The Menstruality Podcast - 148. How to Find the Gold in Your Menstrual Cycle Crossover Days (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Is there a particular point of your menstrual (or lunar) cycle where you tend to fall into a metaphorical ‘hole’? For many it’s day 5/6, coming out of the bleed or day 19/20 as you transition to inner autumn. These are two of the four ‘crossover days’ of the cycle. We like to think of these days as mini gaps in the fabric of life, or the ground giving way under you.Whatever metaphor works for you - and in this week’s podcast episode we laughed ourselves silly coming up with at least 20 metaphors - your crossover days are a little-known key to bringing the powers of the inner seasons of your menstrual cycle  - or the lunar cycle if that’s how you track - to life. Today we go one by one, exploring today’s the gifts and challenges of each of the four crossovers, through the lens of your stories and questions. (A note for you, if you have irregular cycles and you find it hard to track your inner seasons, let alone the transitions between them, you’re not alone, and Sjanie speaks beautifully about how to work with this cycle awareness challenge.)We explore:- How to hold the power of your menstrual insights as you crossover from inner winter into the rising energy of inner spring.- The one crucial task for you to do as you move into your ovulatory energy in inner summer to ensure you don’t spin off out of orbit and get frazzled by the heady heights of the metaphorical sunlight!- How slowing down and taking time for self-recognition and celebration as you enter the premenstrual phase of your cycle in inner autumn prepare you to meet your critic. ---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, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm curious to hear, is there a particular point of your menstrual cycle or the lunar cycle

where you tend to fall into a metaphorical hole? For many of us, it's day five or six coming out of the bleed, or maybe day 19 or 20 as you make the transition from inner summer to inner autumn. These are two of the four crossover days as we talk about at Red School. And Alexandra and Sharni think of these days as mini gaps in the fabric of life, or a time when the ground metaphorically gives way underneath you and whatever metaphor works for you and in this week's podcast episode we laughed ourselves silly coming up with at least 24 metaphors for this your crossover days are actually a little known key to bringing the powers of the inner seasons alive in your life or the lunar cycle if that's how you track and today in the podcast we go through them one by one looking at

the gifts and the challenges of each of them through the lens of your stories and questions and thank you to everyone who sent stories and questions in and just a note for you if you have irregular cycles and you find it hard to track your inner seasons, let alone the transitions in between them, then you're absolutely not alone. And Sharni speaks beautifully about how to work with this cycle awareness challenge. So let's get started with how to find the gold in your menstrual cycle crossover days with alexandra and shani so let's talk about the crossover days and i wonder it sounds like you two are in crossover moments in your cycle cycles at the moment where are you both at um yes she's she's not here so she must be in a crossover day because she's hello did someone say something she's just fallen in the gap between the seasons

and we have to shout quite loudly at her Sophie so she can hear yeah I did laugh kind of madly hysterically to myself this morning when I realized I am in a crossover so day five for me and just transitioning between menstruation, my inner winter and pre-ovulation, my inner spring. And I, you know, well, I spent a good part of the morning negotiating my own experience, which I'll tell you about in a moment. By the way, this is not going to be a one-word cycle check-in, but if you give me permission to get into this, Sophie-Jane, if I may have your permission, I promise you that this will be related to our theme today.

I get the feeling that whatever I want, wild horses can't stop this. So you go, maybe. Say yes or no, And I'm hearing yes. Yes, I spent a good part of my morning sort of negotiating my experience, which I'll tell you about in a moment. And then slowly, gradually it dawned on me that we were going to have a conversation about the crossover day today and that I am right in it. And I sort of had this real chuckle about the kind of divine orchestration of life and how funny it is. And by the time I arrived here for this conversation, I found myself thinking, gosh, I love the crossover days. Like, this is like one of the most significant aspects of the menstrual cycle experience.

But it's a bit like, you know, you have your five children and every time a different child is placed in front of you, you're like, this is my favorite child. This is the one. Here I am faced with this conversation about crossover days and I'm just feeling so lit up by their significance and the mysterious nature of them so more on that in a moment but let me tell you about myself and the place I'm in for a moment so I woke up this morning and having had a very intense bleed, and by that I mean everything in my life seemed to line up to create just an enormous amount of responsibility that was being asked of me, holding that was being asked of me, presence that was being asked of me, both in my family life and in my work life. So I was in this tension of this deep desire to let go and these inescapable responsibilities that I have.

And I navigated that in the absolute best way I could. And ultimately, I had a very, very, very good bleed. But cut to today where like, in a way, I've sort of used up all my fancy footwork to get to this point. It's like, oh God, it's now, it's a new day. And today I felt like so out of sorts. I just woke up feeling really kind of wrong. And like I wasn't put together quite right. And my first thought this morning, and I woke up at the crack of dawn,

my first thought this morning was like oh please please can I just stay in bed today can I just hide can I not have to be seen or do anything this kind of very kind of young part of me just wanted to just like curl up and disappear and I just stayed with that and this is what's so magical about the depth and possibility of cycle awareness that it's a bit like moving from the tip of an iceberg kind of down below the level of the water down to what's kind of beneath the waterline if you kind of stay with your experience this is what happens you get kind of lowered down into something kind of much bigger that's beneath. That is really where the power lies.

And I did that and it took time. It took most of the morning and various little kind of micro movements I was making in myself, I began to experience myself as being like neither solid or liquid or gas. I was just sort of, I kept kind of realizing I was moving between these different states of being and I couldn't quite hold on to how how I am I couldn't quite sort of land in myself because one minute I felt liquid and one minute I felt really kind of solid and next minute I felt like gas and and then with time and with attention I came into this and this wasn't a thought this this emerged I came into this felt sense of the thread between all of this flux and this is what was deep below the waterline for me this deep deep down was this fact of me being water, like whether I'm solid like ice or fluid,

like liquid or gaseous, like steam. It's like what I began to feel was the water. That is me in, in this flux. And it just felt like the space opened up in me. And I still feel very precarious and like maybe a little volatile and also probably a little shy. But the difference is now I can feel this deep down holding in me which is very very different to how I felt when I woke up this morning and maybe what we're going to say in

this conversation will give a little more context to crossover days and what what can happen to us and and actually why that's and why it's significant like why it's powerful yeah I was really profound what you just shared I feel like we just got such a download from you about the nature of what it is to transition on multiple levels. And I feel like we can bookend our conversation today with that. I feel like we're going to come back round to. So this makes sense of why you are both solid, liquid and gas. How's your crossover time feeling, Alexandra? I'm actually not in a crossover i had actually just

picked the card separate this morning so i was just laughing about that which is of course that crossover into the in a winter into menstruation but it's um full moon well full moon tomorrow it's so interesting because i'm sort of held in so many cycles at the moment we're in a huge creative cycle and i'm feeling the intensity of all that i would say this morning when i woke up and even now i can feel it there is this quality of irreverence in me the lightness of thought going on and um I was thinking about death actually but but I was thinking about I was but but the thing is it just the word death came into my head and then the word irreverence and party. And I was thinking about why don't we think of dancing on graves

as sort of, you know, bad? Why aren't we dancing on graves? Why aren't we just celebrating the person and dancing? So I thought, yeah, when I die die i want people to be really irreverent maybe i will be you can count on it so um i am but these thoughts were just randomly firing off in my head this morning there was this kind of um uh i was in that kind of playful mood of flipping from one thing, enjoying just flipping around these crazy thoughts and laughing about them.

So there's both this deep intensity going on. It's absolutely huge, the creative intensity. And then there's my lovely random brain. I do love it. Oh, God, I am loving being invited into your inner worlds today. It's absolutely fascinating. I'm not in a crossover either, but I have just been through a crossover and I'm on day 14 today and I'm just

tracking this is something we'll talk about later that in this crossover from inner spring pre-ovulation to ovulation which for me tends to happen around 12 13 day 12 13 one of the things you say is this is the time to say yes to something and go for it and boy on Monday did I say yes and what I said yes to was this course that we're launching Cycle Power because the list of things I needed to do from Monday was utterly preposterous but I said well it's got to happen so I'm going to say yes so because I'm in my inner summer I've been staying up late and I can do that I can work late into the evening in the summer I can't do it any other time I don't do it but I will do it now and I'm having fun I'm you know there's I'm making

Instagram reels I'm writing webinars I'm writing lots of pieces for different things I'm editing podcasts it's it's all you know it's all go go go but it's this power of commitment and the power of yes that happened very strongly in my crossover on Monday and now I'm riding and riding it to the extent that it feels like life is doing it for me which is the best happening so that is the And Sophie, you've just really given away something of the power of these crossover days is that they are like gateways. And when you pass through them sort of honorably and mindfully and in alignment, you open up the floodgates for the power of the next season to happen.

And your commitment there just allowed allowed allowed creative energy and you know manifestation to kind of come pouring through you so so good yeehaw it's an alignment game isn't it like it's a moment to create alignment for the next bit the next the next season that's actually a very core message actually and i was just thinking that it it it the the crossovers just interrupt something in us because it's so easy for us to become mindless to just get into get caught in the atmospheres around us and you know the dominant energy and we just get taken from ourselves so the crossover days are these little jolts to our psyche there's a lot more packed into them but at their most fundamental level it's saying you know are you awake? Are you in yourself? You know, just check in.

And it's just reminding you you're changing gear. You're going into another season. And each season both kind of fills us with something, but it also demands something of us, you know, and you've got to be uh aligned with yourself to meet that if you're unconscious you can sort of get knocked around a bit by a season yeah yeah one of the games we're going to play during this conversation is how many metaphors can we use to describe the crossover days because I have got so many just coming okay so here's another one it's a bit like you're traveling along with your menstrual cycle through your inner seasons on a road trip you got the music going you know depending

on the season you're in there's's a different soundtrack playing, you're traveling at a different speed. And then there is this intersection up ahead and there's a yield sign at the intersection. And you may not have to stop completely, but you certainly do need to yield because suddenly there's like more information incoming from left field that wasn't part of the planned route and if you don't yield you might collide with something from your past some old wounding some old trauma might come in and sort of sideswipe you. So you need to slow down, gear down, check right, check left, yield to the right. And then if the way is clear, you can begin to accelerate again and start to change gears and move and graduate into the next season. So it's a bit like that.

So we've probably hit about three metaphors by now. There are more. they're more coming anyone for another one because I have another one here yeah yeah go for it go for it this is a quote from wild power anyone who has the book page 100 there's a great section about the crossover days in it so it says think of your crossover days as mini gaps in the fabric of life so I'm bringing a blanket in here like a void moment they potentially expose you to emptiness a subtle sensation of the metaphorical ground another one giving way underneath you this creates an emotional wobble or unease mostly this won't be strong a mere blip on the screen that signals you're changing gear but when it's intense it can tell

you something of the deeper needs or current challenges yeah it's amazing um because i'm sort of not surprised that metaphors are forthcoming because that's part of the magic of these kind of gaps in the fabric of life is that they we could say they give you access to a different kind of knowing they give x they give you kind of creative access or kind of access to soul or otherworldly access so um it's really like something else can come through. So I'm not surprised that metaphors are the language of crossover days. And just to give everyone listening a little bit of context, the inner seasons we think of as being the limits set by the cycle.

Each inner season is like an inner boundary that contains you and holds you within a certain energetic. And the limits of the cycle are not limitations. limitations they are the just the perfect amount of tension and boundary to allow for real creative unfolding like the unfolding of your being the unfolding of your creative endeavors the unfolding of your soul your developmental kind of journey so these limits of the seasons are very necessary and that's you know why we all pay attention to our cycle is to honor the limits and to respect them as being necessary for our for for everything on all levels, you know, health, creative life, spiritual life, relationships, on and on. And what the crossover days are is this negotiation

between one in a season and the next. So boundaries are very safe making and the negotiation of boundaries is very unsafe making, is profoundly challenging and sort of unsettling and ungrounding. It's neither this nor that. It's not clear. It's unknown. So you could almost imagine that you're, here comes another metaphor, you're stepping from one landmass, one in a season, crossing over a kind of canyon or a gap onto the next landmass, the next season. And you can't get from one season to another without that negotiation without that

void that that traversement through the unknown and I think what is so intelligent about the cycle and this kind of combination of boundary of the season and voidness, uncontainment of the crossover days is that it respects our human needs to have both. We need both. We need these very clear boundaries and limits. And we also need these moments of not being contained of being utterly um let go of and sort of out of the usual uh familiar territory so that something else can creep in something else can kind of drop in it's it's really I think those moments are how spirit speaks to us how life speaks to us how things reach us because um when we're in the boundary to place um there's a different kind of work going on yeah so good too because it's so practical too because

life is full of transition and we live in cultures that are largely rubbish at holding us through transitions but the cycle here all the way through every cycle month it's showing us teaching us guiding us holding us to learn how to be with transition, how to move from being in control, out of control, in control, out of control. It's beautiful. Yeah. It's almost like we're a circus performer flying through the air on a trapeze and we let go of one trapeze and then we catch the next. I think we're up to 18 or so or 19 now in terms of metaphors. And please do send your metaphors into us if you're getting more listening. OK, well, I think it would be good to start looking at each crossover transition and like

taking a little bit of a deeper look at it we also have some stories from our community from our community hub on circle from people who shared their experiences and their challenges so we can speak to those I'm just so excited for this because you've never taught this before you know you you there isn't actually a course where you teach about the crossover days apart from cycle power which is coming up so this is really you know a warm-up for what you're going to be teaching on cycle power about how to work with these crossover moments between the inner seasons so this is exciting so let's start with winter to spring would you say yes why not so what we're looking at here is the transition from the menstrual phase

in a winter to the pre-ovulatory phase in a spring so where sharni is often day five to six but remember the big red rule follow your own cycle experience so what you say about this in wild power is as you move from menstruation to pre-ovulation you're asked to hold the intimacy and tenderness you felt at menstruation and protect your precious insights and visions as you return to the rough and tumble of mundane life yes it's sort of like the first initiatory test really of the cycle of this you you get this menstruation if you're able to have the place of drop you know you can get this extraordinary connection but now you're um stepping out into the world and learning to hold on to this.

And this is your first little kind of test moment. The interesting thing is about menstruation is you're held in like a protective bubble. It's like a cowl that is around you um a scheme and um an invisible scheme that's energetically just really allows you to to uh to drop in and um and for you to be able to have these lovely experiences at menstruation you have have had to be made permeable, which is what's happening at the end of the cycle, the end of the autumn of the cycle. So you're in a very permeable, you've been in a very permeable space with just this lovely protective skin that menstruation gives you. So you're held in this deep deep intimacy with yourself but that scheme that skin is starting to thin now the crossover uh what's happening is the outer world

is now penetrating but you you are a little old sensitive bunny you're just coming out um with you haven't sort of built up your um armoring yet i mean i don't mean that negatively either you know just a bit thin-skinned and um so that initial sort of of coming out can be disarming or dis unsettling or overwhelming. And it is as it is. There's nothing wrong or right. And it is this crossover. It's so important to bring a mindfulness to this crossover, to feel your sensitivity and to feel how the world touches you and to bring presence to yourself

rather than because we're also feeling this rising energy aren't we that's starting to kick off now and that's actually carrying us out and for some this can be really strong and there's just such a tendency to go whoosh out and um this little this crossover can just it just reminds you hang on don't get caught up don't get caught up in uh outer timing societal timing remember yourself they're really like moments of remembering of ourselves remembering of self and it's easier said than done and it's also a subtle process that can be very much overridden by life if we're not paying attention to it you know know, I can imagine some

people listening might say, oh, I'm not sure, you know, I've got so much to do. You know, I often feel this way. There's so much happening. I don't have a chance to protect myself. And, you know, I've just, I'm just in the melee of life. But when I listen in that, yes, there is a sensitivity that's wanting to be claimed and if I can claim it then whole whole wealth of um belonging goodness um holding interesting insight is opened up to me but it's that like you said that turning towards that turning in that allows it to be accessed yeah I'd actually love to just share my experience of this crossover when I was menstruating because it was not a good experience. And I think a lot of people can relate to this, where I would come out of menstruation, I would have very, very, very powerful experiences of menstruation.

And I'd go, oh, my God, oh, my God, it was extraordinary. And then I would come out and completely I would collapse and feel completely lost and bereft. And there are a number of things going on there. One was, of course, that I was dealing with fatigue for many years. And even though I rested at menstruation, you know, the bleeding does drain you. That's why it is also important to rest. And it was like a collapse of energy but also it was I really got this month after month this

terrible grief at coming out and my experience not being seen or validated like there was no context there was no meeting of me there was no acknowledgement of this work because this was in the dark old days when this was happening. You know, today I'm hoping people are not feeling that in the same way. So it gave me insight both into something of the kind of space and times I was in but it also it was really telling me something about my energy levels and it was telling me something about my power Sophie which is that I really understand the power of menstruation and what was happening there um but i had no idea there was a whole lot of inner work that i needed to do around how around claiming my sort of inner seasoned self you know that that had never been properly held it was a whole undeveloped um body of work there for me that I had to do a lot of inner work around to claim that

spring self if you like so it was giving me information about that so as we talk about in this episode our upcoming cycle power course is a great next step for you if you want to get to know your experience of the crossover days and how to handle them as well as how to navigate the challenges and harness the opportunities of your unique experience of your inner seasons we're starting on june the 21st and there are a few early bird places left so if you're interested now is a really great time to join us. If you'd like to find out more about the course, what it includes, the curriculum, what you can expect and if it's for you and how it can support you to deepen your own cycle awareness journey whether you've been

tracking your cycle for three months or three years or more then please join us for a free event coming up next week on june the 5th called awaken your cycle power you can explore the course and sign up for the free event at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. I just say if anyone is listening and thinking I do feel bereft in that way when I come out of the deep experiences of menstruation and you aren't feeling held please come to our community hub and please come and share the gold and the honey of your experiences because you will be met and held and loved and seen in that beauty you know that's that's what med school is for it's for you to be seen in that yeah yeah I was feeling that earlier when you said how Sophie our culture doesn't isn't very good with transitions

you know life transitions and um and it's so true you know what's lost in our culture is the community holding of life transitions and that is something we can all offer each other and that's what the red school hub is the red school community is that place where you're amongst people who understand the nature of the cycle experience and can welcome you back from your bleed or who can send you off on your bleed with well wishes and witness you as you go off um on your you know sacred menstrual quest it makes it's a simple thing on one level but it makes such a difference for it to be held within a community context so yes red school is the the place for that that is one of the reasons it's cool exists yeah yeah and speaking of the community hub so i asked our community, what are your

experiences of the crossover days? What do you find most challenging? And Rose shared something about her winter to spring transition. So I'll read that out. Often winter to spring transition feels very clunky and clumsy. I start tripping over my own feet, my mind running, my body still tired. A fountain of ideas and longings and things to be excited about makes my heart race and everything tense. It becomes difficult to pull in the reins and reconnect my thoughts to the here and now. I find myself literally dropping things or eating too much or just generally feeling very ungraceful and jolted in some way yeah I um I'm sure there are many people who can relate was that Rose who shared

that that was Rose yeah yeah sure there are many many people who can relate and um most of all i hope you're not giving yourself a hard time about this this is just the kind of nature of crossovers is that tricksy that tricksy one of when i'm listening to your I'm reminded of is how generally the crossover days are the place where we go unconscious. So, you know, you'll be kind of tracking along and then suddenly you'll realize, oh, like I've started, you know, overeating or doing that thing that i only do when i'm you know in a disturbed or emotional state um sort of turning to some kind of addictive habit that is always a sure sign that you've fallen into this gap in the fabric. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's kind of that this is your yield moment.

That's your sign going, okay, because you don't know when you've gone unconscious, but what you do notice is how you've started behaving and the things you've begun to do and how you've started behaving and the things you've begun to do and how you're feeling. And becoming aware of that is your kind of yield moment going, oh, wow, what's going on here? And that's your cue to slow down and check in with yourself, to really let yourself come present with what's really, really going on. And that and that you know what I described to you this morning was my um my way of doing that because had I not done that I I would have been unconscious today and I would have started doing the kind of destructive things or I would have checked out or been dissociated and instead I feel really present

in my like unknownness so um and can I just say Rose I just want to note here to everyone listening because this is a particular hot spot for me in my cycle experience and i have fallen in this hole a million times a million times and not even noticed i was in the hole and flowers being dragged out the other side or like you know a million times honestly so it's uh it's it's it's a it's a spiritual practice i mean these crossover days are yeah really are a spiritual practice the whole cycle is but this is this is these are the moments i just have this image of rose still tripping from her from her bleed and like suddenly having to deal with normal life while she's still coming down from her trip that's all I could think

of yeah yeah actually yeah and it's right there because there's these longings things are pushing through her and then everything tenses up and that's the meeting of the the mystery of the bleed and then the reality of our our life and our culture right there meeting yeah and also the uh the reality of of our bodies and being and what we're actually capable of because it's pretty cosmic you know it's menstruation you get the how to save the world plan frankly each time as i like to say and then you come out and it's just a little old you and you know you maybe but you know you've got children or you're a bit tired or you you know you've got to go and write some paper for your studies yeah it's like it's like all these ideas

to save the world and they are driving you you, by the way, you know, and they're not going to let up, by the way. Yes. Okay, we're just going to get to touch in on each of these in this podcast and we'll be able to go a lot deeper in cycle power, which is exciting. So let's move on to spring to summer so this is from inner spring pre-ovulatory phase to inner summer ovulatory phase often day 11 and 12 or 12 but see how it feels for you so this is what you say in wild power as you cross from pre-ovulation to ovulation there's

one crucial task for you to do which is what I was speaking to earlier. Say yes to yourself, to an idea, to something. The cycle is asking you to firm up and commit to whatever it is you're going to pour your summer energy into. Without committing to something you could spin off out of orbit and get frazzled by the heady heights of summer or rush around like a headless chicken, which I have done oh so many times. Yeah, it says it all actually. So Mira has an interesting challenge that she shared. She says from spring to summer is most difficult for me because I'm not really aware of exactly when the crossover happens I have an irregular cycle so I never know when ovulation will come I can feel the rising energy

including rising sexual energy and confidence but I struggle with really coming into action probably because of my anxiety and maybe a lack of direction. Yeah. So let's start with this thing of not kind of knowing where the crossover day is. Again, you are definitely not alone with this. So there are a couple of things to say to this. I mean, the first is, and Mira, this possibly doesn't apply to you because I know you have been practicing cycle

awareness for a while but I think of cycle awareness as being like getting to know someone we don't get to know someone all at once and often you know in the very first few meetings or even first few years we only kind of get to know a certain face of someone. And then it's only over time that we start to get to know the more nuanced, complex, subtle, hidden aspects of someone. And it's very much the same with cycle awareness. There are certain aspects of your experience that will really hit you in the face, you know, be very obvious. And then there are other aspects of your experience that you will slowly become familiar with and more acquainted with over time. It's time of practicing cycle awareness. So please know for everyone who isn't aware of your crossover days, you're not doing anything wrong. It's just time on the job,

that time in relationship with yourself and your cycle that helps to reveal more of the details. So that's the first thing. Then the second thing is that to really start to feel the crossovers, it's actually helpful to get to know the season before very deeply and to really give your attention to consummating that season. And when we say that word consummate, what we mean is allow that season to be fulfilled in our experience, allow more of the power and possibility of that season to come through because the more we can fulfill this season um it's more it's like we've created more ground under us and then the no ground of the crossover becomes a little more visible so this is you know in very basic terms the self-care practices of each inner season are hugely helpful for this kind of consolidating of your experience of each inner season.

And that, of course, is what we're teaching in the Cycle Power course, the self-care practices. So that will kind of help you really deepen into your inner spring. So caring for your inner spring is going to make a big difference and then the other thing to say is also the crossovers are not always that obvious like sometimes they are just a little blip and go completely unnoticed and other times they are this hole that you fall into this deep deep chasm and there are a number of reasons for that just to name a couple right now if you're in a big life transition overall you will feel some or certain of the crossovers more strongly if you are experiencing compromised health in any way that will amplify the crossover experience or if you are kind of going through some sort of developmental leap and there is a lot more inner work happening um you know your kind of history is surfacing um old traumas are coming back to be tended to

then the crossovers tend to be amplified as well because they these kind of portals for healing things tend to kind of bubble up through the cracks there's another metaphor it's like a crack in the earth's surface where the kind of volcanic lava that's been buried deep under the ground, the molten lava can kind of seep through and kind of make itself shown to reveal itself to the light, to be kind of reintegrated. So that's also what's happening at these crossovers. So it might not be obvious for you because, you know, for all sorts of reasons. Alexandra, do you want to say anything specific to her question?

Because there were a couple of things she raised there about her own insights of what this might be about. I think I want to just really reiterate firstly that point about some crossovers you know hardly register there's it's you there's no you're not supposed to have a big you have what you have you simply have what you have so you're engaging with the phenomena that your cycle gives you um and yes just it's important to remember that and that's pertinent to where you are in your life your life stage whatever your health everything all those things that shani said um uh i i'm not yes i'm not really sure about the the for you mira yes because there's an regularity with your cycle and because you have some tension around that um that may affect things

i can't say but i think you would be the one to know most of all. And so I don't really have anything specific to say to you around this beyond what you're already lovingly doing with yourself, which is just really paying attention to the experiences you're having. And what you might do, for instance, when you start to feel that struggle to come into action you know you're feeling the rising energy and then you start to feel that sort of struggle come in for yourself you might even use that as a as a as a sort of crossover, inverted commas, moment, you might just pause at that point and go, oh, that's interesting. I'm now just feeling suddenly a bit lost or I'm pushing or I've lost that rising goodness that I had.

Something's just kind of detached there or blocked or something. I would suggest you just meet that moment, actually, as an interesting point of engagement for yourself and really just bringing a lovely quality of presence, slowing everything down, just the way Shani described this morning in meeting her condition or situation that she woke up with. It is simple and very demanding. It doesn't demand any of you, but it is the grace of slowing down and just bringing presence to yourself to really just even just step away from the world for a

moment and have just a real some sweet time with yourself just to feel and be with this moment and the interesting thing is you're not trying to change anything you're just expanding that it's like just expanding that moment where the flow and then the tension comes in and just going bringing your loving attention to it i actually would really love to hear from you in the circle hub you know if you play with any of this, how it goes for you, because your experience is a little learning lab right now for us all. It is just how all of this work has evolved is you two and all of us now using our own

experience as our laboratory to bring this wisdom wisdom through so I find that's one of the most exhilarating things about this work is that it's unfolding and emerging through each of us through our bodies it's so exciting and Lauren next has offered up her laboratory of her summer to autumn experience so this is the ovulatory phase the premenstrual phase often day 19 or 20 um so what you say in wild power is after the activity of summer you're asked to take stock of what you've done and acknowledge yourself and your work. This transition is for self-recognition and celebration. It's the great Thanksgiving moment of the cycle, without which you could enter the premenstrual phase feeling unprepared to meet your critic.

Crucially, you're asked to slow down. I think slowing down is the medicine for everything, can I just say? I know, really, it's a takeaway I feel like my the whole of my 30s was learning how to slow down and I have somewhat got the message and it's interesting we'll read Lauren's challenge but for me this is the easiest cruise for me now from summer to autumn coming home docking in stepping into myself you know in my early 40s it's like this is my terrain this is where it's at so it's interesting to look at the different life phases because Lauren is so this is Lauren the red school angel who many of you may have heard from if you've ever written into us Lauren's late 20s so she says I often find the crossover from inner summer to inner autumn

incredibly tricky I feel so at home in myself during inner summer through ovulation particularly then as soon as my ovulation finishes it's like dropping off a cliff metaphor number 20 it's like I'm holding on to the summer version of myself and it never feels like I get long enough to enjoy it but the sudden shift into autumn feels very contrasting and I often retreat in on myself any advice on how to make this transition a little less dark would be chef's kiss I mean I can I you know I I can relate to this, Lauren. Don't we all grieve the end of the summer, that endless summer? Can't it go on forever?

Yeah. Okay. So there is this, this is one of the pieces we haven't named, which is that at the end of every season, there is an ending. At the end of every inner season, there is an ending. At the end of every inner season, there is an ending. And so there is a kind of little mini death or loss or grief that is inevitable and is kind of part of the makeup of the boundary crossing from one season to another and um and and so how we kind of meet that ending it's not about changing the fact of the ending it's about letting ourselves kind of be with the real

the reality of what that ending feels like for us you know as alexandra has described so that we can graduate into the next season rather than kind of be divorced from ourselves and our experience in this crossover. So there's definitely something about, you know, you just making space for the kind of resistance that you feel and the loss and the, yeah, whatever the feelings are that are happening there for you, Lauren. And also, and this is very important, is that you turn towards yourself so it's a bit like when you're about to leave a sacred space I always think I'm not sure what tradition this comes from but this is something that I've always practiced that I don't leave the sacred space with my back to the space and sort of walk out.

I face the space, I thank the space, and then I sort of reverse out of the space to really honour it and to really give it my attention right until I'm out the door. And that is very important here with this inner summer. And that turning towards the space is actually you turning towards yourself and like celebrating what you've loved. You know, you say you feel so good in summer, like who is that, that you, that you're feeling good about like what are her qualities what do you love about her what do you see in her what do you want to celebrate her about her what are you proud

of so it is such a thanksgiving moment towards oneself and that is like um it's a it gets you firstly it gets you all loved up but secondly it gets you ready for whatever may come it's like um it's like it's like wrapping yourself in a balm or a or a really beautiful cloak of your own goodness then when you cross you know when you cross from this one land to the next and you're going into unknown territory you are ensconced in your own goodness you kind of feel um a certain um i want to say authority or like power when you go into the inner autumn i'm actually reminded of a story from years ago of a woman who it was very specific it was a very specific day this happened where she would suddenly feel like she had to go to bed she had to go under the duvet and she would just give herself that moment or you know a homeopathic dose of that moment

and and then and then she was off again you know she was she was cool she was in the next she was she she crossed over if you like um so it i it makes me think of just having these practices that one does so shan is just beautifully described this you know formal way of just really facing oneself and it might be that you just need to check out for a day um or an hour or an hour whatever just just just really acknowledge that need to well i'm thinking of this woman who had to sort of just go under the bed covers to just do it for a half an hour an hour or whatever and and to make that just entirely your ritual normal this is what you do yeah just yeah i'm just sort of imagining it now just stopping everything and and the psyche the psyche just needs time to sort of catch up so it doesn't switch as i I like to say. It's not like a switch on and off.

It's like a dimmer thing. Yeah. It just needs time. And then after an hour you get up and you go, okay, maybe I'm all right. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. I love that, actually, that these crossover days are a little like catch up with yourself moment. Yeah.

I've got another metaphor happening but I'm I don't think I don't think I can't bring any more I think we might be full no way go for it well it's like it's like a children's um train like a human train where you've got one person standing behind the other like doing the locomotion or something like that, but the person in front gets really carried away and then the people in the human train behind can't quite catch up. And then those are the fronts got to stop so the whole system can reunite. I'm also really moved to hear you share that story about the duvet

because just in this moment i'm seeing that what we're really talking about with cycle awareness whether it's of your inner seasons of or of the crossover days it's believing yourself it's exactly it's turning towards and listening and then daring to believe that what you're sensing feeling longing for needing is correct and then whether it's the one percent the ten percent or the hundred percent giving yourself some of it and how those micro moments over time change everything change everything exactly exactly yeah this morning I had this phrase of um yeah I was thinking about cycle awareness I was thinking it's basically a practice in learning not to contradict yourself

believing in yourself but yes to not contradict yourself and what you're feeling and to um yeah live in accordance with it in some way exactly yeah which is why it's this homecoming homecoming to self okay we have one more crossover let's see if we can get 10 more metaphors in. No, this is autumn to winter, premenstrual phase to menstrual phase, often day 27 to 28, the separation that Alexandra was speaking about at the beginning. And in Wild Power, you say, as you gear down through the premenstruum and tie up loose ends, you're asked to say your final goodbyes to the world

and scoot off alone into your metaphorical cave at menstruation if you aren't able to slow down and sufficiently sever the line to mundane life you can't easily drop your bundle and receive the deep blessings of menstruation do you know this this is very special to me this crossover and it is the one that actually possibly although i think the winter to spring one is well they're all quite big actually in their different ways but this one probably is the biggest void for most of us um the darkest void shall we say because it's happening at the end of the cycle where our energies are at their lowest we're at our most spent at this point so and and we've just been through the inner autumn and you know we've probably gone around or two with our inner critic and etc etc and we're also just more permeable

because the autumn just makes us more we become more and more sensitive through it so this crossover is can be the most exposing i think of all the crossovers and therefore what is um most uh unacknowledged or uncared for or you know our sort of shadow deeper shadow parts parts can often come up from the deep and claim us here or try to claim us and so it does require a lot of care and tenderness and presence I believe this crossover um and you can fall into quite a darkness is what i'm really alerting us to here um so if that is you um if you're someone who really falls off the edge of the cliff into something quite dark. It's so important to, in a way, everything that we have been saying about crossovers, about how to care for them, applies here. Bringing this presence to yourself and not making anything right or wrong here, good or bad,

but to really to know that there is this space that can happen is to be more prepared for it, to have more respect for it. And if you're able to care for yourself very tenderly coming into your bleed, in other words, be as present as you can be to yourself, you are setting yourself up for really being able to meet this and be with it and in a way your deep self is asking for you to attend to whatever it is that's happening here the inner work so this is something that needs to be tended to over time where you may need to reach out for help but the more you're practicing cycle awareness and you understand about these crossovers the more you're able to be present to this place and the other side of this darkness is actually an extraordinary

light that can happen in this crossover an extraordinary illumination of oneness so it's extraordinary how we talk about hell and heaven can happen in this crossover. So can you not hear the enormous powers at work? And really the discipline of the cycle awareness throughout the whole cycle is bringing you into, is preparing you actually for this void moment there's a story that autumn shared in the community hub which speaks to this power or a way to very skillfully negotiate this transition to fight to release the power so I'll share it she says post-menopause now but I do remember a particular feature of my transition day from autumn to winter which was so enlivening

to be able to put into the context of crossover days the day or two before my bleed which for me was usually near the full moon I felt a distinct womanly fullness that felt both good and as if I couldn't hold any more or I would explode. I definitely felt edgy and was tasked with the practice of holding the tension. The tension manifested as irritation and also sexual tension. During this time I'd become more sensitive to everything and I'm already a highly sensitive person. When I surrendered to receiving pleasure, the tension was released. I remember having some of the most powerful, intimate, nourishing sexual encounters with my husband after days of me being quite irritable and crisp. It was like a cosmic breakthrough. I felt so open and then afterwards my creative energy would soar and the downloads

and writing would flow then the blood would come and I would rest that is so powerful so beautiful and one of the things I'm loving about that is this connection with her husband because I call this crossover you know the union moment where you can experience an extraordinary intimacy with someone if they are able to be with you in this space in a way that is undefended but if you're not in a relationship, equally, you can have a sense of union with, I know this is very grand, big word to say this, but with the beloved, the divine, with life. There's a sense of, there's a possibility to experience union or stop, whether you're in a relationship or not and this is just an aside but we've often had women tell us how they get this completely liberated sexual desire in the void to the point where i remember do you remember the shiny one woman you know she would you know she'd virtually pull someone off the street you know anyone it was like

but it was so different to the sexual charge of the rest of the month and equally others who are the opposite who don't want to be looked at but the absolute fierce and if someone looked at them i remember i wouldn't say this you know she would kill them almost it's like because it's she's she's so exposed and she's going and she just has to be utterly alone with this space so so fascinating complete opposites with that yeah there's that sort of polarity again which is why we call this void um this crossover day which i don't know if we've mentioned this but this is the first chamber of menstruation this crossover day um the chamber of separation that we're talking about and uh it is full of everything you know the polarity the heaven the hell that unleashed sexual desire and that fierce protection of oneself

and not wanting to be seen or visible or touched and and all the other different expressions of that yeah and if you want to hear more about the chambers of menstruation i'll put a link to our podcast episode about that in the show notes at redschool.net forward slash podcast well that was wonderful and i'm reluctantly wrapping up the conversation now but yeah beautiful that we could touch in on each of these and I feel like there's so much to work with here so much to play with so much to explore yeah thank you you two yeah you're very welcome and I'm looking forward to hearing people's experience after listening to this conversation in the community hub what you're noticing and discovering about your crossover days and any insights you're having.

Keep the conversation going. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you, Sophie. Yay. Thanks for listening all the way through to the end today in case you don't know how to come and connect in the red school community hub then i'll drop a link to join in the show notes at redschool.net forward slash podcast and you can click on the page for this episode if you would like to share your crossover days, stories or questions. And again, we would love, love, love to see you at Awaken Your Psycho Power, the free event coming up on June the 5th and on the Psycho Power course if it's calling to you. So you can find out about both of them at breadschool.net forward slash Psycho Power. OK, that's it for this week.

I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.