and physiological muscle for all the creative projects that will call us in the future.
What Sjanie has learned from her many careers; from working in a potato factory to being a graphic designer, to being a hypnotherapist focused on fertility, to growing Red School.

---Join our new Your Creative Power online course and save £100 before Sep 10th: www.redschool.net/creativity

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

What to do when you find yourself in a creative void, either because life has thrown you a curve ball, or you find yourself feeling totally uninspired? Our cycles teach us to trust the fallow times, but that’s a tall order in a world that celebrates productivity above all else.

Our guest today is author, Rebecca Campbell and she’s a great person to have this conversation for many reasons, but especially because she’s personally navigated many periods of creative void in order to bring forth creations which have touched the lives of 100s of 1000s of people, including several books, courses, a new podcast and a mystery school.The deeper reason for the richness of this conversation is that Rebecca is a being who fully embraces the mystery. She defines herself as a mystic, and her calling is to weave the sacred back into everyday life.

We explore:

Why it’s ok to suck at the beginning of any creative process, and how staying safe is an antidote to creativity.
How to hold ourselves through big creative leaps, like leaving your job, or starting something brand new.
The journaling process that helps Rebecca move through imposter syndrome, and how trusting the mystery helps us to find the courage to share our voice.

---Join our new Your Creative Power online course and save £100 before Sep 10th: www.redschool.net/creativity

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

As cycle-aware leaders, nurturers and creatives we have a unique opportunity at our fingertips. We have access to an amazing inner technology for managing our inner critic.

(You know… that ever-present and frankly infuriating voice inside that likes to remind you that you’re not good enough, that freezes you into analysis paralysis, and that shames you into playing small.)

In today’s podcast we explore how to restore this inner critic to its natural home in the cycle - the pre-menstruum - and work to put boundaries in place to contain it. Because, when it’s in its rightful place, the inner critic can actually become a creative ally.

We explore:

The truth that your critic will never become your best friend. It absolutely won’t! But it can become a life-bringing force, when you know how to relate to it.
How to navigate the tricky terrain of your inner critic, and offer some guidelines for putting it back in its natural place, so you can experience its sacred role in your creative process.
Our upcoming Inner Critic workshop on September 14th: Your Inner Critic: Your Gateway to Your Creativity where we will learn how to relate to it in a more generative way, and liberate our creative energy.

---

The doors are now open for our Your Creative Power course, starting in September. You can find out more and take your seat here: www.redschool.net/creativity

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re talking about womb healing and leadership with Tumelo Moreri who is a Spiritual Healer, Womb Medicine Woman and Embodied Leadership Guide based in Botswana. Her work is anchored in her training in leadership and integrative coaching as well as African Spirituality.

It’s a far-reaching conversation, rich in story and sprinkled all throughout with embodied feminine wisdom. We explore:

How to follow your Calling, even when everything around you seems to be collapsing, and nobody around you seems to understand (and how your womb can guide you when you’re being cracked open).
How connecting with your ancestors - an important part of Tumelo’s womb healing approach - can serve as an antidote to imposter syndrome (and how cycle awareness amplifies this)
Our wombs as a gateway to the mother, the mystery our own unique medicine and how we can each work to ‘partner with our wombs’ as leaders.

---

The doors are now open for our Your Creative Power course, starting in September. You can find out more and take your seat here: www.redschool.net/creativity

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we’re picking up an important thread we’ve been weaving through the podcast since the beginning - Queer menstruality.

I'm back with Red School Leadership Mentor, Abi Denyer-Bewick and this time we're in conversation with the brilliant Lottie Randomly who graduated from the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme in 2012.

Lottie is a facilitator, educator, activist, writer and mentor with a background in mental health work and resilience building. They’re also a ceremonialist, with a special interest in funerals, and they’re especially drawn to the inner landscapes that people often fear passing through, such as menstruation and menopause as well as death and grief.

In our conversation to day we’re looking to expand the concepts around menstruality to include all people who menstruate - as well as people who don’t - all in the name of belonging, which is at the heart of this work. We explore:

How the practice of menstrual cycle awareness naturally brings up questions and personal exploration around the identities we hold.
How to expand the conversation around menstruality expands to include the experiences of all people with menstrual cycles, including non-binary and gender-expansive folks.
“Menstrunormativity” and the harmful impacts around the unsaid assumptions about the menstrual cycle and menopause.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Abi Denyer Bewick @abi.denyer.bewick - https://www.instagram.com/abi.denyer.bewick/
Lottie Randomly: @lottie.randomly - https://www.instagram.com/lottie.randomly/

View Details

Today we’re talking about menopause and creativity. In Alexandra and Sjanie’s menopause book, Wise Power, they speak about there being an ‘altar’ at the heart of the inner sanctum of menopause, “the point of deepest dark in which you experience the hot breath of your inner critic on the back of your neck, and you turn to fully face it.”

They go on to speak about how this powerful moment forges a new level of authority, a kind of authority that can be incredibly fertile ground for your creative process.

This has been true for my guest Elena Brower. She is prolifically creative; the author of several books, a new volume of poetry, and the creator of yoga programmes, paintings and more, alongside running a successful business.

She’s also passionate about re-writing the cultural menopause story (she recently interviewed Alexandra and Sjanie for an exciting menopause upcoming event - more about that soon…).

We explore:

How she’s experiencing a kind of creative re-birth a year and a half after her last period - a new kind of harmony happening, which is allowing her to think and make things that she’s never considered before.
Why older women believe in themselves more and care less about what others think and how it feels to be catching glimpses of a full acceptance of herself in this phase of life.
Her current greatest creative challenges, and how she’s navigating them.

---

The doors are now open for our Your Creative Power course, starting in September. You can find out more and take your seat here: www.redschool.net/creativity

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

What happens when two people go through the spiritual initiation of menopause as a couple? Today we’re exploring the challenges and power of the menopause transition through the lens of intimate relationship, with our guests, anthropologist, facilitator, writer and mother Sophia Style and meditation teacher, pilgrim, and death doula Gemma Polo.

This conversation is a precious gift - Gemma and Sophia are generous and courageous enough to invite us into some of their most intimate moments of challenge, conflict and connection from the past eight years, since they met, fell in love, and built a life together in Spain, co-parenting their children, and more recently have begun navigating the five phases of menopause alongside each other.

We explore:

The biggest challenges they’ve faced as they navigate being in a perpetual autumn in their menopause journeys (and how a chestnut has helped them get through it!)
How they are managing to co-parent teenagers and make sense of the changes in their mothering roles in this phase of life.
How menstrual cycle awareness has grounded them in a deeper level of understanding of each other’s shifting emotions, and creates a container of safety and depth through the rollercoaster

---
The doors are now open for our Your Creative Power course, starting in September. You can find out more and take your seat here: www.redschool.net/creativity
---
The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net
---
Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

View Details

We believe that both of these statements are true, but - as we explore in this podcast - a profound reclamation of the true power of inner summer is necessary, in a world which demands us to be in an endlessly productive summer-mode all of the time.

As a result of all the societal projections created by hustle and beauty culture, the power of summer is much misunderstood, and many people struggle with it. Today we share ideas for how we can free ourselves from the narrow band of experience within which we’re told to operate, so that our unique magnetism and authenticity can be fully inhabited.
We explore:

The shadow-boxing that can take over inner summer when we live in a linear world which neglects our cyclicity.
How being with the instinctual aliveness of our animal bodies helps us to unleash and express our power in the inner summer, as well as hold the charge of our Calling in the world.
The direct connection between dropping deeply at menstruation and the full claiming of our inner summer selves.

---

Join our NEW programme: Your Creative Power and receive £100 off before Sept 10th - www.redschool.net/creativity

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

What helps you to navigate the tender process of bringing your tender, intimate dreams and visions into reality?

In our episode today - which is the next in our creativity series - we hear from Joni, Jenny and Chloe, three of the people in our community who have shared their current greatest creative challenges. They are all currently negotiating the beginning of their creative process of birthing a new body of work, expressing big ideas through writing, and creating a community event respectively.

Alexandra and Sjanie bring wisdom from The Creative Cycle - the blueprint for creative fulfillment that they have unearthed from their decades of menstrual cycle work to explore challenges like: “I’m good at exploring but not so good at putting pen to paper.”, “I feel frustrated with myself as the ‘always dreaming big but never actually doing anything’ person.” and “The size of the vision is overwhelming and I'm not sure where to start.”

We explore:

The power that comes when we embrace the clumsiness and uncertainty of the beginning of any creative endeavour.
How menstruation holds us in a non-doing state which helps us resist the productivity-obsessed culture so we can receive our vision, learn how to acclimatize to the - often huge - creative charge of our dreams, and listen for the next simple step.
A practical way to kick the inner critic out of the tender dreaming phase of a creative project, so we can feel fully plugged into ourselves and feel held by our innate creativity.

---

The doors are now open for our Your Creative Power course, starting in September. You can find out more and take your seat here: www.redschool.net/creativity

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Six years ago dedicated imperfectionist and mushroom-foraging witch of business, Lucy Aitken Read moved her family from South London, UK to a yurt in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand where they share their off grid farm with another family and are all unschooling their kids.

She now writes and teaches about sustainable living, attachment parenting and living a life without school on her blog, youtube channel and in her courses.

Lucy is also passionate about cycle awareness and today we’re talking about how intimacy to our cycles is the best possible foundational for anything we’re creating, why we all need to be more mammal, and how to free ourselves from the structures that hold us back from creatively expressing ourselves - aka how we can each unschool our creativity.

We explore:

The power of play, making mistakes and detaching from outcomes when it comes to embodying our creative flow (and how Lucy’s unschooled kids have taught her new ways to have fun and follow her instincts).
The mini-death of menstruation and what it teaches us about surrendering to the creative process.
The three steps to unschooling our creativity, and what becomes possible creatively when we unfurl out from the shape that institutionalised education shaped us and our thoughts into.

---

Join our free webinar: How Menstruality Can Teach You to Live a Wildly Creative Life on July 12th - www.redschool.net/creativity

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today I’m back with Alexandra & Sjanie and we’re kicking off a series which will unfold all the way through the summer - our Creativity series. Because these two powerhouse creative mavens have finally landed their teachings on creativity - born from the menstrual cycle and relevant to us all, whether you currently have a menstrual cycle or not.

They’ll be sharing these teachings around what they call ‘The Creative Cycle’ for the first time ever this September in our new creativity course, and you can join us for our free webinar on July 12th to learn all about both The Creative Cycle and the course.

In today’s conversation we explore how we’re all innately creative, how The Creative Cycle can unleash our creative flow, and how Alexandra and Sjanie have worked with these teachings to make everything they’ve created at Red School…

We explore:

The liberating power of The Creative Cycle, and how it can free us all up from self doubt, shame, procrastination and “too-many-ideas” overwhelm into a thriving, fulfilling creative life.
What the menstrual cycles have taught Alexandra and Sjanie about the cyclical nature of creativity, and how Red School has been a ‘laboratory’ to practice these teachings.
Why - and how - we would LOVE to hear from YOU.

---

Join our free webinar: How Menstruality Can Teach You to Live a Wildly Creative Life on July 12th - www.redschool.net/creativity

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

“You cannot say how many cubic metres make up courage, or what kind of wires you need to construct freedom. What kind of lab do you go into to measure relationships between people?” ~ Minna Salami

When Minna, my guest today, said this, I got shivers up and down my spine (as I did many times, reading her brilliant book, Sensuous Knowledge) as a deeply intuitive woman raised in a hyper-rational world… or as Minna calls it, a world rooted in euro-patriarchal knowledge.

Minna Salami is a Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish feminist author and social critic. Her research focuses on Black feminist theory, contemporary African thought, and the politics of knowledge production, and today we’re exploring Sensuous Knowledge is a model of knowledge rooted in the dynamic landscape of Black feminist thought - one that empowers, enlivens, and liberates, through embodied insight. We explore:

How the menstrual cycle is a source of profound, disruptive different ways of knowing.
What happens in a world which only values that which can be quantified, measured and put into hierarchies, rather than honouring the knowledge that emerges from within our bodies and ourselves.
The “kaleidoscopic method” and what rivers, trees and placentas can teach us about power and the nature of reality.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

When I first dreamed into the Menstruality Podcast, my guest today was one of the first people I knew I wanted to interview, and it’s taken a while, but boy is it worth the wait! Tami Lynn Kent is the author of Wild Feminine and the creator of Holistic Pelvic Care, and I’ve studied with her over the past decade. Her work is so in demand, and she’s so devoted to her role as a mother to her three sons, and she lived in such a gloriously paced way, it’s taken almost two years to get together, but here we are at last, exploring the power and medicine we hold in our pelvic bowls as womb carriers.

We explore:

What could become possible if we continued the ancient indigenous practice of listening to the menstrual dreamers in our communities, as guides.
Why Tami came to be known as the Vagina Whisperer, and the shame that shifts when we are deeply honoured in this part of our bodies.
The funny, and deeply beautiful thing that happened when Tami taught her sons about the power of menstruation.

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Understanding how to dismantle racism is a charged and complex topic. So today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness can be a profound ally as we work to unravel our own unconscious bias, and find our way of deconstructing oppressive systems.

My guest is Dr Sunshine Kamaloni who has a PhD in cultural studies and a deep cycle awareness practice. She shares from her own personal journey working with her inner seasons in her equity, inclusion, diversity and belonging work to unpack how the muscles that cycle awareness grow in us can help us to uncover our own personal race story.

We explore:

What a race story is, how they underpin unconscious bias, and how they impact us differently depending on where we are in the structure of the system.
The blessings of inner winter as a time to rest, stop, ground and nourish as we take stock of who we are and how we sit with race, inside a safe container with less charge.
How our own inner critic can actually be a supportive force as we uncover our race stories; as a truth-speaker showing us our blindspots and a guide in evaluating our progress.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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 Sunshine Kamaloni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunshinekamaloni

View Details

Kim McCabe, the founder of Rites for Girls says that without puberty rites of passage, young people self-initiate. The media tells them how they should be and our youngsters create their own ways of proving their adulthood through feats, dares, and adventures. They try to appear like adults in what they do and how they look: using clothes, make-up, drink, cigarettes, cars, and sex.

According to Kim, we grown-ups can take back the role of initiating our children into adulthood, and “the children welcome it, we are fulfilled by it, and a transition that has become defined by its difficulty can become a joyous one.”

In our conversation today we explore how to take back the role of initiating our girls and young people **into their menstruating lives.

We explore:**

How to begin speaking about menstruation, move through shame and support girls to have healthy relationships with their bodies.
The importance of asking “what makes your heart sing?” and “what brings you joy?” to our girls, especially between age 10-12, so these threads are tended and their unique essence awakens.
The profound impact ofhappens when you have regular “mother-daughter dates”…

---

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 info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Kim McCabe - Rites for Girls - https://www.instagram.com/ritesforgirls

View Details

At the beginning of the pandemic, Claire Baker released her first book, and went into a hyper-productive mode, galvanised by the new world we were all suddenly pushed into. At the end of 2020 she was depleted, suffering from critic attacks and her ambition completely dissolved. It’s only now in early 2023 that her creative energy is returning.

In our conversation today we speak about the many ways that intimacy with our cycles manage our creative flow, our energy levels, our sense of confidence and purpose and our overall health. We explore:

How cycle awareness helps us to hold the tension during phases of creative ‘wintering’, and the deep value of fallow times.
The reluctant, bittersweet gratitude both Claire and Sophie feel about the learnings they’ve received from chronic illness, and burnout, and how it’s preparing them for the inevitable changes to come as they head towards menopause, and boosting their inner reserves in readiness.
How we can work with inner autumn and inner spring to manage our inner critic and make more space to play and mess up.

---

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 info@redschool.net

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

View Details

How has your intimacy with your cycle (or your menopause process) changed you, and your life? It’s an important question to ask, in quiet moments, perhaps in your inner winter. Cycle awareness offers many fruits, and they can easily be missed in a linear world that rarely—if ever—shines a spotlight on your cyclicity and what it is awakening in you.

On the podcast today, the tables are turned as Sjanie asks our host, Sophie this question and they explore what menstrual cycle awareness has taught Sophie over the past decade, particularly when it comes to living her calling and creating things of beauty in the world.

They explore:

The wild night of pre-menstrual rage that changed everything for Sophie; her career, her country of residence and her relationship.
What late night breast-feeding dreaming taught Sophie about how to run a thriving, sustainable, impactful business.
Why we all need to connect more to the 99.9% of life on earth that is cyclical, rather than the 0.01% of human culture that is largely made up of linear, productivity obsessed cultures.

---

Join us for a free webinar on May 25th: How Your Menstrual Cycle Can help you to Create a Thriving Business - www.yourcyclicalbusiness.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Hinewai Waitoa is doing powerful work to reclaim Maori menstrual wisdom. In her words: “Colonisation took so much of what was magic about Maori culture when it came to things like menstruation practices. We are still reclaiming our sacred ways here in Aotearoa”.

Hinewai is a māmā to two unschooled mini beings and the creator of Waikuranuku Indigenous devoted to wholistic womb wellness, reclamation & womb sovereignty.

Her reclamation journey has unfolded over the past 15 years and she now lives her life purpose holding space for kōhine - girls, wāhine - women, tāne - men and whānau - families, to reconnect to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the womb, heal inter-generational trauma and create a more nourishing connected loving earth for all living beings.

In our conversation we explore:

How Hinewai is currently preparing her tamahine - her daughter - for her menarche rite of passage.
What it means to “speak aroha” - love - into the centre of our beings, and how to work with it as a powerful menstrual practice, and an act of rebellion which creates deep, inner alignment.
What is inside Hinewai’s ‘kete ikura” - her menstrual cycle basket - and how she uses it to keep her anchored into a real, lived honouring of her cycle.

**---

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 info@redschool.net

**---

Social media:**Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Hinewai Waitoa: @waikuranuku.indigenous_cycles - https://www.instagram.com/waikuranuku.indigenous_cycles

View Details

How do you experience the pre-ovulation phase of your cycle - your inner spring? Is it a time of ease and flow, or perhaps anxiety and insecurity? Maybe a mixture of both?

Whatever your experience, we hope that today's episode will shed some light on the powers of inner spring for you. It's our first Q+A episode where Red School founders Alexandra and Sjanie will answer your questions about how to work with your cycle in the pre-ovulation phase.

We explore questions like:

What to do if your experience of inner spring is different to many people, due to health challenges, and how to handle the shame that can arise?
How to hold yourself when emotional vulnerabilities and wounds come up in inner spring.
How to emerge tenderly from your bleed in a world that often doesn’t support that, and how to meet the rising energy of spring in a generative way, especially when it appears as anxiety and insecurity.

---

Join our free online course, 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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re welcoming back Ruby May to the podcast, who is the new community leader here at Red School. Ruby is the founder of the Know Your Flow cycle awareness course and community - she’s an earth-lover, a truth-seeker, an edge-dweller and a mischief-maker passionate about how we can each midwife a culture of deeper connection – to our bodies, each other and our planet through menstrual cycle awareness.

I’ve been loving working with Ruby lately to co-create our new MLP grads community, The Hive, we’ve been riffing a lot about the power of cycle-aware friendship and community, and today Sjanie is joining us.

So, if you ever feel lonely in your cycle awareness practice, or like you’re swimming upstream and would love some like-minded allies by your side, this one’s for you. I invite you to make a cup of something lovely and nestle into this conversation with us…

We explore:

How lonely it can feel to practise cycle awareness in a world that often demands productivity and a focus on what is visible, rather than what is slow and unseen.
The harmony, creativity that love that emerges between people when we each authentically own the place they are truly in and can put the fullness of our humanity in the space - and how cycle awareness gives us access to that authentic expression.
How the premenstruum schools us in how to meet conflict as a creative ally within our friendships and communities.

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 info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Ruby May: @know.your.flow - https://www.instagram.com/know.your.flow

Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

View Details

Wild Power is five this month!

We love watching this book work its magic, and hearing what it’s waking up in readers across the globe. (We’re thrilled that it’s now available in 8 languages—French, Italian, Spanish, German, Korean, Dutch, Czech, Russian—with a couple more in the pipeline).

Thank you to everyone who has been writing in or tagging us with your greatest takeaway from the book.

Here is one takeaway we adored:“My greatest learning from Wild Power has been that my intuition will always be by my side and guide me whenever I need her. She lies within and when listening, she gives me all the answers I could ever ask for. Through practising deep cycle awareness I have regained the connection with her and ability to be true to myself.”
- Luna

In today’s episode Alexandra and Sjanie share five things they learned from writing Wild Power, including:

How their personal relationship evolved through the writing process.
What they learned about their creative processes—particularly what the book writing taught them about how to begin anything beautifully.
That the world really is ready for menstruality—YES!

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

We’re having an important, needed, hard conversation today about endometriosis. Luckily we are guided by an amazing guest who seems to be able to bring lightness and humour to even the darkest topics, author Emma Bolden. So we invite you to laugh, and cry with us.

Emma’s memoir, The Tiger and The Cage exploring her decades-long rollercoaster with endometriosis was recently featured by the brilliant production company, Shondaland who describe her as a “compelling voice” and her book as: “an outstretched hand inviting us to accompany her through the most intimate and important experiences of her life, and women’s collective experiences.”

Together we explore:

The mystery that is endometriosis - even though the condition been documented since ancient Greece, and 176 million people suffer with it worldwide, we still don’t know exactly what it is, what causes it, or have comprehensive ways to successfully treat it.
Emma’s personal experience, and what gave her the strength to not only manage symptoms that impacted every area of her life, but also to navigate a medical system that is all too often dismissive, dehumanising and at times, abusive.
What writing her taught Emma about herself, her Calling and her future, and the healing power of each of us sharing our own stories.

---

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 info@redschool.net

---

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

Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Emma Bolden: @emmabold - https://www.instagram.com/emmabold/

View Details

Our guest today, Shereen Oberg draws from a unique and rich mix of influences in her women’s empowerment work. She is the author of The Law of Positivism, she’s a yoga teacher and acupuncturist, and alongside this she holds a business and economics degree, and has recently completed a Master's degree in Global Sexual and Reproductive health and rights.

She comes from a long lineage of strong, Kurdish matriarchs and political, social rights activists who shared their natural birth stories with her, this inspired her to train both as a nurse and a doula. Today we chat about how all of these influences wove together in her recent thesis about how we need to change the way we approach infertility across the globe.

We explore:

How 186 million people are affected by infertility in the world today, and most are feeling a degree of loneliness and isolation.
The three big themes that occur across the globe; the grief felt with each loss, a deep questioning of purpose and existence, and the feeling of being let down by the healthcare system.
What ancient goddess myths can teach us about the initatory process of infertility.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Shereen: @lawofpositivism

View Details

Alexandra is your host today as this is the next in our Wise Power Retreat series, where she is having conversations with thought leaders, teachers and change-makers about what menopause revealed and awakened in them.
Her guest is Lynne McTaggart - who is regularly voted in the top 100 of spiritual teachers for her work around the power of intention.

The arrival of Lynne's children birthed the first great work of her life, her magazine, What Doctors Don’t Tell You,and menopause heralded the birth of the work she is devoting the rest of her life to - exploring the human energy field and why spiritual healing works.

We explore:

New ways to approach aging, and the truth that menopause isn't about losing faculties - more faculties are actually coming on line.
How menopause kicked Lynne’s ‘disruptor gene’ into gear, and how it helped her to awaken to who she truly is.
Lynne's post menopausal zest, and how we can all embrace our third acts, move beyond the roles we have previously held, and instead ask -'what else do I want to do with my life?'.

---

You can now order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lynne McTaggart: @lynnemctaggartofficial - https://www.instagram.com/p/CqVaw_RMDbx

View Details

The menstrual cycle is encoded with wisdom that can support us through life’s greatest challenges.Learning to read and receive this wisdom is a lifelong process - and in today’s conversation with psychotherapist and author, Carly Mountain, we explore what one of our oldest goddess myths can teach us about embodying cyclical wisdom as we face all that life throws our way.

Carly has worked in a cycle-inspired way for many years as a women’s initiatory guide. She has channelled her learnings into her new book Decent and Rising, which explores the ancient goddess myth of Innana and her descent into the underworld as a framework for how to manage grief, loss, illness and other dark night’s of the soul.

In today’s conversations we look at each part of the myth through the lens of the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle, and how each cycle phase makes us more resilient, strong and wise, including:

How the tenderising of the pre-menstruum helps us to contact the deeper, body knowings that live below our day-to-day consciousness.
The physical and metaphorical shedding of menstruation - the death part of the death and rebirth - is exactly what makes way for the new shoots - the potential of inner spring.
As we rise with the new momentum of inner spring, we rise rooted, deepened by the underworld of the menstruation process.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Carly Mountain: @carly_mountain - https://www.instagram.com/carly_mountain

View Details

What are the gifts of the inner spring? How can inner spring help us step into leadership? What is needed to access the power of the inner spring? And how can we manages the challenges of this inner season?

So many of you have asked for an episode about inner spring and how we can harness it's strengths and manage its challenges, and here it is - the first of two episodes dedicated to pre-ovulatory phase of the cycle. We explore:

How to hold the charge of inner spring, manage the sense of overwhelm this inner season can bring, and stay in touch with ourselves.
What inner spring can teach us about how to manage the stretch of leadership, through the dark art of pacing and trust our own timing
How inner spring can help us to stay grounded in the face of urgency and bring us back to our medicine - our unique way of contributing to the world

---

Registration is now open for our Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can take your seat here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

What does it really take to be a visionary leader? And how can menstrual cycle awareness support us to face the challenges and stretch that leadership always brings?

In today's episode we share excerpts from our Menstruality Leadership Lab - a free, four-day online leadership training exploring how the hidden powers of the menstrual cycle and menopause can help us lead sustainably, with heart, integrity and wisdom.

Red School co-founder Alexandra shares her biggest leadership challenge and how cycle awareness has helped her to cultivate one of many menstruality leadership skills to meet it: the art of pacing.

We also hear clips from Alexandra and Sjanie's conversations with our special guests, four women who have boldly stepped forward to live their Calling; medicine woman Asha Frost, author and activist Amisha Ghadiali, folk singer and period preacher Lucy Peach and School of Movement Medicine co-founder Susannah Darling Khan, including;

How Asha handled critical feedback when her work went viral.
How Amisha faces the faces the challenge of making a steady living as a visionary.
What made Lucy become a period preacher
How Susannah handled the most embarrassing moment of her leadership journey.

---Register for the Menstruality Leadership lab for free at:www.redschool.net/lab ---

Registration is now open for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can take your seat here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Asha Frost: https://www.instagram.com/asha.frost
Amisha Ghadiali: https://www.instagram.com/amishaghadiali/
Lucy Peach: https://www.instagram.com/lucyspeaches/
Susannah Darling Khan: https://www.instagram.com/susannahdarlingkhan/

View Details

After giving birth to her son Fulano in 2003, Latham Thomas set out on a mission to help women reclaim birth. A graduate of Columbia University & The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Latham is a maternity lifestyle maven, world renown wellness leader and master birth doula on the vanguard of transforming the wellness movement. She has been named one of Oprah’s Super Soul 100.

I experienced Latham as a weaver of profound threads of wisdom… we journeyed from her sacred menstrual practices, to exploring radical self care as a cultural act of resistance in a world that aims to turn us away from our bodies, to how she is supporting her doula students to reclaim their ancient, ancestral technologies and birth wisdom, and so much more. We explore:

The multiple layers of Latham’s menstrual cycle awareness through constant dialogue with her body and how she ‘insources’ solutions when she bleeds.
How Latham’s ancestors appeared at her birth and what facilitated this deeply sacred moment, including the safe space created by her midwife, partner and best friend.
How Latham is bringing forth her ancestral birth wisdom and helping her doula trainees to recall and reclaim the memory of their African ancestral technologies that are lodged in their tissues, so they can become wisdom keepers.

---

Join us for our upcoming free, online Menstruality Leadership lab, March 7th - 10th: www.redschool.net/lab

---

Our final waves of applications will open soon for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. Find out more at: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Latham Thomas: @glowmaven - https://www.instagram.com/glowmaven

View Details

In today's episode Red School's founders, Sjanie an Alexandra reveal intimate stories about their current leadership edges and how their menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause is skilling them up to face them in a sustainable way.

The leadership challenges include;

How to manage a sensitive nervous system when you have a demanding to do list.
How to navigate the inner critic attacks that inevitable come when you have both big visions and human limitations.
We also share about our upcoming free, online Menstruality Leadership Lab from March 7-10 - join us at: www.redschool.net/lab

---
Our final wave of applications opens soon for our Menstruality Leadership Programme - the world’s first leadership training designed for trailblazers, change-makers, nurturers and creatives to realise your full authority and leadership through the power of the menstrual cycle.

You can explore the programme here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

We begin on March 31st. Applications close on March 22nd, and as a Leadership lab participant, you can save £200 when you apply before midnight on March 13th, using the code LEADERSHIP.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

We’re welcoming back Bethany Webster, the author of “Discovering The Inner Mother”. She’s considered to be the global expert on healing the “Mother Wound” - something we all inherit to varying degrees living in a patriarchal society.

Bethany was a guest at our Wise Power Retreat, where she spoke about healing the Mother Wound during menopause.

In our conversation today, we look at the Mother Wound through a menstrual cycle awareness lens, exploring how it shows up throughout our inner seasons, and how each phase of the cycle can support specific aspects of healing.

We explore:

Why it’s so hard for us to take care of ourselves, the role the Mother Wound plays in this, and how inner spring (pre-ovulation) teaches us to mother ourselves and build trust with our inner child.
What we learned from our mothers about whether it’s ok to shine and how inner summer (ovulation) can help us unravel our capacity to be seen and loved for who we really are.
The power of boundaries when it comes to healing the Mother Wound, and how our premenstrual power can support us to claim the honest truth about our limits and what we need.

---

Join the waiting list for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Bethany Webster: @themotherwound - https://www.instagram.com/themotherwound

View Details

Menstruation and menopause awaken us to our deep selves, but to do that, they ask that we pull away from the world, stop and rest. The trouble is that rest can be a great challenge for most if us given the momentum at work in our world today.

If you struggle to ‘just let go’ and rest when you bleed, or during the unfolding of your menopause process, this episode is for you. We explore:

How our inner critics get in the way of rest (come to our Harness Your Inner Critic workshop on Feb 14th if you need support with this).
There are inner barriers to rest, and there are also cultural, systemic barriers, particularly for marginalised communities; including people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, and people living with a disability.
Three powers of menstruality that can help us to get more rest: interoception and the art of restedness, and making small shifts.

Join the waiting list for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

This conversation moved me deeply. Teacher and writer Krista O’Reilly Davi-Digui explores what it is to be a brave and beautiful human in progress, particularly in the messy middle of life, and especially living inside a grief and trauma illiterate culture.

In 2019, when Krista was in the midst of the ‘Quickening’ of perimenopause she lost her son Jairus to suicide.

In this conversation, she shares generously about the inner winter of her grief journey, how it intersected with her menopause experience, and how she is now moving into the second spring of menopause, choosing to say yes to life in it’s fullness, not knowing what tomorrow holds… We explore:

How grief leaves no room for bullshit - particularly in the menopause, stripping away all pretence, people pleasing and masks.
How to make peace and develop resilience through the mess of heartache, struggle, and exhaustion of grief.
The necessity of having our pain witnessed - Krista shares how to find the community you need to survive the darkest times of grief, sometimes in unexpected places. (And how to hold boundaries when your existing community isn’t offering the support you need).

---

You can now order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Join the waiting list for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Krista O’Reilly Davi-Digui: @a_life_in_progress - https://www.instagram.com/a_life_in_progress

View Details

This bonus episode is the next in our ‘Wise Power Retreat’ series where Alexandra is interviewing people about what menopause revealed and awakened in them.

Alexandra and Lara have been working alongside each other in this field for over 30 years. Dr Lara Owen is an author, teacher, researcher, consultant, mentor and an expert on the culture, politics and organisation of the menstrual cycle and menopause.She wrote one of the first books to be published about the power of the menstrual cycle, Her Blood is Gold, and is one of the leading lights in the field of menstrual and menopause education, sharing from an incredible wealth of personal experience, as well as academic research.

We explore:

How Lara worked with her intuition in menopause (including following the impulse to move herself to the south of France for a three year menopause retreat!).
How Lara moved with her menopausal grief at not having had children and how she made sense of her story, and embraced the gifts of her adventurous and creative life without children.
How Lara’s radical educational and cultural work around the menstrual cycle and menopause evolved during her menopause transition, leading to her new masters-level course is designed to develop your understanding of menstruation today in the contexts of business, feminism, health, law, politics, popular culture, sustainability, spirituality, sport, technology, and wellbeing.

You can now order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our Menstruality Leadership Programme: menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lara Owen: www.laraowen.com

View Details

Sjanie’s period came very early last month. She suddenly found herself bleeding on day 12 and the experience was akin to a zen meditation master slapping their student on the back when they’ve momentarily gone unconscious.

She was reminded that there is a wild intelligence within her that was outside of her control, and was invited to dance with the mystery and yield to something bigger.

This is one way that the menstrual cycle 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. If we can receive this belonging, our bleed can fill us with goodness, love, and rightness - a source of great power.

That’s why giving time to yourself at menstruation is positively dangerous! It will change your consciousness. It will awaken you 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 states of consciousness.
A key next step for you, if you want to activate more of the power of menstruation in your life.

Earlybird registration is now open for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Our guest today is someone we’ve been wanting to interview for a while. She has inspired 1000s of people to find their way of doing less inside a culture that so often pushes us to do more.

Kate Northrup is an entrepreneur, mother and bestselling author of Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time Management for Ambitious Women. Her book centers menstrual cycle awareness as a secret productivity superpower that’s always been there, but you just didn’t know you had...

After giving birth to her first child, Kate felt profoundly out of control for the first time in her life. Her period came back when she was 13 months old and she felt safe for the first time since her birth. It held her through post-partum anxiety and insomnia and her menstrual cycle served her as a life-raft that healed her in a profound way.

In our conversation weexplore:

Kate’s Summer sabbatical, how she worked with the voices of doubt and the amazing fruits that it yielded (including her best year ever in business).
The real necessity of lowering our standards (here’s to piles of laundry and dry shampoo) and asking for help (usually people feel honoured when we do) so that we can get the rest we need.
How to get rest as a working mama, and source our enoughness from a deep well within us. Kate asks: “what if you didn’t need to do or earn another damn thing, in order to be the shit?!”

Registration is now open 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Kate Northrup: @katenorthrup - https://www.instagram.com/katenorthrup/?hl=en

View Details

For many years Karen, the founder of ‘Daring to Rest’ experienced severe panic attacks. It wasn’t until she started a deep rest practice that she learned how to meet her anxiety with grace and she hasn’t had a panic attack since.

During her menopause process, this devoted practice of rest enabled her to clearly feel her ‘no’ and ‘yes’ in her body, process the rage arising and listen for what she needed to navigate this almighty transition.

In our conversation today we explore:

How rest at menopause helps us to manage the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges that can show up in menopause, including hot flushes, insomnia, low energy, brain fog, anxiety, grief, and rage.
How rest enables us to feel the ‘No’ of menopause in our bodies, so that we can pay attention to it, act on it, and in doing so, make way for our next level ‘yes’.
Why rest is non-negotiable while we’re navigating the death and a rebirth initiation of menopause, and how to actually get it, even amidst the responsibilities of our lives (and the key is dropping any ideas of perfection).

---

Registration for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme will open again soon. You can check it out and join the waiting list here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Karen Brody: @karen_brody (https://www.instagram.com/karen_brody)

View Details

As we enter 2023, we explore what menstrual cycle awareness can teach us about how to begin things well. We each share a bumpy beginning that we’re currently navigating, and how the deep intelligence within the cycle is guiding us through the highs and lows.

The implicate, deep intelligence at work in the cycle, and how it lays an the archetypal blueprint for all beginnings.
How each of the five chambers of menstruation prepares us to start new things.
Practical ways to look after yourself if you - like us - find beginnings challenging!

Join the waiting list for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Today we explore how menstrual cycle awareness schools us in endings.Each month we have an opportunity to practice ending the cycle well, aligning with the deep intelligences at work within us. ..

In this episode we break down the different processes at work as we descend towards menstruation and what they can teach us about how to navigate all of life’s endings; the smaller, more surface level ones like the end of the year we have coming up, and the bigger more profound ones, like ending relationships, moving house, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones or miscarriage. We explore:

How conscious endings are actually what makes life sacred.
The surprising gifts of the premenstruum when it comes to endings - how this phase of the cycle prepares and tenderises us to feel deeply and acknowledge what we love and treasure.
The end of the menstrual cycling years, menopause, and the deep wisdom alive in this death-and-rebirth ending.

---

Registration is now open for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re continuing our inner autumn, premenstrual theme and sharing the last in a three-part series exploring the powers of the premenstruum, how to awaken these powers, and now a conversation about what this looks like in real life.(And we’re excited to be trying something new today - weaving in comments and insights from the community of podcast listeners about your premenstrual experience.)

Our guest Natalie K Martin is a Menstrual Cycle and Feminine Embodiment Coach and author who made a powerful transition from corporate career in London to a career in yoga and now menstruality. Natalie graduated from our Menstruality Leadership Programme this year and is now contributing to the global menstruality movement with her FemmePowered podcast which she hosts alongside Guilietta Durante. We explore:

How Natalie, and you - the community of listeners - experience the challenges and powers of the premenstruum. We normalise the ‘losing it’, messy moments and celebrate the truth-telling awakenings.
The premenstrual self care practices that Natalie uses to harness the powers of her inner autumn.
What the Menstruality Leadership Programme taught Natalie about her limits, slowing down, and lightning her load as well as how it inspired a huge, premenstrual awakening one bleak, foggy day 22 morning…

Booking for our Menstruality Leadership Programme will open on Thursday 8th December. You can explore programme and apply herehttps://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Natalie K Martin: @nataliekmartin - https://www.instagram.com/natalie.kmartin

View Details

In this electrifying conversation, visionary activist and author Lynne Twist tells a new story about the potency and power we can hold in post-menopause life.

Lynne shares the story of how, when she was 50, she received a series of visions which profoundly altered the direction of her career - ultimately inspiring her transition from her life work of ending world hunger, to a new calling to steward the health of the rainforests alongside indigenous people.

She hadn’t realised, until we did this interview, that she was in menopause at this time and that it was the menopause process that opened her up to receive these visions!

In this episode:

How, post menopause, we are more relevant than ever before. Lynne loves her 70s, and feels more turned on, more fired up than ever - she’s not retiring, she’s re-firing.
Menopause opened Lynne up from her personal mothering journey of her three children to a bigger, global understanding of mothering, serving the great mother, and the founding of the Pachamama Alliance, designed to restore the worlds rainforests by empowering indigenous people that protect them.
Menopause opens our capacity to feel, often through deep pain, to prepare ourselves for this next major phase of our lives in post-menopause.

Registration will open soon for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can take your seat here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lynne Twist: @soulofmoney - https://www.instagram.com/soulofmoney

View Details

Have you ever “lost it” in the days running up to your bleed? Of course you have! We all have. Today we break down Sophie’s latest premenstrual losing it episode to find the gold inside it - the power that the premenstruum is awakening within us. We explore:

What’s going on in the irritability of the premenstruum? Why do we often feel so much more permeable at this time?
The sacred role of premenstrual vulnerability in the process of stepping into our power.
The biggest key when it comes to holding ourselves through premenstruum, and the self discipline we need to take responsibility for our own power.

---

Registration will open soon for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can find out more www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Asha Frost is an indigenous healer and author. She is an Anishinaabe, Ojibwe woman who was raised in a menstrually positive culture and in today’s episode we explore how her menstrual cycle inspires her work, her new book, ‘You are The Medicine: 13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Ancestral Connection, and Animal Spirit Guidance’, and the connection she sees between cycle wisdom and the unique medicine we each hold.‘You are The Medicine’ explores a lunar year of the 13 moons of the Ojibwe people, each moon aligned to particular powers and animal wisdom, and each one has profound and practical keys about how we can reach work to access more of a medicine. We explore:

How the animal medicine of Bear supports Asha to rest and integrate when she bleeds, and the medicine of Dear supports her to bring gentleness to the premenstrual phase of her cycle.
How to honour our sensitivity as a gift, as well as the wisdom of our bodies (particularly the fierce wisdom of the premenstruum!) in a patriarchal, capitalist, productivity-driven world.
Why Asha’s letter, ‘Dear white woman who wants to be like me’ went viral in 2019, and why white listeners must acknowledge the incredible harm colonisation has created, and act in ways that respect Asha’s culture, and all indigenous cultures.

The doors will open soon for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme, you can find our more and register your interest here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Asha Frost: @asha.frost - https://www.instagram.com/asha.frost

View Details

Clare Dubois has given her life to reforesting the topics as the founder of the not-for-profit, TreeSisters, but her menopause experience is demanding that she take a profound pause.

In this conversation Clare breaks down her real-time death and rebirth initiatory process of menopause, from the place she is currently in - the deeply uncomfortable, uncompromisingly thorough, ‘ego-death’ part of the initiation.

She likens it to being carried downstream very fast - you either struggle against the flow or you let go and trust that the river knows where it’s taking you. She’s choosing trust, and hard as it may be, she is loving the ride.

Trigger warning: Clare talks in-depth about healing her childhood physical and sexual abuse. We explore:

How menopause is supporting her to process early trauma and heal the patterns of dissociation that ensued, so she can land in her body and be herself.
The deep gift of menopause - how it is uprooting the patriarchy within her, especially in own work addiction and over-responsibility.
What to do when we can’t ‘let go’ in the way Clare has been able to in her menopause sabbatical, and how we can manage the often chaotic menopause process in a world that doesn’t honour our initiations.

**---

You can now pre-order our new book!** Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Clare Dubois: @clare_dubois_treesister - https://m.facebook.com/clare.dubois.333

View Details

Our menstrual cycles can be a profound ally in work and leadership. Today we do a deep dive on how to channel our cyclical wisdom as it shifts and changes throughout the cycle month, with someone who has an extraordinary amount of personal and professional experience in this realm.

Dr Joanna Martin is a renowned visionary, coach and catalyst. As the founder of One of many, her organisation has supported over 60,000 grassroots women leaders to greater impact without burnout.

The cycle is at the centre of her life and work, she’s overlaid the five archetypes over the phases of the cycle to harness their power and meet the challenges they present: The Lover, The Queen, The Warrioress, The Sorceress, The Mother. We explore:

How our inner winter awakens our ‘Sorceress’ phase, and how to harness the magic of menstruation at work.
Jo’s monthly ‘catastrophising day’ and how she manages it as the leader of a global organisation, by channelling her ‘Queen’ archetype.
How to catch the shadow of over-giving in inner summer - ovulation - by being mindful of how our ‘Mother’ archetype is expressing itself.

Join our free online course - Love Your Cycle: Discover the power of menstrual cycle awareness to revolutionise your life here: www.redschool.net/love

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

View Details

Today’s episode is about what it’s like when our experience is actually supported, honoured and dignified through menopause, and it’s also about relationship, and how to take care of ourselves through - and make sense of - times of great transformation.

Alexandra is your host today, because this is a continuation of our Wise Power Retreat series, which was an incredible journey, over 3500 of us gathered to explore the power of menopause.

She's talking with Susannah Darling Kahn, a teacher, dancer, music maker, trainee pony whisperer, the co-director of The School of Movement Medicine, alongside her husband Ya'avoc Darling Kahn. We explore:

How Susannah’s sexual relationship expanded through menopause, and how, through him meeting her anger and fierceness (sometimes with actual boxing gloves!), they were able to maintain their sexual fire.
How menopause was a fierce taskmaster, requiring her to slow down - very quickly! - commit to her own inner peace, and hone her embodied listening capacity, as well as embrace death as a reality and a teacher.
The only two other mammals who go through menopause - and what evolutionary biology shows us about the vital role we play in our communities post-menopause, as wisdom-keepers for the next generations.

You can now order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Susannah Darling Kahn: https://www.instagram.com/shamanyaacov/

View Details

Dr Sonia Wright - aka The Midlife Sex Coach for Women - combines her natural ability to talk about uncomfortable topics with her medical knowledge, sexual counseling skills and life coaching tools to create a unique brand of sex coaching. In this conversation about sex in midlife and during menopause, we discuss sensitive issues with humour and heart. We explore:

The sex challenges that can arise in menopause, such as changing libido, the surfacing of body image issues and vaginal dryness and pain.
Redefining what fulfillment means when it comes to sexual intimacy, why orgasm isn’t the goal, and how this changes the game around sex.
How to invite our partners into loving, generative dialogue around sex challenges, and the importance of having these brave conversations, especially since we may have 30-50+ years of good sex ahead of us.

You can now pre-order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Dr Sonia Wright : @drsoniawright - https://www.instagram.com/drsoniawright

View Details

The premenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle - or ‘inner autumn’ as we lovingly call it - is often the most uncomfortable phase emotionally, and it is definitely the most misunderstood. The symptoms that show up for many in this phase and the critical, disruptive fire that burns through us premenstrually are demonised in our world and inside ourselves.

In this conversation we want to deshame and dignify the gifts of the premenstruum; the heightened sensitivity, the permeability, the way we show up as a disruptor of the peace. We want to transform the premenstrual script which so often makes us question “what’s wrong with me?” to “how can I hold myself through this?” and “what’s powers are at work here?”. We explore:

How the premenstruum gives us access to a different kind of intelligence - we know, without knowing how we know!
Why we all deeply need the vulnerability of the premenstruum, and how it connects us to each other and to our humanity.
How the powers of the premenstruum are the ones we’ll call on the most post menopause - they become the ground of the second half of our lives.

Our new book is now available wherever books are sold - Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Once you’re in menopause, you appear to be off all the usual maps. You're cast off from a familiar shoreline onto a dark ocean of unknownness, with only the stars and the moon – your instincts, feelings and intuitions – to guide you.

However, there is a map of sorts for the menopausal journey, a timeless archetypal pattern for transitioning this world between worlds, and it has an implicit order in five phases: Betrayal, Repair, Revelation, Visioning and Emergence.

In today's episode, we look at the meaning and purpose of each phase, including all that you may experience and what it means, as well as stories from some of the many people we’ve worked with over the years (and a good dose of humour to see you through).

We explore:

Phase one of the menopause initiation, ‘Betrayal’, which can be a real dark night of the soul, though it is necessary to access the ‘gold’ of your menopause journey.
The sweet moment that you can reach in phase three, ‘Revelation’ where - often in the middle of daily life - you suddenly see yourself for who you truly are.
How the final two phases set you up powerfully for your life post-menopause.

You can now pre-order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Today we’re talking about a much misunderstood part of the body… the cervix.

Olivia Bryant is the founder of Self:Cervix, an organisation dedicated to revolutionising the way the cervix is viewed by the medical profession, by science and sex educators. She says:

“As a sexologist and sex nerd, I know the cervix to be a powerful place of pleasure… **For us, cervical orgasm is a thing worth exploring, just like Mars is for NASA”

We explore:**

The spectrum of cervical awakening, from healing trauma, to enhancing pleasure, to cultivating states of deeply loving consciousness.
The cervix is the only organ in the body that connects to three major nerves and it’s wired to feel PLEASURE
The connection between cervical orgasms and our capacity to relax into our naturalness, and receive support.

You can now pre-order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here:https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Self:Cervix: @selfcervix - https://www.instagram.com/selfcervix

View Details

Today’s conversation follows a powerful idea that woke Alexandra up in the early hours a few days ago. It’s the idea that drives our new menopause book, Wise Power, and it’s an idea that’s almost totally missing in the global menopause conversation... ... We need to dignify menopause as a process of spiritual awakening.

And it’s a very special episode, because it also marks the official release of Wise Power, which is now available wherever books are sold - you can get your copy at **wisepowerbook.com.

We explore:**

The spiritual union, or coming home to yourself that is possible at menopause, when we honour and dignify every aspect of menopause; the rage, the confusion, the challenge and dare to believe it’s meaningful.
The role that rage plays in the spiritual awakening of menopause, particularly in the initiatory times we’re living in as a global community.
The five phases of the menopause spiritual awakening, and how perimenopause, or the ‘Quickening’ prepares us for this great homecoming to ourselves.

You can now pre-order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

The menstruality journey begins at menarche with our first bleed, and ends as we go through the great initiation of menopause. For some, pregnancy, birth, and motherhood are a key part of their menstruating years, but for some people, parenting doesn’t happen, despite a deep desire to have children.

It's World Childless Week this week, and we've invited the brilliant Jody Day to share about the challenges of involuntary childlessness, her work to honour and dignify childless women, and explore how to **how to find meaning and hope when looking towards a future without children.

Jody Day is the founder of Gateway Women, the support & advocacy network for childless women. She’s a psychotherapist, a global thought leader on female involuntary childlessness, and the author of what many professionals consider to be the ‘go-to’ book on the topic, ‘Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children’.**

In the conversation we explore:

Jody’s personal journey through grief, denial, hopelessness to real acceptance of her life as a childless woman.
The creation of Gateway Women and Jody’s mission to make the world understand childless women, and help women who are childless-not-by-choice to understand themselves.
Jody's emerging Gateway Elderwomen project, exploring the uncharted path to becoming a conscious childless elder woman.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school Jody Day: @gatewaywomen - https://www.instagram.com/gatewaywomen

View Details

When teacher and activist Jewels Wingfield felt menopause calling, through intense physical symptoms, she knew she needed to take a deep retreat. In this conversation, we explore her 13 month ‘conscious menopause sabbatical’ and how it transformed her health, her relationship to herself, her work in the world, and even her sex life.

Jewels is the founder of the EarthHeart retreat centre and on the other side of her sabbatical she is focusing on guiding women to explore their ‘nature-based feminine leadership’, with a particular focus on an ancient, Celtic approach to menstruality, and how the natural world can support our menopause ‘death-and-rebirth’ process. In the conversation we explore:

How to carve out space and time for retreat and menopause, even when we have big responsibilities and financial pressure, and the potentially beneficial impact.
How to access the wisdom of the natural world as a powerful guide and ally during the initiation of menopause.
Some good news about how sex can change in menopause, and practical (often surprising!) guidance to access new levels of sexual connection and desire in this phase of life.

You can now pre-order your copy of our new menopause book! Wise Power: Discover the liberating power of menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Jewels Wingfield: @jewelsatearthheart - https://www.instagram.com/jewelsatearthheart/

View Details

There are a handful of trailblazers who have paved the way for the positive menstrual culture we’re beginning to see today, and Dr Lara Owen is one of them. She was researching and writing her book about the power of the menstrual cycle, Her Blood is Gold in the 1990’s, and it has been a game changer for thousands of women and menstruators.

She’s now an expert on the culture, politics and organization of menstruation and menopause. She consults with global and local organizations; teaches in academic and general contexts and has created a first year masters level programme called **Contemporary Menstrual Studies.

In this far-reaching conversation we explore:**

A cultural and historical exploration of the stigmatisation of the menstrual cycle.
What Lara learned from indigenous teachers raised in menstrually positive cultures.
The wisdom of menstruation, and Lara’s personal experience of two years of deep menstrual retreat (including moments of powerful clairvoyance!)

---
Registration is open for our FREE Love Your Cycle course. You can join for free here: https://www.redschool.net/love

---
The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net
---
Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lara’s website: laraowen.com

View Details

When you explore old European myths, it’s the elder women and grandmothers who run the world. In Greek mythology, there are the Fates - three elder women who make the world go round. In Eastern European mythology, the crone Baba Yaga initiates young people and facilitates transformation. In ancient Gallic mythology it is the Cailleach who created and shaped the land, from the beginning of time.

In today’s episode we explore the gold that these myths and archetypes hold for us as we navigate the initiation of menopause and enter the second half of our lives as elders, with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist, Dr Sharon Blackie.

Sharon illuminates the magic and potential of menopause as a shape-shifting crucible, which strips away all that isn’t essential - so we may know ourselves, and our Calling in a new way. She shares how she envisioned herself inside an alchemical process at menopause, how the natural world served as an ally through this initiatory time, and why the world needs more feisty, older women now more than ever…

We explore:

The Greek myth of the ‘Furies’, the sacred role of their rage, and the necessity of the comparable anger many of us feel in menopause.
Why our world doesn’t allow us the time to ‘do menopause properly’ and the impact this has for us on a soul level.
The Jungian archetype of the ‘Medial Woman’ who doesn’t define herself according to anyone else, is whole unto herself, and chooses to dive deeply into the mystery of the world.

You can now pre-order your copy of our new menopause book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

Registration is now open for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can take your seat here: https://www.redschoolmenopause.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sharon Blackie: @sharonblackiemythmakings - https://www.instagram.com/sharonblackiemythmakings

View Details

We want to create a world where everyone is in love with the menstrual cycle - not a perfect version of the cycle - but exactly the cycle you have. Because this love affair revolutionises our lives (and the world!).

That’s why we’ve created our new FREE online course: Love Your Cycle: Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life where we explore the four phases or inner seasons of your cycle as a gateway to vitality, creativity, power and purpose.

Love Your Cycle is our invitation to you to get to know your cycle in more depth, to fall in love with your cycle, and to grow an intimacy with it that will transform your life - by amplifying your vitality, enhancing your creativity and activating your leadership.

In this episode we explore:

Why falling in love with your cycle isn’t about having a ‘perfect’ menstrual cycle, but rather coming into relationship with the cycle you have (and how to actually do that.)

- How to make sense of cycle disturbances and hold ourselves as we heal menstrual pain and other health challenges. ‍

Four specific cycle awareness practices to harness the power of each inner season of your cycle.

You can register for Love Your Cycle for FREE here: https://www.redschool.net/love

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

What is the connection between trauma, the nervous system and menstrual health?

This week we’re speaking with Lisa De Jong, who shares in depth about her personal experience with a decade of chronic pain, an eventual endometriosis diagnosis, and her experience of trauma healing and nervous system regulation.

Lisa is a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and has infused the teachings with ground-breaking science and created a brilliant body of work around trauma, pain, healing and the nervous system. We explore:

Why it’s harder to manage stress in the premenstrual phase (as well as perimenopause and menopause), and how our cyclical nature impacts our capacity to regulate our nervous systems.
How unprocessed trauma and grief can contribute to menstrual health challenges like PMDD and endometriosis, and how to find agency in the face of collective trauma due to patriarchy, racism and other forms of systemic oppression.
Nervous system regulation, polyvagal theory and what being in the ‘rest and digest’ mode of the nervous system can mean for healing and managing chronic pain,especially for highly sensitive people.

---

You can now register your interest for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lisa De Jong: @lisa_dejong_coach - https://www.instagram.com/lisa_dejong_coach

View Details

In our 40s, many women and people with periods begin to experience a variety of health symptoms and challenges, as well as emotional and psychological shifts. Some call this perimenopause. At Red School we like to call it, the Quickening.

In this episode - which is the fourth in our menopause summer series - we look at how the Quickening is slowly awakening new levels of power within us, and how to navigate this. Sjanie shares her personal experience of negotiating this transition over the past few years.

We explore:

How we receive a report card on the state of our health in our 40s, which is inviting us to up our self care and set ourselves up for a healthy post-menopause life.
Why the power that is awakening in us in the Quickening requires deeper responsibility as well as deeper self care.
How to handle your new, increased critical capacites (cynicism, discernment, judgement) wisely and cleanly, rather than use it to annihilate and destroy!

You can pre-order your copy of Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email: info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Across the ages women and birthing people have been invited by midwives and doulas to relax their jaw and throat to support the opening of the cervix in labour.

In today’s conversation we explore why this is so important, we explore the connection between our throats, our voices, and the emotional and physical health of our wombs.

I’m talking with Shakirah Sabira who is a doula, African womb healing practitioner, and the founder of Barakha’s Doula. Shakirah began her career as a doula serving women in the Middle East and West Africa, including seven months working in a rural clinic supporting the local midwife in the Mauritanian desert, a trip which profoundly changed her life, and guided her to her calling.

Through Shakirah’s story, and the experiences with her teachers and clients, as well as Sophie's own womb healing experience, we look at what it means to give your womb a voice, how release stagnant energy, express yourself and find a profound source of healing within us.

We explore:

How Shakirah sang her period back, after her menstrual cycle stopped following a traumatic relationship breakup and divorce.
The connection between trauma, the womb and the voice, and how speaking truth, singing and freeing up the throat can facilitate deep healing.
Why women and people with periods need to share our stories, to release our shame, and support each other to heal, simply by no longer feeling alone.

Registration will open soon for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can register your interest here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

**Social media:

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

Shakirah Sabira: @shakirahsabira https://www.instagram.com/shakirahsabira

Barakah’s Doula: @barakahsdoulahttps://www.instagram.com/barakahsdoula

View Details

In today’s conversation, we get practical, down-to-earth and real about the initiation of menopause and how on earth do we actually get through to the other side. Though, as we explore, it’s much less about doing and much more about being. And we have five alchemical powers that can help us along the way.

This is the in third our Wise Power series where Alexandra and Sjanie have been waxing lyrical, sometimes crying, and often laughing their way through the teachings of their new book Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging, coming out on September 20th.

There’s a line in our new book, Wise Power: “Remember, it’s your birthright to have a dignifying and empowering menopause. Let’s begin to make that so.”

Let’s begin to make it so, together, here, right now…

We explore:

The five ‘alchemical powers’ that can help you navigate the menopause transition.
How to actully find ways to rest, when you aren’t able to take a menopause sabbatical year (that we deeply wish everyone could have!)
The post-menopause magic that can occur when you trust the creative arc of your life, where ‘life becomes your business partner’.

Pre-order your copy of Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

Do you suffer from menstrual pain, or other cycle challenges such as PMS, PMDD or managing irregular cycles?

In this episode we explore how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness creates a ground for healing, helps us to take stand for what we need, and supports us to create a new relationship with the challenges we face, and to trust that something meaningful is at work.

Alexandra shares her personal story with a decade of menstrual pain, and what supported her to heal and eventually become pain-free. Sophie describes what supported her to transform chronic pain and pre-menstrual rage into a new relationship with her power.

We explore:

The connection between our personal suffering and what’s happening in the collective and on our planet.
How cycle awareness helps us to manage chronic stress, which can be the foundation of so many health challenges, and awakens our faculties of knowing; our gut intelligence, our heart knowing, and our ‘pelvic brain’.
How your cycle is - as Lisa Hendrickson Jack says - your ‘fifth vital sign’, giving you important information about your overall health and stress levels, and how to approach healing if you feel you’re in perimenopause.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

When you find yourself in the thick of the menopause transition, there’s no maintaining life as normal. How can we support ourselves to manage the day to day realities of life amidst the huge initiation of menopause? In this episode we explore the six steps of our ‘menopause triage’ and how they help you to dignify and honour what you’re experiencing. We explore:

The power of accepting the fact that you’re in menopause, and that you have a ‘new normal’.
The art of ‘snudging’ and why it’s the a key skill to cultivate in menopause.
The menopause superpowers that can help you to put these triage steps into preactice, including the power of No.

Pre-order your copy of Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://wisepowerbook.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

One of the big initiatory moments along the menstruality journey from menarche (our first period) to menopause is pregnancy and childbirth, if that is our path in life.

In a world which has a lot to learn about how to support mothers and birthing people through this profound initiation, we need all the help we can get to prepare for and create a positive birth, or heal from a challenging or traumatic one. Enter menstrual cycle awareness - as a powerful tool to cultivate body sovereignty, guide us in the art of surrender, and teach us how to advocate for our needs.

Our guest today is pregnancy yoga teacher and mother of two, Tessa Sanderson. She’s a graduate of the Menstruality Leadership programme, as well as our Menstruality Medicine Circle training, and her insights today are based on hundreds of birth stories that she has received from her clients.

This is a big conversation, with lots of potentially triggering or stirring topics, so we invite you to take care of yourself as you listen, especially if you’re currently pregnant.

In this episode:

We explore childbirth as a rite of passage, and how menstrual cycle awareness can prepare us for the inner journey and help to create a positive initiatory experience, however it unfolds.

- We define birth trauma - or perinatal trauma - and menstrual trauma, and explore how the two can be connected.

- We share our own birth stories and how cycle awareness helped us in these mother of all journeys, especially through the challenge of giving birth during lockdown.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Tessa Sanderson: @tessa.venuti.sanderson - https://www.instagram.com/tessa.venuti.sanderson

View Details

It’s time to re-write the story of menopause.

What if the critical, provocative energy of menopause is actually a sign that you’re coming to your senses?

What if menopause isn’t a health condition we suffer from, but that people in menopause you’re actually suffering from is a lack of recognition, respect and support for the profound initiation you’re going through.

What if, post-menopause, you are more needed than ever.

This is the first of our menopause summer series, in the run up to the launch of our new book, Wise Power.

We explore:

The four old stories of menopause, and the new stories that honour and dignify this transition.
The ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment that happens in menopause.
Why our impulse to ‘burn the house down’ in menopause is actually very sane, and an important part of this initiatory process.

You can now pre-order your copy of our new menopause book! Wise Power: Discover the liberating power of menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

One of the beautifully challenging things about cultivating an intimacy with our menstrual cycles, or menopause process, is that it opens us up to the world.

To the beauty of life, and to the pain.

This quality of tender, unarmoured presence is real medicine for a world that can feel full of conflict, pretense, injustice and a lack of capacity to be with difference.

A devoted practice of cycle awareness helps us to see that we all belong; to ourselves, to the rhythm and flow of the natural world, and to each other.

Today we’re marking Pride Month, with a podcast episode about how menstrual cycle awareness can help us to be with difference, and create true cultures of belonging.

Our guest is Abi Denyer-Bewick, a queer menstuality educator and member of the Red School faculty. We chat about the menstruality learning session she recently offered our Menstruality Leadership Programme graduates on 'Inclusive menstruality', including:

How to create a culture of belonging for women and everyone who menstruates.
What life might look like for a trans, non-binary or gender expansive menstruator.
How to work with the fear, trauma or other big emotions that may arise as we explore how to be with difference, together.

We also share some guidance for how to take this belonging and inclusion work deeper, from a range of brilliant LGBTQ+ educators.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Abi Denyer Bewick - @abi.denyer.bewick - https://www.instagram.com/abi.denyer.bewick

View Details

Have you ever wondered what foods can support your cycle health as you move through the different inner seasons of the cycle month?

In this interview with Menstrual Cycle Coach, and food-lover Naam Bachmayer, we explore her ‘Cyclical Nourishment Principles’ and how they help us to welcome in hormonal health, more pleasure, less stress and a deeper intimacy with our cycle process.

This isn’t a ‘how-to’ episode or a set of rules. Naam is very aware of how food can be complex for many of us, as well as the harm that diet culture causes. Instead, Naam shares a wealth of ideas which you can adapt for you and your body, including a delicious recipe for each inner season. Bon appetit!

We explore:

Naam’s ‘Cyclical Nourishment Principles’ including ‘eating the rainbow’, listening to your body, and reducing inflammatory foods.
How to adapt our nutrition and cooking style in the four phases of your cycle - including a delicious, colourful, healthy recipe for each inner season.

- What to eat in inner winter, including iron rich foods like oats and chickpeas to support your body as you lose blood, watermelon and cucumber to up your water intake and why chocolate can help with cramps (yay!).

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Naam Bachmayer: @thecyclicalcoach - https://www.instagram.com/thecyclicalcoach

View Details

Menopause is an immense life event, a great initiation. Not only is it a complete hormonal shift in the landscape of your overall health, it’s also a psychological and emotional transformation.

In today’s episode, we explore this incredible, initiatory power of menopause, and the great potential it awakens in us.

This power has been an obsession for Alexandra and Sjanie for most of the past couple of years as they wrote their long-awaited menopause book, and today we have an exciting announcement - we’re revealing the title of the book!

Today, we break down the title and explore:

What the writing of the book taught Alexandra and Sjanie about the truth of menopause (and how it kicked them up the backside along the way).
The number one thing we each need to learn how to get through menopause.
The liberating power of menopause… and how the book launch events we're dreaming into for September will invite us all into a meaningful experience of this power.

View Details

Today, we’re looking at menstrual cycle awareness through a different lens… we’re exploring 10 surprising reasons to practice fertility awareness.I’m talking with Health Coach and Natural Family Planning (NFP) teacher, Juspreet Kaur who is a fresh, passionate voice in this field - she brings it down to earth and makes it accessible to everyone. We explore…

What fertility awareness is, and the many surprising ways it can profoundly enhance our menstrual cycle awareness practice (whether you’re trying to prevent pregnancy or get pregnant, or neither), and how to get started today.
We bust many myths, including the myth of the ‘late period’, and why knowing when you ovulate is such a game-changer for anyone who wants to plan their life and workflow around their cycle.
The importance of decolonising menstrual health and unravelling the legacy of menstrual shame that colonisation has created.

---

Registration is open for our Your Cyclical Business Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.yourcyclicalbusiness.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Juspreet Kaur: @kaurhealth - https://www.instagram.com/kaurhealth

View Details

Are you currently working on a creative project that you’d love to infuse with your cyclical wisdom? Whether you’re writing a book, growing a garden, launching a business or making art, your cycle can be a profound anchor and resource.

In today’s episode, we talk with someone who knows a thing or two about the menstrual cycles and creativity. Lucy Peach is a period preacher, author, and folksinger. She’s a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme and she has written a book, created songs, produced an award-winning theatre show, delivered educational programmes for teens and even created a TED talk, all about the menstrual cycle.

We explore how she has worked with her cycle to cultivate this epic creativity and shift the period narrative in our culture from one of shame to one of pride, including:

Lucy’s take on the four phases or inner seasons of the cycle: Dream, Do, Give, Take, and how they each support our creative process.
How Lucy’s cycle guides her creative collaboration with her husband, and how he experiences his own cyclical creativity, as well as how non-cycling men react to Lucy’s theatre show.
How to work with dreams to access your creative power, especially in the void just before you bleed as a powerful creative resource - Lucy and Sophie both share what a recurring nightmare has taught them about their power and creativity.

---

Have you listened to our free webinar replay about how to channel your cycle's creative powers as an entrepreneur? You can watch How Your Menstrual Cycle Can Help You Create A Thriving Business here : https://www.yourcyclicalbusiness.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

The hidden agenda of the menstrual cycle is to help us become more fully ourselves. As we deepen our cycle awareness practice, it plugs us into our calling, our vision, our unique way of expressing our genius. The realising of this calling requires an outer structure, which often looks like a business. The beautiful thing is that the menstrual cycle can resource us along the way.

We’re in the middle of launching our brand new programme, Your Cyclical Business which is designed to support you if you’re a teacher, healer or creative, a freelancer, or a purpose-led entrepreneur to channel the wisdom of your menstrual cycle to create a thriving business.

So in our conversation today we want to invite you behind-the-scenes of Red School to see how we work with our cycles (and for Alexandra her post-menopause process) to run our cycle-aware business. We explore:

How resting and tending to your nervous system in inner winter is a key to managing overwhelm, and creating sustainable work rhythms without burning out.
How each inner season of the cycle works in a particular way to help us move from self doubt and imposter syndrome to trust in ourselves and our creative process.
How we bring the discerning energy of inner autumn to craft marketing strategies that allow Red School’s work to expand in an aligned way.

Join us for our upcoming Your Cyclical Business free webinar: https://www.yourcyclicalbusiness.com

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Why do we need to adapt the way we move and exercise throughout the cycle? In today’s conversation we explore the physical and mental health benefits of cycle-aware movement, and how to adjust the way we exercise throughout the cycle month.

Our guest, Le’Nise Brothers shares her own experience of using diet, exercise and lifestyle changes to improve painful and heavy periods, anxiety, depression and irritable bowel syndrome.Le’Nise is a yoga teacher, and Nutritionist, specialising in women's health, hormones and the menstrual cycle. She’s the host of the Period Story podcast, and the author of the new book, You Can Have a Better Period which came out in March - a practical guide to understanding your cycle and balancing your hormones with nutrition and yoga, for a calm and pain-free period. We explore:

How to move in each season of your cycle, including slow flow yoga in inner winter, strength training in inner spring, high energy exercise to channel your ovulatory surge in energy and mood stabilising exercise in inner autumn.
How can we move to support ourselves through pre-menstrual anger and anxiety?
How can movement help us if we’re experiencing menstrual pain, endometriosis, heavy periods, including healing yoga poses and even how to use orgasms as a form of pain relief.

---

Get your copy of Wild Power: Discover the Power of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. It's here in the shownotes: https://redschool.net/podcast/35

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Le’Nise Brothers: @eatlovemove - https://www.instagram.com/eatlovemove

View Details

Becoming a mother is a profound initiatory journey. Journalist and coach, Amy Taylor Kabbaz remembers exactly the moment when she split in two. Fifteen minutes after her child was born, she went from independent, ambitious, ABC journalist, career woman, to completely surrendered mother who would do anything for her child.

That moment changed everything for her, and took her on her own personal pilgrimage to understand how motherhood initiates us.

She’s interviewed hundreds of authors, maternal health experts, and teachers. She’s been the anthropologist, in the trenches of early motherhood, trying to decipher why so many of us feel burnt out, overwhelmed, and addicted to being busy. And she’s emerged from that time knowing that matrescence is the missing link for truly understanding why women feel the way they do, and how we can revolutionise the way we think about and value motherhood.

We explore:

The fact that we’re not mothers at birth. Mothering is a verb - it’s a learnt act. And it gives us daily - hourly! - invitations to move from control, to surrender, if we are supported to cultivate the ability to trust our intuition.
How to hold onto the thread of ourselves as we to navigate the deep reorganising of priorities that happens in matrescence.
How to meet a world that doesn’t recognise the deep shifts that are happening within us, even as we’re inside this deep initiation of matrescence.

Registration is open for our LIVE Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche. We start on May 2nd. You can check it out here: https://redschoolonline.net/p/mothering-your-daughter-through-menarche

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Amy Taylor Kabbaz: @amytaylorkabbaz - https://www.instagram.com/amytaylorkabbaz

View Details

Our first period is a big event. Today we’re exploring why it’s so important to support girls and young menstruators through this transition, as well as how we can resource ourselves as parents, aunties and carers so we can meet our kids where they are at and celebrate them .

I’m talking with Emily Stewart, the founder of The Real Period Project. She's also a Celebration Day for Girls facilitator, and the creator of the Red School Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche programme. Her dream is to see a world where the menstrual cycle is seen as an ally and teacher, and talking about it is a normal part of life.

We explore:

How to practically prepare for guiding your child through their first period, including ways to resource yourself, as well as age-appropriate books and other resources.
Why it’s important to start sharing about periods when your child is young and receptive to exploring ideas, and before the teenage phase kicks in.
Our upcoming live round of our Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche programme, how you can join, and how it will guide you step-by-step to nurture and nourish your child as they approach their puberty years and first period with curiosity, support and a readiness for the changes ahead.

Join us for a live round of our Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche programme. We start at the beginning of May, and you can join us here: www.redschoolonline.net/p/mothering-your-daughter-through-menarche

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

When author, Chloé Caldwell turned 31, her experience of her menstrual cycle changed. Her monthly outbursts of pre-menstrual rage and anxiety began to dominate her life and compromise her relationship.

Compelled to understand the truth of what was happening to her, Chloé researched menstruation throughout history, read everything she could about PMS and was eventually diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, PMDD.

In this episode Chloé shares honestly, generously and vulnerably about her journey through PMDD, and how —along with proper treatment— the medicine of self-acceptance, self-compassion, and transcending shame were the ultimate keys to relief.

We explore:

Chloé's searching, galvanizing memoir about PMDD and how we must bring a multi-layered approach to managing and healing PMDD.
PMDD and relationships - including practical tools and approaches to navigate PMDD with your partner, children or other loved ones.
The “Jekyll and Hyde” nature of PMDD, why it is referred to as werewolf week, and how cycle symptoms, including PMDD can be a gateway to knowing ourselves and accessing our wildness and ultimately, growing into a fuller version of ourselves.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Chloé Caldwell: @chloeeeecaldwell - https://www.instagram.com/chloeeeecaldwell

View Details

Ruby May, the founder of Know Your Flow is an earth-lover, a truth-seeker, an edge-dweller and a mischief-maker passionate about how we can each midwife a culture of deeper connection – to our bodies, each other and our planet through menstrual cycle awareness.

She writes: "We’re tired of living in a culture in which our worth is measured around how productive we are and nothing ever feels like enough.

Where stress, numbing ourselves and bypassing our body’s symptoms are so normalized, and creativity and play feel like elusive luxuries. And where intelligence is seen as something abstract in our heads, removed from the deep feeling, sensitivity and wisdom of our hearts and bellies.

We don’t want to be bystanders and continue the status quo. And we’re ready to be part of the solution."

In this conversation we explore:

How cultivating an intimacy with the rhythm and change of your menstrual cycle allows you to be an embodied activist - a change-maker who is rooted in cyclical intelligence.
How to work with your menstrual cycle as a tool for identifying internalised oppression and how Capitalism lives in your body, for example; by being addicted to endless productivity, feeling rushed all the time, and prioritising your head over your body wisdom.
The connection between revolution - or evolution - and community. As Ruby 'the world would be a better place if we tapped into the wisdom of our menstrual cycle' - don't create change. Bringing them into connection does.”

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Ruby May: @know.your.flow - https://www.instagram.com/know.your.flow

View Details

Period poverty has a huge impact on women, girls and people who menstruate all over the world. Too many people don’t have access to menstrual products, safe, hygienic spaces in which to use them. This isn’t just a potential health risk - it can also affect their education, well-being, and sometimes their entire lives.

One in 10 girls in Africa miss school because they don’t have access to menstrual products, or because there aren’t safe, private toilets to use at school. In India, approximately 12 percent of its 355 million menstruating people cannot afford menstrual products. In the US 23% of college students can’t afford to buy period products.

Thankfully, brilliant, passionate people like Chelsea Von Chaz, the founder of Happy Period are working to end period Poverty. Happy Periods distributes free period products to support 100,000 periods a year, through over 40 cities in the US.

We explore:

Why period products should be provided for free in all public bathrooms, just like toilet paper or soap, and especially in schools.
The long term effects of period poverty for women, girls and people with periods, and how this is amplified for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour as well as other marginalised people such as the LGBTQ+ community.
How we can all contribute to the movement to end period poverty and create menstrual equity, through education, improving access to period products, and advocacy for marginalised groups in need.

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:

Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Chelsea Von Chaz: @chelseavonchaz - https://www.instagram.com/chelseavonchaz/
Happy Period: @wearehappyperiod - https://www.instagram.com/wearehappyperiod

View Details

At the start of 2022, we invited you all to join us for a Year of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to enhance your vitality, creativity and leadership.

To inspire you on your journey, today we're sharing this story from Fertility Awareness Coach and Menstruality Leadership Programme graduate, Louise Ryder about how a year of menstrual cycle awareness transformed her love life, her work life... her ENTIRE life.

This is a deeply personal episode and we're grateful to Louise for sharing so openly about her relationship breakdown, how her cycle awareness supported her grief journey, and how she came to understand her Calling - to bring cycle awareness into the workplace, globally.

We explore:

How to follow the instinctive nudges you receive from your cycle tracking to make big decisions in your life, even if they clash with your logical, rational mind.
How menstrual cycle awareness can support you to navigate periods of deep grief, and trust in a better future to come.
How a steady practice of menstrual cycle awareness cultivates a deep trust in ourselves, our knowing, our instincts and our purpose.

The doors for for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme close on March 31st. You can check it out here. https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)

View Details

It’s incredible to witness the stigma around menstruation shifting in our world, with period policies in workplaces and more and more people practising menstrual cycle awareness.

This de-shaming of the cycle, and especially our bleed, is opening up a gateway for an appreciation of the power of menstruation.

In this episode, Alexandra and Sjanie share stories, insight and teachings drawn from their map of the five chambers of menstruation, which are a powerful guidebook for people wanting to access and discover and embody the power of our periods. We explore:

What gets in the way of us experiencing the ‘inner temple of menstruation’, and how can we support ourselves to manage life’s challenges so we can experience the power of our bleed.
How to follow the clues our body gives us, and slow down in the pre-menstruum and prepare ourselves to receive the power of menstruation.
Why it’s important to focus on receiving and surrender in menstruation, rather than taking action on your insights right there and then.

You can read the shownotes here: https://redschool.net/podcast/28

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Menopause is often portrayed as a disaster waiting to happen. Omisade Burney-Scott is a leading voice in the movement to change the conversation about menopause, as a powerful initiatory phase of life.

Omisade is the creator of the Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause, a multimedia project seeking to curate and share the stories and realities of Black women and femmes over 50.

In today’s conversation, she discusses the menopause ‘remedies’ she’s learned through creating the guide; including the medicine of self-forgiveness, vision, self-acceptance, and living your passion.

We explore:

How our identities can shift during menopause and how to navigate the shape-shifting process of our bodies, minds and souls. Omisade talks about how her depression in menopause was “her body trying to save her life”.
The power of taking a creative, menopause sabbatical to rest and renew your spirit.
How to include all people in the movement to normalise menopause, so we don’t engage in erasure and marginalisation, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community.

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:

Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Omisade Burney-Scott: @oshunsweetnsour - https://www.instagram.com/oshunsweetnsour

View Details

Infertility can be heart-breaking, anxiety-inducing and full of grief. Research has shown that people experiencing infertility have the same levels of anxiety and depression as those with cancer, heart disease and HIV. In this episode, Fertility coach Jennifer Robertson offers solace and guidance drawn from her own seven-year journey to motherhood.

This one's for you if you’re looking for support, inspiration and friendship as you navigate infertility yourself, or if you’re working with people experiencing infertility, or since 1 in 6 people experience fertility challenges, if you’d like to play a supportive role for friends or family. We explore:

Jennifer’s seven-year journey to create her family; through the infertility rollercoaster, multiple rounds of IVF, miscarriage, a long and challenging surrogacy process, and finally, an unexpected, natural pregnancy.
How each phase of the menstrual cycle presents different challenges on the journey through infertility, as well as different powers that can soothe and support us as we ride the rollercoaster.
How to navigate baby-making sex, manage pre-menstrual rage at the unfairness of intertility, and support ourselves through the profound grief we may feel each month when we bleed.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Jennifer Robertson: @msjenniferrobertson - https://www.instagram.com/msjenniferrobertson

View Details

In this episode, Red School founders Alexandra and Sjanie get real, honest and vulnerable about the inner critic: what it is, how it shows up, its deeper purpose, and how to handle this challenging force in our lives.

Learning how to manage and harness the power of the inner critic is almost always a real game-changer for our Menstruality Leadership Programme participants. This powerful, inevitable character has the potential to paralyse us into inaction, whilst also being a key catalyst for profound growth and transformation… if we know how to negotiate it.

And the good news is we’ve got the menstrual cycle on our side here. A key teaching we share today is how to restore your critic to its natural home - the pre menstruum, so you can get in on your side, receive it’s feedback and use it to live your calling.

In the episode we explore:

What is the inner critic? How do we know when it has turned up? (ie: Unease, thoughts speeding up, clenched jaw, procrastination, addictive habits etc). And how can we track the inner critic through our body, thoughts and feeling state?
Guidelines for handling your inner critic, such as; naming it when it shows up, taking your own side, using humour as an antidote, and importantly, seeking professional help where needed.
How the critic shows up in menopause - the winter of our soul’s journey.
Our upcoming Inner Critic online workshop on Monday 14th March. You can find out more and take your seat at redschool.net/podcast/critic

Get your Inner Critic playlist! It's here - in the shownotes: https://redschool.net/podcast/critic

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

What if we already know what will help us through menopause? What if it’s the self care we overlook, or don’t do enough off? What if we don’t need an expert to give us a top ten list to surviving menopause?

Instead of perpetuating the myth that we need to give our power to an outside authority in order to feel better, Kate Codrington, author of Second Spring: A Self Care Guide to Menopause wants to place the power firmly back in our hands as we enter the often disorientating, challenging menopause journey.

In this liberating, culture-shifting conversation, we explore:

What is our Second Spring? Who are we after menopause? And how can we harness the wisdom we’ve gained from previous cycles and transitions to navigate this shift?
How menopause asks us, very intensely, to come into relationship with ourselves and keeps at us until we begin a more subtle kind self care that happens in small moments.
Why we deeply need to re-write the menopause narrative, and colour in the vibrant, creative life that happens in our Second Spring.

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Kate Codrington: @kate.codrington - https://www.instagram.com/kate.codrington

View Details

What is the connection between your menstrual cycle and your purpose in life? Today we’re talking about the hidden agenda within the menstrual cycle. Each cycle month - if we’re paying attention - our cycles are bringing each of us home to our uniqueness, to our genius, to a life full of meaning.

In this episode, Alexandra and Sjanie, the founders of Red School, and authors of Wild Power, explore:

What is our Calling? How can we recognise it? And how does our menstrual cycle awareness practice help us to cultivate an intimacy with it, track it and learn how to embody it?
How the different phases of our life help us embody and realise our Calling, our ‘Wild Power’: starting with our first bleed at menarche, through our fertile years, and culminating at the great initiation of menopause.
How to ‘dock in’ to your Calling at menstruation, receive guidance about your next best steps and get clear about how to make them manifest in the world.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Whether you’re a coach or educator who is working in the menstruality field, or you’re guiding a young menstruator in your life as they experience their first period, or you simply want to deepen your connection to your own cycle, you’re likely to encounter menstrual shame in yourself and others…

In today’s episode, we speak with one of the original pioneers in the menstruality field, founder of the Chalice Foundation and a Celebration Day for Girls, Jane Bennett about how to navigate this shame, so we can dignify the cycle and work together to create a menstrually positive world.

We explore:

How Jane learned to read her cycle in her 20s, got empowered to manage her cyclic wellbeing, and how this has positively impacted her life post menopause.
What Jane learned from gathering the stories and experiences 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.
How can we each work in our own unique way to heal the menstrual taboo and play our role in the menstrual revolution.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here:https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)

View Details

A major transition happens in our bodies in the years that lead up to menopause, a kind of ‘second puberty’. Many people are left wondering if they’re going crazy as they experience a vast range of physical and neurological symptoms which can seem to come out of nowhere; including anxiety, depression, irregular or heavier cycles, heart palpitations, insomnia, night sweats, hot flushes, migraines, and breast pain. Today the “Period Revolutionary” Lara Briden joins us to demystify perimenopause. Lara is a naturopathic doctor and the author of The Hormone Repair Manual, Every Woman's Guide to Healthy Hormones After 40, a practical guide to navigating the change of perimenopause and relieve symptoms with natural treatments such as diet, nutritional supplements, and bioidentical hormone therapy. We explore:

The four phases of perimenopause and how to navigate them, including the ‘waiting room’ where your periods are very irregular, but you haven’t yet reached the 12 month point which defines the beginning of menopause.
The science behind this life transition and the hormonal events that can drive symptoms like irregular / heavier cycles, sleep disturbance and hot flushes.
The rescue prescription for peri-menopause and how it can help you to look after your whole being, and especially your brain and nervous system - Lara assures us that there is always a way to feel better.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Lara Briden: @larabriden (https://www.instagram.com/larabriden)

View Details

Today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness can serve your creativity, whether you’re writing a book, creating art, growing a garden, building a business, creating a family or bringing your creativity to any other aspect of your life.

This is episode six of our special series, The Wild Power Retreat, where we want to inspire you to enhance your vitality, creativity and leadership in 2022, through the power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness.

We explore:

How your inner winter (menstruation) can be an otherworldly space where you have more access to inspiration, capacity to dream and visionary ability to know your next creative steps.
The importance of the innocent foolhardiness that comes in inner spring, and how it activates your creative projects.
The benefits of the critical discernment that arrives in the pre-menstruum, and how your inner critic actually helps your creative projects to shine and become the best version of themselves.

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

In today’s fifth Wild Power Retreat special we explore how to work in a trauma-informed way as you track your cycle, so you can harness the healing potential of the practice safely.

TW: This episode explores sensitive topics including sexual trauma and baby loss

In the world of self development and healing, there can be a tendency to push ourselves too hard and too fast, in our desire to grow, expand our understanding and heal. Cycle awareness allows us to tap into the natural evolutionary impulse within us, which keeps us tuned into a pace that is truly healing for each of us.

Our guest today is trauma-informed yoga expert and menstruality mentor, Kitty Maguire. Kitty is a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme and is currently studying the Red School Menstruality Medicine Circle training.

We explore:

How holding yourself with tenderness and compassion in “the void”, just before you bleed has a healing impact for the rest of the cycle to come.
The challenge of cycle tracking when you’re having trouble conceiving, particularly in inner summer - the ovulatory phase, and how to heal from pregnancy loss.
Bringing humour to the judgmental, edgy parts of yourself that can be revealed in your inner autumn, premenstrual phase.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Kitty Maguire: @kitty_maguire_menstrual_mentor - https://www.instagram.com/kitty_maguire_menstrual_mentor

View Details

Today’s conversation is about how to honour your cycle at work, manage stress and set yourself up to lead, in our non-cyclical world.

Our guest is Nicole Jardim, a Certified Women’s Health Coach, writer, speaker, mentor, and the creator of Fix Your Period, a series of programs that empower women and menstruators to reclaim their hormonal health. Nicole shares personal stories and tips for how to stay true to the energy of your cycle day in the world of work and how our cycles can help us to manage the stress that can arise when the world doesn’t play ball.

This special episode is session four of our free, online Wild Power Retreat, where we’re inviting you to make 2022 your year of menstrual cycle awareness. We explore:

The science of the stress / menstrual cycle connection, how our cycles can be a resource when it comes to stress management, and how cycle tracking can help us mitigate the stresses of our day-to-day pandemic lives.
How to harness the powers of your inner seasons to make tough decisions at work, for example, Nicole has learned to only hire people in her ovulatory phase when her discernment and intuition are strongest!
How being aware of your strengths and challenges each day of your cycle month gives you a ‘crystal ball’ that allows you to work and lead from a place of empathy, authenticity and compassion for ourselves and others.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Nicole Jardim: @nicolemjardim - https://www.instagram.com/nicolemjardim

View Details

Today’s episode of The Menstruality Podcast is session three of our free, online Wild Power retreat, where we’re exploring how to make 2022 your year of creativity, vitality and leadership, through the power of menstrual cycle awareness.

Period and Menstrual Cycle Coach Natalie K Martin guides us through the four cycle phases, inner season by inner season, exploring how to track the wisdom of your body through cycle awareness, and how to move in a cycle-inspired way that honours the energy of your current phase.

We explore:

The power of non-doing, rest and restorative yoga in inner winter (menstruation), and why silence is so key to accessing the powers of your bleed.
Strategies for winding down and creating space when you bleed, including longer toilet breaks, moving mindfully and adapting the way you work.
How to use music to enhance your cycle awareness practice, connect to pleasure, unleash your wildness through intuitive movement and harness the powers of each cycle phase.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Natalie K Martin: @natalie.kmartin - https://www.instagram.com/natalie.kmartin

View Details

Cycle awareness can be a powerful key turner when it comes to menstrual health as well as overall health. The menstrual cycle is a stress sensitive system, which means it can show us how and where we can course correct in order to feel more vital and healthy.

In this episode we speak with Lisa Hendrickson Jack, Holistic Reproductive Health Practitioner and author of The Fifth Vital Sign about how to translate the powerful feedback we receive from our cycle.

This is session two of our special Wild Power Retreat series, where we’re sharing inspiring conversations about how menstrual cycle awareness can help you enhance your vitality, creativity and leadership in 2022.

We explore:

How your cycle is your fifth vital sign and how it can guide you to better health.
The connection between menstrual health and overall vitality, and how to translate the feedback your cycle gives you into action to enhance your health.
What a healthy cycle looks like, and how to track your cycle when you have menstrual symptoms in a way which will support cycle healing.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Lisa Hendrickson Jack: @fertility.friday - https://www.instagram.com/fertilityfriday

View Details

Would you love to feel more healthy, more creative and more confident in your leadership in 2022? Today’s episode is part one of a special series - the Wild Power retreat - where we’ll share six 30-minute interviews over the coming 10 days, all to inspire you to enhance your vitality, creativity and leadership this year, through the power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness.

You can register to be part of the retreat, and receive our emails, watch videos, download our Wild Power Creative Journal, which includes 12 cycle charts at redschool.net/wild-power-retreat.

We explore:

How to access the depth, power and wisdom of Menstrual Cycle Awareness from the women who coined this term, Red School co-founders Sjanie and Alexandra.
How you can work with dreams to deepen your Menstrual Cycle Awareness practice.
The Big Red Rule - stay loyal to your cycle experience.

Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

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

View Details

At Red School our mission is to activate the vitality, creativity and leadership of a million people through the power of menstrual cycle awareness and consciousness menopause. And, this year we want to ignite you to make it your year of cycle awareness.To inspire and uplift and encourage you, today’s conversation is a deep dive into the many layers of this life affirming and life-altering practice. We explore:

How to actually live your cycle awareness in a non-cyclical world: how to yield the cycle you have on any given month… how to find creative ways to be true to your experience, and to lead from the wisdom of your cycle
A powerful example of this - how Sjanie learned to teach from the void of her cycle, and the powerful impact it had on her leadership.
How a commitment to cycle awareness cultivates our capacity to drop our patterns of control and be in intimate relationship with life, so we can grow new muscles of relational, sustainable leadership.

—

If you feel excited about enhancing your vitality, activating your creativity and deepening your leadership through your menstrual cycle awareness this year, we invite you to join our Wild Power free online retreat Jan 11th - 25th.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

**Social media:

Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)**

View Details

In a world where rest is seen as laziness, one of the most radical and daring things we can do is lie down and do nothing. And in doing so, we can wake up and bring to consciousness all that is hidden under our busyness.

Our guest today is Karen Brody - a mother, writer and author of the book “Daring To Rest”. She is one of the leaders in this movement to be radically well-rested, through her Daring to Rest Leadership programme, where she teaches Yoga Nidra for the modern world.

This conversation explores the quietly transformative healing power that rest brings to our lives.

How rest - in a similar way to menstruation - is the anchor that roots us into who we are, opening the door to ‘soul whispers’ which help us access intuitive wisdom and live our Calling.
How to take care of our frazzled nervous systems and ‘power down’ into truly nourishing deep rest, through the power of Yoga Nidra.
How to dare to rest in a world which perceives rest as lazy, weak and unproductive, especially during the transitional moments in life, such as menstruation, menopause and motherhood.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Karen Brody: @karen_brody

(This is the final episode for season one of the Menstruality podcast. We're taking a week off on December 30th, and we'll be back on January 6th with season two! Thank you for listening this year - we're exciting to share more game-changing Menstruality conversations with you in 2022).

View Details

Today we’re exploring themes that are right at the heart of the emerging menstrality movement; love, belonging and an invitation for each of our experiences to be dignified, and honoured, exactly as we are.

I’m talking with LGBTQ+ inclusion consultant, Adele Bates, whose day job is as an education and behavior specialist - just release her first book “Miss I don’t give a sht: engaging with challenging behaviour within schools” - we’re celebrating you Adele! Adele is a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and has been a profound resource as an LGBTQ+ educator in the Red School community. Today we ask how we can move towards more genuine inclusion in our work as Menstruality pioneers, looking at the questions such as:- How is menstrual cycle awareness different when you’re in a same sex relationship?*

How can we ensure that non-binary or gender fluid people and trans men feel safe, honoured and a sense of belonging in menstruality work?
How might a trans woman experience menstruality?

View Details

Are you a menstrualist? Do you want to create a world where we all prioritise the menstrual cycle? Would you like to know how to work with your cycle to enhance your work as a changemaker? Today’s guest is spear-heading the menstrualism movement. Kate Shepherd Cohen is a menstrual health pioneer, an author, activist, climate campaigner and CEO of a health tech start up. Since graduating from the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme, she’s revolutionising menstrual healthcare in the UK, and is the first person in the world to offer a Menstrual Cycle Support programme on social prescription through the NHS.

Our conversation moves from the practical details of how to create change as a menstrual health advocate, to the visionary exploration of menstrual dreaming as a key tool for all social and environmental change work. We explore:

Kate’s recent TEDx talk: “Period Problems - and Why There Is Hope”.
What a menstrualist is, why menstrualism is the most important movement of the 21st century, and how we can move through menstrual shame to claim our place in this social and cultural movement (whether we cycle or not).
Why menstrual rest is the foundation for any menstruator wanting to birth meaningful change, and how on earth to get it, as well as how we can practice menstrual dreaming to receive visions that guide and inform our work.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

**Social media:

Red School: @*red.school* (*https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Kate Shepherd Cohen: @*kateshepherdcohen

View Details

This week we meet The Period Poet herself, Nikki Tajiri who is the author of “She Dreams When She Bleeds” which weaves original menstrual art with cycle-inspired, rebellious poetry and has reached women and menstruators all over the world, as well as Murmur, rumble, roar, an emotional exploration of the space where climate change meets inner transformation.

Nikki gracefully translates her intimate cycle awareness into artistic expression, and this episode is a soothing, gentle, lyrical exploration of how we can each express the magic of our cycles and activate our creativity, in our own unique way. Through the lens of her poems and her creative process, we explore:

How to follow the creative impulses that arise from the menstrual cycle, even when our inner critic tells us they’re crazy.
Why our world needs artists and creatives who dare to channel the fierce, truth-telling energy of inner autumn.
Why embracing the life-affirming rhythm and flow of our cyclical nature is so critical to solving the environmental crises we face.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:
Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Nikki Tajiri: @nikki.tajiri

View Details

The inner seasons of the menstrual cycle are often mirrored in pregnancy, and in this episode with doula and Red School Leadership Mentor Jady Mountjoy, we walk through the three trimesters of pregnancy, learning how to harvest your cycle awareness experience to hold yourself through all the huge changes happening in your body and psyche.

Drawing on her experience of guiding pregnant and birthing people over decades, Jady shares how cycle awareness prepares you for the initiation of pregnancy and birth, how the deep intelligence of the trimesters builds the skill base we’ll need for parenthood, and how to move from your forebrain to your more primitive, instinctive brain as the energy of birth begins to court you.

We explore:

The medicine of the first trimester and how to create a soothing cocoon - even with physical symptoms - slow your life down, and tend to your needs in the vulnerability of the initial phases of pregnancy.
The ‘blossoming’ that can arise in the second trimester and how it correlates to inner summer, creating a kind of anchoring, and guiding us into a journey of allegiance to ourselves.
How the ‘descent’ of the third trimester can mirror the inner autumn, inviting us soften into the energy of birth, and start to allow ourselves to be beautifully dismantled in preparation for the surrender of labour.

Jady is one of the Red School Leadership mentors who guides participants through our Menstruality Leadership Programme. Registration is open for our 2022 cycle and you can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:

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

View Details

Alexandra and Sjanie take us behind the scenes of their menopause book writing process to explore how menstrual cycle awareness can help each of us cultivate intimate connection to our own unique creative process, whether you’re bringing your creativity to work, art, healing, parenting, nurturing, activism or any other form of expression.

They share how they’ve each been tutored by their cycles as well as Alexandra’s menopause process to navigate a wide array of creative challenges, harness the powers of each cycle phase and fully express their Calling. We explore:

How to manage the inner critic - especially when it hijacks the early phases of a creative project - avoid the trap of procrastination and heal the layers of shame that can block our creativity.
How to harvest the innocence, playfulness and improvisational strengths of inner spring (pre-ovulation)to trick yourself into creative expression, swim in the unknown and bring brand new ideas into the world.
How to honour the energy of inner autumn (pre-menstruum) to polish the rough diamond of your work through constructive critical feedback, and get to the essence of what you’re trying to express in the most potent way.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

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

View Details

Towards the middle of 2020, Cycle Alignment Guide, Vianney Leigh saw the extent of the burnout in her community, and decided to take action.

In the weeks following the Black Lives Matter uprising, she used her own cycle awareness practice to create Period Power Activism, a coaching program that supports advocates and activists to align with the cycle and create sustainable change whilst making room for rest and sustained energy levels.

We celebrate the many passionate activists in our community. Whether you’re working to dismantle systemic racism, make the Menstruality field more LGBTQ+ inclusive, decolonise yoga, end period poverty or fight for climate justice, we hope these groundbreaking teachings about cycles and activism support you to speak truth and stand for your values without burning out. We explore:

How each inner season of the menstrual cycle can support sustainable activism, help you manage burnout, guilt and anxiety, cultivate more confidence and receive more cyclical wisdom and inner guidance.
How Vianney harnessed her creative inspiration and natural capacity to connect with her audience in her inner summer, as well as the potent focus and instinctive impulses of inner autumn to craft her Period Power Activism course.
The Black menstrual health crisis, Black maternal health crisis and Black mental health crisis and the extent of the social justice work that is needed.

… but first Vianney began by generously and vulnerably sharing her story of working with a PMDD diagnosis and how her cycle initiated a profound spiritual awakening for her.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Vianney Leigh: @statusflow.com (https://www.instagram.com/statusflow.co)

View Details

Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) is life and world-changing for everyone, whether you have a cycle or not. In today's episode, we explore this with Dominick Quartuccio and Bryan Stacey, the hosts of The Great Man Within podcast. They’re a breath of fresh air in a world which can feel full of toxic masculinity. Brave and vulnerable in their desire to break new ground for men and masculinity, they’ve interviewed Red School’s co-founders Alexandra and Sjanie not once, but TWICE. The first interview “A Man’s Guide to the Menstrual Cycle", has since become their most downloaded episode ever! We explore:

Innovative, sensitive, simple ways to introduce cycle awareness to your male partner, colleagues, family members or friends, and how to enlist their support to ‘drop your bundle’ in inner winter (menstruation) by giving them a way to ‘be a hero’.
How cycle awareness provides a ‘surfboard’ to ride the relationship waves that can happen in inner autumn (premenstruum), and how to bring your truth-speaker in a way that can actually be received.
How to have period sex with a male partner, to move through taboos around blood, and cultivate sexual intimacy during menstruation so you can enter the “Holy Grail” together.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. (https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022)

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

**Social media:

Red School: @red.school Dominick Quartuccio:** @dominickq

View Details

Period Coach, Claire Baker has built a wildly successful, impactful, vision-led business as an author, teacher and leader in the menstruality field. In this episode we go behind the scenes of her business, exploring how she works with the superpowers and vulnerabilities of her menstrual cycle to create potent programmes, manage her team skillfully, lead with integrity and find the pleasure in her creative process.
We explore:

How Claire rides off the momentum of inner spring, paces her workflow to protect her vulnerable new ideas, and invites her playful, innocent maiden self to explore and experiment.
The natural magnetism of inner summer, and how to harness our capacity to be seen in this phase to create connections, nurture relationships and express ourselves with confidence.
How Claire manages her inner critic and imposter syndrome in inner autumn, uses the power of discernment to evaluate and wrap up her work and crafts space to be in her creative cave.
Practical guidance to create space for visioning in inner winter, to receive insights, be your own ‘oracle’ and clarify the most potent next steps for your work.

---

Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. (https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022)

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

**Social media:

Red School: @red.school (*https://www.instagram.com/red.school)
Claire Baker: @_clairebaker_*

View Details

Karen Arthur lives her life in full colour, and her rebellious spirit is catching. A fashion designer, host of the ground-breaking Menopause Whilst Black Podcast, and a leading voice in the global conversation to rewrite menopause, she busts menopause myths and shares refreshing ideas to manage menopause challenges with a rare kind of honesty, fire and wit. In this episode we explore:

How Karen made the bold transition from teacher to fashion designer, moved through depression to creative expression, learned that NO is a complete sentence, and found a new freedom in her voice through menopause.
Her powerful work to make menopause diverse, amplify the voices of Black British women in menopause, and tell a new story of menopause as a pathway home to yourself (rather than something to dread).
Why ‘wearing our happy’ is a powerful antidote to menopause challenges, and how it felt to invite Davina McCall into her fashion design studio for the Channel 4 ‘Sex, Myths and the Menopause’ documentary.

Registration is open for our 2021 Menopause: The Great Awakener is now open. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menopause

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school
Karen Arthur: @thekarenarthur
Menopause Whilst Black: @menopausewhilstblack

View Details

Wise author, grandmother and revolutionary Jane Hardwicke Collings is passionate, provocative and also funny - even as she busts through taboos, heals collective wounds and creates a roadmap for a positive menstrual and menopause culture. We explore:

The roots of menstrual shame and its impact on our cycles and our bodies.
How to live and bleed shamelessly through the spiritual practice of menstruation.
How to heal the menopause shame (and a surprising fact about the five other mammals who go through menopause, and how it serves their offspring and communities.)

Registration is now open for our 2021 live round of Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can explore the five phases of menopause here: www.redschoolmenopause.com.

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:

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

Jane Hardwicke Collings @janehardwickecollings - www.instagram.com/janehardwickecollings

View Details

This episode re-writes the collective story of menopause from a looming disaster to an initiatory pathway into your unique way of leading; in your family, community, and work in the world.

If you’re entering menopause, or find yourself in the midst of this initiation, this conversation with Red School’s co-founders, Alexandra and Sjanie will dignify you, affirm your experience and give you insight into the deep process at work in you. (It’s also a resource for any person who menstruates who wants to prepare for the transformational power of menopause.) We explore:

The ‘Ground Rules for Initiation’ that allow you to craft your own form of menopause sabbatical - even amidst the responsibilities you hold, using the 1% change rule.
The menopause leadership superpower of discernment, and how to practice your ‘NO’ (without justifying it).
How menopause makes you into an organ of intelligence, anchoring you in deep time, transforming your loyalties and plugging you into a bigger consciousness.

---

Registration is now open for our 2021 live round of Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can explore the five phases of menopause here: www.redschoolmenopause.com.

---

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

---

Social media:Red School: @red.school

View Details

In this tender, honest and intimate conversation Red School’s founders, Alexandra and Sjanie reveal how the menstrual cycle activates a fresh kind of relational, creative leadership within each of us, and the possibility that holds for the future of our global community.

We explore:

The arch nemesis that we have to battle in order to grow up as leaders - the inner critic, and the sacred role it plays in calling us home to ourselves.
The surprising ego-deflation devices that live in the second half of the cycle and how they wake us up to our humanity.
Personal leadership stories: how Sjanie gets humbled each and every pre-menstruum and what Alexandra means when she says she’s now a ‘comic cycler’.

Registration is now open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum at www.menstrualityleadership.com

The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net

Social media:
Red School: @red.school

View Details

Welcome to The Menstruality Podcast where we speak with ground-breaking changemakers and creatives about how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle and conscious menopause to cultivate your unique form of leadership; for yourself, your community, and the world. Hosted by Red School, where we’re training the menstruality leaders of the future.

To subscribe visit: www.redschool.net/podcast

The Menstruality Podcast: Recent Episodes

Red School