The Menstruality Podcast

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, How we can decolonise our menstrual cycle 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_

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, How giving attention to all of life’s rhythms and cycles can support us Why life’s big transitions can cause irregular 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

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 is reclaiming her indigenous lineage, --- 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

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, How Elayne’s menopause process began with her experience of baby loss at 46, we meet Elayne’s brilliant East London cockney grandmother, Olive,--- 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

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 Ideas for approaching intimacy in inner autumn and winter, How to use sex to heal and feel more safe, --- 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

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, Guidance for how to do a personal menarche ritual We share many different menarche stories, including how Sophie’s reframed her ‘non-event’ first 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

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: --- 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

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’ How the wild character of ‘Mis’ How the story of the ‘Selkie’ --- 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

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

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 The science behind this life transition rescue prescription for peri-menopause always--- 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)

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: --- 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)

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: --- 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

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" A wide variety of activist approaches and roles for sensitive, introverted empaths; The ‘seasons of activism’ --- 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/

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: --- 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

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, we help to deshame the menstrual cycle and menopause, Cycle awareness as a foundational wellness 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: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

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

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: --- 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 Lazola MaDuka: @wombflow_ - https://www.instagram.com/wombflow_

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: --- 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

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: --- 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

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