The Menstruality Podcast

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 we explore: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.schoolKate Northrup: @katenorthrup - https://www.instagram.com/katenorthrup/?hl=en

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)

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.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!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

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

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 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.schoolNatalie K Martin: @nataliekmartin - https://www.instagram.com/natalie.kmartin

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.schoolLynne Twist: @soulofmoney - https://www.instagram.com/soulofmoney

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

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.schoolAsha Frost: @asha.frost - https://www.instagram.com/asha.frost

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.schoolClare Dubois: @clare_dubois_treesister - https://m.facebook.com/clare.dubois.333

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