The Menstruality Podcast - 105. What the Sea can Teach us about Cycle-Aware Creativity (Dr Easkey Britton)

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Today I’m speaking with someone who knows in a very embodied way how to ride the creative waves of cyclical living… mainly because she knows how to ride actual ocean waves, and in some cases we’re talking 30 foot waves. Easkey Britton spearheaded women’s big-wave surfing in Ireland and is a five time national champion surfer as well as being a marine scientist, holding a Doctorate in Environment and Society and an activist - she was named an ‘Agent of Change’ by Surfer magazine. She’s the author of two beautiful books about our interconnection with water, Saltwater in the Blood and Ebb and Flow. She was writing her first book when she joined Alexandra and Sjanie for the Menstruality Leadership Programme and it is woven throughout with celebration of her own bodily cycles.We explore how water supports Easkey through the cyclicality of her creative process including, The importance of honouring the ebb, the out-breath, the inner winter. She interviews indigenous wisdom keepers throughout the book, and here she shares Lakota skier and activist Connor Ryan’s teachings about how it’s the ebb that allows us to tap into a state of flow.How the cycles of water in our world can anchor us in the natural cyclical wisdom that has been at pay since the beginning of life on earth. The water you drink today has always been present - it may have been drunk by a tyrannosaurus rex!What Easkey’s cycle has taught her about how to hold the tension as she wrote her second book, and how surfing in the ocean has helped her to trust the creative power of showing up, and being present. ---Join our new Your Creative Power online course. We start on September 21st:  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.hardyEaskey Britton: @easkeysurf - https://www.instagram.com/easkeysurf

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, thank you so much for tuning in today. It's great to be with you. Today I'm speaking with someone, I enjoy this conversation so much, I'm speaking with someone who knows in a really embodied way how to navigate the creative waves of living as a cyclical being in our world

largely because she knows how to actually surf ocean waves and in some cases we're talking 30 foot ocean waves. My guest is Eastie Britton who spearheaded women's big wave surfing in Ireland. She's a five-time national champion surfer, as well as being a marine scientist. She holds a doctorate in environment and society, and also an activist. She was named an agent of change by Surfer Magazine. And she's the author of two beautiful books about our interconnection with water, Saltwater in the Blood and Ebon Flow and she was actually writing her first book when she joined Alexandra and Sharni for the menstruality leadership program and the book is woven throughout with this celebration of her own bodily cycles. So today we're looking at how water supports Iski through the cyclicity of

her creative process. And we really dance from the practical to the visionary to the deeply soulful. I loved it so much and I hope you do too. Welcome to the podcast, Iski. I feel like i know you so well because i've been immersed which is a good word for this immersed in your books for the last couple of weeks and yeah what you've brought through through these books and the way that you're living your calling is so inspiring to me and i can't wait to get into this conversation with you so thank you so much for for being here today oh I'm so grateful and excited I just I really enjoy listening to your conversation so I feel like yeah I've had loads already with you but I've just been listening

into this amazing podcast for so long yeah we haven't actually ever talked face to face but we really feel like we know each other I love it let's let's kick off as we always do with um with our cycles and your your little ones are 14 months old so you're right in the thick of motherhood initiation time but yeah how is your how's your cycle today how How's your cycle experience today? Yeah, I have my cycle back. I've had it back for a while, which is a little bit maddening, but that's just how it worked out. I'm cycle day 13 and this is probably the first cycle I really felt connected to my inner summer energy in a more positive way. It's always been a bit like kind of more prickly and challenging the last while and this is the first time I felt that kind of fizz of creative energy which is great for this conversation but I have a short cycle so I ovulated yesterday day 12

and I felt that that lovely kind of outward energy those days and a real like kind of clarity of focus and drive. And then today, it's like there's always like it's a little bit of a dip always afterwards. So I'm a little bit like, yeah, I try to pull, find it hard to put my focus inward and just feeling that little bit of like that kind of fragmentation between my mind and my body but we'll see if we can weave them back together in this conversation but the energy is soft rather than uh it's been kind of hard um the last while but it's soft now in my summer in this moment which is nice that's beautiful wow I'm in a really similar place because I must be day 18 now, but I think I only ovulated a couple of days ago. And it's been a bumpy one for me in terms of feeling fragmented in the way that you're describing. And I've been surprised because I'm used to this being the time where I can really,

oh, it's a kind of, right, I can trust that I can just go now and go for it and I think I've put too much pressure on myself as a working mama and you know we just had a great conversation actually about the inner summer like how really the world expects us to be on all the time yes and so we can in our inner summer we can just slip slide into that super super woman super human mode and I think I fell into that trap and here I am feeling a little bit bruised I feel like I just got tumbled by a wave by my own ovulatory wave and yeah yeah well it's really it's just such a relief to be able to have cycle where conversations with people yeah yeah I would love to get into your calling first of all I'd love to hear how you're seeing it at the moment and if it's all right with you there's a little section from salt water in the blood

your first book that I'd love to read to you, which for me, it really gave me the texture of how I understand your calling. I'm really excited to hear how you understand it. So you said, our health is inextricably linked to the health of the ocean. Understanding this extraordinary and complex relationship with the sea and why it's vital we heal and restore our relationship with it fuels my work throughout my life I've been drawn to water and this book is a story of how my life has been shaped by the sea and how the sea influences and shapes all our lives in unexpected ways yeah I'm glad to say that pretty much holds up um yeah and it's in my work just continues to to deepen into that that looking at that um that interrelationship we have with the rest of the

living world and especially then I feel like my medium uh is water and the ocean in particular but looking at that in terms of that exchange of our own sense of like um kind of inner wellness and how that's mirrored in in something like the health of of the ocean and then how just looking at how those two are are into so interconnected and what can we do then to create that cultural shift where we begin to um acknowledge water the sacredness of water again and then of course when you start to look at that you're also really speaking to that feminine energy and power which water and the ocean embodies so much um so they're yeah completely entangled this work we're doing and the work you know with our bodies and with cycle awareness and that red school are doing is is really parallels i see uh not even parallels it is the work of of restoring

the planetary systems and their health of looking at how we do ocean restoration i think it's all in the in the teachings and the architecture and everything else of, of cycle awareness is totally integral to the, to shifting how we approach these challenges. Yeah, I've got a really gone off a riff there, but that's what excites me so much of having this, this awareness now of, of, you know, from my work with the red school which only happened really recently but it gave me the language and understanding of what I've probably you know been intuitively tapping into my whole life especially as a surfer and so immersed in in natural cycles my whole life and realizing oh I've been really embodying that but I just didn't

have it was lovely to just really shine a light and and be able to have a language to give more meaning to these experiences I was having or why I was meeting um challenges and struggle and it just yeah really helped me make sense of the world and and the work that I'm doing but I also find it really aligned with this yeah with with my calling as uh you've so beautifully read out I'm glad I wrote that it's so interesting to hear you say that because as I was reading your books it felt like the language that the sea has taught you is really aligned with the language of menstruality or maybe how like being with a body so vast as the ocean for as long as you have been which has basically been since birth right

you've been a sea creature but to be with a body that big has kind of given you some kind of language to describe a body as big as like menstruality as in it plugs us into the cyclical consciousness of everything and so many of us when we're like going about our cycle of our lives you know basically being lone wolves because there aren't many people around that are talking about it it can feel like this great big mystery that we're just like dipping our toe in and there's something about the way you write that really feels like you're you're inside you're inside it somehow does that make sense yeah yeah and I think I kind of made that discovery because I as I was writing I was also

um during the leadership training with Alexandra and Shani when they were doing still in person in in Hawkwood and I remember kind of getting up in the early hours of the morning in that beautiful space and place um and and writing some of yeah writing some of the book there even but it also made me realize how the act of surfing it can can be framed or how you had menstrual cycle awareness could be framed in a really similar way to surfing so essentially bringing the you know the outer world into our inner way of being, thinking and doing. And then the act of surfing itself, that's kind of what's happening for me. I feel when it's really embodied, you know, it's that process of self-discovery while being completely present and connected, connected to this this power both within my own body but also then feeling that extend um

far beyond the kind of limitations as it were of the physical body and connecting with something like the power of the ocean or a breaking wave and so all of a sudden then it starts to create this um yeah that deeper sense of how we relate to the world, that there isn't a sense of like, actually separation at all. And then I felt that then that's the same when you kind of tap into, you know, as Alexandra describes it, the field of menstruality. And I first heard that as a concept or term, I was like, what the? But then I realized the more I kind of dove into it um I was like oh that's that's it yeah that's that's what's actually going on sometimes when I when I surf when I'm actually kind of I say sometimes because it's it just also depends how I show up the energy and then I became aware of

the energy I'm bringing into the water really influences that dynamic, that exchange that's happening, say, between surfer and wave. Yeah. Your writings made me think about water in a completely different way, so much so that I went to find where our drinking water comes from with Artie, because I'm with Artie every afternoon, my two and a half year old. And I was like, right, we're going to go and visit the Lady Bower Reservoir and Derwent Dam. And we went together and there was no one around. And I just spoke to him about, you know, this is where our drinking water comes from.

And he's obsessed with like pipes and anything underground and engineering, you know, he just loved this. So I was explaining and I showed him the big pipe that takes the drinking water. And then we sang a song together to the water. And I just made it up in the moment. I was just like, thank you, water. And he was singing it with me. And it was from Yui Ski, you know, from this, you know, reading the books, I realized, okay, so we are made of water.

There were these great facts in the book, like the water that I drink might have been drunk by a Tyrannosaurus Rex because all of the water that's here is the water that's always been here and it's just constantly cycling and being recycled right yeah that so then again that amazing I guess I'd never thought about the water cycle in that kind of way before in such a yeah and the complexity of it the again those entanglements I'd never really seen myself as part of the water cycle it was just this abstract thing or graph that you learn about in geography class in school and then I was like wait hang on a minute it's this incredible process of renewal and it's the story of all life on earth and it's it's the story of um cycle awareness

it's all cycles um and then the fact yeah the water is continuously cycling through our bodies and it's renewed up to i think 17 times a year so we're really that really connects us to the water of wherever we are that particular place and um and it's all the time sort of bringing new energy into the body while also like cleansing and clearing out our our own toxins and that's what's happening it's mirrored then at a sort of planetary scale what's going on within our own bodies um and i also love too that it creates that you know these abstract maybe notions of when we talk about interconnectedness or uh even oneness or or that ecological interdependence we have it can seem a bit vague or broad perhaps but I thought oh when you start to talk about the story of water um that's actually it's very literal it's what's

really happening because it's moving through all of us through all life then through all time um but i also i guess writing about it was like what i find interesting about the energy of water and we're talking maybe about say that tapping into the power of water it's also it's so it's the most powerful force on earth but also the most fragile and it's really vulnerable and sensitive, I suppose maybe is another way of putting it to its environment. And that although there's this process of renewal, that it happens on a really different timescale as well. And that I was just kind of blown away that the amount of water we actually have access to for our own um well-being you know to drink to live on to survive on is so tiny I was like wow it's like you know so it's rather

than it being something of water's everywhere and it's all around us it's actually so precious is what I kind of really realized so I think you know all the water on the planet maybe even all the fresh water it's less than maybe three percent we have access to and then if actually all the water including the ocean it's it's it's like 0.001 percent and that that's diminishing all the time because as water gets degraded and polluted um and and we extract more of it we we're actually losing it, or losing the water we've access to. It's so precious. It's so precious. Your work really woke up like a new level of love for our earth,

which is very vividly alive in me, but it was like another lens and another window. So I really recommend to all our listeners to get both of Iski's books they're just such a revelation I'd love us to like get into some of the details of how water has supported you with your own creative process especially the kind of cyclicity of the creative process so I have a lot of questions here great loads we could probably talk for five hours but one of the pieces I was really struck by in ebb and flow was you were talking to and I can't remember who it is now but it's around page 50 you were talking to one of the

people that you interviewed about how the ebb is as essential as the flow in all of life but you know especially we could say in the creative process but it's obviously something that we're learning every single cycle month when we let ourselves ebb let ourselves slow down into inner winter so that the the flow can happen um as we come out of our bleed and yeah i just wanted to ask you about you know in a world that is often pushing us or constantly pushing us to focus on the peak and this like as we were talking about at the beginning the ovulation the summer mode what water has taught you about the importance of the the outbreath the ebb the inner winter oh my goodness completely um and and just recognizing again how undervalued that is in

so many ways so the conversation i had in the book ebb and flow where that really came up was with Lakota skier and activist Connor Ryan. And he was talking about, yeah, Ebb is, as in his words, and it's sort of the language even of, I think, of red school too. And I was like, oh, how fascinating. But it's the container, you know, it's that allows for, you know, and then when we fill that container container up then we can tap into a state of flow but at first it has to be empty and even the importance of like being with with that even the feeling of emptiness um being with that um i suppose all the

discomforting disquieting feelings uh of of you know ebb also being about that stillness and and the ability to rest and relax but a lot of the time for so many of us that may elude us and so it's it's also ebb shows up as a reminder then too when we have those more confronting feelings and i've kind of learned that from like the sea and surfing, especially, you know, it's such a place of encounter for me. But it's often really challenging. It's really can be really uncomfortable. You're in the cold water. The elements are so raw and exposing. And those times then the biggest kind of moments of transformation or sense of empowerment that have come about through my surfing and have been the ability to just like be with that you know to just like allow myself to just um hold that

in a way hold that tension in those moments of being in the the middle of either an inner or storm um and yeah so the ebb for me is also then this isn't it it's about that the letting go and the surrender so like not having any striving or expectation and again that really I realized oh that really shows up in how I surf like if I look at it say with the big way of surfing so in waves of you know 15 foot plus maybe even as big as 30 foot that I've been out in um so that's really confronting in a visceral way with your own mortality even but it's um yeah and of course it's interesting to see how the likes of the inner critic may show up there but for me those moments where I've and it's in a that's in a domain too it's very

male dominated so I surf I've surfed with an entirely male crew there's no other female big wave surfers in in Ireland certainly you know especially when I was doing it and even still I think um but so sometimes I carried that story with me into the water of this expectation of this added pressure to to perform basically not screw up because I was going to be identified you know by my gender as a woman or female no matter what I did it would be defined through that lens um but then those moments when it really aligned that when I was actually able to enter the flow state came about by really honoring my ebb which was just letting everything go having no expectations taking it moment by moment and not even putting the pressure on myself that I had to do anything at all but just sort of show up as I

was however I was feeling so then I was able to tap into how some days I was able to really listen and feel into actually today is not the day it's just I'm not feeling that kind of connection and then other times really trusting that actually yes I'm right where I'm meant to be and that not not overthinking anything and but I realized yeah those all my flow state moments or experiences came about by honoring the ebb in one way or another. And even now, this connection I have with my inner summer that feels so different for the first time since I've become a mother is because I had the chance to go more gently in my inner spring for the first time in a long time. And funnily enough, now that I think about it we've gone through two months of like no surf the sea has just been really quiet on that front um

very little action wave action um so it's really long kind of we call them like dry spells and I start to like dry out and get withdrawal symptoms yeah also there there was alongside my inner winter, there was the arrival of surf. And so I was able to get back in the water again for the first time in a long time, which just felt really, really good. And now that I'm talking to you, I wonder, oh, does that must have had an effect on how I'm showing up in my inner summer by just, for me, my inner winter, it's about, well, rest would be lovely, but, you know, being a mom to 14 month old twins, that's, you know, I definitely may be lucky if I get, you know, 1% of it or 0.01%. But also a way to honor my inner winter is about that.

You know, for me, it's the ability to to go inward and to it can actually be quite potent and powerful. It's like it's a very different kind of energy. And the way I actually really love to honor that is is going into the water, like having a full body immersion in some way. And so it was actually lovely to honor that by going surfing and then how I show up when I surf on my inner winter is also really different it's um the kind of I suppose that creative energy I bring to it is because it's more inward I often have these moments of greater flow um and connection I'm not pushing or trying so hard I guess. Yeah this is it the theme that you keep coming back to is this yielding and surrendering and not pushing and letting go which is so hard so hard and I'm so grateful for menstruation for

like just very patiently schooling me in it every single month when it comes around again so grateful I I'd love to hear if you have any thoughts about it right now about how this has shown up for you in your creative processes like thinking about writing or like putting together a presentation when have there yeah how does it look for you have there been times where you can feel that you're striving and pushing and then you realize you need to yield into the ebb or oh yes what helps you probably like the best maybe comparison now it might be with with writing the book especially ebb and flow um and it's funny writing about ebb and flow and I found actually if I wasn't honoring and embodying that in my creative approach it it actually didn't flow like my writing didn't flow um and I initially you know had it in my head that you you know as a writer you have to have this disciplined

approach where you get up and you write for like two hours every day and you know in the morning at a set time and you write your thousand words and you know um and it just didn't work like that at all there was absolutely no way I just couldn't anytime I tried to force it with this book it just like nothing came and so there were big blocks of time where I was really having to just like again that feeling of being in this void of drifting and having to in that trying to just hold attention and trust this really trust this like great unknown that it would come to me this this flow of writing and then because there is a sense of you know you're there it's funny you're in this needing to tap into this you know inner creative process while at the same time meet these external demands that you have to sort of perform and meet deadlines and

um honor agreements with publishers and but having to just set all of that aside and yeah I just remember being after a while of really struggling with this of actually trusting now this is how this is this is going to be it's going to be coming around in these bursts these creative bursts and I have to trust in this in the times in between when I feel like nothing is happening that actually stuff is happening and of course it was so I found I was yeah if I really allowed myself just to be in those moments in between where I otherwise you would have thought well I'm not writing I'm not sitting at my laptop or um that I would just show up and try to be as present as possible to the experiences I was having or to actually do something you know entirely different altogether and of course that's

when you get those little like when you're less focused on the task at hand get those lovely creative insights that will come bubbling or fizzing up um and maybe they wouldn't even be revealed until then I would sit down when I felt the urge or energy and and then realize oh this has been working through me all along in in a different way in a more animal way in a more like working itself through my body first so it was great because then those times then it would it would really um the writing would flow in a way where I wasn't having to um find ways to bypass my more analytical mindset or it wasn't coming from my my brain or head first uh if that makes sense yeah totally makes sense yeah I mean I feel like

we're right in here speaking the language of the sea and menstruality or like feminist as some people have called it because it's really hard to give voice to these mysterious states that we find ourselves in especially when we're practicing trust well even in a very practical way as well so if we just go back on the creative process so with having cycle awareness it was also you know being able to as best I could to tap into knowing you know by knowing the patterns of my own cycle when that peak and surge would come of energy uh and when so when was it when then when was a good time you had that power of discernment kick in so that would be a much better time to sort of sit down and maybe do a block of editing to be able to call out my own

kind of bullshit um in my writing perhaps and then the the inner winter just that really sort of stepping back and allowing the sort of that deeper meaning and insight or even vision to come through and during the writing of ebb and flow I actually did quite a few menstrual medicine circles and brought that intention into very clearly about the creative process of my writing in fact what was what was I being called to tell the story of or to you know so actually using the MMC to help me with some of those creative blocks on the in the in the process of writing um and it was amazing so yeah I'm going to pause my conversation with the amazing Eastview Britain for a moment to invite you to join us for our brand new online program which starts next week you might have heard about

it it's called your creative power and we'll be exploring menstruality's hidden toolkit for unstoppable creativity iski just actually beautifully illustrated some of the teachings of the phases of the creative cycle which alexander and sharni will use to guide you through a practical workshopping process for whatever you're creating in your life it's a map that you'll be able to apply to unleash your creative expression in all your future projects and adventures as well and your creative power also includes a one-to-one menstruality medicine circle session which as Iski just shared is a powerful way to invite menstruality wisdom to guide your creative process. We start in a week on September the 21st

and you can join us at redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's redschool.net forward slash creativity. I just love how the cycle shows us that the flow will come again. And that's the thing that helps me the most in the ab moments is like well look around you look inside yourself and then look around you the flow will come the summer comes back around and the trees do their thing you know my menstrual cycle comes back around and I'm not a surfer but the image I find really helpful is of you in the sea just waiting for a wave because it sounds like in surfing you spend a lot of time

doing that more time than writing games believe it or not a lot more time yeah you're just you're just watching listening feeling and waiting and for me that's such a powerful analogy for the state to inhabit at menstruation or in the airflow of the creative process is like there is a there is a really vibrant dialogue going on it's just unseen and it's below the the surface and it's just this place of of waiting yeah yeah and actually funnily enough so much of surfing is also about that you know you're reading these patterns to try to predict when waves might arrive but most of the time you're also just waiting for the waves to arrive um yeah and then trusting then the timing that yeah it will line up if it's meant to yeah interesting I'd love to speak about playfulness this is another big part of the creative cycle that Alexandra and Sharni will be teaching in September in this Your Creative Power course is a stage of the creative process that we so often miss because we want to go from zero to 100, from nothing to flow state to productivity to go, go, go. And it's where, you know, we've had people writing in over the summer with their creative challenges. And this has been an answer to a lot of them. You know, people are saying,

I don't know how to get started. I don't know how to bring my dreams into reality. I keep procrastinating. And Alexander and Sharni keep saying, okay, it's this power of play. It's this inner spring power of play. And in one of the books, I think it was saltwater you talked about what the sea has taught you about playfulness and about embracing this inner spring energy of play and could you speak about that like how the sea helps you to maintain this playfulness yeah I think it's like it's so essential and often again something that gets really neglected and undervalued the power of play especially you know we we become grown-ups I'm really seeing how all life everything every action from when you wake up to go to go to bed

in my little ones it is about play that play is a way to explore the world feel our curiosity understand uh connect and i think water lends itself to it so well because it's such a multi-sensory immersive experience it just helps us come into our bodies to connect in that way um and then surfing itself if you take the perform pressure to sort of perform or those performance aspects out of it the more mechanistic sort of elements to learning to surf in terms of the technique if you remove that and actually look at what it is in essence is essentially play like in a way it's absolutely ridiculous it doesn't make sense that you go into the water expend all that energy and effort trying to like battle your way through the waves

to sit out there and then put loads of effort into catching a wave to take you right back to where you stopped. But it's just for that moment, that feeling of, it's just fun and pleasure and that pure sense of joy. And so if that isn't play,

I mean, I don't know what is it's just it's essentially like this this game um way of play would be a better way of describing it than surfing um so for me I think that's been a huge theme as well in my creative process um is is is that play and curiosity which is also about a willingness to be with and move into the unknown to not be afraid of of getting silly or weird or making mistakes and then you learn a lot in surfing because failure is always inevitable you can't control a wave certainly not the ocean and so there's you're going to fall off and wipe out and and then it's also learning to just um to be playful in in that kind of chaos and turbulence when something unpredictable or

unforeseen happens um yeah so it's it's really key and I think what other aspects of it as well are coming to me is yeah and what playfulness is essentially that process of self discovery but openness to those kind of experiences um to be able to I think the other thing especially then I've learned from from the sea and surfing and is the ability to recognize so many different ways of seeing and being so you know I think that that's what's really coming to me now that and being in that sort of more playful mindset really allows us to to inhabit that space so in the ocean you're also having these encounters with all these other non-human or more than more than human species and elements and phenomena and there is this sort of connection

happening um in a way where even riding a wave it's also you're for me it's also mirroring the energy of that wave like there's that kind of exchange happening and you're starting to embody what it would feel like almost to to be the wave to move like water um those kinds of things and and if we're in a more playful mindset it all that all comes so much more easily what when you're creating what do you notice about like what is your sign that you need to bring play in because I'm just thinking riffing in my own mind like I I know when I start getting um too dramatic like oh everything is like this or it's always like this that's a sign well you mentioned the inner critic and I would love to next speech about the inner critic but

that's a sign that the critics getting in I'm taking it too seriously because you know like yes surfing is play but this like you could say that this whole freaking life thing is play like we don't really know why we're here no we we know that we've got these longings and these desires and we know that we have these responsibilities and then we just get to dance and weave our way through this this mysterious thing called life and yeah I think the inner spring teachings remind me of that of like the bigger picture in a way like a playful way into the bigger picture of like just just splash around so don't take it so seriously like yes you have responsibility but

also who knows what's going to happen like life always surprises you and to have that like you said openness and curiosity yeah because you know I might be waxing on a bit about surfing here too but it has you know it's it's rife with its own sort of conflict and tribalisms and hierarchies and god knows like the serious uh case of uh hyper masculine dominance and it can be a really tough intimidating exclusionary environment and you go to different surf spots and and even unwelcoming and there's definitely tensions because waves can feel like this and often are a limited resource and everyone's gets into this mindset where you becomes really serious of like this wanting to possess a wave for yourself and you're all competing over this

limited amount of waves coming in it's crazy sometimes yeah so in those moments yeah and I feel that sort of like wow getting um frustrated or even bringing elements of like anger into that space I'm like whoa what am I doing especially now knowing how water water senses us and who we are and the energy we're bringing it just now even if I do that it feels so disrespectful to the ocean never mind everyone else in the lineup um and so yeah shifting back into the power of play is so important and actually what what we do I for a number of years have been along with a couple of friends of mine Lindsay Hawken and Carolina Pereira, I've been running a leadership retreat called the Wavemaker Collective in

Portugal. Most, you know, most years off and on, maybe since 2016, I don't know, I kind of put it on hold for the moment myself, but the first thing we do, it's all about, it's a leadership retreat, but it's all about sort of learning with and through nature and doing everything outdoors. And also and also with the ocean. We have people from all kinds of backgrounds. And the first thing we do is actually take them to the beach. Some, maybe half might have experience of surfing and half none at all.

And so there's this, could potentially be this hierarchy. And to level the playing field as it were we just go body surfing so body surfing essentially is wave play and you know all of us maybe would have done as kids those of us who have the chance to get to the beach and you're just like jumping in the waves allowing yourself to get tossed around by them and thrown back up onto the sand and so I'm just riding the waves with your body so no equipment equipment, there's no pressure to perform. And it's amazing what happens. It's just this like, it acts as this total leveler

and this incredible sense of like openness and connection in the group forms and a trust. So you're learning to trust your body in the ocean and then begin to trust each other. You know, everyone's looking out for everyone else in the shore break, but it's simply about play and to see all these very you know uh high power talented um amazing people you know leading in their own way begin and brought back into connecting with their inner child it's wonderful and it just catalyzes the most amazing um kind of creative

process from that point onwards um where people actually let go maybe of any agendas they might have come with and um it becomes a much more open and honest and trusting process um but we could always start with that and it's amazing the difference I really want to speak about the inner critic and we will because it just we just have to don't be in any creative conversation because it's there there was one other piece of this was in salt water in the blood too which really struck me around what the sea can teach us about creativity and the cyclicity of creativity which is you started to speak about sensuality and the sea and there was this gorgeous piece in saltwater where you were kind of describing a really erotic moment with the sea you know erotic in that bigger sense

as in like experiencing the full our full aliveness and I was driving at the time and I was like oh this is like hot this is lovely I feel really alive here just listening to this and um yeah something about you know the power of water to reclaim our sensuality and how important kind of our sensuality and our pleasure is in the creative process because otherwise we just end up being ahead you know doing things rather than realizing where where it's an embodied experience creativity yeah absolutely I find my way in a way into cycle awareness came out through that sort of exploring my own relationship with with my body and letting go perhaps different layers of of shame or guilt or you know realizing actually the disconnect I had

and yeah around connecting in a more sensual way and what that would feel like and so it was really interesting to write about that in the book and I kind of wrote about it in parallel I think with the Selkie mythology of again one of the messages perhaps as I see it and that would be you know that that freedom to be all of who you are and you enter the ocean you take on your like that fluid seal form as you know as a seal woman um and then when you come ashore and you like you can you take off your seal skin and you're in that sort of you know the female form and and you're fully naked like that must have been wonderful feeling as well but that in a lot of the mythologies then that's your seal skin gets taken from you and and so that you can't any longer be all of who you are in in the complexity

of that too and and then your nakedness becomes then the source of shame that needs to be clothed and so yeah I was kind of starting to like peel back those different kinds of layers um and yeah like there's there's no place for the inner critic in those moments I think especially when we're yeah the I suppose the potency and power of that sensuality and also what I'm feeling as you're talking is how creating those experiences of wild sensuality are have been for me a great antidote for the critic because in a way when I'm so immersed in the elements and you all know this from your hundreds thousands of hours in the sea that when I'm so pulled into my body through you know say the roar of my river in in a storm which is sort of my most like vibrant

elemental experience these days that the critic can't really get in it's like it's nature is bigger than it and my connection with nature and my especially my erotic and sensual connection with nature kind of doesn't leave any space for it so it's kind of a beautiful antidote as well oh absolutely and cold water like really does it for me it's like in these this these times of trying to honor the one percent it's like just I'm lucky I have I you know that we live by the sea so I'm able to go in and I just do like you know even jump dive in and like I'll float on my back and take three breaths and come back out again um but yeah that's I find that's a wonderful way to again it's isn't it about that um that feeling of yeah of breaking free from those more kind of earthly confines and restrictions and and the criticisms

um but really living by the skin and the senses and I think water for me just does that in a really visceral way sometimes I feel like my critic is even pushing me to the edges to the wildness like that like there have been times where my emotionality is so big and strong that I just have to be away from all other humans because it's safer for everyone that way no one's going to get their heads ripped off by by me and my and my critic and it's yeah it's like my critic is you know how we in menstruality we talk about how the critic can be harnessed as an ally if we work with it well in the inner autumn it's like if I listen it's pushing me to wildness because wildness is where my connection to my calling is strongest and therefore where I can resource myself to to keep going on this

calling I'm thinking about the howling practice from your mentor Pauline right now could you tell us about her what she taught you sort of introduce us to her because she sounds like such an amazing character in your life. Yeah, she was so polybolic. It was this remarkable Irish artist and she was she passed away just a year ago now, but was a mentor for me throughout my whole life from when I was 10 years of age. And my mom took her to one of her painting classes and she's sort of famous for she paints in like watercolors and these sort of like big bold images of like women in nature and there's sort of a wildness and freedom to them and bindlessness and I would have learned from her a lot of the importance of giving expression to that sense of like all of who we are

and then painting being that way for me to explore those more uh hidden or unconscious parts and to to reveal them and in fact a lot of writing salt water in the blood in a way to like my yeah my inner critic would show up in interesting ways in the creative process um but there were also times when you just needed to create that sense of like um flow without any judgment at first you know of just letting that stream of consciousness come out and so in order to bypass the inner critic in those moments I would turn to then my art and my painting and my drawing and it would be a way to sort of free myself from that more analytical mindset and I would also if I had a creative block actually turn to what I had painted what I paint tends to be more of that like dream space um it just tends to be maybe a little bit more

in a way honest it sort of almost comes through me and I don't know what I'm going to paint until I start doing it so there isn't any kind of I haven't predetermined any outcome and so it can be quite revealing usually and then I usually get to that stage too I paint almost as a form of therapy that stage where it's something I just can't not do it and I have to have to get it out and I really felt that in my especially in my childhood and around that transition time into you know around puberty when I was 13 and the start of my menstrual cycle, I was doing a lot. Now, when I look back with that understanding, these paintings of these really wild women in the ocean and huge waves howling and quite a lot of them were quite then like dark and, you know, pretty uh fairies or anything like that um yeah and I was just like and I remember even painting it and wondering god where did she come from this woman in this wild

fury in a storm and her mouth wide open kind of you know with a howl or a scream and I know it unsettled the adults around me and my parents even who were like, what's going on, freeze me? And now I realize that, of course, this was a way of expressing that incredible transformation that was going on within me. So yeah, and then as an adult, I could even return to some of those,

some of that artwork and begin to sort of write the story that I, and the energy that I saw and and feed that I see and feel in them now um and so that helped that was sort of the initial seed for actually a lot of the chapters in in salt water and the blood um which is it was interesting yeah and in Pauline then being this this incredible mentor um of just that non-conformist I suppose in every way oh she sounds fantastic I wish every 10 year old could spend time with Pauline she's such a great revitalizing and like wholesome um spirit to be around can we sort of slow the process down that you described because and go step by step with it because it sounds so incredibly helpful so you said when you're hit when you hear that your critic is coming in when you just need to let the stream of consciousness

flow you know that a good place to go is to painting because it will allow something else to kind of open up in you I guess I just want to ask some questions step by step how do you know the critic is really taking over what what does it sound like in your head could you describe it well it just comes in with I just know when I it depends on what stage in the creative process I'm I'm in uh because sometimes you know we can get that one where where and when it's actually really useful um but that's kind of later on and I'm trying to like you know fine hone everything and um so it's in that early stages when the the then when the newness of something so it's still vulnerable and fragile and it's just still working its way through me and then the inner critic will

maybe show up to say that that's that's a silly thought no one wants to hear that or you know I suppose in a way to protect me it the inner critic is that that part of me that wants to protect those more vulnerable parts of myself that I I'm going to be sharing when I write so during writing a more honest way it's also very exposing and so the inner critic shows up to like oh wait close that down shut that down you need to stay safe so through the cycle awareness work learning the inner critic shows up it always has a message um but then also knowing okay I hear you but you know finding a way then to sort of unhook from it too when it's also unhelpful in those moments um because that's you yeah you

want to actually trust that kind of flow and let let it come but there's also yeah then it shows up in my surfing as well and I've written about that in salt water in the blood um how it's shown up in moments and probably really saved my ass and then it's also showing up where it's just been this really negative stream of uh but again and protection isn't it usually that's I think the my inner critic shows up when it really wants to defend and protect me and keep me safe uh so it shows up in those times usually when I'm really in this edge about to take a risk or a leap into the unknown and so that's often an indicator for me that oh I am on course yes step off or jump off anyway yes and I love this painting being the vehicle for you to unhook from the critic to tap into intuitive I guess it's from a brain perspective it would be I always get this confused but it would be right brain so let so

less logical and analytical and just more intuitive and flowing I'm thinking for others you know that might look like I think for me it often looks, actually. I'll often just go and like make a stew because then I get involved in the spices and in the, in that whole like sensual dance of it, or maybe like gardening or yeah, if I go and do a workout that always shifts it. So this is just really practical here, like doing something physical, embodied, intuitive to unhook and then find your way back into the creative knowing that yeah it's just trying to protect us bless it like thank you there's a sweetness to it isn't it well that and then it's also helped and say what my writing when you can get a little bit caught up

in to be honest like it get there's a fine line isn't it between really like opening up and being vulnerable and sharing your story and then also he's getting ahead and heading veering off into like navel gazing and getting a little bit too do you know what I'm trying to say so it also helps in with that like brings in that wonderful discernment of calling bullshit actually you've you know kind of gone a little bit too far now here and you're going down this sort of woolly magical come back and then the way then I work with that in a practical way to sort of reset to sort of create that and that kind of more honest connection like a self-connection again would be to spend to go outside and spend time just actually just being still and becoming and tapping more into that

observer role of just observing and taking in what's going on around me or like tapping back into the earth through my senses so you know even closing my eyes and like breathing in and smelling whatever the air is holding or going out and just going walking barefoot or in just really simple ways like that off um yeah I find that really helps me kind of if I'm a little bit too stuck in my own uh in my own story because of course it's not all about me it's connected to everything else so it's a lovely lovely reminder of like okay when i start to narrow yeah bring bring the focus in to too narrow it's a lovely way to expand and open up again is again just going out and observing nature and our our connection with it thank you that's beautiful I could really

feel that in your writing how you told me enough about your life to connect me in to the story and then you opened up and invited me into this love affair with with water really and I think you did a skilfully ski you really did oh I could honestly talk to you all day and I've enjoyed this so much um but for now we'll wrap up and maybe we can have a part two down the line around leadership on water for our listeners who have loved this how how could they connect with you um yeah what's the best way to connect with you and find out more about your work yeah well there's a lot on my website which is just eastkeybritain.com and you'll find out information on you know all my books and different projects and then probably the most kind of alive and up-to-date content will be on on instagram

at eastkeysurf and the book and the my new book ebb and flow is yeah it's out now and it's also on audible if you like audiobooks and should be available everywhere you like to get your books thanks east key thank you so much and good luck with all of your creations especially these two little ones that you're currently creating and thank you so much oh it was such a delight to speak to a woman who's not only so wedded to nature and nature's cycles and beauty but also who can speak through the lens of menstruality and has such a deep connection with her own cycle and cyclical nature you know I'm just taking away so many things I'd love to hear what you're taking away for me something that is really staying with me

is this importance of honoring the ebb thereath, the inner winter and how that honouring is what allows us to tap into the state of flow. I feel like I can never hear that enough and I also keep thinking about how the cycles of water in our world have been going on since the beginning of life on earth and I was just literally drinking a glass of water and thinking okay this really might have been drunk by a tyrannosaurus rex so it has opened my mind to yeah the amazingness of the water that's all around us and within us i'd love to hear what you're taking away as always you can email me at sophie at red school.net i'd also love to hear anyone that you would love us to be in conversation with or any themes that you'd like us to explore and before we close I want to reiterate our invitation to join us for your creative power I'm so personally excited for it because understanding how to apply everything that

I've learned over this past decade of cycle awareness and overlay this map of the creative cycle the inner seasons of the creative process, I feel is going to unlock so much for me personally and in living my calling in the world. And I would just love to take the journey with you all as well. So you can find out more about the course at redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's redschool.net forward slash creativity. And that's it for this week. I'll be with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm