The Menstruality Podcast

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

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

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

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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyTumelo Moreri: @tumelomoreri - https://www.instagram.com/tumelomoreri/

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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyAbi Denyer Bewick @abi.denyer.bewick - https://www.instagram.com/abi.denyer.bewick/Lottie Randomly: @lottie.randomly - https://www.instagram.com/lottie.randomly/

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

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

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

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

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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyLucy Aitkin: @lucy_aitkenread - https://www.instagram.com/lucy_aitkenread