The Menstruality Podcast - 122. How Cycle Awareness Holds us in Dark Times (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

We just passed the darkest night of the year here in the northern hemisphere - the dark moon before the solstice, and it feels like a good moment to explore how cycle awareness can hold us during dark times; personally, collectively, and seasonally. Like many of you, we’re grieving the suffering and conflict in the world, and doing what we can to educate ourselves, take meaningful action and contribute to building peace. So, as Sjanie says beautifully in this episode, the menstrual cycle is such a profound teacher in the mystery and the darkness - and if you’re going through a dark night of the soul personally at the moment, or are needing sustenance as we navigate these dark times collectively, we hope this episode is balm for your heart. We explore: What Alexandra learned from painful encounters with her inner critic just before menstruation. (She would always find herself sitting in the bath with her inner critic at the other end tearing strips off her! And feeling strong self-rejection just before the ecstasy of her bleed). How the wisdom of the second half of the menstrual cycle held Sophie through a recent time of personal grief and hopelessness. How we can each yield to this phase of darkness as we complete the cycle of this year, so that we can be deeply regenerated and receive new visions at the beginning of the next annual cycle. ---Please join us on for our free New Year retreat: Your Menstrual Cycle: Your Oracle on January 11th  https://www.redschool.net/oracle---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, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for tuning in today. So here in the Northern Hemisphere, we just passed the darkest night of the year, the dark moon before the solstice, and it feels like a good time to explore how cycle awareness can hold us during dark times, seasonally, personally and collectively.

Like many of you, we're grieving the suffering and the conflict that's happening in our world at the moment, doing what we can to educate ourselves, taking meaningful action and contributing to building peace. And as Sharni says beautifully in this episode the menstrual cycle is such a profound teacher in the mystery and in the darkness so if you're going through a dark night of the soul personally at the moment or you're needing sustenance to navigate these dark times collectively then we hope this episode is balm for your heart one of my favourite bits was Alexandra's story about how she would always find herself sitting in the bath just before her bleed with her inner critic tearing strips off her and how she managed that and also you know the ecstasy that followed from that process.

So let's get started with how cycle awareness holds us in dark times with alexandra and sharni hey you two let's see how we're all doing how are you doing sharni what day you on i'm doing day 16 day 17 day 17 day 17 today I've been doing and actually this is pretty on topic I've been doing this meditation every morning which amongst other things is a sort of practice of being in the unknown and I was telling Alexandra about my experience of it a week ago when I was sort of pre-ovulation. And Alexandra said, it would be interesting to see how you experience it at different points in your cycle. So I've really been paying attention. And pre-ovulation, I was experiencing the unknown as the most erotic aliveness it had my whole body sort of riveted with pleasure delight aliveness was

absolutely divine and today which I think is a sign of my day 17 entering into the inner autumn, the unknown felt so heartfelt and had such a quality of care about it. I found myself just really deep inside meaning is the only way I can describe it, feeling so moved by what matters to me and moved to tears with the kind of awe and wonder of what was opening in my heart. So that's a really good capture of actually how I'm feeling today. It's like I'm really in touch with something. And interestingly, there's still enough energy in my system.

I haven't completely, you know, hit the dirt yet. I'm sort of still like head held high. We're going to talk about what happens next but there's enough energy in my system that i can be a little full of shit still but argy-bargy and like you know um a bit defense defensive or armored maybe yeah and at some point that will all fall away i'll be defenseless you'll be heading into the descent that we're going to be speaking about today how about you alexandra it's a good question actually sophie very good question however because i don't know and it's not a bad not knowing. I mean, you know, I can tick certain boxes,

had a good night's sleep, and I'm feeling, you know, there's a level of, you know, I just feel kind of well and happy. But actually, it's like sort of swimming in a vast unknown. You see, it's hard to find the words. And when I can't find the words, it means I am quite far away in some ways. It's a weird experience because I'm here and engaging and enjoying this. But there's a part of me that is far away doing something and i'm not privy to what it's doing so it's off on something and i'm kind of waiting for it to

return with whatever and i'm kind of interested and excited by what that might be but at the moment I've no idea so I've just got to be patient that's some faith there I'm really listening to that I'm really taking that in is it partly connected your state to what's happening with the menopause course at the moment is there a connection there that's a very good question, actually, because the menopause course is feeling so deep. The healings that are going on in this course this year, it's slightly taking my breath away. And so I'm feeling the depth of the work and the mystery and wonder of what can happen at menopause if we and i'm

going to just cry you know if we are educated if we knew about this extraordinary initiation um and we're properly prepared for it for the great dark that you go into here we are talking about spiraling into the dark if we were properly set up you know well for it um and could trust it then menopause can it's this magic that gets to work but you have got to have muscle and and it's we've got people coming back someone's on their fifth year of coming back and this year she's just hit pay dirt it's like this extraordinary what's happened to her what she's sort of felt um and i'm going menopause yeah yeah if you can only just trust it and not get hyped by all the big splash going on out in the world about it but can actually dare to trust this organic

ending that can birth a new beginning and of course that is what our conversation is about today so i am deeply held by that what they're exploring but also i am dealing with, you know, it's winter in England and it's damp and grey. Is there any redeeming feature to an English winter? Tell me about it. Really, I love it. I love it. Love it. Well, it's lovely.

I don't mind the cold and the Christmas. It is the endless grey the grey yeah my friend came to visit from Canada one winter and she said it just feels like the sky is touching my head because in Canada even in the winter they have these huge vast blue skies and she's like the clouds around my ears yeah and not in the like you can touch the sky kind of way i felt that as a south african coming to england it's like where is the skyscape yeah oh yeah so you know yeah we're coming to the end of the year and it's been quite a year for us. I'm really in touch with this theme personally, too, because I got taken through a great grief initiation in this bleed where I really did touch depths of darkness that I haven't touched

in a long time because I had wondered if I was pregnant and I wasn't and seeing the blood ushered in a similar grief to the grief I had before I had Artie when we were trying to conceive for four years and it shocked me and then my body took me to a place too, because I got a huge migraine. So I just had to lie in bed. I couldn't move. I had to lie in bed in the dark. I couldn't stand light and just be with this hopelessness. And we were talking before we started recording that this wisdom that's going on in the second half of the cycle, the spiraling into darkness, one of the characteristics of the deepest dark point is a kind of hopelessness. And like you always say, Alexandra, in a death and rebirth process, the death process just feels like death.

I wasn't sitting there thinking, oh, I'm going to feel fine in a couple of days. No, even though I know that I was swallowed by it I was consumed by it and um my the new love in my life Nick Cave was my savior here because I discovered this wonderful interview with him on on be the on being podcast and then started to listen to his book and hearing him speak about his grief at the loss of his son with language that was so fresh and so raw and so painfully real uh it yeah it's it's woken up something in me so I'm very I'm just very much with this theme. And also like so many of us feeling deep grief at the terribly dark and difficult things that are happening in our world.

So I'm grateful that we're here having this conversation. Yes. Yeah, to bring an honoring to the darkness. Yeah, in a way to bring some I guess I want to say depth of holding to the like incomprehensible suffering that's happening you know the incredible pain that so many people are in, to bring some kind of holding to that. I feel like menstruality has so much to gift us,

you know, individually for our personal experience, but also collectively as humans who are indeed facing like the darkest of dark times in many respects so Sharni maybe you can walk us into this because the idea for this conversation came from an experience you had at your daughter's school right yeah. She goes to a Waldorf school here in England and they have an event every year called the Advent Fair. And she's in class four and it's the class four responsibilities to co-create this event every year. And so I got to kind of be really on the inside of it.

And I get, you know, one of the things that really inspires me when I'm creating anything or involved in the creation of something is like, what's the task within the task? Like, why are we doing this? What's the meaning that we are wanting to bring alive through this festival? And as a kind of newcomer to this festival I sort of started asking some of the other parents what Advent meant to them and it was so beautiful to hear just the different ways that people spoke about this ritual or ceremony of Advent in the four weeks leading up to the solstice as the year becomes darker it's to do with holding reverence

and remembering for of the divine light within each of us and how we and the necessity these are my words now the necessity of us slowing down and finding careful mindful footing so that we can come into the light within us rather than I want to say get taken by the distractions and and the infinite darkness. Yeah, so the returning. And actually, I looked the word Advent up. And the definition of it is so beautiful. Advent means coming into being. It means arrival,

which really speaks to me of what's happening from ovulation to menstruation so this time of year is reflected in our menstrual cycle when we cross over from the inner in the from the inner summer into the inner autumn we are in a way coming into this advent this ceremony of reverence for the light as we enter the darkness so I felt just so much resonance with what people were saying and they do this beautiful ritual called the advent spiral where there is this kind of care for the light as you spiral your way into the center you know back home i want to say yeah into that place of arrival and return so beautiful a ceremony of reverence for the light as we enter the darkness

and that's what's happening between ovulation and menstruation so beautiful and this idea of coming that ceremony holding the process of coming into being so we think of the second half of the cycle as this the the closing in phase the the sort of dying phase of the cycle it's the yeah the expansion the contraction phase and um but that uh dismantling that's going on is a process of coming into being and i always used to think of the second half of the cycle as as this descent into embodiment coming into and inhabiting yourself more and more um but this phrase coming into being is so evocative. It's like coming into being as in being alive, you know, in the sense. I mean, it's so I love the kind of contradictions of the descent and the death process being coming into being.

And of course, that's what menopause is about too. Menopause is this, you are coming into being with yourself. That's the, I always talk about it as the altar at the heart of the heart of menopause is you landing in the utter recognition of yourself yeah coming into being yourself and it's so good that you name the contradiction of it alexandra because that's what really inspires me to have this conversation with you two is that because this is not a process that our mind has privy to our mind is completely out of depth when we're in this descent into darkness when we're in the second half of the cycle or I mean indeed in any kind of

breaking down of our life something falling apart the mind is no longer the thing to rely on and it's out of its depth and our minds will tell us that this is a problem yeah and so it's that's part of we actually live the contradiction because on some level our minds or we could even say our egos are not going willingly not going willingly yeah yeah this is um this is part of the tension that we hold is that um to our egos to our identity the status quo is everything it's the thing to hold on to regardless even when it's shit even when it's not working so we've all been there we've been doing things that aren't good for us in bad situations we've been causing each other pain we've been you know horrified by our own behavior and even so we hold on to doing the same thing to being the same person, to just staying.

And I think this is what I find so profoundly moving, is how the cycle doesn't collude with that. cycle is such a um such a profound teacher in the mystery that even when we are holding on for dear life the cycle bloody hell turns the inner seasons shift and we get taken willing or not into some kind of discomfort some kind of unknown some kind of darkness and um yeah and what's so what makes it doubly doubly difficult and in a way what I think bleeds the sacred life out of it is that there's no dignified context for this you know our mind can't go okay no no this is actually this feels like shit this looks like this is all like ah but this is I'm coming into being like our mind doesn't have that handle our mind kind of doesn't have someone saying it's okay

we're returning we're returning home and so then we land up shitting on ourselves doubting ourselves feeling wrong um it's like adding insult to injury rather than us moving with dignity through it so i think that's really what I would love us to all hold together and to everyone listening is there is a dignity in what's happening here, even if it doesn't look pretty. I find myself quite speechless. It feels to me like you're speaking from a future time. The knowledge that you're bringing here is so real and right and timeless. And like you said,

it's not the reality that most of life is living within. It's very moving. Yeah. And that's actually good just to, I don't know, be real with ourselves in that, like as a culture, we are living in the first half of the cycle by and large. And the sort of consciousness that we're collectively inhabiting is like first half of the cycle consciousness which is much more into maintaining the status quo and much more into um i want to say building building you know generating um we could say creating a home versus coming home oh that's good yeah yeah and so actually it's quite nice to say it like that the first half of the cycle is about creating a home creating an identity creating a container having a material platform and ground and then the second half of the cycle is all about leaving

that home and and so that we can come home and our culture really reveres the home building and not so it's not so glamorized the leaving the leaving home um and it's not just our culture. I mean, we're all like children of our culture. I mean, Jesus, I don't like to change any more than the next person. You know, I mean, ask Alexandra how I go kicking and screaming. It's like a petulant child in me. It's just like resistance. We have a running joke around that we do we do and actually it's really really helped me alexandra calls it my inner adina you know from absolutely fabulous

adina who's so resistant to everything so fucking entitled entitled You're asking me to do this? No, Idina's turned up. And I'm embracing my new Idina and at the same time. This is what we're talking about here. I mean, this is what life's made of, really. You know, we all want to. We all want more than the home. You know, we all want to belong. Yes, beingness brings us into belonging.

And it brings us into connection with others. And it brings us into oneness, actually, a sense of oneness and a sense that what we do to ourselves or what we do, or rather what we do to others, we do to ourselves. And so it brings in this real awakening to our responsibility for life and how each of one, each of us, has a role to play in life, has meaning, has a role to play and must play, actually, for the sake of us all so yes it's it's uh yes finding coming home coming into being it's the work and the first half i want to add

when shani was talking about the first half of the cycle and yeah creating identity and you spoke about it as creating home yes one's identity gives one a location and we know ourselves and we know what we do and we talked about you talked about that shani as this you know egoic energy and that egoic energy is so important to build you've got to have an ego before you can have it punctured. And if you don't have that sense of, you know, affirmation of yourself and build up of yourself, the first half of the cycle has. And that sense of, you know, entitlement. Yeah, you know, aren't I great? If we don't have that, then when our lives are threatened, you know, that way madness lies.

It's muscle building. It gives us some, it builds real important psychological muscles that are part of our maturing process into coming into being. So it's really powerful so you need the first half of the cycle for the second half of the cycle and the second half of the cycle needs the first half of the cycle you know it's all integrated yeah that's actually i mean really the kind of punch line of cyclical wisdom is that the one half leads to the next needs to the next it's it's um yeah self-generating yes we're being worked all the time um because i i you know i've been sitting as i've been listening i've been sitting with this thought about um we've been describing the uh process of the cycle and and the thought that is coming to

me is how if as we honor that dynamic month after month uh with our menstrual cycle what's happening on the inside and this is very hidden work that goes on. You don't see it or almost know it's happening. But when you are tested by life, there's something in the bones of your being that actually is there that holds you. And you were talking, Sophie, about, you know, when you're in a death moment, you're not thinking, oh, yeah, rebirth is on its way. Whoopee. Death always feels like death. But, and this isn't in your head, but in your being, I suppose there's a kind of resilience or something or um i would like to say it's a trust that you're building and you might not give it that word initially but i i feel a degree of trust in my being

today and i have to give it you know i have to say thank you to my menstrual cycle years and what they gave me you know month after month uh losing the ground under me coming into the bleed you know the end of those last days of the cycle and then that void moment and the complete self-loathing i used to i used to find myself always sitting in the bath, because I didn't always have baths, I liked showers, and I'd be sitting in the bath with my critic at the other end of the bath, always. It was on schedule, I'm in the bath, critic at the other end going. What would it say? Just staring, tearing strips off me, you know, what's your life about? And then I'd bleed and then would come the ecstasy

and the remembering and all the rest of it that happens. And it's being weathered by that, you know, and all the inner work that one does and so on. The point I'm trying to make here is that the process of practising cycle awareness, you know, on the surface can look quite sort of mundane. But there's real important psychological muscle you're growing and developing and spiritual depth you're carving within your being. you come to the workout of menopause where that trust in life and trust in yourself is really tested and that's the initiation of methamenopause and um and and that in passing that and you do pass it um in passing that meeting it and if you know about how to care for yourself through that

yes you come through it and you find your being and you come out and i really believe this is what post postmenopause delivers you to this sense that one is held by life. I feel one get tastes of it through one's cycling years, and especially every time you bleed, you feel it. But that's the gift of menopause ultimately, to come out, so that this deep trust or communion with life, I think, is the gift of menopause. What I'm thinking is that someone who has undergone that passage and come out with a dignity in their being is a really valuable person to have in the community

or, you know, in positions of power in the world when you know uh when we're trying to deal with deep complex situations in the world where there are people who have got a certain kind that kind of psychological wiring I'm not saying it's the only thing that's needed, but it is a very important piece to have someone who can have one foot in the mystery and trust that and bring that as a presence to the table when we are encountering what seem like insurmountable challenges in our world and there's a kind of um it's not even about the ideas they might bring but it is about a certain quality of presence that holds this dignity of holding around crisis.

You know, that Shani, you know, we were alluding to this at the beginning, that when we encounter trouble in our lives, how or when we enter this death, it is, well, it is that rebirth, you know, that there is something, it's a kind of evolutionary moment we're brought into. And if we can learn to hold the tension around it, we might generate new possibilities that haven't been before. This is the gift of the dark, the fertile void, as we call it, that if there are people who know how to hold this space within the public sphere, alongside all those other voices we need and skills we need,

might we just be able to hear something new come through, a new possibility that we had not imagined or thought of? Okay, I'm going to pause this for a moment to invite you to explore our Menstruality Leadership Program. The doors are now open. The program starts in march next year it's an immersive apprenticeship to menstruality as it lives inside you to the wisdom that we all know in our blood and bones that it's time for each of us to unashamedly claim this power of the menstrual cycle and menopause and use it to serve to live our calling to, to stand for life itself. We've been sharing the words of some of our menstruality leadership program graduates recently about how the program transformed their health, their careers, their parenting or caring, their sense

of purpose, their way of living in the world. And today we're hearing from Dr. Cree Dye. I am excited to share why I chose to participate in the Mr. Alley Leadership Program with Red School. And so coming across Red School was just like a gift because I think the way Shani and Alexandra have put together this work's just so life-giving. Some of the things that I've discovered or experienced while being in the training, and I haven't stopped following them yet for other trainings or other offerings that they have, is that how much I need us. I need us as women, how much I need us. And it really saved my life. Like participating in the Mr. Ali leadership program told me that one thing that I really knew all along is that there's nothing wrong with me. Like I'm not crazy. All of these things that I'm experiencing, it's OK to be who I am and how I show up in this world. My inner landscape has grown. All of the little community inside of me has grown. And I get to live that out

as a leader in all the things that I do. As a therapist, I integrate this work into working with individuals, not just women, not just people with wombs, but also with families, with men, with my son. They are aware of my inner seasons. They're aware of when I am in my inner fall and it's time for me to just slow down and have some time with myself. The way that Shani and Alexandra teach, it is, it's like, it's like you're talking to a family member, right? They don't know this, but I actually described them as my mentors. Because once I had one session with them and I just sat with them and it's just like we're talking in a video that I'm listening to of them, I'm like, oh, they're my mentors. there's so much you've said there that is so beautiful alexandra and is just um

inspiring so much in me but one of the themes you've touched on there is what this darkness is for that darkness is serving something so I want to come back to that. But first, you were talking about cycle awareness as being this sort of means of tutoring us in how to navigate the darkness and the necessity of the first half of the cycle as creating enough ego strength in order to meet what's coming and it's like round after round month after month the cycle is titrating our system with this building up and this breaking down, this building

up and this breaking down. And it's this rhythmic flex that we go through, expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction, which over time expands our capacity and that capacity that we're talking about is the capacity to be with the darkness and I want to say you know in the second half of the cycle what's happening we go from doing from sort of managing and controlling and kind of orchestrating our lives to suddenly meeting life or encountering life where feelings come strong feelings where things happen that touch us and move us so we're being weathered through the challenge you know the emotional challenge or the psychological challenge

or even the practical challenge it's weathering us and what you're saying there alexandra because of course we have a amplified dose of this at menopause what you're saying is that weathering is building in us this deeper capacity for presence yeah yeah and then that presence becomes medicine so it's like we build the container of our identity or create a home in the first half. And in the second half, we find the contents, we could say. We find what this life is for, what we're serving, what our intent is. So we could be doing the same thing as the next person, but we're holding a different quality of intent. And you're saying that that is the power

that brings new solution, that brings evolution. That's, wow. I mean, if that's not a reason to hang in with the dark I don't know what is I mean that kind of it doesn't make the suffering okay because we still suffer but it does that thing of bringing dignity to it which I so appreciate yeah I really appreciate that nuance too because it's not about saying there's a silver lining or no um the suffering happened because you know all of those throwaway statements that feel so hollow and shallow when you are actually in the depths of grief exactly but this that yeah this presence this dignifying this honoring that makes space for something new that possibly couldn't have happened before thinking back to Nick Cave again now who you know in in the the wake of this tragic loss of his son who was 15 and died in an accident

and he speaks about what happened to him and his wife Susie after this you know for months they were just obliterated and lost totally lost and then something began to happen with him around him for him creatively and I don't want to put kind of heavy-handed words around this because the way he speaks to it is so nuanced and light and clear and mysterious but essentially he felt there was some kind of communion going on between him and his son that was happening through his creative process and the music that's emerged and and the kind of writings that have emerged from him now as the new person that he's become through this tragic loss is bringing so much beauty and hope to others and it's not like good things happened because of Arthur's death no no no but through this deepest of darknesses something new has been born that is bringing beauty and love and goodness

to so many yes Sophie one of the things that you said Shani yesterday when we were riffing about this is I'm going to sort of read this back to you. I found it so beautiful, as you said. The reverence of the darkness is what allows the new cycle to take root. The degeneration, the letting go, the rest, the succumbing, the bottoming out, the going into the hole, the going inward is what clears the space for us to receive new vision. Discuss. I wish that was my university English essay. Discuss in 2000 words or less. Yes.

Oh, my God. I want to hear what Alexandra has to say can you ask it again I'm thinking now especially about how we're ending this year you know we're in December the year is ending in January we'll be hosting this new year retreat which I think is going to become an an annual event I think it is your cycle your oracle you know working with this wisdom to envision what's to come and Shani was saying that it's exactly this reverence, honoring, dignifying of the darkness that allows for the newness to arise, that allows for the space to be cleared for something fresh to be born.

Like we were just talking about with Nick Cave, like I just experienced in my bleed where I have this new profound next level of love for Artie and also these new creative seed sprouting that I know are very much connected to the depth of the grief that I just touched in my bleed what's coming to me actually as I listen to you is that what that um undoing does for us is that it really Sharni talked about it creating space, you know, for something new to emerge. But, and when I think about it, what it's doing is it's actually, the destruction is working

me, it's tenderizing me. I mean, it is creating little space because you get stuff out of the way. But, you know, in the process of going through that dying, I mean, there's a huge, you know, you went through an extraordinary emotional workout, didn't you, Sophie, when you experienced that grief? And it is the process of letting yourself feel it. And a way you know we talked about this sacred holding you took you know your body took you out anyway but you know you just what you went and lay down and just lay there and you just you were with that grief just letting yourself have it and feel it. And the act of doing that just, I think of it as sort of breaking up the soil of our psyches, loosening it. And this is what I call tenderizing. This also sort of emotional exercise we go through. It sort of stretches and expands and opens something

within us so it is the act of actually really meeting the the pain the terror the heartbreak the meaninglessness daring to kind of look it in the eye and to feel that, oh, maybe there is nothing there. Oh, maybe I really will never have a baby. Oh, to be impacted by that is to feel that is to really open up new space. If you're feeling held, if you're're not if you have no holding around that it is obliterating it is meaningless it goes nowhere it's not it doesn't evolve into anything but if it's this alchemical thing you know you have the alchemical process of holding you put the substance in the oven you know you it has to be the right temperature not too hot you know not too cold and um there's a burning off that happens and then out of faith, you see, I can't guarantee

to you. I can't guarantee you're going to have ideas come out of it. And every time Sharni and I come up against when we're in a creative tussle with something and we go, holy shit, this is impossible. Oh, my God, we're looking at the time, you you know it's like we're running out of time we got we're up against it you know we can't solve this and i'm thinking let's just let's just go back and sort of package what we had and make that okay you know there's that tendency in me it's like oh don't open this can of worms don't go there don't go there and then but then i have this other voice that goes yeah just stay with it's like something I'll have just stay with it. Just stay with it. That is the nature of darkness is that it feels impossible. Yeah. It feels insurmountable. It feels like it will go on forever.

It feels like death. So what we're saying here is like how to have faith in the face of that yeah it's no it's a tall order it's a tall order and you know and if you're not in you know sometimes we're just not up for it so no no it's too much no yeah and that's why we have all this you know it's important to seek support and help so important so important yeah you've got to have some resources you've actually got to have resource no you have resources sophie you you had all sorts of kinds of different supports there yeah and ideally you've got to have a few years of cycle awareness under your belt because that is this built-in body knowing that death is followed by rebirth and and yeah nothing can really make up for that

body knowing because your body knows even in the darkest of dark that post-surrender you will return yeah yes it's really fascinating that body knowing isn't it because like you say it's not the mind the mind's got a whole load of other stories running but i was intrigued with this darkness that i went into that something in my body knew to look for signs and synchronicities it knew to look for signs and synchronicities. It knew to look for something new and fresh. And I went, I, this wasn't conscious, but I went hunting for, for love, really for holding, for holding outside of myself. And that's where I tumbled into the on being podcast. And that's where I found the Nick cave conversation. And then that's where I tumbled into the on being podcast and that's where I found the Nick Cave conversation and then that's where I found you know this whole deep creative process

around grief that he's been through that has been holding me and informing me so there's something there about how how the body knowing connects up with the mystery through these synchronicities and it is because that book was published you know two years ago he was here in sheffield two years ago performing i could have seen him didn't know about it then but i but now now i found it when i most needed it when i was in the dark we were talking about this yesterday in the menopause the great awakener course about i mean alexandra was describing the experience she had at menopause um of what we call revelation but how that or really visioning uh how that visioning how her connection to her calling just opened the doorway for all these synchronicities to occur which is another thing that we should just say is what the darkness is delivering to us your

story really explains that Sophie it's taking us deep into the unknown but actually into something more true more real more, more plugged in. And then from that place of profound connection to life, we are now alive and life starts to move with us and we start to feel the harmony of things. And Alexandra told some great stories about how everything unfolded for her in that place in menopause.

You might have to come to the great awakener to hear next year. We want to invite everybody to join us for this retreat in January the 11th of January it's a Thursday to work with this wisdom of cycle awareness to vision for the year it was amazing last year it blew us away an incredible turnout so many people were drawn to this and we're really excited for it this year so yeah I've got a few questions around this really but one is while we're here in this dark how can people prepare for you know be with this process in the darkness now to prepare for this visioning process that's to come i.e how can we end this year well so that we can then start this year start next year well with with this cycle wisdom that's a good question sophie so the thing that comes up for me is um the need the way that i

end well is through slowing down and bringing more spaciousness in because, you know, the ground under me is not so solid. It's sort of, you know, as you come more and more into the unknown, it's unknown. And, you know, for my ego, that's's treachery that feels like treacherous ground and i i sort of have to pace my ego really i have to pace um my need to know everything so it's like pacing my spirit into the dark. And I do it through doing less and giving myself more spaciousness and slowing down. And the reason I'm hesitating is because I'm aware that it's a bonkers time of year

where everything speeds up because of Christmas. And no wonder people get so spun out because we are in an ending but also what's just come to mind is what we began with this thing of um coming into being i mean that's such a holy event but we are not present to that because we're doing all this insane stuff christmas demands oh and the irony of it of course is that christmas was about the holy being yeah i love i really love uh referencing cycle awareness to answer this question sophie because everything alexandra is saying is comes out of that intelligence and if we just think about what we know about the inner autumn um we often say we often talk about

holding the tension which is exactly that dance between the movement of the outer world, which is different to our own inner timing. And really holding that contradiction is part of building this muscle of resilience. We were speaking about building our presence to be with what is. So we can't deny that there is this acceleration for those people who celebrate Christmas. And at the same time, we can't deny that there's this de-acceleration

for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere who are going into the dark of the year. And these practices of very simple self-care is what I always come back to for the inner autumn and late in autumn just what am I needing how can I honor that in some small way give myself a little bit more of that so really ending well for me is about coming a little bit closer to my own needs and prioritizing those, even as the needs of the world don't go away. It was funny because you and I were thinking of meeting up over this winter break because our kids really love each other, which is really gorgeous. Yeah, they are begging to see arty and you wrote a message essay saying do you know what what i'm really sensing is we need to less nest in and get still and then i wrote back saying

how still does it get at your place my place never feels that still and you wrote back let me read it in our whatsapp thread you said it's a master class in cultivating stillness within yeah and can i just say to all of those people who do have crazy lives going on we're just getting a triple hardcore workout on how to cultivate stillness yeah we're building some serious muscle but i I do and also just to kind of add a little embellishment to that and this is a daring thought that I like to have is that we don't know how much effect we have on others and that when we come into stillness in ourselves it creates stillness for others or at least an invitation into stillness that wasn't there before yeah so you know I'm holding that vision well this conversation has been so rich and so beautiful both in terms of how how cycle awareness can hold us through the darkest and

most difficult times of our lives how it can help to create a holding for the darkness that's happening in the world and also now how to hold ourselves as we're entering this dark phase of the year in the northern hemisphere do you want to say a word or two about the other side I know we're still in the darkness but about your excitement for this for this retreat that's happening in January yeah I will but first I want to tell everyone that I've created a glorious playlist because something I love is finding music that speaks to me in these different places of the cycle and these different places of our human experience and so I've created a playlist for everyone which is all songs to support us for spiraling into darkness and in fact there's one

track on there which somebody from the Red School community sent me, which she wrote and created out of her experience of meeting the starkness in herself. I'll let everyone take a vote on which track that is, but it is beautiful. So that's tucked in there as well. Yeah. So your question was about the event in the new year yeah well what I love about it is this is I think one of our best kept secrets about the menstrual cycle is that it is our inner oracle it is our built-in innate guidance system that is leading us home and in this retreat where we all come together for two and a half hours to really drop into

dreaming and a sort of sacred sanctuary space together, we'll be working with the wisdom of our cycles, which by the way, you can do whether you have a menstrual cycle or not. We're working with the wisdom of our cycles to receive personal guidance for our year ahead, for what our kind of theme is, our personal theme, the personal life invitation that we have, that we are going to be tracking each one of us all year long.

And then we're going to give you all instructions on how you can work with your menstrual cycle to really support the unfolding of that vision, that calling in the year over the coming 12 or 13 months. So it's a very kind of creative endeavor that we're going to be going on together as a community. And I heard from people actually not that long ago about how the theme of the year that they received at that event has unfolded. Yeah, it's really exciting to kind of report back on this and how the cycle has really guided them into manifesting that vision into realizing that experience or that quality or that feeling or that outcome in their life. So it's a juicy invitation and I'm really

excited about it I love I love this kind of uh I know there's something about the collective power of everyone there that just makes it more potent and also the fact of doing it each year the exercise itself the process we've, takes on a life of its own. It seems to get more potent. It's very interesting. Yes. So it's wonderful. I love it.

I absolutely love it. Are you coming, Sofa Jane? Try and stop me well thanks you too we need to wrap up now and this is the last time the last podcast for this year so go well into the darkness and see you on the other side. Thank you for being with us all the way to the end here. So I said it was the final episode for this year, but actually we have our next installment of the bonus Wild Power series next week on Tuesday. And I was really grateful to receive a message from Becky a couple of days ago on Instagram saying that this series changed her life when it first came out. So you can tune into that one next week.

We'll be back in January with an episode that I've been waiting to have for a long time about the five chambers of menstruation. And in the meantime, maybe you want to catch up on this bonus wild power series if you haven't already so you can go back and listen to the first five and please please join us for our new year retreat save the date for january the 11th it's called your menstrual cycle your oracle it's actually for you whether you have a menstrual cycle or not you'll be guided to work with your cyclical wisdom either way and you can register at redschool.net forward slash Oracle. Okay, I'll be with you again soon.

And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.