The Menstruality Podcast - 157. How to do a Big Bleed Retreat (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

As you may know, we often talk about the amazing powers available to us when we’re able to rest at menstruation. But in a world that likes to see us active 24/7, how do we create the time and space to truly fulfill this glorious potential? Well, Alexandra and Sjanie have a remedy they call The Big Bleed. Essentially, this means giving yourself a one-off ultimate menstrual experience. Because this is likely to blow your socks off, leaving you full of revelations, and inspiration to plan another Big Bleed as soon as possible.We explore:How to do a Big Bleed retreat; where to do it, what to bring, and what to do (hint: nothing!) as well as how to manage the challenges that can come up when we try to carve out pockets for deep rest. Sjanie’s recent magical Big Bleed experience; how she managed to pull it off, what she discovered about herself and her leadership, and why it mattered that every time she checked the clock it said 11.11. How Alexandra and Sjanie do a creative Big Bleed ritual retreat for Red School twice a year, in August and December, to allow the organisation to have an inner winter, and receive visions for the months to come.  ---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 for joining us. As you may know, as you may have heard at Red School, we often talk about the amazing powers available to us when we're able to rest at menstruation. But in a world that likes to see us on the go and active 24-7, how do we actually create the time and space to truly experience the magic of our inner winter?

Today on the podcast, we're exploring an interesting solution to this challenge, which Alexandra and Sharni call the big bleed. Essentially, it means giving yourself a one-off ultimate menstrual experience. So we explore how to do a big bleed retreat, where to do it, what to bring, what to do, hint really they're suggesting doing nothing at all, and how to manage the challenges that can come up when we try to carve out pockets like this for deep rest in our world today, particularly for women. Sharni shares about her recent magical big bleed experience, how she managed to pull it off, what she discovered about herself and her leadership, and how every time she checked the clock it said 11.11. And how Alexandra and Sharni do a creative big bleed ritual retreat for Red School twice a year in August and December

to allow the organisation to have an inner winter and receive visions for the months to come. So let's get started with how to do a big bleed retreat with Alexandra and Sharni. Well howdy you two. Who feels like doing a cycle check-in first? I'll start then. So it is just after full moon, and I am definitely in the sort of post-high. It was such a good full moon. I've never felt such a smooth, nourished full moon. Normally it's a sort of, when's it going to be over?

You know, a jagged sleep. When's it going to be over? But no, I just felt so good, so well-oiled. And so I've just come over the hill. I'm in the lee of the hill now. And I'm sort of not quite so buffered by it and i'm more exposed to the enormity of what we have to pull off by the end of this week and um so i had to do some i had to do some talking to myself today and i think i have i think the other part of me heard because i feel

you know must have worked i uh you know because i'm essentially you know i don't know i'm in good spirit sophie how great that i just love this work and love doing this work because if I didn't oh my god well I wouldn't be here I'd be long gone I'd have jumped ship I don't know I just feel in good spirits really oh that's fantastic to hear the reason why I said wow in the middle when you were saying yeah I was feeling really good is because I know how much you have to pull off before this wonderful big bleed that's coming it's coming it's coming it's coming I know I am literally counting down the days this week I'll be it's all right I've only got to hold it together for another it's like a kid before Christmas I know I could do it yeah I was I was really feeling it this morning, this end of cycle thing.

So I'm day 18 in my menstrual cycle. So I'm in my inner autumn. And there's a certain intensity to my experience because of this layering of the bigger cycle that's going on at Red School, which is an ending, you know, we're coming to the end of term, so to speak. We've got another, you know, week and a half of work before we break for a month and have our wonderful summer drop. But we're also coming to the end of our cycle power course we're coming to the final week of our cycle power course so we're in an ending there so those layers of ending are really creating quite a lot of intensity in my system. And so I was reflecting on endings and how they are so often coupled with

a lot of intensity, like something is coming to a head, something's coming to culmination, and maybe a bit like running a race and being at the end of maybe a marathon. And that final piece to finish really requires us going beyond our normal capacity, beyond what we've ever done before to kind of bring it home. There's that deep stretch that happens on a kind of psychological, emotional, physical level god and i'm feeling that i'm feeling it my body is aching my body is so sore and tired and i just feel so weary i feel so tired oh that's the other thing with endings it's this tiredness that comes you know when we are at the end of cycles our energy drops and yeah this tiredness is what's actually pulling us towards the end but as we all know and I'm really feeling it today tiredness is a very vulnerable making state it's very it's uncomfortable to be tired except except

when you can do nothing then it's kind of a riot right but not when you're in this like bringing something to completion you know final moments of having to pull it out the bag and dig deeper than you've ever had to dig oh then tiredness is just oh it's such a creative tension yeah you're a lady in need of a big bleed hey um i am a lady in need of a big i'm in need of a bleed menstrual and otherwise oh my god i can't wait i'm i'm just about to bleed i can feel it it's day 24 but I know I ovulated early so I'm I'm very voidy um and I feel tender but I also recognize that I I say that I feel tender a lot I feel like I might have like resting tender state. I'm a tender being, but I feel especially tender. And I know when I'm in this tender,

void-y state before my bleed, it's good if I protect myself a bit from the world. But in this place of my cycle in the autumn, I also have a desire to be plugged into the world and what's happening, to really look the world in the face and see some of the mess that's happening. And it happened in a specific way last night because I happened to pop onto Instagram to upload a painting that I did because I've started painting again, which is particularly medicinal for me in inner autumn and I happened to see a black African-American educator that I follow and she was naming something that is likely to happen over the next hundred or so days in the US for black women now that the political shifts have happened and Kamala Harris might well be the Democratic nominee for president and it just

it hit me and I thought of our Black and African-American sisters and siblings in this community. Hey it's Sophie just jumping in here while I edit this to say that what I was referring to here was Maisha T Hill from Check Your Privilege. I will put a link to the show notes at redschool.net forward slash podcast with all of her sharings and advice about why we need to all gather together to protect black women at this time. So I'll drop that into the show notes. Yeah and the truth is I do need to step away from the world for the next few days while I bleed because as we all know if we want to be generative and creative and like responsive rather than reactive we need to come from a resource place so

giving myself a talking to close flipping close Instagram for a couple of days and come back resourced on the other side yeah I could do with my own big bleed but what I might do in this conversation is just absorb your big bleed energy and yeah see if see if it can inspire me for later in the year and we do actually want to invite everyone listening to let yourself be inspired by this conversation and see if you are able to pull off your version of a big bleed sometime this year and we'd love to hear your stories from it if you do and come back and have another episode to hear all of those stories but first shall we yeah could you walk us into this idea of a big bleed? What is it? Why do you think it's so important?

Yeah. What do you mean by a big bleed? Well, why don't we start, Alexandra, with you saying where the phrase came from? This is another term we've come up with. Well, Alexandra coined this one. It happened quite many years ago, and it was to do with reading something in Native American culture about dreams, night dreams. And you know how you can have kind of regular, ordinary dreams, what I call my Flotsam and jetsam dreams you know i wake up

what was that about um and then there are dreams that are like you know wow like sort of cosmic dreams the meaning of your life and i can even still remember some of those dreams from way back profound ones and in native american culture they talk about about big dreams calling so I don't know if they talk about small dreams but they talk about dreams and big dreams I don't know enough about but I just remember this idea of that you occasionally have these big dreams that speak to you of kind of the meaning of your life and you know it's kind of a vision dream almost. And then something in my brain went, wow, yeah, that's what with menstruation. There's like what I call the common or garden menstruation experience where, you know, you're fitting it into normal life and it's like you just feel tired and you don't want to

do anything and you, you know, but you try to sort of struggle on or you try to get some rest and you drop a bit and, yeah, you feel a bit better or whatever. So there's that kind of version of it. And then there's the big bleed version, okay, because menstruation is, in fact, a profound altered state. And it needs a completely different response to how we are in living normal life. You can't do normal life and access that altered state of consciousness. And if you are still trying to do normal life as most of us are you know just being realistic

then it's not possible to really experience the fullness of what can happen at menstruation which is and I don't use this word lightly it is it can be sort of of cosmic proportions, it's extraordinary what it can be. And so I came up with this idea of the phrase big bleed and that we can't have this, you know, it's not possible to have the kind of time and space that menstruation really demands to be able to experience the fullness of it, but that we instead plan to have occasional opportunities to take that space. So, I mean, even if it's just like once a year, but maybe, I don't know, twice a year or something where you really push the boat out and go, OK, I'm going to really plan and give myself space when I bleed. And it might be months away and you have to do all sorts of plotting and scheming and time off work or lining up babysitters or sweet talking partners and friends or whatever, you know, and your own psyche, by the way, because, you know, it's like part of us goes, no, you know, it's like, what, step away, what,

drop technology, I have no connection with the world. So there'll be negotiations with your psyche. And actually, that's a really important thing to note. But yes, a big bleed is where you really give yourself proper time and space to drop and i'm talking you know at least two days i mean i'm talking if you could go for four days how great is that um to really have space yes so that's what a big bleed is. And what's so brilliant about this concept of a big bleed, as you said, Alexandra, is the power of our menstrual cycle and the power of menstruation really lies in our capacity to listen to and honor the needs of our body, the pace of our body and follow the imperatives of menstruation, the kind of inner impulses, instead of overriding them. That's, you know, when we write about the power of the inner winter, the power of menstruation, and the kinds of experiences that you can have, we will be locked out of those things and not able to access them. And it will sound like fantastical talk, you know, it'll sound like real far-fetched stuff,

what we say about the power of menstruation, unless we are able to really honor what we're deeply needing to do, which is this let go and this stepping back. So, you know, this is not possible in our everyday life. It is just not possible. We can have little tastes of the power of menstruation. And I really hope we do. I really hope that we can change the pace of our lives regardless. And I do believe there are ways we can do that. The 1%, we speak about a lot, just 1% more rest, 1% more slowly and so on. But truly, if you're wanting to, I want to say,

like reconnect with yourself at the deepest level and realign with what really, really matters to you and receive the deep gifts of menstruation, it's going to take something more than ordinary everyday life. It's going to take a bigger, more significant act of stepping away. And yeah, and then this is the really beautiful thing is that once we've tasted that, it's like there's a new possibility in our psyche and it actually gets easier and easier to enter that place and space. It's almost like, yeah, it's a capacity, it's a skill, I want to say, to really go there. Yeah, so such a good, such a good thing to do for oneself. So I think it would be great for everybody if you could unpack a bit more what a big bleed could look like or what it entails? Well, as I alluded to earlier, it does require preparation, preparation of your psyche as well. But what you need is time away from the world. So what that means is time away from responsibilities and commitments and time away from any kind of agenda. So it can happen at home if you know that you're not going to be interrupted.

But I think ideally, if you can go away somewhere, that can make it even more potent. And the first thing to remember is when you are taking a big bleed is the initially you have to the process of stopping requires something so the the big message of a big bleed is you are resting and so you're resting your physical body but you're actually also resting your mind. So it's almost like you've got to park your left brain, you know, your just your brain outside the door. And conveniently at menstruation, menstruation does sort of decommission that, particularly that left brain stuff. I think you might be experiencing a little bit of this now, Sophie.

Menopause as well. Yes, and menopause is that sort of decommissioning of the sort of plotting and scheming and jobs to do brain. But it is so addictive, that side of ourselves. We have to really make a conscious choice to let it go. And there's like a detox that happens, I think, initially. So the initial experience of a big bleed might be mightily uncomfortable, actually, because you're, you know, suddenly you haven't got the things you usually have to fill the space. So, you know, if you're sort of habit of reaching for your phone and scrolling through things and that sort of thing, you're going to struggle with that. So it's really important to know that initially there's a kind of detox on all sorts of levels as you just let yourself drop. But what you are doing is you're just following what your body wants to do, which will be, I just want to lie here and do nothing. So if you can actually

move towards that and really take your body side, your body will guide you here. So yes, you'll go through this kind of discomfort, but also boredom, folks, boredom will come up. And you just hang out with boredom. You just hang out with it and you just keep letting go and letting go and resting and just doing simple things for yourself, you know, just gentle, maybe gentle walks, just gentle pottering around, but you're just allowing yourself to be in a very special bubble. And here's the other very important thing. Have no expectation of what should be happening.

It's like, oh, well, I've rested for 24 hours, and now I'm supposed to be having visionings, ecstatic states of being. No, you drop all that. You just drop it all. You drop it all, and you have the experience you are having remember this is new for your psyche probably it's probably it's like whoa what's happening here i've never had this before and your body might be thinking that um so you drop all expectation and have the experience you're having and just let your menstruation be what it is Just guide you in the way it guides you.

And if you can do those early stages, then something may open up. Something may just, it's something else takes over, actually. It is extraordinary how it happens. But remember, no expectations. And by the way, some of you may experience immediate kind of whoa, something happening the moment you stop, because this will depend on your nature and psyche and so on. So I want to say some of the amazing stuff that does happen at menstruation can just fire off at any moment too. But for those for whom nothing is happening nothing is perfection just

stay with nothing stay with it stay with it i can't tell you how profound it is just to hang out with nothing and boredom and so on and i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to actually hand over to shani here because shani you did a very radical uh big bleed for yourself um over um the new year didn't you and you really went for it this time I mean you really I think you took longer and you left your technology behind So you didn't even know the time. Did you? I mean, it's really amazing. And then, frankly, you sounded like, I mean, you were so high. It was like you were drunk on highness from your bleed.

And I think, I mean, it was like you were channeling. You could have channeled the universe. I mean, it was just, it was very, very funny. so it was just it was very very funny and it was also very very profound and moving you're taking me back there alexandra gosh it feels like another world because of course here we are in the summer and that was you know post winter solstice and I'm also just reminded of all the big bleeds I've done leading up to that one and particularly I'm remembering one of the first big bleeds I did after I had children when my children were young and I have to just say it took me years uh it was probably about three or four years after having my children that I managed to pull

off a big bleed which was one night away maybe it was more than three or four years it might have been five or six years um so i i really want to give that context of you know being a mother of a baby and a toddler and just what's possible in that context and i'm remembering what a celebration was just to be away for one night, you know, not even two days in one night, just a night. It was a revelation. So fast forward, my children are now 13 and 10, and my life is different. I have much more opportunity to step away. And it just so happened. I mean, this was not planned.

I was just hanging out over the winter and I'd had a really good drop anyway. Firstly, I'd been sick for 10 days, which was just the most brilliant retreat from doing anything and everything. I'd spent like seven days in bed and I was really milking it because it was just such good rest. So I'd had that. Then I had had, you know, over the Christmas time and the days that follow in my house, very chilled. We don't do a lot. We're really just hanging out. It was a deep, deep drop in my home. And then I suddenly realized, wait a minute, there are these spare days, empty days coming up just after the new year where I don't have to be at work. I have no responsibilities at home. My husband's here. I could go and my bleed is coming like I could go away for like three days

on my own I remember the moment I was like wait a minute this is actually possible I could actually do this uh because it's quite hard to fit into my life ordinarily but there it was just sitting like a golden golden goose awaiting me so I scurried to organize things and I found myself a very simple little wooden hut by a river in the woods that had really nothing much. It was very, very basic. And I decided that I was going to really go all in have as Alexandra said like I left all technology in my car I had no time I took nothing with me I didn't take like books or music to listen I took nothing it was just even as I'm describing it now I can feel the nakedness and vulnerability of just me in the woods in a hut for three days doing nothing. It's like, ah, it's really quite confronting.

But what was incredible about it, I mean, there's so much to say, and I'm not going to go into the whole story now, but just to really echo some of what Alexandra said, I recognized that because I'd come into the big bleed so well rested, rest was not really the priority. It's like I had a good foundation of rest in my body because sometimes when I've done big bleeds, I have really just almost collapsed. And it's been all about recovery and rest and repair. But this was not that because I actually had a good amount of sort of chi in my system. But having said that, that made it all the more exposing because I wasn't sort of tired.

So I wasn't just sleeping the whole time. I was relatively conscious and just sitting there alone with myself, not really knowing what time it was and really having to trust my body in terms of when I ate and when I went to sleep and things like that. So it required this very deep listening to myself. And I remember the incredible ordinariness of it. So I want to say that because Alexandra sort of set this up by talking about how I was like channeling and had this massive cosmic experience. That was where I landed. But for sort of two-ish days, I was having this very ordinary experience where I was a bit like, okay, I'm just sitting here in the woods.

There was something so plain about it. But with that, I felt and saw myself, I think, more clearly than I ever have before. You spoke about that actually, Shani. Yeah. You spoke very strongly, clearly about just really seeing into yourself and confronting certain things. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right, because you spoke about this sort of detox that needs to happen and it was that I was seeing the states of being that I was addicted to you know that were so habitual and um so uh such a pattern for me but that had nothing to do with what was going on on the outside. And this is what's so interesting is when you remove all stimulus, all responsibility, all jobs, and then you suddenly realize that you're conjuring these states of being regardless of what's happening around you. That was what was so confronting. I realized that I had just become habituated to a certain state of arousal, of activity, of agitation, of overstimulation. I'd become acclimatized to a level of overstimulation and that was very confronting but what was so powerful about that awareness because it really felt like I could just suddenly see and feel myself was that it brought me into this deeper connection with myself it was the awareness brought me in and that really I can now looking back see was a gateway to then what unfolded which I was doing all the things of like not having an agenda letting my experience be what what just whatever

it was not trying to make something happen I was just kind of rolling with it and then on I think the final morning really when I was least expecting it and I was just having a quiet walk outside in the woods, I felt I could feel life with me. It's very hard to put words to, but I could feel life talking to me in a way that I normally can't in my everyday life. And there was just this opening that happened. And I started asking questions and the answers were just pouring through hard and fast. And I can honestly say that what I received in that big bleed has set the trajectory for the next five years at Red School. For myself personally, it was such a strong reorientation and such a deep knowing that I felt into that I'm really inside a vision now for the next five years that I just didn't, I wasn't aware of, I didn't have access to before. And the thing that's really significant for me

about that is that it's a vision that feels guided. So I know that it's unfolding. I know that it's happening. And my work is to just keep showing up and, you know, just to stay in the river of myself. It almost feels like it came with a guarantee. I want to say it came with a sense of we're showing you what's happening. Now live it. Now live it, don't follow. So I guess what I'm saying is it's instilled a deep confidence in me. Yeah. And that's a very, very powerful inner compass to have.

I actually would love to just come in on the tail end of what you said there, because I feel so strongly about this, about how menstruation can, you know, potentially dock you into something so significant and profound that it, it does sustain you through the vicissitudes it helps you to keep faith when on the surface you know in day-to-day life it doesn't look so promising or it doesn't look like it's happening um uh some deep part of that. I remember it very strongly because it was my experience of menstruation every month that has kept me going with this work.

And it's only now, it's only now that it's having its moment in the sun. And this is like, you know, 40 years on from my initial, you know, thing in my early 30s. And if you can get that blessing of menstruation, it really does hold you in a knowing that it holds you and goes, you know, it holds you to what you're doing, even as the outer world is not quite lined up with it yet. Yeah.

I find it, I mean, I wouldn't say it's priceless. It's, I mean, how extraordinary is that? Hey, I'm just popping in here to remind you that we have a special offer running for the next week. For you, if you're interested in joining the Red School Menstruality Leadership Program, which is Alexandra and Sharni's three-month immersion to help you discover your calling, to embody your authority,

to find your own natural leadership rhythm with the menstrual cycle as your guide and mentor and ally. And the bit I love the most about it is how the menstrual cycle and menopause process have this mission to deliver us home to our deep selves and in that they guide us how to serve how to lead from a well-rested place so the course begins in February 2025 but if you're curious now is a really good time to step in because we have a special super early bird offer which will save you £495 before midnight on Wednesday the 7th of August. You can find out all about the course at menstrualityleadership.com. And another great reason to join the course now is that it'll give you lots of time to really deepen your cycle awareness practice in the run up to the course,

which will really enhance your experience of the menstruality leadership program and you'll have time to immerse yourself in all the great bonuses that come with the course so you can find out all about it at menstrualityleadership.com and the super early bird offer is available until midnight on Wednesday the 7th of August. Yeah I mean talk about feminine leadership because what I was tracking with what you were saying shiny was firstly you were shown things sort of personally for you patterns that you had confronted with things that you didn't want to see and then you carried on with that process and then a download came that was for your the fulfillment of your calling so there's a leadership piece in there it's like you didn't go to a leadership an executive coach to ask them for their strategy for your how you can fulfill

your purpose in the world not that I'm dissing that because those people can be incredibly amazing but what all of Red School's work points to is we've got that coach inside you know or we've got that capacity to connect with that wisdom inside and so in your staying with the slowness and the boredom and the confronting the like painful uncomfortable parts something was this is what I'm hearing something was being worked in you that then created an opening for you to hear what it is for you to do for you to hear your next leadership steps yeah Yeah, that's exactly right, Sophie. And yeah, I've come to rely on that more heavily than anything else. What I mean is I've come to rely on the knowing that I tap into when I bleed and the vision that I see and feel when I bleed more heavily than anything else. It's amazing to feel how much faith it's, it has given me because there's one thing we,

we absolutely need to learn from other people and receive the experience of others who have gone before us? Absolutely. But that is just, those are just the sort of tools that we want at our disposal to be able to draw on. But it's a whole other thing when we personally, through our own being and through our own experience, receive guidance there is something so unequivocal undeniable about it that we can't help but have the deepest faith

in what's unfolding and as alexandra said regardless of how appearances look, and there's no one else that can give that to us, really. No one else can instill that level of faith, that depth of trust. It's menstruation. And that's why we feel so passionate about these big leads. Because, you know, imagine if each person was feeling held by that inner compass. Imagine each person felt that meaning that's at work in their lives and was able to ride the highs and lows and the challenges, understanding that something is being worked out through them, something is unfolding through them. It just creates a very different holding for our lives, and I think gives us an immense sense of resource. Yeah. I'd love to just come in here and just bring in menopause for a moment, because, of course, we call menopause the wintertime of your menstruating years. So what happens in menopause echoes the phases of menstruation, only it happens over three to five years but that what shani has just described there is um comes to a deep fulfillment at menopause where uh your calling gets um i don't know i can't remember what the word is right now but really um cemented is not the word but sort of cemented in but you know uh there's something sort

of there's a because it's so alchemical what's happening at menopause um and um and of course menopause calls for a retreat and part of the problem that we suffer so horribly in menopause is we're not able to follow that call. But to be able to give yourself some kind of a drop, you know, away from everything, away from all responsibilities and really care for yourself and nourish yourself. Oh, my God. Does the can the spiritual forces reach you? This is the moment but you are so wide open and you've been so prepped through your menstruating years and it becomes so undeniable so undeniable so fierce that you will change everything about your life which is of course

precisely what i did i mean i knew what my calling was when I came into menopause, but oh, my God, does it come into sharp relief and utterly undeniable and it is it. And then postmenopause, you the big bleed, the menopause sabbatical, which is a sort of more extended version of the big bleed that really serves that need to retreat that menopause. We also have another version of the big bleed, and this is great for people who aren't bleeding, but also great for the entrepreneurs and creatives out there who want to create time and space for receiving guidance and for kind of working their business or their creative life in a very cyclical way. And I mean, we just call it the Red School Big Bleed, but I guess it's like a creative big bleed that you can do really any old time and create similar conditions to invite in that deep listening and that rest and respite and the receiving of visions.

So that's another way of applying this big bleed wisdom. I'm always amazed by how you do it. It fascinates me because I'm always looking at people who are doing big things in the world and going, how are they doing it? Particularly the ones who are choosing to do it differently without pushing through and grinding and hustling. So what you two do is twice a year, you take a big bleed for Red School, like you just described, Sharni. And as we spoke about at the beginning, you're on your way. It's only, what, a week and a bit before it begins. Oh, gosh.

Sorry, I just have to tell you, it is 11.11 right now. And that's very significant because, okay, here's a little sidetrack story. When I was on that big bleed that I described at the new year, I started having these 11-11. Every time I checked the time, it was 11-11. So as I said, I didn't have a clock with me, but on the way there, I looked at my clock and it was 11.11. And then I went out to check the time on one or two occasions. And the one time was 11.11 at night. And then coming home when I got back in my car, it was 11.11. It was just stupid.

And now it was 11.11 as you started describing. It's like following the synchronicities in these bleed times everything isn't it everything yeah and we can talk about that more because that's part part of really what the magic of these creative big bleeds is is the kind of synchronicities uh that open up but alexandra and i were just talking about it before this conversation we're like how did we how did we land up doing these you know twice a year big bleed retreats together because we never planned this it wasn't like one day we're like right we're gonna do we're gonna use what we know about menstruation and we're gonna apply it to our kind of creative lives and business life we're gonna meet twice a year and this is what

we can do we never planned any of this this This has just happened organically, almost I want to say accidentally, or we could say just guided by our own knowing of the power of cyclicity and the power of rest and the power of sanctuary. It's just sort of a ritual that's arisen. So that's quite funny. And I was wondering, like, how long ago did we start doing this? I can't even remember when it happened, but we've been doing it for years now. And now it's become a thing, but it never really was a thing until it became a thing, which is really funny. Can you invite us all into it with you because i know i'm really curious and i can imagine our listeners would love to hear as much as you feel okay to share about what goes on in these

yes take us behind the scenes yeah i'll take you behind the scenes. So we have an allotted amount of time, which can be about five days usually, isn't it, Shani? Yeah. And Shani comes up to me, and so it's just her and I in my place. And the – well, this is making me laugh as I was thinking about it, because I'm preparing now, you see, in my mind for Sharni coming up. And one of the things we absolutely because we love to have fun and pleasure. This is like top note of if they're not fun and pleasure, we're not doing them. And part of our fun and pleasure is food.

We love good food. So I am actually thinking about food. I think, yeah, right, I've got to go on Saturday. I'll get the blah, blah. And, yes, I made a little nice sweet treat for Charlotte. And Godra's messaged me saying, shall I make these lovely bars or these? Lots of talk about food. So, you know, it's food, food top of the list, you know.

And so, yes, we want to have good food in um and basically we try not to go out again uh to get food yeah but to have or have it delivered um but yes to be set up in that way with nice treats and then um sometimes and it's true this time there's some lingering work hanging over so we're being very boundaried here so we have to be fiercely boundary because there's always stuff to do and so but there's certain stuff we'll have to get out of the way so we will have probably a day where there's work involved. Tying up loose ends and, you know, because this is an important thing to add, is that we usually do it in the week before we go on a four-week summer break. So we are really closing up shop, wrapping up things from the summer term.

And there is a lot of, you know, dotting our i's and crossing our t's that has to happen well that really aligns to the kind of nesting phase that can happen on like day 26 27 where you know you're going into the bleed so like i often cook a big something or you know i just exactly my life readied to go in yeah yeah so we're kind of sort of doing that a little bit now too, getting ready. And then really, aside from the finishing off of things, there's zero expectation. So especially, I mean, I've already said to Shani, because she's coming up on the Saturday, I said, right, I'm just saying, Sunday, nothing, no agenda.

We're going to piss around. Now, we might end up doing little bits of something, but there's simply no agenda. We're going to piss around. We go long walks. And I do like to let Shani have space, you know, child-free space. So this is her chance to do as much yoga as she wants and take her time in the morning she has to contend with me in the kitchen rattling pans

preparing things I mean it's really good for me because I feel like I'm you know being looked after at Alexandra's house so I really get this thing of being a away from home be in a sanctuary see being looked after these are all very helpful conditions which I love and the other piece which is really important and Alexandra doesn't have this in the same way but for me the drive the leaving my life behind me and setting off on the road because Alexandra lives you know about four hours away that drive to that big bleed is all part of the separation and letting go of everything that's happened and all that we've been doing much like we you know need to separate before we go into a bleed so we have that component I feel that very strongly and I'm always very grateful for those

few hours alone in the car where I just kind of feel decommissioned from the responsibilities of my life. Yeah. Yeah. And so then we so there is this sort of emptying out, emptying out, pissing around. And then, of course, what happens in the pissing around is, oh, my God, ideas just popping. You know, so we'll be out walking and then we'll just be casual conversations, casual questions, things start pouring in straight away. And, you know, Shadi will carry a phone and we'll be recording stuff

as we go, as we're walking on the Malvern Hills or in the fields around my place. There's just so much just this incidental conversation just lying on the grass at my home going on all the time. And it's just magic not having any agendas going on. It's just so incredible. Our psyches are just unleashed. And then we'll do often when we sort of get into a formal process,

do you want to say something about, because we go through a sort of formal process that leads up to on our final day, we do a big, we have a big ceremonial day on the final day together where we, yes, we create ritual and we will create ritual cacao and things like that actually before you get into that yeah no i'm not i'm not going to get into i'm just saying that's sort of what we're heading toward oh right because you say there's a formal process that i'm totally unaware of well we will sometimes bring in um a sort of formal process before it of really acknowledging we don't do it every time but especially I think in the summer or maybe we do it in winter as well where we just really

acknowledge what we've done we take time yes remember and we just we really just decompress in this way of going well we did this and we achieved that and we had that success and we did yeah that's right and we just really because often we get subsumed under all our responsibilities and we just remind ourselves of the things we've done and achieved and we really take time celebrating ourselves actually we it's actually very very important that to us yeah yeah that's a real um component of it which tends to happen quite organically which is why i was like what formal oh yes but we do we absolutely do the other thing that um tends to happen and again this is not an agenda we have these this is sort of just how things unfold with the empty space one of the

other things that tends to happen is um healing work i was going to say that's the other piece there is sometimes something that kind of surfaces and you know we spoke about this detox process that can happen in a big bleed you know issues come up for looking at or we become aware of things that we're struggling with that we need to tend to and alexandra and i sometimes and sometimes quite a lot of our big bleed time can be in this where we go into this very deep um healing work together and that takes all sorts of shapes and forms. I mean, both Alexandra and I've got all kinds of tools that we draw on. And sometimes I might be supporting her in working through something, or she might be supporting me, or we're both working through something together,

using various tools, and tools and practices. And that I find is so powerful because there's something about the two of us doing that together within this context of our calling and our partnership and the vision that we're holding in the world that is very significant I mean we've we've really healed some big shit in those big bleeds. We have. And that is all the sort of part of the preparation that leads to the ritual. But as you say, you know, it sort of spontaneously emerges. But there is a sort of preparatory stuff that spontaneously emerges that we have to move through so that we're in a space to,

it's like we've emptied out, as you say. Yeah, we're in a space to receive. Yeah, we create the space to receive. And then, yes, and then we devote a day to ritual that if the weather is not great well can happen um in my home which is what happened well that's what happens in the winter one too but we have on occasion gone um out into nature to do it right down to the river that's the river that is just you know that's magic swim in the river uh so yes we'll add sort of all sorts of embellishments and um i'm just now thinking how last time you were here shani we got all this wonderful i live in a place where there are natural springs everywhere and we collect we went

and collected all this water and we blessed the water and that became a very central part of our ritual this time yeah that's right we blessed the water with all these different qualities which were particular intentions and qualities that we had been feeling into that we wanted to hold and cultivate over the coming six months. Each vessel of water held a different quality. And then we, as part of our ritual, we drank these waters and really imbibed these qualities and all of that happened very spontaneously it wasn't something we planned and every time the ritual we do is a little different because there's a magic that we're inside of and there's a guidance that is happening and

there are all these synchronicities that tend to unfold and more and more gets revealed to us as we follow the impulses, you know, our intuition and so on. Yeah. So, yeah, the whole of the big bleed is like one long, big dreaming. You know, it has that quality to it, even when we're just in the detoxing and everything um there's a big dreaming into something that we're courting and then that reaches a sort of pinnacle in the heart of our ceremony uh in our ceremonial day when we do our cacao ceremony we drink the um chocolate which shani prepares so lovingly and in a very special way and we drink the chocolate and then we um just take time lying down and just seeing what comes

to us so there is a moment of actual dreaming into something. And we'll both get insights come and just thoughts. I mean, images, it's extraordinary how it emerges, isn't it, Shani? And how connected to all, I will speak something and then what came to you sort of unfolds from that or follows from that um so yes we always have that sort of uh moment of actual dreaming deliberate dreaming into something that we take that space to lie together lying um just lying and letting something come and then yeah we sort of unfold from that and land something and form something yeah that usually uh brings to the surface something that really matters something

for us to care for and focus on over the coming few months and also we sometimes get very practical strategic downloads which are you know about um very specific things that need to happen at red school um and that usually unfolds after this so So we land up coming to this place of really landing something. And that's exciting. It's like there's a kind of grounding or kind of gathering in that usually happens by the end of it, which is pretty magical as well. come back to you Sophie and back to Laura and back to our wider team at Red School with sort of what we've received and what's happening next and things like that instructions for the way ahead it's really fun it gets very practical and well maybe when we get together in September for our first conversation we could hear a little bit about what you received from this bleed. We'll see how it goes. We've got a few minutes left, but I'd love in those few minutes

for you to share some guidelines or ideas for everyone listening who's thinking, I really want some of this. We want some of this goodness in my life. What would you say to someone who is like, I really don't know how I'm going to pull this off, but I want a big bleed at some point in 2024. Yeah, how can I make this happen? The power of your intention. Just go, I am going to have a big bleed. I don't quite know how I'm going to pull it off,

but I'm just putting it out to the universe. A big bleed for me, please. And then something gets to work in your psyche. And then it will happen within the context of your life. So, you know, if you've got very young children, you have to cut your costs according to that. But. Yes, just hold that intention and start.

I want to say start scheming. You don't even have to tell anybody at this point, although at some point you may need to tell somebody. But just hold it and something gets to work. And I think that's so important. And, you know, you may think, I'd just love to have, you know, three, four days away from it all. But that just may absolutely not be realistic within the context of your life. So, you know, aim for a day of nothingness that would be so radical just

to have that to start with you know like shani with her one night away she didn't really get a day but she did have this night on her own that's what i do i i get a morning once a month where and i get guided to go to specific places in the beautiful countryside by me. And that's what I get. And so I make the bloody most of it. Yeah. Beautiful, Sophie. Exactly. Exactly.

And then you start to get practical about, you know, what you need to be able to do it. And actually, I really want to encourage people to, one of the things about the big bleed is it is about pushing the boat out, which means you're going to have to call in favours. And there's going to be a discomfort you're going to have to cross around, I don't know, going somewhere new on your own maybe, or asking for help from a friend or a partner or negotiating things at work. There's going to be this tension involved, but that's the whole point is you're pushing the boat out.

So you get your half morning. So and I bet you if you decided you were going to have two days, you could find a way to push the boat out. You know, it's like, so that's, I want to encourage people to see, be open to what's possible and to really call on help. I think that is the key is we need others to help us. And, you know, you've got to ask. And if people say no, say no but it's yeah I really want to encourage people to ask for help because I know women in particular find it hard

and this is the because you know it's a one-off experience why not why not there is a resource here that could be really helpful we recorded an episode called Why is it so hard to rest at menstruation and menopause? It's episode 74. And it speaks to for anyone who's feeling like, oh, do I really, can I really do this? Do I get to prioritize myself in this way? Or for anyone who has like a lot of vulnerability and fear that might come up at this thought, there's tons of really good gold in that episode. So I recommend going back to that one. Thank you. It's so exciting to feel you two heading off into your lead. I can't wait to hear from the other side.

And I hope you have an absolutely wonderful, pleasurable, beautiful, restful time together. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Sophie. Thanks, Sophie. you yeah thank you Sophie thanks Sophie thanks for being with us today I'm excited to hear what comes out of Alexander and Sharni's retreat and I'd love to hear from you if you've done a big bleed or if you're planning a big bleed how it went for you and I'd love to be able to share your experiences when we come back and have the episode where we hear about Alexandra and Shani.

If you know someone who would love this podcast episode, please forward it to them. And I will be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.