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

Today I’m back with Alexandra & Sjanie and we’re kicking off a series which will unfold all the way through the summer - our Creativity series. Because these two powerhouse creative mavens have finally landed their teachings on creativity - born from the menstrual cycle and relevant to us all, whether you currently have a menstrual cycle or not. They’ll be sharing these teachings around what they call ‘The Creative Cycle’ for the first time ever this September in our new creativity course, and you can join us for our free webinar on July 12th to learn all about both The Creative Cycle and the course.In today’s conversation we explore how we’re all innately creative, how The Creative Cycle can unleash our creative flow, and how Alexandra and Sjanie have worked with these teachings to make everything they’ve created at Red School…We explore:The liberating power of The Creative Cycle, and how it can free us all up from self doubt, shame, procrastination and “too-many-ideas” overwhelm into a thriving, fulfilling creative life. What the menstrual cycles have taught Alexandra and Sjanie about the cyclical nature of creativity, and how Red School has been a ‘laboratory’ to practice these teachings.  Why - and how - we would LOVE to hear from YOU.---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.hardy

“You cannot say how many cubic metres make up courage, or what kind of wires you need to construct freedom. What kind of lab do you go into to measure relationships between people?” ~ Minna SalamiWhen Minna, my guest today, said this, I got shivers up and down my spine (as I did many times, reading her brilliant book, Sensuous Knowledge) as a deeply intuitive woman raised in a hyper-rational world… or as Minna calls it, a world rooted in euro-patriarchal knowledge. Minna Salami is a Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish feminist author and social critic. Her research focuses on Black feminist theory, contemporary African thought, and the politics of knowledge production, and today we’re exploring Sensuous Knowledge is a model of knowledge rooted in the dynamic landscape of Black feminist thought - one that empowers, enlivens, and liberates, through embodied insight.We explore:How the menstrual cycle is a source of profound, disruptive different ways of knowing. What happens in a world which only values that which can be quantified, measured and put into hierarchies, rather than honouring the knowledge that emerges from within our bodies and ourselves. The “kaleidoscopic method” and what rivers, trees and placentas can teach us about power and the nature of reality. ---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.hardyMinna Salami: @minnasalami_ - https://www.instagram.com/minnasalami_

When I first dreamed into the Menstruality Podcast, my guest today was one of the first people I knew I wanted to interview, and it’s taken a while, but boy, is it worth the wait!Tami Lynn Kent is the author of Wild Feminine and the creator of Holistic Pelvic Care, and I’ve been lucky to study with her several times over the past decade - the results have been transformative for me. Today's far-reaching conversation explores the power and medicine we hold in our pelvic bowls and how we can resource ourselves as we 'work on the frontlines of the feminine'.We explore:What could become possible if we continued the ancient indigenous practice of listening to the menstrual dreamers in our communities, as guides. Why Tami came to be known as the Vagina Whisperer, and the shame that shifts when we are deeply honoured in this part of our bodies. The funny, and deeply beautiful thing that happened when Tami taught her sons about the power of menstruation. ---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.hardyTami Lynn Kent: @tamilynnkent - https://www.instagram.com/tamilynnkent

Understanding how to dismantle racism is a charged and complex topic. So today we’re exploring how  menstrual cycle awareness can be a profound ally as we work to unravel our own unconscious bias, and find our way of deconstructing oppressive systems. My guest is Dr Sunshine Kamaloni who has a PhD in cultural studies and a deep cycle awareness practice. She shares from her own personal journey working with her inner seasons in her equity, inclusion, diversity and belonging work to unpack how the muscles that cycle awareness grow in us can help us to uncover our own personal race story.We explore:What a race story is, how they underpin unconscious bias, and how they impact us differently depending on where we are in the structure of the system. The blessings of inner winter as a time to rest, stop, ground and nourish as we take stock of who we are and how we sit with race, inside a safe container with less charge.How our own inner critic can actually be a supportive force as we uncover our race stories; as a truth-speaker showing us our blindspots and a guide in evaluating our progress. ---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 Sunshine Kamaloni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunshinekamaloni

Kim McCabe, the founder of Rites for Girls says that without puberty rites of passage, young people self-initiate. The media tells them how they should be and our youngsters create their own ways of proving their adulthood through feats, dares, and adventures. They try to appear like adults in what they do and how they look: using clothes, make-up, drink, cigarettes, cars, and sex.According to Kim, we grown-ups can take back the role of initiating our children into adulthood, and “the children welcome it, we are fulfilled by it, and a transition that has become defined by its difficulty can become a joyous one.”In our conversation today we explore how to take back the role of initiating our girls and young people into their menstruating lives.We explore:How to begin speaking about menstruation, move through shame and support girls to have healthy relationships with their bodies.The importance of asking “what makes your heart sing?” and “what brings you joy?” to our girls, especially between age 10-12, so these threads are tended and their unique essence awakens. The profound impact of happens when you have regular “mother-daughter dates”…---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.schoolKim McCabe - Rites for Girls - https://www.instagram.com/ritesforgirls