The Menstruality Podcast - 129: Wild Power #8: Creating a New Life-Affirming Menstrual Story (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Welcome to the final episode in our Wild Power Bonus series - today we're creating a new life-affirming menstrual story. It’s time now for each of us to fully reclaim the power of our menstrual cycle. To do that we have to get smart in a world that doesn’t yet recognise or celebrate it. In this episode we share some of our key Red School cycle savvy tips and strategies for restoring the cycle’s wisdom and creating a new life affirming menstrual story.In this episode you will:- Get to know your four undercover agents for a cycle savvy life- Learn practical ways to create a cycle centred life- Hear us talk about the crucialness of women and all people who menstruate gathering together to change the world.---Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com---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 being here. Thank you for tuning in today. It's an exciting day because this is the final Wild Power bonus episode,

creating a new life-affirming menstrual story. So as a reminder, these Wild Power conversations were recorded way back when Alexandra Sharni's book Wild Power first came out, but they're full of gold. And that's why we've been sharing them over the past couple of months on Tuesdays. And it's our final episode today. The idea behind this episode is that it is time now for all of us to fully reclaim the power of our menstrual cycles, of our menopause process. But to do that, we have to get smart in a world that doesn't yet recognize or celebrate it, or even acknowledge it in many cases. So in this conversation, Alexandra and Sharni share some of their key Red School cycle savvy tips and strategies for restoring the cycle's wisdom, restoring your cyclical wisdom. So I hope you enjoy it and I hope you've enjoyed this series. Let's get started with the final installment of

the Wild Power Bonus series, creating a new life-affirming menstrual story. Well, Shani, we've been on quite an adventure with this series, haven't we? We've explored all sorts of things. We've declared that the menstrual cycle process is a spiritual practice in and of itself. We've explored the different seasons of the cycle, the different energy currents, the different types of powers that we're negotiating within the cycle. And we've spoken about the inner temple of menstruation. And we've also shared the tool to support you to access the powers and the possibilities of the menstrual cycle, i.e. menstrual cycle awareness. Yes, that's right, Shani.

So much juicy information. And, you know, there's so much juicy potential and power and glory held within our menstrual cycles but it really begs the question of all this amazing power in a non-cyclical world in a world that is not recognizing this yet i mean there are things happening i have to say menstruation is really you know on she's on a roll i reckon yeah yeah yeah she's well out of the closet and she's starting to strut her stuff down the high street you know on mainstream media newspapers yep she's out she's out and about absolutely but she's not really yet fully you know there's edginess and nervousness and of course

you know no one is really naming that the menstrual cycle is well one the spiritual practice but this amazing self-care tool for women that it's our inner guidance system but it's our rhythm of power it's our way of being connected to ourselves so you know how what are we going to do about this you know how are we going to bring this out I always think of you Shannon because you know people look at me again Alexandra you're a postmenopausal woman it's all very well you talking about it you don't have to live the realities. And I say, excuse me, I actually happened to have bled for over 30 years and did have

to deal with the realities of this. But of course, I didn't have children and you, Shani, you tick all the boxes of a very busy woman. You're in a relationship, you've got two young daughters, and you are self-employed in a job that is more than full-time. And this work on the cycle is absolutely non-negotiable for you, isn't it? So how do you do it, Shani? You know, you're kind of like a lovely example, really, of a woman who is, despite the forms of her life, really claiming this work. Yeah, I'm the living experiment.

You certainly are. And I'm figuring it out moment by moment, but I have discovered all kinds of things that have made this possible. And actually it's interesting because i don't see the cycle as a something in competition to my life i don't see it as something um that i have to fight against um i i feel it as a support i genuinely feel it as an ally i feel it as the ground i feel it as a support. I genuinely feel it as an ally. I feel it as the ground. I feel it as the bedrock of my life. It is the thing that allows me to parent in the way that I want to. It is the thing that allows me to work in the way that I want to. I mean, have the creative life that I desire. It really supports me.

But that doesn't mean necessarily that it's easy. There is this tension between what my cycle is inviting me to, the way my cycle is guiding me and leading me, and the mood and energy of any particular day or phase of my cycle and the world around me. And this is the, you know, this is really the tension that we're negotiating is that your cycle isn't necessarily in tune with or seemingly in tune with life around you. So there's a real reality to this, isn't there, Alexandra, is that cycles are not respected, full stop.

Cyclical life is not respected, and the menstrual cycle is not respected. You're so right, Shani, and I'm really fascinated by, despite the fullness of your life and the fact that you really, you know, when you've got children, you know, it's non-negotiable, they come first. How you have built this lovely relationship with your cycle and see it as an ally, that you trust in it, you know, even as you can't always go with the flow of it, still you feel supported by it. And I'm just really curious if you can kind of drill down a little bit

into what it is that's happening. What is it that you are actually doing, Shani? Is it possible for you to feel into that? Yeah. I think the first thing is I've really learned to value the power of just giving my cycle attention. I've really learned to value the power of being mindful of where I am in my cycle. And just that in and of itself is priceless. It's like it just helps me to locate myself. It helps me to connect with myself.

It's my ground. So that, that is huge. So, and that's something we can all do, no matter what is going on in the world around you. You can simply tune in and connect with your cycle energy in any given moment on any particular day. So I really want to value that. Shani, I hear two things happening there. One is that your cycle awareness is building this quality of presence. So you are actually more present to the stuff of what you have to do. And that in itself sort of changes things, changes everything. But also I get the sense that you have real kindness with yourself

or much more kindness with yourself. Yeah. As you're going through this act of cycle awareness, you have both this presence and this quality of kindness with yourself and I'm suspecting that is what's really those two things are really crucial yes that um that's beautiful because it's this it's this awareness of where I'm in my cycle it's a way of tapping into my deep self and I can then hold myself and I I know I know the truth of how I am and where I am. And that's part of the kindness. And the second thing, when you ask me how I do this, the second thing is

that whilst I can feel the full potential or the sort of ideal possibility for where I am in my cycle. I can feel the tendency, the direction, and what would be the most magnificent way of responding to my cycles, the needs that I feel, and the desires that I feel. Whilst I can feel that on one hand, I also know that small shifts towards that have profound effects. I don't live with this idealized perfection for how to live my cycle. I mean, I have that. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to pretend like I don't have that going on in the background. Of course I do. You know, I have that. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to pretend like I don't have that going on in the background. Of course I do. You know, I know what's possible with the cycles.

In the background, I have this of like, you know, what if I could at menstruation completely check out, disappear for five days, be on retreat in nature. I mean, I have that going on somewhere in the background. But I also know that even just honoring that need in menstruation in the smallest way builds this relationship of kindness with myself, builds and allows the power of that time to come through and supports the whole flow of my cycle and really supports the continual building of this ecology, this resilience, this momentum, this creativity. So I think those are really those are the two things. And yes, this ingredient of kindness is crucial.

That's lovely hearing that. And of course, you've introduced one of our key kind of, I don't know, what do we call it, strategy. Yeah, well, actually, this whole question of how you live your cycle in a non-cyclical world, I think of it as a bit of a covert operation. Yes. Until our entire planet and every human being on it is really honoring cyclical life, we kind of need to slip in the back door and call on what we call these undercover agents

to really support a cycle-savvy life. And yeah, so you were saying, I've just touched on one of those agents, those allies, which was the one you were referring to, Alexandra? I was actually referring to our othera i was actually i was uh i was actually referring to our other strategy not the other undercover agent well you see i think actually i think we should talk about the undercover agents first because that really is you know those are the keys those four the four undercover agents are the kind of four main i suppose framings to hold and then we'll bring in some of our other little strategies of which you just stated one but yes that's the four undercover agents shani are acceptance so that's really accepting your cycle. Intention, setting intentions for how you would like it to be.

And then the third one is entitlement. And that is a feeling that you have a right to follow your own cycle. This is really crucial. One, that you're accepting it, but that you feel a sense of entitlement around it. And, of course, if you don't feel that entitlement yet, you can set an intention to feel that entitlement, and it will come, believe you me. And then imagination, which, of course, is what you were doing, Shani. You're really allowing yourself to dream into and imagine how you'd love to be living with your cycle.

You're really putting that energy out there, and you're starting to make that real more and more by holding that imagination of how you'd like to be. And, of course, here at Red School, we have a whole huge vision that we have written down. It's in our book that we read. I think it was the first one of and that we read in i think our first it was the first one of the series we read the vision out that is us using imagination to begin to change the cultural consciousness hey i'm just going to pause the podcast for a moment I'm loving hearing Alexandra and Shani's

stories but I want to share a little bit about our menstruality leadership program the doors for our 2024 program which starts in March are now open you can explore the curriculum at menstrualityleadership.com that's menstrualityleadership dot com it's the only comprehensive training of its kind in the world and it's had a really beautiful meaningful profound impact for our 460 graduates and we've been sharing some stories from our graduates on the podcast today we're hearing from psychotherapist suad ahmed about how the program supported her to transform her experience of challenging menstrual cycles particularly in her pre-menstrual phase. I came into work because I was suffering really badly from like PMS symptoms of kind of pre-menstrual

mostly emotional symptoms really kind of that anger what was depression that kind of depressive like things are just not going well being really irritable feeling really hopeless getting into situations where I was real rage was coming out and not knowing where it'd come from and then upsetting the other person mostly my husband who obviously we're in a close relationship with so and getting that feedback and seeing myself almost like lose control things weren't quite right like I wasn't coping very well and I think it came back of a few years of working with Shani and Alexandra doing the other courses that they were offering in the UK at the time and doing my own work and seeing how it transformed my my life how something that was so painful became transformative almost like a phoenix out of a of the ashes or something that was kind of yeah painful and

difficult to be with came something so beautiful and speaking to other women sharing it and seeing how widely experienced my my feelings were and other people were in the same boat so I was like this this is important I think what I really appreciate about the course like the way that it's being taught by Shaina Alexandra is that there isn't like a prescriptive way of being we're not not everyone's not leaving with like a list or a steps on how to be a leader and I guess what's done for me is is affirmed that I have something to offer or that what I'm doing in the world is important in itself it's worthy within itself it has meaning within itself it doesn't have to be exceptional or special or because intrinsically everything we do is special it is sacred but there's a part of us in the society

that we live in that is compared against somebody else or like is it as good as that is it as good as that and so it's kind of pulled me away from that into a very intimate space of this is right now this is good enough yeah so as you were describing those, I was thinking, yeah, those are the ingredients that I'm calling on that allows me to negotiate my cycle in everyday life and in the realities of my life. It helped me to keep it real. Yeah. I think they're really, really significant, those.

And I particularly love intention, especially when a situation looks impossible. I think to myself, how would I like to experience this? And to actually just put that out there. And to also really use your menstrual cycle around this intention setting and to deliberately to set an intention when you're bleeding. That seems to sort of amplify the power of that intention by doing it when you're in the depths of menstruation. Yeah. Deeply connect with yourself.

Set an intention for how you would like to be with your cycle process or what you'd like to be experiencing just name it you don't have to worry about the practicalities of it just name it and we've got some lovely examples we could share yeah and then can i just jump in there and say and and if and if you're not if you don't really have a sense of what that might be for you. Actually, this other undercover agent of imagination is another one that can be so freely available when you're menstruating. So at menstruation, if you can really stop and take some time out from doing and from the distractions of our modern world and really give yourself some headspace, it's a beautiful time to let your imagination, let your dreaming take flight and to really see what's possible

for yourself in your life, to really think outside the box of what you might have been believing is possible up until now. And then your intention can arise out of that dreaming, out of that imagination. That's beautiful. And then I had this sense of, for those women who are really creative, you might want to create an image around that. You could just really nourish that.

Actually, almost like imagination comes first, doesn't it, Charlie? We just dare to dream. And this is immensely powerful. I can't emphasize enough how powerful that is. Then to set the intention and also, of course, acceptance is in there. Acceptance is crucial. If you're fighting your cycle and seeing it as the enemy, which we can certainly understand if you suffer,

but if you can start to just step towards it more and more and accept it, then that's enormously powerful. And then comes that sense of entitlement. You're actually going to feel it in the swagger of your hips as you walk down the road, when you know where you are in your cycle at any one moment you're going to feel your spine straighten you're going to feel a rightness about this work and that going to feed the field as well and and we we do we've done this jokingly before alexandra but it's a really fun thing to do for yourself because if you're waiting for somebody else to come along and say right you're entitled to have a menstrual cycle and you're entitled to follow it.

I mean, aside from us, nobody's probably going to come along and say that to you. So you might want to just take a moment, you know, create a little ritual for yourself or take some, find some formal way of claiming that entitlement, you know, saying, right, I have a right to follow my cycle. I have a right to claim this as the rhythm of my life, as my rhythm, as my pace, as my tempo, as my way. And that's, yeah, that's a really good thing to do as well if you feel like that's something you are struggling with. Yeah. That's so good, Shani. Should we perhaps move on to another amazing and important tool?

I don't know if it's quite a tool, but we always have this phrase, don't go it alone, don't we? Where we talk about connecting with other women, that this is everything, community is everything, not to be alone with this. Even just having one other friend with whom you can talk about this work. There might be someone at work and you can just, as you're passing them at work, you can go, oh, I'm in my inner autumn, and they'll totally get where you're at

yeah this um being being alone with your cycle experience and living in a little bubble where it's just you and your menstrual cycle and it can feel incredibly lonely and um i mean you can feel completely crazy quite honestly if you don't have allies who get it, who share their experiences with you and who you share your experiences with. So finding people you can talk to about this or building a community around you or bringing this work into your community or into your workplace. We spoke a bit about that as well. It's going to make such a difference. We always find at our workshops that women come away saying one of the things that they've really had a huge impact on them is being able to talk freely

about this and to hear about other women's experiences and what a support that's been and what an affirmation that's been and how much that's strengthened their sense of entitlement for one thing and also their, you know, their courage to be able to follow this more and more because it takes, this does take courage, this does take courage. You really are going against the current status quo. Indeed, Shani. Indeed. That's so important, that word courage. But which sort of brings to mind for me, I don't know why I suddenly thought of it.

We have this phrase that we talk about plant the menstruality mean and what we mean by that is to just start to men to say the word you know talk about menstruation just drop the word menstruation in a conversation and before you know it you're going to have others talking to you about it something happens suddenly I, the field starts to change. You know, it might just come out with one colleague at work because you're just feeling perhaps possibly just a little low in energy because you're close to your bleed or something, and you just mention the word menstruation,

and then suddenly it comes up in another context in a different way it's extraordinary how it happens and before you know it there's a bigger conversation happening around you and you're actually talking to a few people at work about it and you're just having a deep a deeper or a freer um i don't know what the word is i'm actually thinking of a lovely story that we share in our book, which I'd love to share very quickly. Oh, yes, I was thinking of that as well. Go on, tell it. Sorry.

Because this is a teacher in a school, and, you know, she was really concerned with how am I going to honour my menstrual cycle when my life is governed by, you know, school bells, not by the texture of my, you know know what's happening with my menstrual cycle and and she's an English teacher and she was teaching Shakespeare and then it was Romeo and Juliet and the father was saying of Juliet oh she has not what was the phrase she has not I can't think of the phrase now but it was referring to menstruation

yeah and so this woman took that opportunity to walk through that door and said you know what they're talking about here so they then had a conversation about menarche that she hadn't actually had her first bleed yet and and this actually turned up in the in the children one boy wrote about it one of his essays but then before she knew it she had in the school, she had – because she was charting her cycle and she had teachers asking her for charts so that they could chart their cycle. She found herself teaching on a biology class. It was

a male teacher and he had to teach on the fertility cycle of women. This woman came in and taught the class for him. Then he had another teacher, a male teacher, talking to him about how he was struggling with one girl because she was behaving much better now, but she always lost it once a month. And this woman explained to him what might be going on, i.e. that it was close to her bleeding. She was in her premenstrual. And she gave him strategies to think about how to do this and then she jokingly said at the end you know before long i'll be running by christmas she said i'll be running menstrually inspired school school assemblies it was just one thing after another

after shakespeare opening so um yeah it's just story so don't don't underestimate the power of just dropping that word into a conversation i mean part of it yeah part of what you're doing with that is you really are building you're building the field and there's huge strength that comes in numbers there's huge momentum and women gathering together around this knowledge is going to really support you, but it's going to support this field, this consciousness to flow through more and more strongly and be more and more readily available to each one of us. So it's a very, very powerful thing, building this new energy field and speaking about it as we attend to our own cycle. The other piece of this, Alexandra, which I think is good to mention, and we'll get your cycle to being able to live it more, to being able to really enjoy the full pleasure and power of your cycle. We've got a good tip here, don't we, Alexandra?

And actually, the UK cycling team use this as well, don't they, to great effect? Yes, this was actually a policy that was used with the British cycling team before they were Olympic champions. And this was the strategy that the manager used, the trainer used with them. And it's making small changes or 1% changes in all sorts of small ways like for instance the shape of the seat they sat on or the type of material in the clothing that they wore or the pillows they slept on at night. It was all these tiny 1% moves that he made and this took the british cycling team from nowhere to being the world champions in the olympics winning the tour de france and i mean we're winning everything now

in the cycling but this was pre that and this was really great so so this can actually be our way of becoming uh olympic menstrual cyclists exactly we can become olympic menstrual cyclists exactly we can become Olympic menstrual cyclists with the power of small changes to have big effect and I always think of one woman actually who she and again we use her story in the book and she's Spanish but she lives in Macedonia she's married to a Macedonian and so these she comes from very she comes from a very conservative cultural background where the women you know do all the family stuff and they don't really have a life of their own they're serving everybody else and she lives within a culture that's like that now and so for her to take time off at menstruation was a huge edge to cross and she just started by taking an hour I think she just she has children she has children so she would

take this out and then before she knew it she was taking a whole day off when she bled like a whole life was reorganized and then about six months after that the loveliest of things happened her husband turned around it was actually the beginning of the new year and her husband turned around to her and said why don't we organize the family calendar around your menstrual cycle because he saw how powerful it was how things had shifted in the family how she was happier how the whole energy of the family was different i feel like i've got sort of goosebumps as i'm saying this actually um it was very touching because he said that quite spontaneously without any kind of pushing

from her she wasn't expecting it and she was so touched so there was she just going from and it may not be an hour folks it may be it's about you taking half an hour with a cup of tea where you just simply don't answer the phone you don't look at anything but you give yourself that zone of half an hour and then that grows so we talk about the one percent move or the homeopathic dose and you know how powerful homeopathy can be so the power of small moves to make big changes it's one one of our most potent tools, isn't it, Shani? So potent. And it's always doable. And that's the thing.

It's the thing I'm always for because when I feel like, oh, there's nothing I can do here. For example, I'm bleeding and I am having to, I mean, classic, host my daughter's birthday party. Yes. No getting out of it. The thing I can always reach for is what is 1%? What is the 1% that I can do to really honor this time and how I feel and what my deep needs are? And there's always 1% and there's always 5%, I find.

And then when I give 5%, I'm like, oh, there's another 1% and there's always 5% I find. And then when I give 5, I'm like, oh, there's another 10% there, you know, and it makes such a difference. It builds that sweetness with myself. It's like, I'm always listening to myself. When I give myself that small percent, I really feel that I, my needs are being heard by myself, by me. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. So we're going to invite you to do just that. As our sort of final practical exercise for this online series, we want to ask you to just take a moment now to think about what your 1% is. What could you do?

I mean, let's say today, tomorrow, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it now. Why wait? What is the 1% you could do today or tomorrow that would really honor your cycle and where you are. Something small, so small that it's just imminently doable. Something so seemingly insignificant that you can't help but do it.

That 1%. We'd love to hear what that is. Please come and share it with us on our Facebook page. It's really good, firstly, for you to say it out loud by way of commitment to yourself, but also for us to hear, you know, what sorts of things you're doing, and it will give us all ideas for the next time we're reaching for our 1%. And I think we should warn you here. It's so powerful that we should warn you that 1% begets 2%. 2% begets 4%.

And you know where this is leading. Before long, you're like 100%. Nothing standing in the path of how you're living your cycle it's so potent you'll see we could put our money on it we'll put our money on a cycle savvy world in no time at all and by the way this this is how this is how we change the world it's from the inside out you know by us making small moves towards ourself and towards honoring our menstrual cycle. We are changing the consciousness. We're changing the field. We're changing really how how we as human beings engage with life and with nature and with, you know, with each other.

We're really changing something so fundamental. So it's an incredibly powerful thing to do. We call it the wild power revolution, and it's an inside job. It starts right here with you. So, Alexandra, this is the last of our Wild Power series. We've come to the end. I've loved doing this. It's been such a joy to share these little nuggets from our book,

and we have so much more to share. We really hope that you'll stay in touch with us so we can keep these conversations going in one way shape or form and also remember next week we are opening the lines to your questions so you can make it live to the call next week that would be amazing we would love to hear your thoughts your comments your questions that we can spend a little bit of time answering that at our little launch party, which is happening next week in time for the book.

Oh, my God, it's so exciting. So exciting. Thank you very much, everyone, for being a part of this. And thank you for letting other people know about it please do keep sharing this work in your way uh it's going to make a big difference thank you thank you ah that's it the final wild power episode i hope you've enjoyed this particularly if you've read the book and this has helped to bring alive some of the teachings in a new way that's what i've been hearing from some people and i'd love to hear from you about your experience of this

and about anything that you'd love to hear more about on the podcast, guests that you've loved, people that you'd love to hear from, people that you'd love me to interview, themes and topics that you'd like to explore around menopause, around the menstrual cycle, parts of the cycle you find challenging, parts that you love. You can always write to me at sophie at redschool.net. I love hearing from you and I'm really committed to this being a conversation back and forth between us we actually have some exciting plans brewing for that but I'll let you know more soon okay we'll be back on Thursday with our next regular episode and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm