The Menstruality Podcast - 147. Coming Home to our Wild, Instinctual, Embodied Wisdom (Michaela Boehm)

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Many of us in the Red School community have an intuitive longing to connect to the wild Feminine within us. As our guest today Michaela Boehm says in her book, The Wild Woman’s Way, we’re longing to connect to “the ancient part of us that knows the rising of the moon, and the movement of the tides. The instinctual, deeply connected aspects in each of us that has survived and thrived in the wilderness for many 1000s of years”. Today we’re exploring how to rewild ourselves, how to come back to body and pleasure, and how to move from doing to being, amidst the challenges of modern life. Our guide is the wise and wonderful Michaela who is known for her work with high-performing individuals, including Oscar-winning actors, and Grammy-winning musicians. She’s the founder of The Non-Linear Movement Method®, a powerful somatic release modality. Her work has recently been featured in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix Show “Sex, Love & goop” and Will Smith’s bestselling memoir ‘Will’.We explore:The story of Michaela’s childhood longing to become a witch, her early years apprenticing with her mentor, and how she eventually became the holder of an ancient, female held, tantric lineage.Why we need to be able to access both our ‘Go’ mode and ‘Flow’ mode as women living in our modern world. The embodiment practices that enable Michaela to live a huge, wildly creative life without burning out. ---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.hardyMichaela Boehm: @micboehm77 - https://www.instagram.com/micboehm77

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 joining us today. I'm really excited to share this one with you. I enjoyed this conversation so much. So perhaps you, like many of us in the Red School community, have this intuitive, instinctual longing to connect to

the wildness within you, to the feminine within you. And as our guest today, Michaela Boehm says in her book, The Wild Woman's Way, we're longing to connect to the ancient part of us that knows the rising of the moon and the movement of the tides, the instinctual, deeply connected aspects in each of us that has survived and thrived in the wilderness for many thousands of years. And today in our conversation, we look at how to rewild ourselves, how to come home to our bodies, to pleasure, how to move from doing to being, even amidst all of the busyness and challenges of modern life. And as I mentioned, our guide is the wise and wonderful Michaela Baum, who's known for her work with high performing individuals, including Oscar winning actors and

Grammy winning musicians. She is good. She's the founder of the non-linear movement method a powerful somatic release modality and her work has recently been featured in Gwyneth Paltrow's Netflix show Sex Love and Goop and Will Smith's best-selling memoir Will. We look at Michaela's story of her childhood longing to become a witch her early years apprenticing with her mentor and how she eventually became the holder of an ancient female held tantric lineage. We look at why we need to be able to access both our go mode and our flow mode as women living in our modern world and we hear about the embodiment practices that enable Michaela to live this big wildly creative life without burning out. So let's get started with coming home to our

wild instinctual embodied wisdom with Michaela Baum. So thank you so much Michaela for joining us. I know everyone in our community is going to be delighted to hear from you and I have so so many questions but I wondered if we could start where we always start with this podcast which is to check in around how we are cyclically so I'm not sure where you're at with your journey with your menstrual cycle or menopause process. But I wondered if you minded sharing through that lens how you're doing today? Yeah, well, I am now officially menopausal. So just, just for a few, I mean, now, I guess I'm post menopausal, because it's been a year and three months.

So, you know, it's all very, you know, technical, I guess. But I'm 56 now, so it's fairly late in the game as far as, you know, I had very regular cycles till fairly recently. And then had pretty much one year where there was some transition. And then that was that and um so where i'm at i'm still very much feeling like there is cycles even i'm no longer bleeding and um which is quite interesting to note and not always entirely pleasant to say it very nicely. But at least, you know, one of the things that I've always liked, I've been always very, very regular and always really loved bleeding

and really loved being, you know, being in my body with everything. And so I'm still really quite enjoying that there's still cycles because it feels right and it feels natural. And at the same time, it's also quite puzzling, you know, that, of course, the cycles take on different meanings. And like I said, it's not always pleasant. It's a lot better now than in the first couple of months of not bleeding where it was pretty heinous to say the least but um yeah so that's where I'm at thank you for sharing that do you connect with the cycles of the moon is that a part of what you feel like you're cycling with or are these cycles that are coming from inside you that you're tracking um well i would say that when

i um still was bleeding i was lined up with the moon because i'm very very lucky in the sense that i live out in nature in a place where there's very little light pollution even though i'm about and two hours north of los angeles it's in a valley and it's somewhat secluded. And we have a law in the area where I live that there's no streetlights. And it's very little. Yeah. So it's quite dark. And of course, when you actually get to have dark nights and bright days and things like

that, the body lines up quite, at least my body lined up quite easily. And so I'm still somewhat on the moon, but now it's more that through several weeks of the month, certain things are happening. So it's no longer building up know, building up to, to that, the event of the release, it's more like, I feel really, really energetic. And then I get like puffy, and then I get kind of gnarly. And then I get really puffy. And then when I'm about to lose my mind, I'm fine again, right. So it's more like, it's more that kind of a cycle. And I'm still tracking it for certain symptoms, because I think it's very informative. But it's not as clear cut anymore.

Fascinating. I mean, I could spend a whole hour talking to you about just that. But there are, there are so many topics I'd love us to explore. And as I was dreaming into this conversation, you know, obviously, you have decades of experience on multiple levels around intimacy, sexuality, embodiment. And, but it feels like what it all comes back to is coming home to our bodies, coming home to the wisdom and intelligence, the natural intelligence in our bodies. And I wondered if we could track that through your story because there are some I mean I'm fascinated by your life story there are certain pieces I want to pull out like you described how you grew up as a girl in Austria and what you really wanted to be

was a witch and I wondered if you could walk us into that. What was life like for you in the wilds of Austria? Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because the book, of course, that you're referring to is The Wild Woman's Way. And The Wild Woman's Way is about the archetype of the wild woman, which is the part of us that comes back to nature. It's not like a lot of people think, you know, frothing at the mouth and screaming and clawing the walls. It's actually the exact opposite. It's rewilding into our cycles and our bodies and our nervous system regulating and integrating.

And that entire thing that you were talking about, the coming back to our body and coming back to nature via our body, is kind of our birthright. And, you know, not kind of, it is our birthright. It's just that if you're not exposed to it in the early days, then it's much, much harder to feel back into it and I was really really lucky in the sense that I grew up you know Austria is fairly fairly and I mean it's not it's not unpopulated it's quite populated for its square footage but it has a lot of natural world I mean there's a yeah I grew up about 25 minutes outside of Salzburg. And you're in nature. You know, there's just there is houses, but there's pastures and there's mountains and there's unoccupied spaces.

And I grew up at a time and a place where my life was essentially I had to go to school reluctantly, but I had to go to school, you know, reluctantly, but I had to go to school. And then I would come home and do my homework or not as quickly as possible. And then I went outside all through the spring and the summer and the fall, not in the winter so much because it's really, really or it used to be really, really cold. It's not as bad anymore but um so I essentially spent from like two or three in the afternoon till sundown outside unsupervised essentially because there was nothing to really worry about um you know uh in in the context of where I grew up and the environment and society in that place of Austria and that time, of course. So I was just out and my entire life revolved around, you know, climbing on the backs of cows because there were no horses to be found and climbing on trees and

rowing an old door over a pond, which, you know, my parents are still terrified of because I couldn't swim at that point, you know, and stuff like that. And, you know, animals and I always had snakes and lizards as pets and, you know, all of that. So with that said, I had that kind of an upbringing and then um I was given a book by um uh well it's my I call him my uncle but of course he wasn't an uncle he was the godfather of my father so um we weren't technically related but um you know very strong family affinity and it was a book about um you know

very powerful witches and and women and so I decided right then and there that was gonna be my gig and uh it was fairly easy to and now I didn't really know what that meant in its entirety but in the book there's a lot of umcrafting and herb lore and spells and things like that. And in the part of Austria where I grew up, that's very easy to come by. Probably now even less and more, meaning there's more emphasis on it now again, but way back when there were still traditional herbal healers in every village, essentially. And you could find people, which I did, who, you know, wrote books and had manuals and showed me. And, you know, and everybody knows where to pick the mushrooms and where to get the blackberries and all of that. So I was very lucky to have gotten very early on entry and education in that.

And I also have to say that I have incredible parents who didn't immediately squash my ambitions, which of course makes a big difference when my parents were like, okay, well, you want to learn these things? Go ahead. Here's how you do this. This is what you do and I uh you know I produced these very bizarre pasta sauces out of wild crap wild

picked herbs and stuff that must have been this but my parents ate no problem I love this I love this um at red school we we do quite a lot of work around the menarche, the first period experiences. Alexandra and Sharni, who run Red School, they describe how it's like the calling, our calling, our purpose awakens when the first blood comes in. And I was curious if you remember your first periods and like what was happening around at that time. Yeah, I did. I do. I think I started like along the path of inquiry quite a while before that because I was a late bleeder, so to speak. I didn't actually get my well, I mean, late, late now, particularly, I didn't get my first period till I was 15 and so I was already kind of on my path and I was probably one of the last of my girlfriends

of my close girlfriends getting my period so it was a little bit like okay you know when is it happening already and so it was also I would say I don't know exactly how to say say it because it was just this you know it was just the thing right there wasn't anything negative but there wasn't anything you know nobody went you're a woman now we have to have a ceremony none of that happened it was just like okay fine yeah you know here's some pads and this is what you do and cool and so you know my mother was very matter of fact about it but not dismissive and there was no negative around it it was just not that big of a deal. And I do think though, that because my mother, I was quite, you know, matter of fact about it, it wasn't a big deal in the positive

way as well. So I never really had a lot of attention on, I had cramps and stuff like that, of course, but it was never like, oh, you need to be in bed or you can't do things or whatever. It was always more like, okay, well, this is how you do this. And this is how you do that. And, you know, here's how you work with tampons. And, you know, so it was kind of, it wasn't, it wasn't a thing and because it wasn't a thing I've always had a very good and happy kind of time with my with my period and and around all of that I've always known when I ovulated I could feel it my mother told me what that felt like I felt it. You know, that was the end of that. So it was very, let's say, ordinary in the best possible way. Yeah.

I mean, what I'm hearing is no shame. There's a lot of literature now and evidence and research around shaming experiences at Menarche and then ongoing menstrual problems. So it's great to hear. And that she taught you how to feel your ovulation, that she was body literate in that way that's exciting yeah yeah yeah so I was like oh I have this weird thing and she goes uh you know essentially where are you on your cycle oh yeah that's what that is um and then that was that was the end of that you know and and so it was very matter of fact and very no fuss uh but i appreciate that and i think um you know in in the context of of in general my upbringing and sexuality that's was my parents gift that they weren't you know it was neither good nor bad. It was just it. Have extra layers.

And those not extra layers, I think, were a really wonderful gift. I feel that the neutrality, the blank slate that you could then just write whatever you wanted to on it. That's beautiful. And there was another key figure in your life um possibly entered in around now deeper your teacher and I really wanted to ask you about her because that is it's very rare to be mentored in that way in that early phase of life in your 20s and she um you describe in the book how she started by teaching you how to make tea and you were like sweeping the floors for her to do her chalk mandalas. And then eventually she started to share the teachings of Kashmir Shiaism with you, which I've been I've been blessed to receive some teachings in a different context that unfortunately was very unethical and difficult.

But I'm grateful for the teachings. Yeah, I just wondered if you could share with us it's a big question but some of the core things that you carry with you from from deeper from your time with her you know it's an interesting question in the context of where I'm sitting now versus where I would have said what I would have said maybe even five years ago, pre-pandemic potentially. And I don't know exactly how to say this. I used to give my teacher much more credit than my, let's say, upbringing.

But when I'm now where I'm sitting, you know, and I think it's a combination of having been quite isolated during the pandemic through a set of circumstances and also, you know, menopause and some other, you know, life changes that occurred all around the same time that I can now look back and this dovetails in what when you asked me about my mother in my first period, is that I can now really see that my mother set the or prepared the ground and really set the context for the life in which I could have a teacher and in which I could become a teacher and a mentor. And so nowadays, my mother, thankfully, is still alive. And so she gets to reap the benefits of my realizations in a certain way. Nowadays, I can see that a lot of the things that Deepa cultivated in me actually were instilled or started in my upbringing. You know, my mother's, the way she did things and the way things in my household were done

and a certain kind of orientation towards beauty and ritual and offerings and hospitality and generosity, all of those things were given to me by my mother. But you, of course, can't see that when you're young. You have to kind of break free from that a bit. And I had the really amazing joy and privilege of breaking free from it with somebody who still instilled the same kind of, I want to say values, but values is quite a bit of a fraught way of saying it, but orientations in me. And that's probably why I took to it. And so the way she taught was essentially she would give you something to do and then based on if you would do it or not, next things would happen. And that's an interesting way of mentoring, of course. And that's a very, you have to have ovaries of steel, so to speak, to mentor like that, right? Because it's a very hands-off, self-starting and self-responsible way

of engaging with any form of inquiry and teaching in the sense that there was nothing forthcoming till I asked. There was nothing forthcoming till I made a move, so to speak. There was nothing forthcoming till I solved the riddle, so to speak, of whatever it was. And it wasn't like I'm giving you a riddle. It was not a Zen kind of a situation, right? It was just like, try this, you know, try this. And and so chai making tea making was one of the first things i learned in that context where it was like okay you know feel this ingredient smell this ingredient ingredient um pulverize this ingredient to various stages taste it steep it

steep it this long steep it that long you know and then I had to kind of like experiment with that. And then the next ingredient came in the next ingredient. And so it was very, very, I mean, it was glacial, right. And I, it's kind of funny because of course, nowadays where I'm full-time teaching and mentoring and, and, um, you know, working with people, when you see that kind of attention span now versus when I grew up, of course, right? And, you know, this kind of stuff no longer really works like that, unfortunately, because there is something about that slow simmer in which you can learn a skill and also find out what you're willing and not willing to do or what your propensities are or where your weaknesses are. And, you know, I look back at it now and I can really see the gift when you're in your, you know, 20s, you're just a punk essentially. I mean, at least I can talk about anyone else, but I was a punk right I I was definitely um had a very uh

inflated uh view of my experience or my intellect or whatever right and so I must have been hell for everyone uh involved you know it feels meaningful in like the in the context of rewilding the feminine that it was glacial and thinking of a teacher of mine who I said I really want to connect more to the Celtic mysteries or like the teachings of this land and she said well look that there are people teaching it but just go and find your rivers go and find the wells go and sit with them listen to them walk the pathways be with the animals and and I have I have been for for the past years and it's it's like my body is learning rather than my head I guess I could say yeah yeah and and that was pretty much um you know a big part of what I was taught and am teaching now.

But of course, you lose those things on occasion. I went particularly as I started a career, I lost a bit of it. And then it came back. And yeah, I have to do the same here. And still, you know, I'm still connecting with the land. And everywhere I go, I have to always connect with the land freshly and learn more. And that's how you learn. And I still teach like that to a certain degree that I give practices.

And then I see what people come back with. And if people are just coming back with wanting more without actually having mind, you know, the wisdom of what was given, which is mostly the case, right? It's like, well, can I have another practice? And it's like, well, you haven't really done this practice. But yeah, can I have another practice? What are other practices, right? Anytime I hear what are other practices, I know that it's a skipping over. But you know, some people, that's how they learn, they accumulate, and then maybe they go back and um i wasn't really allowed to accumulate and go back i was just doled out bits by bits and a lot of the things um i was actually taught and given didn't unpack themselves till i was in my 40s yeah so now still I look back and I go oh yeah now this makes sense like

retroactively this makes sense but it didn't make or didn't even register back then so yeah wow what gifts like like seeds planted in your being and your consciousness that are now coming to flower wow yeah hey i'm going to pause this conversation with michaela just for a moment to share an invitation with you we have a free online event coming up hosted by alexandra and sharni it's called awaken your cycle power it's a live exploration of how we can all take this homecoming journey to the power that lives within us within our cyclical nature it's on wednesday june the 5th and you can take your seat at redschool.net forward slash cycle power it's for you if you long to explore the cyclical intelligence within you whether you have a regular cycle challenging cycles irregular cycles perhaps in your 40s

in the run-up to menopause or if you no longer have a menstrual cycle we would love to have you with us we'll gather for an hour and a half to look at the power that lives in the cycle how you can awaken it through befriending your inner seasons power that lives in the cycle how you can awaken it through befriending your inner seasons these four phases of the cycle and how you can embody this power to literally transform everything in your world which has definitely been my experience of menstrual cycle awareness the event will also serve as an introduction to our new cycle power course which you can read more about at redschool.net forward slash cycle power so you mentioned that you lost it a little as you embarked upon this

career in LA in West Hollywood eventually this hugely successful relationship counseling practice and then at a certain point, I think, in fact, it might have been in the book, you were describing that you were working with clients in England, and you were reminded of the land of Austria in your childhood. And you realized, oh, I need, I need the land, I need to get back to the land. And that's when you found your, your land and you and you found your animals. And can you tell us a bit about that process? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, this is so much there's such great questions, but they are very, you know, we need weeks. But I think one of the one of the things that worked both in my favor and also against me in certain ways. And it's, I think, important to say as a broader point, right,

I do have a fairly good head on my shoulders. And what I mean by that is I have substantial cognitive ability. That's the best way I can say it. And willingness to organize concepts and, you know, do things and achieve things. And so I think there's a bit of, nowadays particularly, there's a bit of fetishization of just the feminine, just the body, just the, you know, flowing and being with the flow. And I taught a guest, like i did some guest teaching

yesterday and everybody was like swaying on zoom and it's like you know it's like yes but you're here to learn something and that actually requires that you engage your head and have rational thinking because you do need intellectual underpinning so you can this was a practitioner training so you can support somebody else it's not enough to and sway as much as you can do that for yourself at home you must also use your head and use your capacities because we're not in the 50s and we're not little housewives and all the you know know, pseudo neo tantric stuff around, you know, is all good and nice, but it's, you know, it's not the 50s anymore. And just being the surrendered feminine is a gross reduction of what a woman is capable

of. And so that all said, I don't think there's anything wrong with going into the head, getting shit done, having a career, achieving something, as long as you still have the other thing going as well, right? It's not an either or, it's a both. And sometimes you have to be a bit heavier on one than the other for other reasons, for various reasons. So, for instance, if you're about to give birth, you're pregnant, things like that, you're going to be very heavily leaning on the body and you're not going to be cultivating, you know, your career as much.

But then at some point in your life early particularly uh particularly if you know you want children at some point it's perfectly all right to kind of lean heavily into um skill acquisition and career and you know creating resources because then you're also independent for the and you know you you can do it when you want to dial back from that which I think is really really important you were able to go and buy this land yeah based on the back of this brilliant career yeah that is exactly what I thought as I read the book see this is it she is she has yeah she's working that like you talk about do and flow there's the do sorry there's the go mode and the flow mode. And you're like,

oh, yeah, she's got she's got both of them. Yeah. And that's the thing, right? It's the thing you can't have just go, you're stuck in your head and completely disembodied. You can't just have flow, because you can't, you won't be able to organize yourself in any meaningful way. You need both. And then you need to know when you need what. And so I had a period of quite intense, let's say, career and skill acquisition period. And that was not entirely pleasant in the sense that, you know, as Hollywood, even back then, it was a very busy, loud, intrusive, kind of, you know, not super dangerous, but also not an easy place. But it was where I built a practice and had a career.

And, you know, I taught regular women's groups even back then. And it was not a problem. I was on one of the main drags. People could pop in, you know, so I built a business based on that. I also, in addition to that, saw clients in a drug rehab, which I helped create and ran for a while. That was kind of a very, very heavily traumatized dual diagnosis situation where we used, let's say, what was back then called alternative methods, meaning it wasn't just 12 step, it was massage, it was acupuncture, it was nutrition, it was workouts, it was life purpose, it was subconscious work, it was

psychology, and I was everything. And so I would see eight or nine clients there, then go back to my office, see another two, three people there. So I did very, very long days of very heavy clinical work and then teach on top of that. And in the beginning, also keep a job going. So I wasn't dependent on one income, you know, because when you build a practice, it's not always, you know, people go on summer vacation. They're like, shit. And then, of course, they come back and then you go, well, I wish I would have taken some time off. But in the early days of being self-employed, you don't know. So all of that said, I did all of that said I did all of that and then I had the the incredible fortune of being able to buy

the land that I'm on now and what it doesn't say in the book um because that came after and it will be in the next book uh is that then that property burnt down to the ground in a wildfire, you know, right. Well, as I was handing in the book, actually I was, my deadline was December 15th and the house burned on December 4th. So you get the idea. So that all said it took, it, it, that was a cycle of intense mental and, and physical demand on my capacity as a, let's say, businesswoman, how far, lack of a better word. And then when I came kind of back to being on the land, that really shifted back to,

you know, I could see the sunrise every morning. I could see the sunset every evening. I started traveling and teaching. You know, I could see the sunrise every morning. I could see the sunset every evening. I started traveling and teaching. I didn't go into the office every day anymore. And it really slowed me down and really oriented me back to, you know, where I kind of started growing herbs, growing medicinal plants, having chickens, having goats, having pigs, you know, all of the things that allowed me to kind of come back to where I started, so to speak, in, you know, in a different iteration. And I love that you're like, I'm a witch, it's happened. I'm definitely a witch now. And it's one of my greatest pleasures. I always had a vision of this fenced-in herb garden that provided kind of the support for being able to support women.

And it's pretty damn close to how I envisioned it. And of course, once I once the house burned down, and I had to rebuild everything, it pretty much looks exactly how I envisioned it, as far as the layout of the, you know, of the vegetable gardens and the herb gardens and stuff animals and my public teaching and my private teaching and my one-on-one clients and my writing and running a business it's it's definitely um it's a lot it's a big life that is that's a big life I'm listening I'm paying attention because that that kind of land is is my dream and I'm in the the go phase I'm in the building and it's um yeah it asks a lot and one of the things I so appreciated about the book I was listening to it as I was on the the rowing machine at the gym this morning when you you were listing all of the different possibilities

that exist for us as women in this era you know you named that because of the pill we were freed up from this like endless child rearing out of control um and that i've written it down somewhere um there are dizzy a dizzying variety of versions of women to which we can aspire boardroom executive mother entrepreneur homemaker vixen in the bedroom, visionary, academic, artist, yogini, leader, goddess, scientist, earth mother, warrior, like it goes on and on. And I felt so seen by that because it was right there for me this morning. I just, I came back from the gym. I've got to pack the lunchbox for my little one taken to nursery before I start my full work day. And I can tell I'm not in flow. And I can tell I'm being with my husband. And he reacts to me, we end up having a fight,

everyone's crying, I'm in a puddle of tears. And I'm like, this is it. This is the quandary. This is, I'm trying to do everything and still have this sexual fire with this man that I've been married to for seven years who I do like blessedly still find so attractive which is very helpful but yeah I was just nodding and saying yes what do we do what do we do as as women wanting to be with the wild woman archetype and having such a full life with it. Yeah. Well, I think there's a difference between having it all and having the things we want, right? Because the myth of having it all is certainly a myth. You can't have it all. And there's reasons for that, that I can go into. But we can't have it all.

There is choices that need to be made. There's only so many hours in a day and there's only so much energy we have. And so there's no human possible way that you can have it all at once. However, you can have different things at different times in your life. And you can certainly have different strands of engagement at the same time. But the important piece, I think, is to know in what a phase you are, right? You said you're in a building phase. And clearly, you're in a building phase everywhere. Your relationship is relatively, relatively young, right? I mean, seven years is a decent amount of time but still right it's a

relatively it's still you're still in there and then you have a small child and then that of course means that's a building phase right and then there's a business building phase and so in that phase there are certain things that will have to go and they will have to go not because they're not available to you or you shouldn't have them or couldn't have them but because you want to manage your energy responsibly so you don't burn out and that's not to say that you can't have them later or you can't have them on occasion, but there is choices to be made. And some of these choices, they're just choices.

Some of these choices feel like sacrifice or at least things that you could later regret, technically. And thankfully for us humans, we typically don't, you know, examine every choice that carefully because otherwise we'd probably go mad. But it is a thing, right? And so I think when I work with people, and this is true for myself, the thing that you want to look at is what is the purpose of your life in this particular moment? And then with that, what's the purpose of your relationship? And when you say, OK, the purpose of our relationship right now is we are mothering and fathering a small child with everything that means. Needing extra resources, needing extra help, having to, you know, get, I mean, you know, you have it a bit better than people in America because I'm assuming, you know, nursery and all of that is not as expensive. But nonetheless, you need more resource. You need more tribe.

You need more support. You need, you know, you need, you course, influences your intimate relationship because your primary responsibility in life isn't lovers, it's parents. And that's sometimes a bit of a rough moment. But if you look at it in a long time, what great privilege to be able to you know raise a child and do those things and so the key isn't to go well I can't now have that sexy wonderful part of me it's just you have to put it in a perspective it's not the first thing that comes out to play it shouldn't be the last thing that comes out to play but it's not the first thing that comes out to play so the way you arrange that in your body is that you go i have these things that were in the go domain let's say right and then i have

this part of my life which i am going to maintain but perhaps not deepen or perhaps it even goes back a tiny little bit but but it will come back. So then you go, how do I cultivate that? Well, probably taking time aside for just the two of you where you don't talk about the kid, the dog, the gas bill, or who needs to buy dog food tomorrow. So you have to kind of take it out and say, okay, well, maybe we only have once a week or so.

And I'm not a big fan of date nights per se, but most people now have to schedule things. So there's nothing wrong. The thing about date night that I don't approve of is when you think that that's the time you have to have sex because that's a disaster waiting to happen. But you have to say, this's the time you have to have sex because that's a disaster waiting to happen but you have to say this is the time you and I have intimate connection where it's just you and I and we don't talk about the kid and the dog and the job and the bills and the errands

but we talk about things we're thinking about things we've heard and read things we want to communicate to each other maybe we don't talk at all and sit by the lake and dangle our feet in the water or whatever. So you do have to make time for that and you have to allow for that. And then, of course, when you know that that's on the program, you will have to prepare for it the way you would prepare for any date. But if you're dating somebody freshly, you would never just roll out of the house and whatever you were just cleaning the kitchen and, you know, still have, you know, a Zoom meeting going on. And, you know, kind of writing some notes. You wouldn't do that.

You would actually put attention on yourself, on getting ready, on having a good time and on your partner. And that never, you know, that never should change. And that's not a should as in you should, but that's just common courtesy. And in plain good sense. But no, we can't do it all. And having priorities and knowing what season you're in is super important. And then, you know, there are some things that do fall by the wayside.

And while I would say that, you know, I lead a very big and busy and um you know bizarre in many ways bizarre good bizarre life but like you know some of the things i get to do in my regular week is most people can't even imagine in the sense that you know i have like i have multiple celebrity clients at a time who do really amazing stuff that I get to see and be part of and partake in. And I have an incredible set of friends and neighbors and support with whom I get to do really cool stuff. And I get to do all these different teaching things and blah, blah, blah. And I have all the dogs who live with me, you know, we live as a pack, you know, which is both really wonderful and sometimes also quite heavy duty. So all of that said, I do have a big life, but I had to make some very strong choices which some people would not want to make right and and you know for instance I did not have children by choice not by lack of fertility

but by choice and that's never an easy choice and it's certainly not a choice that most, you know, most people wouldn't make that choice. And it makes me someone very specific in other people's view. Not in mine. I really, you know, I don't walk around going, are people thinking, you know, I don't have it because I don't have that kind of environment. But ever so often when I get interviewed or something, people are like, aren't you regretting this? Don't you feel incomplete?

Are you barren? You know, like those kind of things where I'm going, barren? You know? I don't think we can use that word. Right. But that's how people think and operate. And then operate. And then of course, if you are somebody who wanted children and couldn't have them, or didn't find somebody to have them with, I can just imagine how shit this, you know, that kind of view feels. And of course, aging and,

you know, all of that. So that all said, I have to constantly make choices, not always the choices I want to make to maintain the things I want to maintain. So by no means do I have it all. And if you listen to me on a bad day, you will hear me complain about the things I don't get to do as much as I want and the things that I missed out and the things that I might maybe never get to do based on, you know, how it goes. And so, you know, I think that is how it goes. And even the most, let's say, joyous and or privileged and or lucky and or accomplished of us, right, have to deal with the fact, and I can tell you that because I work with very famous and or very rich people, and they have the exact same issues that we have, except that they don't have the luxury of suffering these things in private which makes it of course way worse right yeah way worse so well thank you for giving me the

permission to be fully in this season and I have often thought you know what if we have sex once a month and we just sneak it in in half an hour while Artie's watching something, then great. And we have a good time and we still fancy each other. And like, that's, that's this phase. And yeah, we talk about cycles here. We know that the cycle will come back round. I'm curious, Michaela, because there's, I can sort of imagine people listening and wondering, what, what is it that you sense in you that enables this much life to pour through you, that enables you to maintain such a full, big life without burning out? I'm not American, so I'm not that good at whatever self-promotion or however you want to call it. But I think when you ask me, how do I do all the things? It's relentless discipline.

I have relentless discipline that has been practiced for many, many, many, many, many years. So I have huge capacity in applying myself both physically and emotionally and mentally, where I've just taught myself and also have been taught and also life, right, to just stick with it, right, and not fuzz out. And the reason I can do that is I have an embodiment practice. And this brings us back to the very beginning of our conversation is I have an embodiment practice, and there's not a day where I am not engaging with my body and checking with my body and, you know, flossing my system, so to speak, as a means of maintaining an openness and awareness. And I think the other thing that I have is a relentless pursuit of,

for lack of a better word, beauty, but I don't mean beauty in the beauty of, you know, somebody's face, but beauty as in the goodliness, the goodliness and the godliness, so to speak, of nature, of color, of texture, of flower, of animal, of sky, of a candle of you know so so I have a very very deep love for beauty and there's nothing in my house anywhere that isn't arranged in some way you can see even my I can see it's beautiful yeah yeah zoom shelf gets constantly arranged and and um my plants and my you know like my books and my, you know, like my books and my, so I have this orientation towards ordinary, ordinary sacredness or sacred ordinariness. And I think that's my saving grace because when the going gets tough, my nervous system sits in a, in a kind of mandala meaning in a in this in a in a landscape not only my land landscape but in

in a landscape anywhere that is aligned and arranged in a way that I can make sense even when it's really really tough and it has been you know I've had several pretty horrendous things in a row happen, but I can sit there. And that kind of beauty and organization and layout and attention is the best way I can describe it. It aligns my nervous system immediately. So it doesn't matter how tough the going gets i can put myself into that landscape and then everything goes and so i don't have to spend a lot of time um regulating de-escalating um you know meditating whatever i just land in in my surrounds and I spent a fair share of time

in you know constantly recreating my surrounds as a means of regulating my system and that's why I have so much energy I mean it's a it's a really and you know really beautiful and amazing thing it's like I'm I'm never really tired yeah and and you know I mean sometimes I wake up a little bit but the moment I get going with my life I'm like what's next and I constantly want to do new things and create new things and write new things and you know it's like it's this endless thing that I just love it comes from my body yeah so yeah yeah that comes from your body I'm also thinking back to your mom too because she said she always put herself in the way of beauty or there was always ritual so that that was really anchored in you right from the beginning yeah yeah I mean I talked with my parents yesterday and

my sister's in-laws came to visit and um and my parents had my parents are 80 my dad's 83 my mom's turning 83 in a few weeks and um and you know and my parents are like oh yeah we were out with them we left at 10 we just came home at four and then my dad says your mom's making uh dinner and you know he points the the you know the camera thank god for you know facetime and my mother had produced like this massive board with like cheese and fruit and nuts and you know prosciutto and whatever and and she's like wheeling and dealing and she's 83 right and and and there's like no stopping my parents which is so cool you know because they're just relentlessly embodied in in even though they have quite a lot of both of them had

very debilitating bone injuries you know accidents and things but you know let's just get a joint replaced ever so often and then move on with life they sound amazing yeah they are amazing and speaking about discipline there was a question i wanted to ask you in the last couple of minutes, thank you for being so generous with everything you're sharing. You, you created this way of practicing the nonlinear movement. And I was very moved to hear how, when tragically your home was taken by this fire, you, I think I was listening to an interview, it might have been with Sarah of Ants Dover and she said yeah she's wonderful and you said she asked how did you get through that and you said before I did anything every morning I rolled out of bed I got on my mat and I did my non-linear movement and you said you really road tested this through that time and it was very

beautiful to hear how it held you yeah yeah it really did and this is true pretty much with everything I teach it's road tested in either my own body or in you know doing copious teaching and working with it and so um you know I think in general doesn't have to be non- movement. Nonlinear movement is super, super effective because it essentially utilizes the mechanisms of the nervous system to deescalate and unfreeze and regulate and all of that. But regardless of what you do, the kind of installation of something that you always do and that kind of carries you through tough periods in your life, I think is invaluable. And even if it's just your first cup of tea when you sit down on your computer or it's, I do a whole set of morning practice that's pretty much

non-negotiable that includes non-linear movement includes sitting facing the sun getting so that my circadian rhythms stay really stable includes my cards you know I made this oracle deck recently and so I you know pull my own card now enough time has passed that I don't remember the descriptions so I read it and I'm like wow this is really apropos for my you know like very funny so I pull a card I journal I do non-linear I sit um and um you know and then I might add on certain things. And sometimes I also, in that time, have conversations with my partner or whatever. It's like I have a period of time that, regardless of what happens, is the thing that happens. And sometimes I can only spend like three or four minutes doing it.

And sometimes I have an hour you know and but mostly it's 10-15 minutes and and but it keeps me stable regardless yeah and that's I think invaluable for anyone who wants to stay stable is that you have a few touch points throughout your day that always stay the same but that are for you you know not for other people or not an activity that's for gainful employment this has been so beautiful I'm so inspired I was already because just being around you you know it's infectious this life that you have flowing through you so thank you for everything you do and for the time you've given us today and yeah blessings on everything that you're doing and all your animals thank you and this was great amazing question so thank you

i'm so glad lots of love have a beautiful day bye into you bye ah thank you for listening today thank you for being part of the community gathered around this podcast in this work if you haven't yet please subscribe on apple podcasts and if you have a friend who you think would love to listen to this conversation with Michaela then please do share this episode with them or share something that you loved about it with a screenshot on Instagram and tag us we would love to see what you loved and we'd always love to hear from you if you have any guests that you would love us to interview please write to me at sophie at redschool.net and please please do join us on June the 5th for Awaken Your Psycho Power. You can take your seat at redschool.net forward slash psychopower. All right, that's it for this week. I'm really looking forward to being with you again next week.

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