Today we’re talking about power, and it’s a word that comes up a lot at Red School. It features in both of Alexandra and Sjanie’s book titles, as well as the title of our new course coming up in June - Cycle Power. But what exactly do we mean by power?In our conversation, we explore how Alexandra and Sjanie define and understand power, why so many of us feel scared, confused or suspicious about power, and how the menstrual cycle wakes us up to our power.So, if you’re longing to feel more agency and power in your life, if you notice yourself suppressing your power, and if you’re curious how menstrual cycle awareness can help you to claim your power and live it, this one is for you.We explore:Alexandra’s lifelong fascination with power, her current experience of power as an elder who has lived a lifetime of cycle-awareness, and her current power-edge; undefendedness. Vulnerability as a gateway to healthy expressions of power; it allows us to feel, to know ourselves, to empathise and to move towards ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’.The importance of acknowledging and claiming the power that we do have, exactly where we are, and how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness helps us to notice and lean into this innate power. ---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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

The deeper we go with our menstrual cycle awareness practice, the more it can resource us as we heal our deepest wounds. Cycle by cycle, we step into deeper intimacy with our needs, which in turn enables us to take clumsy steps towards clarifying healthy boundaries. Today we’re speaking about a core wound which effects all of us, with the woman who first comprehensively defined the term a decade ago, Bethany Webster and the Mother Wound. As Bethany says, the Mother Wound is the place inside us where we compulsively cause ourselves to be small, self-sacrificing and silent as a means of loyalty and love and approval with other people. Today we explore how, if we’re persistent and committed on both the path of menstrual cycle awareness (or conscious menopause), and working with the Mother Wound, we can create boundaries which can help us to feel less disconnected and more like we belong to this messy, old life. We explore:How your deep ‘why’ can help you to hold clear boundaries when you face criticism.Bethany’s three tips for holding strong boundaries with challenging family members. How menstrual cycle can help us to discover what we really want (rather than what we’re making ourselves do) so that we can ride off the power of these desires to courageously set necessary boundaries. ---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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyBethany Webster: @themotherwound - https://www.instagram.com/themotherwound/

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, your life and your wellness practices. How we can decolonise our menstrual cycle - by stepping away from cookie cutter templates of how our cycles ‘should look’ and instead cultivating an intimacy with the cycle we have.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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyJyoti 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, especially if you’re feeling lost, angry and experiencing self-blame in the face of your unpredictable cycle. How giving attention to all of life’s rhythms and cycles can support us when our menstrual cycles are unpredictable; including your circadian rhythms, the lunar phases, your overall life cycle and the creative processes you’re inhabiting (particularly in the years running up to menopause). Why life’s big transitions can cause irregular cycles, the deep initiatory wisdom at work inside the disturbance, and guidance for how to work with life’s ‘void’ moments. ---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.schoolSophie 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 cycle healing journey - including a traumatic abortion experience - ultimately led her to a profound freedom of expression. Some simple, practical, accessible ways to begin using your voice as an instrument.How Alycia’s is reclaiming her indigenous lineage, and how we can work with our wombs and voices to connect to our ancestors, and bring our unique medicine into the world. ---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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyAlycia 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, and how this is in service the the dismantling of the inner patriarchal structures within each of us.How Elayne’s menopause process began with her experience of baby loss at 46, and what she's learned from being an unmothered daughter about how to mother herself (and our planet).A hilarious moment - at around 35 minutes - where we meet Elayne’s brilliant East London cockney grandmother, Olive, and hear about her feisty menopause reckoning, when she was done being compliant. HOLY YES!---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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyElayne 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 with your lover - including actual scripts for sharing vulnerable longings.Ideas for approaching intimacy in inner autumn and winter, to support you to get your needs met (including how to move through shame if you’re someone who loves menstrual sex).How to use sex to heal and feel more safe, both with yourself and in partnership. ---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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyAlexa 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, and how re-writing menarche can liberate a profound sense of self-belief and self-confidence.Guidance for how to do a personal menarche ritual (including what to do if your experience of your first menstrual cycle was a let-down, a non-event, or a shaming experience). We share many different menarche stories, including how Sophie’s reframed her ‘non-event’ first period, how a menarche ritual helped Louise prepare for menopause, and how Sjanie is holding her daughter in the tender approach to her menarche.---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.schoolSophie 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:Why women gathered together in Moon Lodges, in many indigenous cultures to listen for the dreams of bleeding women, and how Cre has followed this lead to embody the sacred through her cycle and her body. A wide range of indigenous menarche rituals, including the Anishinaabe rite of passage known as the Berry Fast, the Navajo Kinaalda ceremony and the Hupa Flower Dancers coming-of-age ceremonies.What Cre has learned from her research about how to honour and trust her menstruating body, and guide her clients to honour the moon cycle. ---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.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyDr Cre Dye: @credyeyoga - https://www.instagram.com/credyeyoga

Dr. Sharon Blackie, a renowned mythologist and author, delves into how ancient myths connect women to their cyclical nature and ancestral wisdom. She discusses the ‘Well Maiden’ as a bridge to restoring the Feminine through dreams. The wild character of ‘Mis’ offers solace during misunderstood phases like premenstruum and menopause. The tale of the ‘Selkie’ inspires a reclamation of authenticity and belonging. Blackie emphasizes the importance of storytelling in understanding grief and rediscovering one's identity in a modern context.