The Menstruality Podcast

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, Jaspreet 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.schoolJaspreet Kaur: @kaurhealth - https://www.instagram.com/kaurhealth

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

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

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.schoolLe’Nise Brothers: @eatlovemove - https://www.instagram.com/eatlovemove

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.schoolAmy Taylor Kabbaz: @amytaylorkabbaz - https://www.instagram.com/amytaylorkabbaz

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

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.schoolChloé Caldwell: @chloeeeecaldwell - https://www.instagram.com/chloeeeecaldwell

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.schoolRuby May: @know.your.flow - https://www.instagram.com/know.your.flow

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.schoolChelsea Von Chaz: @chelseavonchaz - https://www.instagram.com/chelseavonchaz/Happy Period: @wearehappyperiod - https://www.instagram.com/wearehappyperiod

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)