The Menstruality Podcast - 146. What we Know about the Power of the Menstrual Cycle (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Today we’re talking about power, and it’s a word that comes up a lot at Red School. It features in both of Alexandra and Sjanie’s book titles, as well as the title of our new course coming up in June - Cycle Power. But what exactly do we mean by power?In our conversation, we explore how Alexandra and Sjanie define and understand power, why so many of us feel scared, confused or suspicious about power, and how the menstrual cycle wakes us up to our power.So, if you’re longing to feel more agency and power in your life, if you notice yourself suppressing your power, and if you’re curious how menstrual cycle awareness can help you to claim your power and live it, this one is for you.We explore:Alexandra’s lifelong fascination with power, her current experience of power as an elder who has lived a lifetime of cycle-awareness, and her current power-edge; undefendedness. Vulnerability as a gateway to healthy expressions of power; it allows us to feel, to know ourselves, to empathise and to move towards ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’.The importance of acknowledging and claiming the power that we do have, exactly where we are, and how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness helps us to notice and lean into this innate power. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [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, thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome back to the podcast. We're talking about power today, which is something we talk about a lot at Red School.

The word is in both of Alexandra and Sharni's book titles, Wild Power and Wise Power. And it's also in the title of our new upcoming course cycle power which is starting in june which we'll tell you more about later but what exactly do we mean by power today we're unpacking this exploring how alexander and sharni define and understand power why so many of us feel scared or confused or suspicious about power perhaps it's because we live in a world where it's so often misused, and how the menstrual cycle and menopause wake us up to our power. So if you're longing to feel more agency, to feel more powerful in your life, if you notice yourself suppressing your power, if you're curious about how menstrual cycle awareness can help you to claim more of your power and live it in the world, then this one is for you. And it's a wild one. Sometimes our podcast conversations have a very clear structure,

very clear plan, but with this one, we just let ourselves loose and we went on a magical mystery ride. As you'll hear, Alexandra and I were very much in the void, me before my period and her before the new moon. So pour yourself a cup of something lovely and just enjoy us for this wild exploration of demystifying something that's so vital for all of us and for our world, power. Good morning you two. Let's do our cycle check-in. But before we start, let's invite everyone listening to take a moment, maybe put a hand on your heart or on your belly if you have one free. Just check in with yourself and see how you are on this cycle day, if you have a menstrual cycle, if you can remember what day you're on, or whatever cycles you're tracking in your life and maybe as you're listening you can see what sparks for you about where you're at and how your cyclical intelligence is informing your experience today

yeah who who feels like kicking us off alexandra i imagine more than sharni actually i'm going to surprise you nothing like the challenge of breaking the the habits of being oneself um yes so I am day 16 and I love that you got us to pause there because just in that moment something about how I am today crystallized for me. And I could just feel this effervescence in my body. I feel very buoyant and like there is a big laugh waiting to happen. I can almost imagine if I was put in a context, a very inappropriate context, where I was not allowed to laugh. I would laugh so much and so hard and so long I might collapse on the floor and possibly even wet my pants. That kind of silly laugh is just sort of waiting to happen.

So, yeah, I guess there's an element of silliness yeah which is quite a fun yes oh I'm glad for that because our topic is pretty big today and fairly heavy so I'm glad for your day 16 silliness. Alexandra you and I are in a similar place. Yes, why don't you go first? No, you go first. Okay, so I'm on day 30 of a cycle that I don't know how long it's going to be. Normally, I feel when I ovulate and then I know I bleed 14 days later. I don't know when I ovulated this month. I didn't feel it. But I feel fantastic. I feel like I don't belong to the world right now. So I'm free and I

can say what I want and do what I want. I feel otherworldly. It's really gorgeous. Yeah. And I also feel quite sensual. I had quite a hot dream last night and I'm sorry, dad, if you're listening because my dad listens to me sometimes. I don't me sometimes my dad needs to know about the dream I was having about Tom Herriwood from Call the Midwife but yeah there's a yeah sensual sexual connected to myself it's a good place yeah oh so great hearing you. And I just love this feeling of feeling so well and special. And I am actually feeling very, very well in my body. It's really nice.

And I am wide open. It's the void of the moon. So it's kind of sort of new moon today-ish, today, tomorrow. I'm not sure. Yeah. Depends where you are in the world. And, oh, gosh. And it's also hard to find words.

So, again, it's going to be interesting. Shani's going to be silly and I'm going to be wordless, struggling for words. It is going to bode well for our podcast. I'm permeable. I'm just very, very permeable. So real world stuff shocks me today and shakes me up and triggers my nervous system. And that doesn't feel good. and shakes me up and triggers my nervous system.

And that doesn't feel good. So as long as I'm in a little love nest, I'm doing all right. Actually, there's a lot of inner discipline required because, of course, my working life continues. And there's something from the world beeping in now to just to i know your nervous system what was that was that like a a rubbish lorry reversing into your or something it's so random it's a rubbish lorry reversing into our sort of little cul-de-sac but then it doesn't pick up the rubbish and comes back tomorrow only only we're still told to put out the rubbish today i think there's a profound riddle here there is a huge riddle

i'm having to solve with my council and there have been communications yeah so um it may it's going to drive back past again because it can't get out the other end oh good we'll look forward to that so the topic of the day is power and i find it interesting that we haven't had a conversation directly about this yet although we've spoken about it a lot on the podcast especially because the word power features in the title of both of your books. So Wild Power, Wise Power, and in the title of our new course, Cycle Power. So now is the moment to speak about power. And we wanted to start by actually checking in with you, wonderful

being listening to this, how you feel about power what happens in you in your body when you hear the word power because it it's a big word and it conjures up so many different things there are massive misuses of power in our world it's no wonder that we can feel concerned confused suspicious all kinds of. So we actually have some questions for you to reflect on. Are you scared of power in yourself or others? How do you suppress your own power? Are you afraid that claiming your power means you'll oppress or diminish someone else? Do you see power as a destructive force that's outside of your control? So maybe if you have the time and space, you might just want to pause the podcast for a

moment to reflect on that. And if you don't have time to pause and sort of really inquire into that, actually just notice the feeling that arises in your body when you think about power and just get a felt sense of sort of somatic response or answer which will reveal something about what your relationship to power is and that will tell you what your relationship to power is. Yeah, thank you, Shani. So there's this quote in your Wild Power book about why many of us feel afraid of power. So I think I'll read that to walk us into this. So it says, too many of us are afraid of our power and have pretty messed up notions about it. Given the many displays of distorted power in the world today, it's easy to see how we might assume that power is the problem. The distortion of power in

our culture arises in part because we forget that weakness and vulnerability are necessary. These qualities only appear weak because of our one-sided view of power. We currently see power as perfection, tough and hard, insensitive, unemotional, untouchable and bulletproof. The tender, apparently fragile, emotionally messy, inept, imperfect or immature parts of ourselves are all perceived as weak and powerless. However, these vulnerabilities are at the heart of our humanity they're the doorway to a wholesome integrated wise expression of power that brings compassion and respect to other people along with a cooperative and respectful relationship with the natural world that supports us it's big there's so much in that it's beautiful yeah coming from the place I'm in today when you asked those questions I felt like I was a beginner again with that word power and I feel

every day that there's a kind of inner work dance I have to do to, if I'm engaging with the world as I do, if I don't live in my own prime bubble, you know, just my small everyday life, it's, you know, I feel okay. But the moment I'm sort of tested by things in the world, I have to rediscover in a way. I have to re-find myself and claim my power in all these different situations. situations so it's never like you nail it and also because as I get older um and I become more permeable as I get older I feel things more I feel the complexity of things much more and I don't have the same kind of resilience and insensitivity for want of a better word that i had in my youth um so um

and there's something also very sturdy and very fierce in me it's an interesting combination of feeling uh because when i think of that word power i think of it in very simple terms as my capacity to have agency in the world to be able to go out and to shape my lot to do what i you know to realize what i want to realize in the world. It's like my capacity to wield a metaphorical tool and literal tool. I'm not very good on the literal tools, by the way. I haven't mastered those powers. In fact, I'm rubbish. But I have realized, you know, many things in the world. And I feel a muscularity in me.

I feel a capacity in me. I feel a capacity in me. I feel an intelligence in me and a pleasure in who I am, which are all the ingredients that I need to be able to go out and achieve the things I want to achieve. So there's that level of agency that is there. And then there's something else where when I, you know, as this ongoing kind of negotiation with life, this ongoing process of evolving you know meeting because when you're in the world you're meeting challenges all the time and there are challenges are very

real and sometimes i feel like i just would like to go and hide and stop and often i go you know i have these sort of fantasies of just walking away and going i just i'm not interested in i can't i do not want to live like this yeah well what you're saying alexandra is such a really fundamental point which is um in a way we're saying that power is a lot like health it's not a one-time thing you can can't create good health and then you're done. It's a day-by-day, moment-by-moment way of relating to caring for ourselves, getting to know ourselves, responding to our environment, responding to what challenges, pressures arise, et cetera. So power is very, very much the same. In in other words our relationship to power and our experience of power is a process and the bit you're pointing to alexandra from the kind of vantage place of

elderhood is that through a lifetime of being um well through a lifetime of cycle awareness but of also relating to yourself day by day getting to know yourself you've actually created a foundation of power in your system in other words a bit like we can create a stronger immune system we can create a stronger capacity or greater capacity to hold our own power because it has to do, power is in a way available and it has to do with our capacity to hold it, allow it, and the responsibility that we take with it. So this thing of it being a process, I think, is really significant and important and ever-changing, as you say,

through the life stages we're in, through the circumstances of our lives. Yeah, it's ongoing. That's a really helpful parallel for me to see power and health as similar. It's a process. And Alexandra, I feel like what you shared there about when you hear those power questions, you feel yourself as a beginner again. It felt like a beautiful example of this vulnerability that is at the heart of our humanity and at the heart of this work with the menstrual cycle and power you know I felt touched by that moved by that oh you know Alexandra is feeling like a beginner right now because I have seen you

in your power you know and I'm actually thinking of when we all gathered together for your 70th birthday and it was one of the most beautiful demonstrations of a person holding healthy power that I've ever seen you know we were you had magnetized us all to you because we love you so um because of who you are and everything that you've given to us and then you invited us all to hold I hope it's okay for me to share this with everybody in our community but you asked us all to hold qualities for you for this next phase of your life and the presence that you held it was I could feel your power vividly you know it was so alive it was electrifying and so to know you as that and then to hear you now as oh I feel like a beginner again

to feel this cyclical spiraling process of power it feels like a great example of that vulnerability that you were pointing to in that original quote that power isn't this perfect tough hard bulletproof thing that it can feel like when we're like 23 and feel feeling invincible but there's a there's a relational element a vulnerable element it's it's interesting because this morning I was thinking oh Jesus I wish I had a nervous system of steel sometimes same same um and because I've been fascinated by this word power all my life i right from the beginning you know right back into my 30s when i started exploring this work um cycle work um well at least when my pain invited me into a deeper level of engagement with it because in my 20s i was into fertility awareness um i um was always interested in the word power power was very central to me and when i was

researching you know the etymology of words around menstruation everything power was always in there and so i was my whole long journey was about unpacking what is powerful about the power of the cycle so it's so interesting that our books have all got power in it in some shape or form it's so central to me and as someone who doesn't have that power that is normally demonstrated in the world, I never felt like that. You know, I wanted to be powerful. I wanted to feel I had authority, that I was at the main table, if you like. I've always got this thing in me, you know, of wanting to have effect in the world in the way some people do always felt it but i didn't have those kind of skills and um and the menstrual cycle journey

over the years has awoken me to a different kind of of the kind of power that I have and gosh there's so much packed into just that statement what's involved in that but right now I am so fascinated by the power of undefendedness which I'm lousy at I can be so reactive but this is my spiritual practice it's been my spiritual practice for a long time this capacity to encounter life and to dare to be undefended and that requires this is the upside of vulnerability because there's a vulnerability where we are you know we can't function and we don't have any sense of power and we can't do things. And, and then there's that vulnerability that's needed for us to be able to feel

if we're not vulnerable, we are machines. We can't feel and we can't know ourselves even if we're not vulnerable so we have to cultivate a vulnerability and um and i you know the menstrual cycle over and over again uh has brought me into uh this place of vulnerability of openness that has revealed so much power through trusting and letting myself feel and receive. And, you know, where the cycle breaks you down and the second half utterly exposes you at menstruation. Oh, God, nothing about that looks positive or powerful.

And yet it opens us to the most cosmic forces of power and what that whole cycle process educated me in around um daring to be uh myself daring to be vulnerable and touched by life rather than steal myself and armor myself to go out there but to to go out there as a as a human being basically yeah we see out there in the world what this steeled up bulletproof armored illusion of power we see what that does in our world there's another quote in Wild Power which feels important to bring in here. You say, power is always a step ahead of us. We're always negotiating and learning about it, tripped up by it and growing into it. We have to get smart. We have to come into a

respectful relationship with power and practice a mindful discipline around it and awareness of your menstrual cycle is this mindful discipline yes I love that bit of come into a respectful relationship with it and bring more mindfulness to it something that um Alexandra and I have learned from Julie Diamond, who we've been supervised by, and who wrote a great book called Power, A User's Guide. Everyone needs that book. But one of the things that she often reminded us of or reminds us of is the fact that we all underestimate just how much personal power we have. In other words, we are all unconscious of how much impact, how much effect we have. We always underestimate it.

And that's very closely tied, I think, to the fact of us coming from a not good enough place and a place of comparing ourselves to others and looking upwards at those who have more power and therefore undermining the power we have. And in that, the real shadow is that we aren't taking responsibility for the power that we do have. So menstrual cycle awareness is waking us up, is helping us to be aware of actually what power is alive in us today. Not the kind of ghost idea of how we should be, but actually of how we are. And in Alexandra's case, she's in this void place, feeling very vulnerable, highly sensitized, and she could easily be unconscious of the power that that holds and the effect that has. And she could be acting out from that place and being irresponsible with that

power, you know, acting out of fear and defensiveness, et cetera. But because she's paying attention, she is aware of the vulnerability and able to make choices around remaining undefended and being present with what is actually alive in her. So I think this is a really important link between the practice of cycle awareness and our relationship with power. And it's how we stay in step with our own power and really take responsibility for the power we do have on any given day. Yes, it's very powerful what Sharni has said. Yeah. Something you shared, Alexandra, when we were riffing about this conversation yesterday was about how the power of the menstrual cycle is accessed through our body. So like you're saying, Sharni,

through this awareness of what's actually happening in our embodied experience, not through concepts and thoughts not through our heads yeah and back to this word discipline I didn't know this word discipline was going to come up so much today but it feels like we're saying it a lot this disciplined work of daring to lean into our own cycle experience daring to trust that whatever we're experiencing is okay is good is right I mean that is one of the biggest gateways to power I've ever experienced and continue to experience and it's happening for me right now in this kind of mystical mythical place I'm in on day 30 you know trusting that

okay I can't lead this conversation as I might do on day 16 and have a very ordered plan and structured and make it make sense and summarize everything neatly and succinctly no I can't do that today that's not the power I have at my fingertips but I can hold you know a big understanding of power from my heart right now and be inside it and feel it and follow and listen and be receptive. So that's the power. Yeah, yeah, you are, you are courting the unknown, Sophie. And that is such an enormous power. Yeah. And it brings a clarity to it that is very different from mental clarity. It's sort of like a knowingness clarity. And that's really quite something. Yeah, really awesome. Yes, I want to just take up that point, Sophie, about the power of the cycle. This is our theme.

And what's powerful about the power of the cycle? what do we actually mean when we talk about the power of the cycle what does that actually mean and um and it it's it it's the it's it's what we experience when we allow ourselves to be um held by cyclical. It's what opens up or is revealed when we dare to actually trust the phenomena of our experience of the menstrual cycle and to trust the feeling states that we move through over the course of the menstrual month. And rather than go into a performative mode of how one is supposed to be into the rhythm of your own being rather than what you're supposed uh okay as not wrong as um they are your experience of yourself there's nothing right or wrong that it is it just is and what opens up in that act of leaning back into the cycle and and and allowing yourself to be paced by the rhythm of the cycle because you know you're

making i know you've been making um uh decisions in these last few days sophie about what you can and can't do in where because of where you are in your cycle and you've been sort of clocking that or plotting that for a few days yeah and back to our irregular cycles episode I expected to have started bleeding by now and be moving on but no I haven't so here I am yes there's such a discipline going on of you know just really valuing the place you're in and by the way you wrote some cork emails for us from that sort of poetic email I thought what sophie on she's really on something when we were checking them you were really channeling something because that's what you're much more

open at that time um yeah but um if you had been trying to sort of perform as you're supposed to you know at work and just turn up regardless how that would have jarred your whole system and in a sense traumatized something in you and you would have felt less effective and quite not great afterwards so this trusting of that where you are in the cycle is okay each place in the cycle is is okay and just really allowing yourself to be moved and touched by that so i am leading to something here that act of leaning into and letting us and feeling yourself um and pacing yourself opens the doors to these glorious powers that the cycle holds in each inner season of the cycle.

Each phase of the cycle sort of awakens different capacities, abilities in us or enhances, amplifies, shall we say. Yes, it amplifies different types of powers so we get to you know for example if you can slow down coming into menstruation and and really pace your energy state and the feelings that are emerging you'll find that you're and are able to follow that impulse just to drop and are able to do it, of course, that an extraordinary thing can happen. You start to feel these beautiful, like love suddenly is there, a sense of ecstasy. I mean, you can get pretty high at menstruation if you start. I mean, there's lots

of things we could say. And of course, we name all those powers in the book. And equally, I love, for instance, what happens if you can really pace yourself coming into your inner spring, that's the pre-ovulatory time. And every month, you get to where it's like these fresh glasses you put on and go oh yeah yeah just yes my life's okay because you have that cynical moment you know just before the cycle ends where it's all shit and what and then you're oh wow yeah and it's this renewal of hope and possibility and so on i mean those are just two simple examples. There's loads of different powers, you know, literal talents and gifts we have in each part of the cycle.

But you can't approach that with your head. You can't, for instance, you can read. We list it all in Wild Power and you can read all about it and you go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But to actually experience them, you have to dare to feel your own being and follow your own being and have a patience with it. I'm going to pause for a moment to share an invitation with you we are calling for thousands of us together for a collective kind of homecoming to the power that lives within our cyclical intelligence it's a free event called awaken your cycle power it's online with Alexander and Sharni

and this amazing global red school community of cycle seekers it's on wednesday june the 5th at 1 30 p.m new york time 6 30 p.m london time we'll provide a recording if that isn't a good time for you or if you're not available to attend live and you can join us at redschool.net forward slash cycle power it's for you if you're longing to know the power of the menstrual cycle in new ways, whether you have a regular cycle, challenging irregular cycles, or even no longer have a menstrual cycle. We'll be together for an hour and a half to explore the power that lives in your cycle, how you can awaken it through befriending your inner seasons, and how you can

embody it to transform everything in your world. That's been my personal experience for sure. This event will also serve as an introduction to our new Cycle Power course, which we can't wait to share with you. So you can find out all about the event and the course at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. You know, often people will ask the question and we have been um approaching this question throughout the conversation but what is powerful about the menstrual cycle and something you've said there alexandra really captures it it's that the cycle is moving us through different states of being. It's inviting us into these powers, these qualities. We're talking here about personal power.

We're talking here about power within. If we want to drink of this medicine, if we want to be filled up by these powers, our task is to honor where the cycle is leading us. And that's how we come to embody these powers in each inner season, because you can't make them happen uh and in fact if you think you should be experiencing them you're really stepped out of the process so it has to do with this authentic relationship with yourself and your cycle moment by moment and um and it has nothing to do with what anyone said you should experience or how it should be, which is why we have our big red rule. This is personal power. This is between you and your cycle. This is about you and your nature.

This is about you and your calling. So it's utterly about something authentic. And the beautiful thing is it's like a, I want to say springboard, because when we do this and when we actually cooperate with our cycle and cooperate with our changing energies and adapt how we live and our behaviors and what we choose to do based on where we are in the cycle um we access this power which is a resource and that then is like a springboard it mobilizes us into inspired action yeah it changes what we do and how we do it in a way that's so much more aligned to you know what we're really about our purpose and and ultimately i would say that's what power is

for it's ultimately for realizing our purpose yeah fulfilling we are and realizing our purpose that's big what you just said shawnee can i just give an example of this alexandra it feels like there's something you want to say but i just want to land what you just said inside this example that you just brought in alexandra of me in my day 29 yesterday where in a non if i wasn't cycle aware I would have woken up put my kind of armor on to go out into the world and do my job which I used to do but instead I knew okay day 29 I'm expecting my bleed today I don't know when it's going to come I've got quite a lot that I need to write but I know that I need to be in the woods just that intuitive instinctive knowing I'm going to take the dog out that's a silly thing to do when you're supposed

to be starting work to do writing you know in a in the normal world but I went out and in that relationship between me my body moving the river the trees the trees, the sunlight, I started to land, these ideas could bubble up, there was space for these creative ideas to rise. And I followed them, I trusted them, I lent into it. And I wrote these pieces that hopefully people will find beautiful and inspiring. But if I hadn't trusted that and leaned into that, and if I'd gone with what I thought I should do then none of that would have been able to happen and everyone listening will have you know there are dozens of examples of that from the past month probably of things they should have done but they took a slightly different path and something generative came from it.

Actually the bit that I just wanted to add was the word empowered and and when your example here is perfection because you stayed in the river of yourself and you unleashed something and it was very creative and you um you probably ended the day feeling pretty tired because you were on with things but i'm hoping you ended the day feeling uh satisfaction or a goodness i mean because you today you described feeling really good well and i imagine if you had put on that armor and just pushed through that might have yeah the the kind of fallout from that today yeah well i felt completely inside my calling it makes me like it hurts in my heart to feel how often we are unplugged from that feeling of being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right people our power

flowing through us because of because we're not supported to lean back into ourselves because so many of us don't have this discipline of menstrual cycle awareness that invites us to come back and trust our own direct experience and it would be remiss of me to leave out the fact that there are so many power structures in our world which quite very actively and often deliberately hold power back from certain people in our world, you know, those are real, and they must be taken down and dismantled. And there are so many powerful movements that are doing that. But this, I feel that there's such a potent opportunity for everyone here with this power with that you're speaking to Sharni you know we have an opportunity to lean into our own authentic innate power

through through this practice of menstrual cycle awareness as a kind of great fu to the to the power structures that might be holding power back from us, you know, that is within our agency to do that. Yeah, exactly. And Dr. Cree Dye, who supports us on the Menstruality Leadership Programme, one of the things she says is inner change is social change. And we see how this kind of power within helps us all to be in a right relationship with power so that we can experience power with. In other words, we can really engage with the challenges of the power structures and what's going on in our world in a way that can evolve it,

in a way that can really allow something new to happen in our world versus coming at it from a power over place, which it doesn't, it just lands up causing more suppression, more destruction, even as it might initially look effective it doesn't ultimately create change um so you know for each one of us this is where our activism begins is us coming to relationship with our power the power within us and taking responsibility for that and and from that place we can really start to affect change okay another example is coming up for me right now it feels it feels important to land this in concrete examples i'm thinking of kate shepherd cohen so she took on menstrual pain and the way it's dismissed in our world i would say

like that's what she took on her activism and she through relating to her cycle and her cycle experience, she was able to contact her power and set up this whole program, which is now rolling out through the UK, through the NHS, menstrual cycle support, where people now have access to menstrual cycle awareness and support to alleviate their or meet their menstrual cycle support, where people now have access to menstrual cycle awareness and support to alleviate their or meet their menstrual pain in new ways. And she that that came from her leaning into her cycle, contacting her power, finding her calling and saying saying yes to it. And we have an episode with Kate Shepard Cohen that I can link to in the show notes so you can hear more of her story. But that's, you you know just one example of what this can look like in the world it's so

great that story is so powerful actually it's amazing and I want to I'm just thinking of people because I'm going back to your story Sophie of you know uh making the decision to go and walk in the woods you know before you come to work and so on. And I'm thinking of someone who, who works, you know, has to turn up in an office and, you know, does not work in a cycle friendly workplace, and, in fact, complete opposite and um they just have to you know go to work and uh and i want to say if you're someone who's in that position who has to kind of you know knuckle under in inverted commas the extraordinary don't abandon your cycle awareness practice just even the awareness that oh god i you know i have to go to work and do blah blah today and i'm feeling just so permeable and vulnerable um so there's that just having that

pause of awareness with yourself i want to really emphasize the potency, the power, can I say, simply in that thought, because you're dignifying yourself. This awareness is everything. You're just dignifying yourself, that you may make very subtle shifts and accommodations in your day that you might not have done. Yes, you still have to do what you do, but there may be subtle shifts and change. And in my book, there is no small shift, even though we talk about the 1% rule.

The 1%, you know, the 1% change, you're doing the 1% change. I tell you, 1% packs a punch within our psyches. Something shifts. And it is a discipline. It's an ongoing practice. Not the least of which is that it's actually feeding your self-esteem. And this is key for power this is self-empowerment yeah at work yeah and so I want to come back to what I said earlier because this is such a good example of it you know when I said we always underestimate how much personal power we

have this is a really good example it's so easy to look to the kind of structure of our day or the sort of outer responsibilities and forget the power we do have within the situation. So wherever there are limits in our lives, I really invite all of us to turn towards ourselves and feel the place we're in as alexandra said that mindfulness is number one and then from knowing how you are and what you're needing to really ask yourself what power do i have in this situation what choices can i make how can i adapt or how can i tend myself differently and that's that that's taking responsibility for your power. It might not look like much in the moment, but when you do that, when you move towards yourself

in that way, Alexandra, you said it was self-esteem building. That is absolutely right. You are recovering the latent power that is so easily dismissed. We all do it day in, day out. We dismiss the choice we have. We dismiss the power we have. So I think that is something, a muscle we can all, you know, really exercise regardless of what's going on in our lives, regardless of the limitations.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like a gratitude practice exactly everything might be really shit in your life then you go oh hang on life's just pouring air into my lungs yeah and all the birds are singing and it's brightening my spirits that yes yeah there is agency and it could be that you have you can make the choice to text your friend and say, help me send me a message of encouragement right now. And that one message could change the shape of your day because it's given you that little boost. Yeah. Yeah. It's the micro moments, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm well, I'm sort of following this theme of, you know, responsibility and, you know, the powers. Well, we brought up this idea that there are powers held within the cycle.

When you practice cyclo energy, you start to release all these different capacities. And we've also spoken about that we all have some power and and to recognize the power we have and taking some responsibility for that and i want to just really talk about how another aspect of the power in the cycle is that through the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, you're growing into, I call them meta powers really. I used this word the other day with you. It was the best way I could describe it is, so you have these powers,

but then you're developing kind of meta powers through the process of practicing cycle awareness. You're growing into yourself more and more. You're discovering yourself more and more. You're discovering yourself more and more. And you're discovering your own nature. And you're discovering what you're actually built for and what you're not built for. So it's another way of talking about how you're discovering what you are here to serve in the world, what your calling is.

And so it's like this power that comes from growing into yourself through menstrual cycle awareness. And this empowerment, you know, menstrual cycle awareness is like an empowerment process. Yeah, yeah yeah exactly you know we say how at menarche you step into your power and then through your menstruating years you're tutored in the nature of power and how to handle it and then at menopause your power is fully liberated so you're sort of going through this um incremental upgrade every month through your menstruating years we're moving towards menopause yeah

that's an incredible gift of power from the cycle and um it's a we could say it it it awakens us to our calling, our creative power. And also for me, this is what's most alive, is that the sort of ultimate kind of meta power of the cycle is that it's a process or it's a spiritual path of practice. It's a process of awakening. Now we're talking power. Wow. It initiates us into new levels of awareness all the time,

new levels of awakening, new levels of connection with life. So it's weaving us into our place in the world. And it's growing in us the capacity to take responsibility for that power. Because, yes, I, you know, menopause is one massive awakening experience that you post menopause are, you know, learning to inhabit that consciousness. And that's a discipline all its own. It's not a given that I'll handle that power that's awoken in me at menopause. On the contrary, there's an ongoing practice there of staying awake to something and taking responsibility and using the very real powers that i feel in me and not abusing them because

um just because one has power doesn't mean you're not you know there's no guarantee there's no guarantee that you're going to use it wisely though that there was you say in wild power history makes it clear that no one is exempt from abuse of power there's no guarantee that you'll use your power wisely but we're convinced that the menstrual cycle is our best bet to make sense of power and train ourselves to be wiser custodians of it. He was hoping. Wow. And then you say there are many ways in which the cycle helps us to do this. And we unpack these throughout the book. But the key mechanism is the premenstrual deflation our ego undergoes each month. In short, we have an inbuilt antidote to invincibility and hubris.

Lucky us. Lucky us. Comes with the package. I have to say, getting older is also an inbuilt puncturing of ego daily. Motherhood. Motherhood 2, can I say? Yes daily motherhood motherhood too can i say yes motherhood too yes yeah any initiation where where we don't have the control that we once had exactly yeah where where control begins to slip through our fingers we we meet our edges and the limits of our agency, you know, the limits of our ego power. Yes, I mean, I could become a tyrant.

I mean, that's one option at this point. It's very tempting. And this premenstrual power isn't something that's respected in our world is that it's demonized um and you were saying this when we were riffing before alexandra that we're not because we're not taught cycle awareness because the cycle isn't validated it's no wonder that it's hard for us to manage the this ego deflation power in the premenstrual phase absolutely yes um oh gosh there's so much to say about this autumn power premenstrually you know you are being awoken to much more instinctual energies. And as I like to say, your polite, socialized self bites the dust. So your capacity to sort of suppress those energies, you know,

that sort of more animal, visceral kind of energy in you, it's like all the stays are loosened, you know, on the corset. Sorry, not everyone knows that term, I realize. On the corsets of ourselves, you know on the corset sorry not everyone knows that term i realize on the corsets of ourselves you know we hold ourselves in a tight corset to sort of fit and all the stays of this corset are starting to give and we're not held in in the same way and so um this other kind of energy gets unleashed in us uh and there's a very critical energy in there which we can turn on ourselves but we also turn on the world and there's a very kind of uncensored raw expression that can come out and the other phase is if you're practicing menstrual cycle awareness you're sort of building

in yourself the capacity in a sense to be sufficiently present to challenge those or to channel those autumn powers more coherently. I mean, it's a work in progress, can I say, you know. is so big what you're saying Alexandra and I can imagine that so many people listening can relate to this feeling of the corset strings becoming looser and I'm wondering if we should stay focused on our topic here today because we actually are gonna I think gonna have a part two to this conversation where we will look at the powers of each specific inner season and we might play with the power cards here and like just name some of these different powers that are available to us in each of these like four different gears that we have available to us in these four phases of the cycle and we can expand upon the premenstrual inner autumn powers there and just come back to the thread that we were with right at the beginning of the conversation of how

the it's the vulnerability that the cycle invites us into that really gives us access to this power and how the inner autumn really is the the gatekeeper you could say of this vulnerability the the invitation into this vulnerability yeah exactly that ego deflation we're speaking of is it's coming out of this armoring and coming into um a much more real experience of your fragility and vulnerability and the limits you have as a human being, both just a human being in a body, you know know has limits and is at the mercy of time and the environment and so many things but also the limits of who you are your own nature your um uh your kind of gifts and talents and so on all have their limits. And then the life you've lived has created all kinds of very interesting chinks and colors and flavors. Through the richness of your history,

the traumas you've faced, the challenges you've experienced, you are weathered by life. And when you come into the premenstruum, all of that confronts you and you kind of come out of the illusion of being invincible and being superhuman. And you start to feel your humanity and that is so profoundly humanizing and connecting connecting because you can suddenly feel compassion and you can suddenly relate to all of life you know to the natural world because the natural world mirrors this everything dies everything ends everything is temporary and if we don't have an experience of this vulnerability we can very easily go into that hardened sort of power over place this is what brings us into power with this brings us into relationship with life because it creates empathy when we can be with our own

mess then and have compassion with it then that compassion becomes empathy with others in their own mess and that's a natural antidote to the power over because then we can't help but be with everyone else in their mess exactly and realize and realize that it's all for one you know one for all that we're we're all in this together and your suffering is my suffering because I feel it. I feel it. It's not just a thought in my head, but it's, I feel your suffering is my suffering. And, and so, you know, it's not about me, the individual anymore, which is a lot of where the power over stuff in the first half of the cycle is, is all about you, you know, and, and what you can get in life and what you can achieve.

But in the second half of the cycle, yeah, it becomes about us and what we need and how unless we go there together, we're not going. And so we feel that, you know, we feel our our part we feel that we're here to serve we feel that we are here to contribute and you know when I think of the kinds of power we see in the world which is misused power so often it's devoid of Yeah, it's much more about making something happen or getting somewhere, but it's devoid of service. And this premenstruum and the inner winter as well just take us back

into our service, our contribution. And the value of that, that's the big thing. We've often missed the value of our contribution in this bigger dance that's going on. Oh, I've got shivers head to toe. That feels like a very potent place to complete for now, recognizing that this is essentially the the golden thread behind every conversation we have about the menstrual cycle and menopause yeah yeah it's walking us

home to our power yeah i just feel in myself really soothed and still and quiet with all that's just been said. It's very, very lovely. And I'm feeling really fired up to work with people and show them how to do this because the information isn't enough. And Alexandra and I are so committed to getting practical and detailed about how we can all awaken this power within that lives in our menstruality and in our cycles. Can't wait yeah so if you're feeling called if you're listening and feeling called please do join us in june for cycle power we would love to have you with us you can find out all about it at redschool.net forward slash cycle power thanks you too i loved that wild safari of a conversation about the menstrual cycle and power and we'd love to hear how it lands for you know you know we're going to be talking about power a fair amount over

the next few weeks so please write to us share your thoughts your questions and we can carry on the conversation thanks you too thank you sophie thanks Thank you, Sophie. Thanks. Hey, thank you for being with us all the way through to the end today. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do that on Apple Podcasts. Please share this conversation with a friend who you know might be interested in the power of the menstrual cycle and want to know more. And please do join us on June the 5th for Awaken Your Cycle Power. It's a great introduction to the cyclecle Power course and also just a great event if you're looking to discover more about how the menstrual cycle can help you awaken and embody your own power to step into your power. You can find out all about it and register at redschool.net forward slash cycle power.

All right that's it from me for this week. I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.