The Menstruality Podcast

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

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.schoolOmisade Burney-Scott: @oshunsweetnsour - https://www.instagram.com/oshunsweetnsour

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.schoolJennifer Robertson: @msjenniferrobertson - https://www.instagram.com/msjenniferrobertson

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

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.schoolKate Codrington: @kate.codrington - https://www.instagram.com/kate.codrington

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

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)

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)

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

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.schoolKitty Maguire: @kitty_maguire_menstrual_mentor - https://www.instagram.com/kitty_maguire_menstrual_mentor