The Menstruality Podcast - 104. How Your Cycle Inspires Creativity even when Life is Getting in the Way (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Today on the podcast we’re chatting about a tried-and tested antidote to the biggest creative challenge most of us face, a challenge which came through in dozens of versions of this question in our inbox during our summer creativity series…How can I make space for my creative expression when there’s so much else going on in my life?Do you relate? Perhaps you find yourself making exciting creative plans, only to get caught up in the flurry of day-to-day life and never really get started? Maybe you are wary of diving fully into a creative project—amidst everything else you’re caring for in your life—out of fear that you’ll burn out (again)? Today’s podcast explores the deep, underground magic of cycle awareness, and how it helps us to understand everything we experience in our lives as part of the biggest creative act of all—being an ever-evolving human in an often-challenging world. We explore:The incredibly creative shift that happens when we dare to trust that everything in our life has meaning - even the things that feel that they’re getting in the way (the job, the caring role, the responsibilities etc)How cycle awareness grounds us in who we truly are, which helps us develop new emotional skills, inner discipline and physiological muscle for all the creative projects that will call us in the future. What Sjanie has learned from her many careers; from working in a potato factory to being a graphic designer, to being a hypnotherapist focused on fertility, to growing Red School.---Join our new Your Creative Power online course and save £100 before Sep 10th: www.redschool.net/creativity---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here today. We're chatting about a tried and tested antidote to the biggest creative challenge that most of us face today

on the podcast. It's a challenge that came through in dozens of versions of this question into our inbox during our summer creativity series this year. How can I make space for creative expression when there's so much else going on in my life? Do you relate? I do. Perhaps you find yourself making exciting creative plans only to get caught up in the flurry of day-to-day life and responsibilities. Maybe you're wary of diving fully into a creative project amidst everything else you're already caring for in your life. Today's episode with Alexandra and Sharni explores the deep underground magic of cycle awareness and how it helps us to understand everything we experience in our lives as meaningful, as part of the biggest creative act of all, which is being an ever

evolving human in our often challenging world. So I hope this one really enriches and inspires you and let's get going with how your cycle inspires creativity even when life is getting in the way well hey you two it's so good to be back after my luscious summer hauls i've just arrived back from so great to be back with you two. How are you doing? I have no idea where we're all at cyclically. Yeah I know I have missed you Sophie Jane. Same. Yeah where are we at? Where are you at? Me 23, day 23. Huh it looks good on you. Thanks I have something to do with the nice French food I've been eating

and the French sunshine yeah I mean it's just so different to feel my inner autumn having properly rested for a couple of weeks because it has been a good couple of weeks of rest and I feel very very very at home in myself this a deep rooted feeling of oh yeah I know I know what I'm about but it's on a beingness level rather than a doing level do you know what I mean like there's something in me that rest wow so good where are you alexandra i am i think it's the last quarter of the moon we're just coming into actually I noticed this morning just this need for spaciousness. You like to inhabit the spaciousness and to go slowly in it. And to, you know, I wanted to listen to just some more complex,

soulful ideas over breakfast rather than the old usual stuff. Or silence. But I didn't want silence. I wanted to fill the atmosphere with just, it's like I was in the world of ideas, but deep ideas, yeah. You know how you're just,'s a precision when in that spaciousness that discerning spaciousness of yeah that's yes i'd like to just read that piece now um yeah i mean it was only 15 minutes worth of something but it's very distinct and so i'm sort of with these ideas so it's it's these deeper ideas

that are kind of informing me right now kind of the deep pulse of the business of me you know what i really i'm here doing yeah and there's so there's a restraint and an innerness yeah i love how you describe that clarity and precision and uh yeah the sort of appetite for nuance and complexity it is a kind of soulfulness yeah gorgeous i'm day 18 today and a really good time for me to check in with myself with my cycle is in the very first moments of consciousness in the day you know it's what i would call before i've even woken up I'm sort of still slightly asleep moment if I pay attention then I get a very good read on like the bass note that I'm in and I noticed something very similar yesterday to what I noticed today in my early morning it's this feeling of um

feeling like I'm slightly swimming inside myself you could almost describe it as nausea but it's not a physical thing it's sort of like an emotional um nausea like there's just feelings stirring and yeah and like some kind of solidity has been lost in my system and what I always find very fascinating is because in the days prior clearly there was a solidity but that the way that solidity shows up is just as sort of um i don't notice that i feel solid i sort of don't notice anything and then suddenly i notice the solidity is gone that's when i yeah i'm like oh wow that's gone that moment of melting from solid to liquid and so this is this is inner autumn for me because my cycles are about 25 days this is coming into inner autumn and it's very different to when i'm really landed in inner autumn which has much more

of the qualities often that alexandandra you described and also that you're feeling into sophie i'm not quite there it's like that's uh that that's where all this swimmy watery desolidification is leading me i've missed you both so much i love the conversations that we have talk about appetite for soulfulness. I know when I sit down with you two, it's going to be a great big dollop of soul blop on my plate. With a cherry on the top. When you're talking about that,

going from that solid to that liquid state, I can't help but see a caterpillar in a cocoon, which apparently does really pretty much liquefy before the beginnings of the butterfly come and that is it isn't it it's that state of absolute mush yeah and and how um creative that is which is actually it's such a lovely segue into what we're going to be talking about today but how like the dissolution of what was and the ending of how things have been is um such a creative threshold and such a kind of sweet uh sometimes terrifying and i was gonna say terrifying yeah often destabilizing moment but

yeah there's something very very precious and I want to even say privileged about the fact that we get taken there every month in our menstrual cycle I meant this is a slight side conversation but I was recently in conversation with a man about his calling and life purpose and I just found myself unable to to respond because all my answers were but if you have a menstrual cycle like all this will all be answered so I was really left with feeling the kind of privilege of the deep cyclicity that we have in our meaning men have another kind of access I'm pretty sure of that but this is the access I have and bloody hell I love it it's one of the reasons why I've been loving this summer exploring the creative cycle with you two because it's one of the reasons why I've been loving this summer exploring the creative cycle with you two because it's making me understand like AIDS calling in a new way or my best friend Dustin

who neither of them have menstrual cycles but I've noticed myself saying different things asking different questions helping them see that they're in a mush phase or they're in they're riding a creative wave right now and it's it's wonderful to feel how we can apply this deep wisdom to to a bigger range of people and situations do you know for me it's everything sophie it's so powerful you, just negotiating life stages. I would actually feel a bit bleak, you know, at times if I had not known this. But it gives meaning and, you know, that transition is, that's terrifying and sweet and everything, is fertile.

It's, life comes out of death you know yeah fertilizes it's yeah so it's so good having been embodied embedded in this knowledge through my menstrual cycle over the years because it's embedded me yeah and then being able to then take that into all these other contexts you know when we we've taught our creativity workshop which was a sort of early prototype of what we are going to be teaching now on your creative power when we taught these workshops and we've been doing it for years in person and we often started the workshop by saying the creative cycle we could teach this to anyone we could teach this to anyone whether they have a menstrual cycle or not because in a way this is the application of

the wisdom that we live every month that we we see in everything. And having this map, in a way, is the bridge between menstruality and everything in life, everything that lives and breathes. Yeah. You know, when we say that we want menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause to be happening around every boardroom, every kitchen table, every school, this is a really big part of it, isn't it? It's the translation. comes highly practical. The creative cycle is the practical application of menstruality wisdom. That's why Alexandra and I get so excited about teaching it because you learn how to do shit, how to make stuff happen. You know, it isn't this kind of inner work,

internal stuff, which we love, make no mistake, and which is completely necessary. But it's the next piece of the puzzle which is like right let's create things in the world that matter to us and that you know matter to others it's very exciting well let's get practical here then because we have you know yes we know that the mush phase of the creative process is there's something really powerful going on but it is terrifying and there are you know there's a lot in life that around creativity that feels challenging and we're really grateful to have received lots and lots of

questions from our audience from the community gathered around this podcast and this work sharing you know the things that are getting in the way of creativity and, you know, life just getting in the way of creativity. So I'm just going to read a couple of stories from Ileana and Lisa. So Ileana says, I love writing when I feel inspired, but since I've been working full time again, I can't push myself to do it. I'm not even sure if it's just procrastination, it really feels like a huge challenge to even start. So that's one, that's Ileana. And then Lisa, my challenge is straddling the world of my creative projects and those of my children's, finding uninterrupted time to execute

projects rather than just having to be stopped and distracted by children or other things that demand my attention, either invited or uninvited. So these are both examples of I want to create, I've got this creative impulse but life is getting in the way in some way, shape or form. So let's unpack this a bit. How can cycle awareness, how can the creative cycle hold us and help us when life is getting in the way? Well, it is something that has actually sourced from cycle awareness. But there's also another so there's that which I'll we can I'll speak about but there's also another thought

that I want to bring in at the beginning of this which is that which has to do with daring to trust that my life is meaningful that there is some sort of unfolding process going on so at the heart of what i'm saying here is this holding of the trust that who I am and that what's happening within my life holds meaning, is meaningful. And then with that, holding that attention to actually care for the place you are in because this is a a dictum we have with menstrual cycle awareness the way that you awaken the powers of the menstrual cycle the way you uh not just awaken but experience actually feel the and the forces at work within each part of the cycle is you need to care for the place you're in rather than, you know, wishing you were, you know, in the summer of your cycle because you've got this big meeting, blah, blah, blah.

But you're actually, you know, in your bleed right now and you feel very very internal and yet you have to show up but instead of sort of complaining about that or kind of bemoaning the fact you have a cycle although you might do that momentarily because it's human but that you actually really come back and go and just really be in the moment with the place you are in and and meet the day from that place and of course you know if you were say bleeding you might want to go oh i don't want to go out at all and this is where we bring our one percent rule in you can always do something to care for the place you are in. And so with these two stories it's it's not seeing what's happening right

now as an impediment to your creativity but to actually go to inhabit what is happening within you and within this moment right now. And it is not to forget your creativity, but it is almost to claim your life in this moment. This is who I am and this is what I'm doing. And to care for that moment as best you can, to be the best that you are in that moment with whatever you're doing. And what happens when you start to do that?

One, of course, you're connecting with yourself and that's what caring for the place of your cycle is in it's actually because the menstrual cycle awareness is this act of keeping connection with yourself and that's what you're doing in that moment you are connecting in and when you that's the first note of any creative endeavor by the way. You've got to be at home in yourself. You can't create when you're not connected to yourself. So you're just practicing all the time. Being who you are. Grounding in who you are. And in the act of doing that something awakens. You're you're actually

developing skills. You're you're actually developing skills. You're developing an inner discipline muscle, psychological muscle and you don't know how important what you're doing right now may be down the track when you are perhaps really in the flow of the creative project that really you know is speaking to you and that you're yearning to do. You don't know how all these elements that you're tending to now are building in you this

capacity because you've got to have capacity to create. I mean creating is demanding. And the elements of your life are the ingredients by which you come to be able to unfold your creativity. But not only that, they are the ingredients that kind of awaken an inner space within you that allows the creativity to awaken for ideas to come actually well you've said so much there alessandra it's huge i i feel moved to kind of tease out some of those pieces because you know what you've just shared there's it feels like there's so

many different building blocks in it and yeah even though I've been practicing menstrual cycle awareness for a long time, it all feels like a very new language for me still, even though, even as I create cyclically. So one thing I really heard you say, well, the first thing I heard you say is to dare to trust that our lives are meaningful. And for for me that's like the injection of soul is right there you know boom to dare to trust that our lives are meaningful which actually means that whatever crap beep is going on in our lives is also meaningful and important and um that we can always do you know one percent to take care of ourselves or to take care of the exact place that we're in there's another way of saying that which I think

is also a really good way of thinking about it is that so Alexandra said our lives are meaningful we could also say that our entire life is a creative unfolding. Beautiful. So what that means is that we're moving through stages and phases of unfolding and that every stage and phase is necessary and is teaching us something, is growing something in us, is leading us to the next phase. Yeah. And so the map of the creative cycle that we teach can be applied

to the creative unfolding of one's life. You can look at it at that macro level. I feel really moved hearing you say that and for some reason it's making me think of a flower like looking at the life arc of a flower you know and at first it's just a little green thing just poking up through the dirt and then it becomes you know a huge plant and then there's a bud which is tight and then it unfurls into this beautiful blossom and then it um turns a different color and falls away and we can somehow appreciate every aspect of that process but when it comes to the like why won't my buds open you know we like why isn't there enough sunlight for my buds to open right now you know

we get really frustrated I do and just so it's so gorgeous to feel okay my whole life is a creative unfolding you know I am that I am that flower and and it's all natural and it's all right it's all right you know oh a relief yeah it's all right yeah and then you said alessandra um to claim your life and when you said it i sort of saw it as a great big up yours to the to the to the capitalist grind culture that we've spoken about a lot you know that to the all the systems that try and keep us churning a great big up yours well no I'm going to claim this moment messy you know not Instagram sparkly you know it's just me having to you know come back to Ileana me at work full-time tending to all the like hundred things on my to-do list when in the back of my mind there is this idea for this novel brewing or Lisa like if I could just get five

minutes to write that idea down, but then the kid comes in with who's, you know, got stung by a bee or something. Okay, I guess that's what I do now. And the claiming of that, and then you started to map out what the claiming brings, you know, the skills, the inner discipline, discipline the psychological muscle and the space that is carving inside us for creativity yeah and alexandra said which i've never heard you say it quite that way uh which is that the starting place of every any creative endeavor is your connection to yourself that's a very critical piece of information when you find yourself in a situation where you are

wishing that things could be other than what they are, in that wishing, you are abandoning yourself and the place that you're in and what you are being asked to tend to. And so that piece of coming back to the connection within yourself is tapping you in to the creative river of your life. And, you know, what if you could meet the situation that you are in as a creative act? You know, if we really do believe that our whole life is a creative unfolding that means any situation we find ourselves in is opening the way to this kind of deeper knowing of yourself and building in you the skills you need for what's coming next.

And ultimately, it's all a workout in the unfolding of your calling. I sometimes look back at my life and I have done all kinds of things. At one point, I used to joke that I'd had more careers by the age of 30 than most people have in their lifetime. I've done so many things. And, you know, random, graphic, I was a graphic a graphic designer you know I worked at a multimedia agency in London I majored in philosophy I've been trained as a hypnotherapist I specialized in fertility I developed a training around fertility I'm a movement medicine practitioner and on and on and on and on there There will all be various kinds of things.

And each one of those things has fed what I do today. Each one of those things has been like the perfect life experience, the perfect ingredient, the perfect skill set, the perfect means of growing up, just all the things I need. And so many of them seem so random. I worked in a potato factory. What did you do in the potato factory? I assessed the quality size shape of all the potatoes that's not really it

that's come in very handy I have to say I mean we refer to that all the time maybe that's where your discernment superpower began to form in you exactly I mean there you go there you go Sharni so funny it is really really funny so I just want to pause the conversation for a moment to tell you a bit more about this brand new course that is starting on September the 21st, called Your Creative Power. Alexandra and Sharni have been dreaming into this course for years, and they are right now pouring their hearts into creating the most supportive, generative, fruitful offering for your wildly creative soul, sharing the map of the creative cycle, which has totally transformed their lives personally. So the course includes brand new teachings on the creative cycle which has totally transformed their lives personally. So the course includes brand new teachings on the creative cycle, your map for unstoppable creativity for life,

seven live workshops which will provide riverbanks to help you prioritise your creative process, a supportive wolf pack of kind like-minded people to champion and inspire you with whatever you're creating in your life you'll also have a one-to-one menstruality medicine circle session as well as weekly q a time with alexandra and sharni so lots of real-time support as a bonus there's an inner critic workshop series and there's also a creative power meditation, which can be an ongoing resource. At any point, you're experiencing a creative challenge. So you can find out all about the course

at redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's redschool.net forward slash creativity. And there's a special early bird discount before September the 10th i want to sort of bring in some you know sort of further embellishments here because you know we just said this sort of very powerful thing about really you know uh caring for the place you are in rather than getting caught in i wish i was doing this and i mean that's inevitable that's going to happen of course it's going to happen

yeah it's human um but also uh so yes locate where you are care for the place you're in and it is also important i do want you know you've got you've got things rattling in you it's like oh yeah i want it's you know you still have the dream you still have the dream of things because i when i think of all my years of holding this menstruality work whilst i was doing you know other stuff i just had an implicit knowing of uh you know all the ways that this could be applied in the world because i was i wasn't even doing one percent of that it was um but it's amazing how i mean those things are now showing up so it's very important to have the the dreams going on and of, when you bleed,

if you're able to take any time for yourself, however you do it with your 1% moves, you know, that opens up. And having that dreaming space, having the bigness come in, you don't abandon the creative things that are pulling you. They're there, but you are sort of you know

you're beavering away assessing potatoes or yeah even while i was assessing potatoes i was visioning how menstruality is in history you know you know the the dreams are talking and they're alive in us and we have them um and it's you know those thoughts kind of fueled me even as i was doing this sort of thing over here or over there because those having those dreams actually they they have a kind of a generative quality to them. They are at work on the job. So the dreams are at work on the job of me, you know, writing my novel or whatever it is.

And here I am every day, like Ileana, you know, going to work and not able to have a moment to write. So that was one thought I was thinking. Well, this is a big reason why we've created your Big Bold Thing, which actually is going to be happening. If you're listening to this podcast on the day it's come out, it's going to be happening later today. But if you go to redschool.net forward slash big, you'll be able to get the recording of it as well because we recognize that having the space and time to dream isn't available always often for many people and it's such a vital part of the creative cycle and so we you will be hosting an event to hold people in a deep dreaming, visioning sanctuary space so that they can get a taste of that.

So just in case you're listening, you're one of the early birds listening to this podcast and come and join us this afternoon or come and get the recording at redschool.net forward slash big the other thing about caring for the place you're in and we spoke about you know just being really present to who you are in the moment and all that comes out of that well one of the things that comes out of that is the more you're in yourself the more choice you have that there's more discernment that you can apply because you know i keep thinking well both iliana and lisa you know desperate to to just do something and actually you do want to do something i so get it you know sharni and i were driven to extreme ends was to just do something um in the midst of all the kind of maelstrom of what we were caught in and the more you're present with yourself and the more you allow yourself to feel this creative project there's

some sort of that in there's some kind of intentionality there's something that gets to work i'm not quite sure what the exact word is but that you you make choices that maybe there's a gap somewhere that you go you know what i am not going to sit and watch telly this evening i'm actually just going to sit quietly with myself in my dream i don't feel like writing i really i'm tired but i'm actually just not going to lose myself in tv i'm'm just going to hold that space, you know, to find the 1%, because I really hear you. You do want to be doing something to find that 1% of creativity. But if you're just kind of caught in the wishing and the yearning,

you're not home. You're not, yeah, you can't make choices in the same way this is why I freaking love the fierceness of the premenstruum and the role it plays in my life oh yeah because you know I can especially in the inner summer I can get lost in overgiving and then being shattered by the end of the day and I lose the thread of myself and whatever the deep dream is that I'm holding and then boom the premenstruum comes in and usually there's some kind of provocation like hey I was supposed to have this evening off and now it hasn't happened and there's a kind of heat but that heat is saying to me come back to yourself your dreams matter

your life is meaningful get to it Soph and it's just it's well it's that kind of evolution of my inner critic journey with my inner critic I guess you know because it used to just kick me to the curb but now I receive it as come back to yourself Soph come on there's something important here and I just appreciate that fierceness so much and it's what I see missing in my friends that don't have menstrual cycles okay I want to I want them to have a premenstrual fierce voice that calls them back to it yeah yeah really good what you're saying because you know for Lisa and Ileana um taking what you've said Sophie like I'd be curious to see how things might be different

for both of you if you really lean into your cyclicity as a way of creating like a bedrock for your for your for what matters to you which is clearly uh your kind of book your creative endeavor that's cooking so you might not be able to tend to that every day but how about if you lent into the imperative of your cycle as a way to create a kind of rhythm so you know maybe there's a time in the month where it's easier for you to pull back from doing other things and to give yourself to your creative project or to call in support with your children so that you can carve some time out for yourself now I like you I find that in autumn is the time where suddenly I'm just enough is enough I could have put something on hold and I'm like no no no now it's now I'm doing it now and so I can really use that um inner strength and that fierceness that I tap into as a way to, in a way, establish a bit more diversity in my life.

So it's not the same every day. Just following on from that, this idea of taking the space, you know, just going, okay, let's go back to my idea of, okay, I won't watch telly tonight. I'll just, you know, have the empty space. The thought that's sort of going through me is yeah but i'm not feeling inspired to write you know you know i was you know i just don't have the inspiration now and you must do not get corralled by that thought actually just give yourself space regardless of whether you you you're uh popping with the ideas or not but to sit with it to sit with your blank page and just be with your project for an hour whatever it is you know whether it is writing or whatever you are creating and to simply give it space. How radical. For one hour. You know, okay.

I would have normally watched that TV program. I'm not going to. That's an hour long. That's an hour. You do have to bring a kind of discipline in with yourself. And the choice would be that I will give it space. I may not be able to do anything in that time, but I'm at least going to give it space.

And I tell you, the moment you give something space, yes, at first you go, I don't want to say, but you know, something can kick in. Something will kick in. Something will. Again, the power of space, rest, yeah, as being hugely fertile yeah so practical these things that you're saying and one of the things that I'm looking forward to most about your creative power is well really that the container of it will create the riverbanks for people to actually commit to their own process

rather than the hundreds of other things they could commit to in the moment like how they can how the container of the course will help us to claim our lives as they are like forget about all the amazing teachings that are going to happen which will be fantastic it's that having the dedicated time and space with other people who are longing for soulful conversation and connection who are nurturing something inside them that is pushing through them and they know they want to give birth to it but it's how to how to get it happening simply the riverbanks that the course will create will facilitate that um those kind of moments of do you know i'm not going to watch tell you i'm going to do this hour now because it isn't

creativity so delicate like it is it's simultaneously so robust like the force of it in us is so robust and so fine and so delicate and so easy to miss in the tumble of of life as it goes on do you know what I mean and also I'm just thinking of our own edge to creating because we are exposed to ourselves you know as long as we're not sitting down doing it, it's like it can sort of remain a fantasy land. But the moment you sit and have the empty space, it's like, gulp, gulp, where do I start? And you're kind of exposed to your own vulnerability in the face of this. Yeah. And as you say, I think

the brilliance of the course is just that very fact of being held by the river banks of it because we're being very um pragmatic you know we've got lots and lots of really good information just really useful information because we really really really want to help people to get in gear and it and however tiny the gestures you make oh my goodness in the world of creativity there's no such thing as tiny for me any small move you make generates something it creativity is so wild when you give it the space it's so amazing it's the best high of all I think except maybe the high when you bleed let's look at how the course will actually help people to get stuff done like can you

lay out some of the pieces some of the ways that people will be held and inspired so that they can actually activate this agency and this power to get things done yeah well we're going to um start by helping you to lower into the wellspring of your creativity, which is, you know, what we now joyfully call your big, bold thing. But it's your calling. It's the kind of deep meaning that's at work in you and in your life. So by tapping into that, you're going to be in touch with a kind of bigger context that's going on in your life. And that immediately generates something that immediately opens up what Alexandra was pointing to a kind of wildness

a we call it your wild power a power a life force that then fuels and kind of set something in motion so we all need that that's how creativity starts to move through us and it's what happens at menstruation too that time of rest and retreat taps us into this life force this deep regenerative feeling of love and that then sets us in motion for the whole of the menstrual month. So we're going to really begin with that in the program. And then we are inviting people to bring a creative project. So this could be anything. And really, we mean anything. Something that you are going to work on and workshop through the phases of the creative cycle. So we're going to introduce the map of the creative cycle, and then we're going to

work through week by week through each phase of the creative cycle. And we have a playbook, which is really a guidebook for creativity, which gives you the exact instructions for what you need to do in each phase. We've done all the hard work for you. We've done all the years of sweating through creative project after creative project to kind of go, right, this is what is being asked of us in this phase. This is what we have to show up for. This is what we have to do. These are the pitfalls, beware. And these are the kinds of kindnesses you need to bring to yourself in this phase. Because if you don't bring this level of compassion, you will see your ass in this phase. We've given you the instructions and then we're going to workshop it together.

So you're going to take your project and you are going to do what is being asked of you in that creative phase and then we're going to come back together you're going to have peer pods so we're going to unpack the learnings you're going to discover all kinds of things about yourself and the creative cycle through the actual act of doing doing it um and we alexandra and i are going to work with people uh individually in the group to really kind of get into the nuts and bolts of that uh and then we'll so we'll go through the whole creative cycle and then we'll come to the end and um really round up the experience by, in a way, coming back to that thing that we tapped into at the beginning, the big picture, if you like,

and really just feeling what's different now, having tended to this particular project. Because how we started this podcast was saying, you know, everything in your life matters and how you meet whatever um is going to deepen you into your calling and give you the skills and uh capacities to be able to go onward with that journey um so we're planning on having lots of fun really oh yeah oh yeah we we we uh we are we are really going to um simultaneously challenge people but also there's a such a quality of playfulness to the creative cycle that um we know everyone's going to experience the kind of joy of just experimenting and trying and failing

and discovering as you go because that's what ultimately creativity is about yeah yes I just really want to emphasize it can be something you know you can just bring one small modest thing to the it could just be an article you'd like to write or just whatever um and just and that whatever you do each week is a something i want to come back to what i was saying earlier about uh just those small moves so small moves how they add up to something, both in terms of what you're actually creating, but also what it's growing in you each time you do something. And just what you said at the beginning earlier, Sophie, about the riverbanks. And this course will just really hold you in that with so much um kindness and even as we are going to get you to do things

and is the idea say that like Ileana would bring maybe like the first chapter of her book to write maybe or and Lisa might bring one of the creative projects that she's been nurturing and through the lens of that project or that chapter people will i because i'm going to be doing it alongside you yay we will be um like imbibing or understanding or illuminating the creative cycle within us of activating it so that we can apply it to this project, but then so that we can apply it to any other project in the future, right? Like this is about illuminating a blueprint that lives within us that we can then apply to everything we create in the years to come.

That's exactly the purpose of this program. Yeah. Is to experience the creative cycle, illuminate this blueprint within us and learn the skills you need to navigate it and you know at the end of the course you'll come out with what we call your creative power toolkit which is a little package that will be your ongoing guide to then apply the knowledge of the creative cycle to every single thing you do in your life forevermore. This is for life. It's on the course you are going to get going with a project or something. And in the act of doing that, you're really starting the business of embedding this knowledge in your being. So you're going to have lots of great

information when you come out because we you know we've really broken it down to make it just to really hold you so there's lots of information we're giving but in the act of going through the course you actually are in bod starting to embody it and um and then the more you kind of continue working with your creative endeavors, the more and more you are embodying it. And of course, that's supported by your menstrual cycle awareness. And ultimately, in the big scheme of things, because we're saying this is for life, this is knowledge for life, this is what holds you post-menopause, this knowledge on the creative cycle. meaning out of uh you know the different places that I'm in with all the levels of creative cycles that are at work within me so uh I uh I live by this stuff it's pretty cool actually I really want everyone to do this of course because I'm thinking how much will we be able to get out of our own way creatively when we have this toolkit when we have this capacity to understand

okay um okay these negative thoughts are coming up because I'm in this phase of the creative cycle but I'm not tending to it with the kindness, you know, the pitfall is claiming me. So now I know I need to bring this kindness in. Yeah. And it will grease the wheels for the creative process to flow rather than like, I have personally been stuck in creative quandaries for years at a time in my life, which as we've said, there's a meaning to that and that something was at work and I have a lot I want to create and produce in my life or like to say it another way and I know that everyone listening will have their own version of this there's something I'm serving and I want to really serve it with everything I've got and that involves you mean you have a big bold thing

I've got a big, bold thing. I've got a big, bold thing that wants to sing. And yeah, and let's skill ourselves up to, well, to let life's intelligence in. So final words for what to do when life's getting in the way of our creative when we feel that life's getting in the way of our creative projects our response is dare to trust that everything in your life is meaningful and claim who you are in the place that you're in and let your cycle awareness practice guide that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yes. You know, what comes to mind is an experience years and years ago when I was in my 40s where i um because i had lots of health challenges and it was a bit bleak and i remember just this one particular afternoon it just really stood out for me i i could not go out and do what i wanted to do and i just had to go to bed and I remember just consciously lying there and saying to myself this one door is closing but in the act of lying down here now what's going to make me cry this I'm opening another door something else is being made available to me lying here. And that kind of thought just really saved my life, really,

over and over again when I was struggling with the health challenges I kept having to come back and consecrate them as meaningful in my life path yeah oh it's really moving what Alexandra shared at the end there. And I hope that this conversation helped to ground you in a sense of the deep meaning that's at work in whatever you're experiencing in your life at the moment. It definitely did for me. And if you're curious about your creative power, you can find out more about it at redschool.net forward slash creativity. It's for you whatever you're creating in your life so for example if you're an entrepreneur or you'd like to own your own business in the future or become self-employed

the course will help you discover how to work with your own personal creative strengths and vulnerabilities to set yourself up for success for impact for a sustainable income if you're an artist or another kind of creative a designer someone who's working in the creative field you'll understand how to move through your creative blocks and ride off your natural creative waves to bring your visionary art and creations into reality if you're currently in menopause or you don't have a menstrual cycle this course is also very relevant for you, you'll get intimate with the creative cyclical blueprint that lives within you so that you can apply it to all of your future creative projects for life. If you're a nurturer, a parent, a carer, one of the things that you can hope to receive from the course is a clarification of your unique way of embracing

parenting or your caring role as an immensely creative act in itself this has been so helpful for me so that you can feel creatively fulfilled at this and and every stage of your life and it's definitely for you if you feel creatively stuck at the moment, blocked, disillusioned, lost, you know we've heard from a lot of people over this summer who feel this way, you will be able to locate yourself in the creative cycle, in the different roles in your life so that you can make sense of what you're currently experiencing it, so that you can make sense of what you're currently experiencing, find the you can make sense of what you're currently experiencing find the meaning in it as we've been speaking about today and find your way back to

your fruitful unique creative rhythms so there's so much that is going to happen in the course it's going to be rich i can't wait to get started i'd love to take the journey with you you can come and find out more at redschool.net forward slash creativity and there's a special early bird offer that is ending on September the 10th okay that's it for this week I really look forward to being with you again next week thank you so much for being part of the community gathered around this work and this podcast I love being in this conversation with you you can always reach out to me sophie at redscore.net if you have any questions or thoughts or ideas for the podcast and yeah I'll be with you next week and until then keep living your life according to your own brilliant rhythm