The Menstruality Podcast - 159. How to Meet the Challenges of Inner Summer (Q+A with Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

How do you feel about inner summer, or the ovulatory phase of the cycle? For many in our community, it’s the easiest and most joyful part of the cycle, but many also find it to be challenging and confronting.  Today Alexandra and Sjnaie respond to your questions about inner summer and ovulation, including; how to approach physical symptoms around ovulation, such as headaches / migraines, acne and nausea, how to stay grounded and focused amidst the big energy of ovulation and why you should never put your inner summer self in charge of your schedule! We explore:How to know when you’re in inner summer, how long ‘should’ it last (and why there are no shoulds when it comes to cycle tracking). The connection between rest at menstruation and fulfillment at ovulation, and how inner winter restedness unlocks inner summer powers.How to manage a sense of disconnection from yourself in inner summer, particularly if you’re doing a lot of caring roles or mothering in your life. ---Receive Red School's 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 there. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Welcome back to the Mentor Charity podcast. How do you feel about the inner summer, the ovulatory phase of the cycle or the full moon

phase if you're lunar tracking? For many people in our community, it's the easiest, the comfiest, the most joyful part of the cycle, but many also find it challenging and confronting in lots of different ways. And today, Alexandra and Sharni are responding to your questions about inner summer and ovulation, including how to approach physical symptoms such as headaches, migraines, acne and nausea around ovulation, how to stay grounded and focused amidst the big energy of ovulation and why you should never ever ever put your inner summer self in charge of your schedule. If you'd like to be included in the mix when we reach out for questions

when we do episodes like this, please come over to our private online community on Circle. I'll put the link in our show notes at redschool.net forward slash podcast. OK, let's get started with how to meet the challenges of inner summer. Your questions answered with Alexandra and Sharni. So good morning, you two. You wouldn't know it here in the UK, but we are actually in the middle of summer. Hooray! you two you wouldn't know it here in the uk but we are actually in the middle of summer hooray i don't know how it is with you but it's pretty great and murky and rainy here today and cool and cool and cool i i have to say i i mean i am grieving the loss of sun and warm but i am secretly enjoying the cool nights i mean that's the upside oh it's your fault this weather's happening

South African Sharni is just like it was just getting into your swing of things and I know in some parts of the world it's not summer but we're going to take this opportunity in the inner summer in the UK to wrap up our series our inner season series which we didn't complete from last year and we've had so many brilliant questions about challenges that happen for people in inner summer so we're going to be exploring how to harness the gifts of inner summer through the lens of your brilliant questions but before we do are any of us in the summer nope nope and you know why we didn't complete the inner summer series last year why because we were too busy having fun we decided to go on holiday instead

which is you know a good way for the inner summer to go i have to say it's not all about work work work piss off and enjoy ourselves and should we just go now exactly and just leave a silent podcast because we are just enjoying ourselves everyone listening this is your permission to go do whatever you want for the next 40 minutes and alexandra is holding up the power card that she received this morning which is vitamin p pleasure pleasure that's abby denier buick one of our mentors who calls it vitamin p i love that p that's lovely isn't it yeah where are you both at cycle wise over to you shani

um i am day six so just creeping my way into the inner spring and this morning i noticed with some relief actually that i could just feel my second skin reconstituting after in a winter of feeling quite exposed and naked and sort of yeah really bare without that sort of extra layer of something and this morning I was like oh it's coming back such a it's such a nice feeling of um the beginning of containment starting to happen I still feel a bit scatty today I don't have that so towards the end of my inner spring and when I'm in my inner summer I feel really kind of honed in and sort of nicely kind of muscular and contained and embodied I'm not quite there yet I'm sort of I haven't quite coagulated I'm a little just coagulated still

um but yeah I'm yeah it's good actually I feel a little relief today I'm, yeah, it's good, actually. I feel a little relief today. I'm curious, when you were in that skinless place in the bleed, what helped you to hold yourself through it? Well, the first thing was I became aware of it. I remember waking up one morning going oh my word I feel so exposed and so raw and the moment I clocked that I thought what do I need and I thought I need protection and actually in in that moment in the imaginal I just felt myself protected I imagined what it would be like to feel completely held and safe in that space and that was sort of the thing that I was tracking through

the whole bleed was remembering reminding myself of that other layer of protection that's always there um even when you know we feel egoless or um you know's so beautiful isn't it there is a fundamental groundlessness to life and the bleed makes us very very aware of that but yeah there is something holding us in the grounded groundlessness that's beautiful isn't it yeah it's grounding me a little hearing it actually yeah because i'm on about day seven of the moon and um i am um it's a sort of my improvisational side shall we say is alive and well and and it has a sort of and it plays off things it plays off whatever passing whim passes me and riffs on it you know i'm a good improviser and so it's wonderfully playful and a little bit unstable and um so there's a kind of delightfulness there and the other side of it is when i sat down at my desk i thought i could just i just felt like the mad hatter at alice's tea party i just wanted to go clunk

with my head on the desk and fall into a deep sleep it's so random either way i don't know if it bodes well for this conversation. You are our wild card, Alexandra. Well, I mean, if I fall asleep, you'll be fine. I'm not so sure, actually. I do snore a little, actually. Yeah, so anyway, I'm essentially sort of happy you know hearing you speak about this improvising skill that you've got and how it's unstable I was really moved to feel how you are a woman who has embraced your own sensitivity for so long that you know it so well

and that's really rare in our world because we don't embrace sensitivity en masse so we don't really know what what the gifts that are inside it but to feel the nuance and the intricacy of that oh yeah I can improvise right now but it's a bit unstable yeah it was beautiful thank you thank you Sophie I'm tracking cycles within cycles here because I think I'm on day 11. But I think because I'm quite far away from myself because I'm ill, I've got a cold and that's taking me into an inner winter place where everything just feels quite voidy or quite where everything feels quite slow and low. And I have a new niece and a new nephew that have just arrived within four days of each other. And so I'm, I'm really with them in the very beginning of their life,

which again feels like an inner winter place, you know, so just really feeling my sister's in law and where they are. And so I'm sort of inside all kinds of cycles right now and I don't quite know where I am am but I feel great that's moving that's beautiful well let's get summery there's a question that came in from Katja about how to track in a summer which I think is a really great place to start so said, I'm new to cycle tracking and I wasn't even aware of inner seasons until a few months ago. And then I never understood why I felt so amazing

during ovulation. But since I've started to become in tune with my body and have made it a habit to keep track of my menstrual cycle every day, I have to say that my biggest struggle when it comes to inner summer is knowing how to track it in my body, I feel my best for two days of the month. I'm literally glowing and feel capable of everything. And so for a while, I marked those two days as ovulation. And then I went straight to the luteal phase. But the other day I read something that said each inner season should be, that's an interesting word, around six to eight days for a woman with a 28-day cycle. So mostly my question regarding inner summer would be what symptoms, physical and otherwise, to look out for to know how to correctly track it

and how long should inner summer last for a woman with a 28-day cycle. Great question. So firstly, there's so many things to say here, but firstly, Katya, I love what you shared about how before you tracked your cycle, you just felt fantastic, but you never quite knew why. And it's really interesting that because without cycle awareness, so many of us think that that's normal. You know, that feeling that we have at the peak of the inner summer is normal and we're normal and we're okay. And the rest of the time, there's something wrong with us. Partly because we are wired to feel good. So when we feel good, we think all is well. But also because that is the kind of state where we are most socially acceptable. We are being all the things that our society de selves is our good and our right selves and that we should and we must, you know, hold to this self and anything else is not okay. And what's so beautiful about cycle awareness is we start,

as you've done, is you start to realize that it is just a phase within a cycle and that all the other phases are equally valid and equally good and equally powerful, but just in different ways. And I think it makes the summer, the inner summer actually so much sweeter because we feel the impermanence of it. And we feel that it's just one aspect of who we are. So we, it's sort of in some ways easier to savor and to drop that whole pressure of kind of wanting to maintain or sustain or be that way all the time it's quite a relief to be like oh I flower for a season and then I move on then I've got other business I've got other I've got other stuff to do

isn't all about the flower you know it's like there's a whole bigger thing going on here. So I really loved that you shared that, Katia. So in terms of tracking it, it is just simply getting to know. So first of all, think of each season as a sort of evolving phenomena. It's not a one state experience. So there are sort of gradations of experience that you move through in any particular season. And there will be a sort of pinnacle moment within that season or something, which, of course course an ovulation the inner summer would be the ovulatory moment. Yeah can I jump in here Alexandra because I could hear there's a slight misunderstanding in what you said there Katia which would be good to clarify for everyone

so the actual day or days of ovulation the 24 to 48 hours of ovulation is only an aspect of the inner summer. The inner summer is a phase. It's what we call the pre-ovulatory phase. So it includes the days before and the days after. So when Alexandra's describing this gradation actually the moment of ovulation is that high point in that gradation so you could almost imagine an arc in your inner summer experience that starts so with a 28 day cycle that starts around day 10 or 11 that would be the crossover so you've got maybe day 12 day 13 and then day 14 15 might be ovulation so that's the peak of that arc and then you're coming down the other side of the arc in the sort of latter part of your inner summer um and then you would be crossing over into your inner autumn possibly around day 18 day 19 so it's something like that but you've got to remember this is not a science it's an art and it's a deeply

personal art yes and what you're doing here Kat, is just charting the phenomena of your experience as you move through that arc of your inner summer. So just simply get curious and allow what is there to be. And, you know, a few cycles will perhaps reveal to you a clearer and clearer patterning there. Yeah, that's what I love about the practice of cycle awareness is that it's about you getting to know how these inner seasons show up for you. So it's a real process of discovery and exploration. You're going on this huge adventure with yourself and it's an adventure that is vast and infinite and the more attention you pay the more that gets revealed so it's very very magical um so what Alexandra's saying there about you getting to know your experience is really, really important. And that day by day

tracking and just noting the psychological, emotional, energetic experiences that you're feeling and what your needs are is going to start to reveal the pattern of your inner summer and your experience of the inner summer and what awakens in you in your inner summer. And you've already noticed some of that there at ovulation, you know, a feeling of glowing, a feeling of being on top of the world. It sounds like you feel really sort of happy and exuberant. Those are my words, but it's the feeling states, the energy states, and the powers that come alive in you that you want to be paying attention to. And then the physical, the physiological signs, that's the body literacy piece, which creates a sort of anchor. So knowing when you ovulate by tracking

the position of your cervix and your mucus and possibly charting your basal body temperature that's going to give you something very tangible that will underpin what you're tracking in your psychological and emotional experience so this is your adventure and your journey to kind of discovering what the inner summer is like for you and when you enter it and when you exit it so those are what we call the crossover days the entry and the exit points and those are usually our signposts that we're entering another is in a season isn't it Alexandra those crossover moments is usually what alerts us I love those moments actually they were so distinct and it's so it's so fascinating like my whole your whole psyche's going oh we're changing gear yeah and there's a sort of momentary wobble there or just a disjunction or interruption or something the the atmospheric

there's an atmospheric shift to be quite really is i'm thinking of one of my um crossover experiences which is no longer the case because of course our cycle experience changes as we change because our cycle experience is a reflection of who we are and the circumstances of our lives and our overall health and all of these many many layers it's a real mirror of our deep inner selves but a few years ago I remember my crossover into the inner summer experience. And this happened on repeat for quite a number of months, was I had this feeling of my legs giving way under me. And it wasn't a physical feeling.

It was like I lost my connection to the ground or my ground. I lost a sense of being in myself and in my body. And it was a very unstable, sort of insecure place, a place that I really relate to feeling when I was, yeah, in my late teens, actually, very familiar feeling of uncertainty and unknownness so that was one of my crossover experiences so Katia and to anyone else who's listening if you want to know when you've entered your inner summer pay attention to that crossover moment it will be your moment of alerting, that little wobble there. And this is something we are teaching on our cycle power course is about these crossover moments because they are such anchors in our cycle awareness experience. They really help us focus and be aware of where we're at and when we're moving because life gets busy right it's really sort of sometimes we need these little tugs on our attention to go oh okay yeah okay oh

yes my cycle me i have a rhythm we come back to ourselves so that's what those those crossovers are doing yeah you mentioned the cycle power course there shiny and i just wanted to drop in a note that that's going to be available soon as a self-paced course yeah yeah yeah because after we closed the doors lots of people have been getting in touch and saying can they join and the good news is yes you can and it's the kind of program where you can do it once twice three times because it'll be taking you deeper and deeper into your experience and sort of holding you alongside your cycle tracking month after month after month and you know I'm just thinking sorry there's another thing that's come to me in response to Katia's question, which is actually a really helpful piece because we've spoken about the importance of us all getting to know our own experience of the inner summer can really help to shine a

light on what's happening inside you which is why alexandra and i bothered to write a book wild power and and why why we include teachings in all of our courses, like in Cycle Power, where we talk about the natural powers that are available, the archetypal powers that we can tap into. It's not because everyone experiences all of those, and nor is it that you should experience all of them. It's just that when you hear about some of the possibilities, it really helps you to reflect on your own experience and it just illuminates something you go oh actually wait a minute yes I do feel a sense of invincibility at some point in my inner summer or oh yeah I am a little bit more insensitive in my inner summer

so I highly recommend reading the section in wild Power about the inner summer and also listening to our other episode about the inner summer, where we talk more about some of these inner summer experiences. Yeah, I'll link to that in the show notes. couple of times which is the word should should which I think you know you're you're pointing to here Sharni that there's an there there's an archetypal cycle and we always just have to mention the big red rule that you are the authority of your cycle experience and there is a lot of talk out there in the world of what we should be experiencing in each season. And what I love about the way you two approach this is you put the power firmly back into the hands of the person who is experiencing the cycle. We are our own authorities here. Yeah. I mean, we are reminding people of that, but actually the practice of cycle awareness puts us back firmly in our own inner authority. It really shifts us from this outer focus to the awareness of

ourselves. And then more than that, really trusting our own experience. That is for me, one of the greatest powers of menstrual cycle awareness is that we learn to trust our own experience above all else i mean i have goosebumps when i say that because jeez nobody wants to with you and you've got that going on i mean watch out world yes okay should we move on to question two Yeah. So this is a question about how to stay grounded in inner summer. And it's from Cecily. She says, I love the summer energy, but I can also find it hard to stay grounded and focused sometimes. The balance between being outgoing and tending to myself, my senses, my ground is of most interest to me.

It's a discipline, Sathalee. And that discipline grows out of what has come before. So the work of menstrual cycle awareness is the work of pacing your actual energy and the actual state of your nervous system and tending to that as best you can within the context of the responsibilities you have. And there is an order to the cycle process so you know sophie we were talking earlier about you know each season having its place and the summer season is a flowering moment but that summer season is rooted in what has gone before um and um so i would say it's really important for you to really firstly tend to menstruation and to uh give yourself as much rest as you can at menstruation for well for lots of reasons but

for two particular ones one is simply for to rest and resting at menstruation really um gives bigger dividends than any other time you know resting at any other time in the cycle it's extraordinary what it can do then so really uh letting go at menstruation as much as you can and allowing yourself to be filled up with energy, be restored. It's like you're being restored to yourself. So there's just that physical nourishment you're going to get at menstruation. But also what's happening is you have the possibility to dock into who you are more deeply because menstruation is this spiritual a place of spiritual awakening when we're able to honor its energies and as you let go and rest you connect in you have the

possibility to be restored to the essence of who you are um and to feel um you i'm just remembering someone's comment in the cycle power course actually she talked about um oh wow i really felt i'm a genius i don't know what it is she's made this comment i don't know what it is but i'm a genius and that was i just made me crack up when i read it because that's what you feel like oh my god yeah yeah i'm i'm okay i'm great and it's this rooted it's big it's feeding on this month after month um and you're strengthening this connection to your deeper self you You're like forging something there. And then so menstruation, we care for that.

And then we must care now for the inner spring. So you're coming out of a very protective space of menstruation. And you've got to now pace this rising energy that's going to culminate at your inner summer. And it's this fine art of just being able to pace that energy and not lose the thread, not get sort of caught up in societal timing and out of focus and what other people's expectations are of you, which is so easy to happen, by the way. Always. It's very easy. which is so easy to happen, by the way, always. It's very easy. But to be able to hold onto that thread to the deep place within you.

And, of course, you're pacing your energy, so you're staying within the ballpark of who you are rather than overextending yourself all the time and in this way you set yourself up for that wonderful flowering of energy that can happen in the inner summer so really it's the work of anchoring yourself in that first half of the cycle that would be really important for you to lean into to to bring more consciousness to to give more time to and in a sense the summer is like it's like the gift of that it's the revelation of that sort of patient tending of yourself it's like um the break is released you know you're sort of yeah it really is the liberation of your expression of your actually maybe of your authenticity

is a way of saying it liberation of yourself in the world yeah um I think it's good to say that that can look big and loud and confident and it can look like your authentic expression can look quiet and soft and you know like I think we can fall into this myth of we're supposed to be superwoman and on standing on stages and and that's not no I mean the key word here is authentic yes yes what does that unleashed you feel and look like it's about daring just to show yourself more in the world however that looks um so it's not about again performance there's no um standard here of what that looks like it is the it is a quality of surrender into yourself and going this is who i am yeah yeah and in fact it's a really good thing to keep returning to as a sort of inquiry or practice during your inner summer is to just check in with, am I being authentic?

Am I being true? Is this me? Is this me? Is this me in this context and in this moment? Is this me because of all the ways we pull ourselves outside of ourselves in certain situations because we think we should we ought to and so on yeah it's it's interesting because that word should came up in the very first question and in many ways the inner summer is a relinquishing of that it is so utterly and unapologetically about you resting into you and that's where this experience of pleasure this vitamin p that is available in in the inner summer emerges from because we're not trying

to be anything other than we are. And it's amazing how much creativity and energy is released when we're in that pleasurable sweet spot with ourselves. We're just in a kind of yummy, nice place with ourselves we're just in a kind of yummy nice place with ourselves that manifesting energy that you know this inner summer is known for that doing energy actually is liberated out of this authentic place it's out of you being in your joy stream. It's about you being in your groove, in your life, in your nature. That's where that energy comes from. So if you're somebody who sort of feels quite flat in the inner summer,

I really encourage you to keep coming back to this, you know, am I being authentic in this moment? And this little 1% shifts towards being a little more true. Some reason I have a true blue just blaring the soundtrack, Madonna, true blue. It's just, I think we need to have a little break, Soph, to play a little snip of that song so i don't know how copyright works with music so i'm not going to include a clip of madonna here or inflict my singing voice on you but this is your invitation to go out and dance to madonna or whatever you're loving at the moment it's lizzo's juice for me and just have a lovely inner summer moment and I'm going to pause the conversation for a moment to share an offering with you as Sharni and I explored

earlier in today's conversation due to popular demand Alexander and Sharni's cycle power course is now available as a self-paced course it's for you if you want to know more about the powers of the inner seasons of the cycle if you want to explore the spiritual power of menstruation if you're working to heal menstrual health challenges if you're dealing with changing cycles in the run-up to menopause if you're feeling called to take a stand for the feminine or if you simply know that you want to put your cyclical intelligence right at the heart of your life. And it's part of the Red School summer sale. So you'll receive 33% off the course until August the 31st. You can register at redschool.net forward slash cycle power and to claim your summer sale discount, use the coupon code SUMMER.

For some reason, I'm with the word weird. I think of Madonna. Like, who knew it was going to be okay to put cones on your boobs? Exactly. Rants around the world, you know. She unleashed her weird. And I think that's a really interesting exploration for me in my inner summer at the moment. Like, what weirdness wants to come out that that I'm hiding away you know what strange quirky foible

wants to be expressed that's yes it is so it is so much about that and you know the inner summer is about individuality it's not about us all being the same. It's about us being utterly ourselves and actually celebrating the individuality and uniqueness in ourselves and in others. that I'm being me, you're being you, there's a lovely dynamic aliveness because we're, you know, being our own weird, you know, unique selves. When we go into the sort of monotone summer, which is very much the shadow side of the inner summer, it's what the media portrays is like that this is what it looks like to be, you know, a good human or a good woman or whatever the or you know beautiful woman or whatever the case is and we lose that sense of individuality and we lose that sense of expression and diversity I mean I yeah that's one of the great powers of the inner summer

as we all learn to live into our inner summer more we will have more variety in the world actually which is just to me the most thrilling thought yes all right then let's move on to our next question which is from Alice she says I often struggle around ovulation I feel nause nauseous, achy and tired. I sometimes feel a sense of despair and disconnection to myself and others. I wonder if it stems from being a bit directionless. I don't know where to channel my energy. I've spent most of the past seven and a half years focused on my young children. And now I have more energy for myself. I'm unsure where where to put it I often feel frazzled and scatty as I go into autumn I remember reading

Wild Power for the first time and feeling disappointed that I never seemed to have much of a summer hmm lots of food for thought she says I think you have an enormous amount of understanding there too, Alice, about the fact you are in a transition right now. You have been mothering your children very intensely for seven and a half years. And of course, you're going to still go on mothering them. But you, they are obviously becoming more independent, and you have got more space and time for yourself so those great existential questions come up for us of you know what's it all about and who am i and where do i want to put my energy now and summer of course is a pinnacle of energy. It's, as we've spoken about, a real flowering of something. And if there isn't a channel for that energy to move through,

if there isn't a sense of some kind of direction to your life, meaningful direction, then that energy can feel can dissipate and i think i think this is what you are experiencing is um not knowing quite who you are and therefore quite um what direction you want to go in or what you actually want to do so you're in a limbo phase right now so there are two things i'm saying here one is uh not knowing quite who you are because you're of course you're still a mother you're still mothering away but um you're more than more than that just wanting to come through now but that's what you're having to discover and then the then from that sort of knowing more of who you are then what am I about what is it that I want to be doing now will emerge I think it's really helpful

to remember that our experience of each inner season is giving us insight into ourselves and insight into where we're at in our lives. It's giving us a look into the deeper river of our life's unfolding. And that's really true in your case. You can hear it you know as Alexandra beautifully described there it's reflecting back to you this place of like who am I now and what am I for now and a feeling of kind of lostness and disconnection. So the reason I'm saying that to you, but to everyone is our cycle experiences are not there to fix or to argue with.

They're there as guidance. It's a bit like having the most phenomenal life coach who holds up a mirror to you and really helps you to see at a much deeper level what's going on for you, what your soul is yearning for and what's needed. And this life coach shows you that on all levels in terms of like physical wellbeing, emotional, mental health, your creativity, your calling, your spiritual life, you're getting that reflection on all levels. So our cycle experiences are not there to be fixed or to be argued with they're there to listen to and to to deeply deeply respect and even as I'm saying that I hope you can let yourself sort of settle a little with how things are right now because all is well you know you're in a you're in a process that is a very natural normal process to go through when you've been in this kind of intense in a winter of mothering and then the season of mothering changes

and now there's a new vista appearing it's very normal to feel lost and disconnected and confused for a while and unsure and your cycle is there to guide you so everything that alexandra said who was the person alice was alice no no but who was the person that alexandra spoke was it cecilia or cecily so everything that alexandra said in response to Cecily about the seasons that come before as medicine and as ground and as preparation and the necessity of the inner winter to receive that seed of new possibility, that vision, that guidance for that direction for your life and then the inner spring as a way to nurture that and stabilize in that and to sort of find explore and experiment with that is all

going to help you to have a different experience in your inner summer because it's going to change you and that's going to be reflected in your inner summer because it's going to change you and that's going to be reflected in your inner summer experience I feel like that when you said the seasons of mothering something in my body relaxes to practice cycle awareness on multiple levels like when I first got my bleed back after having Artie, I had to remind myself, so if you're still in the inner winter of mothering, so my inner summer felt completely different then to how it had in other phases of my life. And I feel it gives so much permission and relief. You know, maybe people are in a phase of grieving in their life. So their inner season is going to feel different. Maybe they're inside a massive creative or consuming creative project.

So their seasons are going to feel different. It's just, it feels relaxing and relieving to think of cycles and you know, the cycles within cycles in that way. Really comforting and really good to keep remembering that our cycle experience is a reflection and mirror of all these different things in our lives. It's a highly responsive, highly intelligent, interconnected system that we have privy to through our physiological, biological changes it's um it's amazing it's really amazing yeah all right then we've got a question from jenny about physical symptoms around ovulation she says historically i've suffered with various premenstrual symptoms such as migraines acne nausea period pain and other things thankfully these have all improved over

the years and particularly since practicing menstrual cycle awareness. Amazing. However recently I've noticed some similar symptoms around ovulation, headaches, migraines, acne, nausea and I've been wondering what this might be telling me. I'm 41 so I've wondered if it's to do with approaching perimenopause and the hormonal changes there or whether it could be telling me? I'm 41. So I've wondered if it's to do with approaching perimenopause and the hormonal changes there, or whether it could be telling me something about how I'm using my energy throughout my inner seasons. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. Thank you. This is a question to be answered on a couple of levels. One is, I would just really recommend you check out Lara Brydon's work to help you understand and get some really good health guidance there. And that's

out of, not within my remit. I can't speak to that level. Yeah. So we have two episodes with Lara Brydon, episode 13 134 which is about natural approaches to all kinds of menstrual health challenges and episode 135 which is how to feel better in perimenopause. Okay I think where there's trouble in the cycle in inverted commas where there's disturbance I always feel it's worth it feels like the cycle is saying, you know, pay attention to me, come here. And I'm in a way, that's how I approached my menstrual pain all those years ago, 40 years ago. I took my body very seriously and sort of followed it and listened to it. And voila, this is what has happened.

Red school has come out of it. So beware. It could lead to something interesting. So, yes, your cycle is drawing your attention now to something around the ovulatory energy. And in a way, everything that we have said today about the inner summer and how to have a sort of better inner summer, if you like, by caring for the seasons before, I would really take that on board. I would really take on board what is happening for you at menstruation and deeply really attending to menstruation, really allowing yourself as much as you can, more than before, to really have more of what menstruation can give you to start to really taste that those deep spiritual forces at work that affirmation of who you are and what you're about and to to really pace how you come into the into your inner spring and um i would actually set an intention

to get before your next bleed and for subsequent beads for a little while to really get insight about what is happening for you in the inner summer around ovulation so set an intention and then just let it go and allow yourself to bleed well as well as you can as best you can and do that lovely pacing work and um actually but you're going to be really um just bringing more awareness to the whole cycle, but particularly this first half. And just notice what arises in you as you do this. You set this intention and you tend to yourself at this deeper layer. And I suspect you will have insights that come in, guidance that will land. It could happen very strongly at menstruation, but frankly, it can happen any old time. And I actually would be really interested to hear what unfolds over a

few cycles for you, of you just really tending to, in a way we're here we're talking about tending to the ecology of the whole cycle and um just seeing what deeper meaning is wanting to come through wanting to speak wanting to be known shall we say through you in you right now and yes do it would be well worth doing um checking out say lara bryden's work getting some really good uh guidance around uh your hormonal health what but also actually your your home your hormonal health is always saying something about your overall health yeah it's the fifth vital sign and um so when trouble happens within the cycle, it's saying, tend to yourself, to your physical health. And of course, to the health of multi-layered way of meeting physical symptoms. And one of the things that's beautiful to remember about the menstrual cycle is that it is the self-care cycle, that each phase of the cycle is teaching us more about what we're needing and when we're needing it and actually how to

meet that need in ourselves. And self-care is so fundamental to health and well-being that when we begin to really deeply regulate with the rhythm and flow of our menstrual cycle. Our nervous system is soothed. And actually, our health can be profoundly transformed. I know people often put a lot of weight on directly addressing physical symptoms through all the health practices and they are really good and valid but the practice of cycle awareness is the foundation for our health it it really is the bedrock on which all of those things can be most effective

and have the most impact it's like creating fertile ground before you plug the seeds. So I really want to emphasize that. And you are practicing cycle awareness. I can hear that, that these symptoms are a sort of call to drop into a deeper commitment to yourself. So you mentioned you're in your early 40s. So what's helpful to know is that when you come into your 40s, you're coming into the inner autumn of your menstruating years. So here we're talking about cycles within cycles again. And part of what the inner autumn of our menstruating years gifts us is this sort of like the peeling back of the veils to reveal the underlying issues and these show up in our physical health in our mental and emotional health and the reason that's a gift is because we can't tend to anything we

can't see. Anything that's suppressed or unconscious can't be healed, can't be integrated. So it's a lovely unearthing that starts to happen in our 40s, which, you know, if you know that, if you know that this is the right and natural order of things, if you know that this is like your cycle's gift to you, creating greater health that will put you in good stead for the, you know, the last act of your life or the third act of your life, then suddenly we can recognize, oh, again, I'm not in battle with myself or my health. There's, you know, this is, I'm being guided as to what needs to be tended to. So I find that a very helpful context to have as well. So good, Shani. So good. Yeah. Okay. So this is our final question and it's quite fun it's about like please can everyone just catch up with me in the inner summer so it's from Rachel and she says I'm in the summer

of my life and my inner summer is probably my favorite time of the month at the moment I'm so patient and feel so confident everything just feels easy something that would cause me to break down in tears at another time of the month is like water off a duck's back during my inner summer. The only downsides I find is that I want a lot of time and energy from my husband, which he appreciates but doesn't always have time to indulge, and I can get frustrated with how slow everything and everyone seems. I know it's just my brain working at full speed, but my perception of the world is that everything's in slow motion and I just want to get to the point. I totally know that feeling. It's the one time of the month I can't listen to podcasts because I have too many thoughts buzzing around my head and need something upbeat to match my energy. Oh, I just want to go, yes, yes, yes.

It's such a brilliant example of the power that we tap into the inner summer, but it's also a brilliant example of the limits of the inner summer. You know, there are natural boundaries that we meet in the inner summer which are because of the powers we tap into so with all that heightened energy and capacity what we lose or lack is sensitivity and compassion and a capacity to be deeply relational you know we've got good social capacity but we aren't that sensitized towards really someone else's perspective we it's it's very very interesting the limits that that you know where we're held by in our inner summer and um it's so all-consuming that energy that it's very hard to believe that anything or

anyone else is operating or is different to you you know yeah and a feeling of you know of this could go on forever it's that sense of uh just a high that could just keep on getting keep on going and going and going um you know i i um in almost i just want to say you just have to love that energy. And actually, maybe just get strategic with what you're doing. You know, maybe if the world is just too slow for you, it's to not engage with the world. Get on with things where you don't have to faff with other people faffing you and putting brakes on you and, you know, care for that energy and use it. It's fabulous. It sounds like you could kind of conquer the world with that. And yeah, I say,

get smart and strategic with it if you want something practical. And I just want to second what Shani has said. Yes, just being mindful that there is a shadow side going on with that energy. It is non-relational. But I just don't want to dampen you. I don't want to dampen your spirit. I kind of love the unashamedness of it. And I just want you to unashamedly go, yeah, whoa, yes, get out of my way, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's so good

to capitalize on that and really take charge and go for it, you know, get into the flow of um what's coming through you and stop at nothing you know it's it's really is about letting yourself experience that limitless capacity i think so yes we always say that's the limitation of summer that we are limitless but actually it is also it's strength it's huge. We need to feel invincible at least occasionally for the vulnerability that we have to feel. Exactly. I mean, bring on invincibility, please. I'll have a dose of that.

So drink it up, Rachel. And the question I would want to bring to Rachel is this frustration. Like, how could you take your foot off the brakes even more yourself you know the frustration she's feeling around others well forget them how can you take your own inner like take your own inner breaks even more yeah yes exactly it is that sort of really claiming that energy and and go using it utilizing it going with it unashamedly but you know there's a very practical thing here which totally bit me in the bum last cycle i think it was where if you put all that inner summer energy in charge of your schedule

for the rest of the month you get in so much trouble and i got to my inner awesome and went what have I done podcast conversations at 4 30 in the morning and eight o'clock at night like what was I thinking oh I was in my inner summer yeah it is one of our rules don't let your inner summer be in charge of your diary yeah it's one of the rules you know you've got to get smart about these things and then that's the trouble with invincibility yeah is that you forget there are no rules you see because you're limitless and nothing applies to you it's all what i know yeah yeah yeah that's the that's the downside you forget that you shouldn't be scheduling things here i just i'm so so grateful to everyone that sent their questions in because there were so many more that we weren't able to answer today but we really appreciate them bringing in hopefully we can bring

them into future podcast episodes and for anyone who would like to be part of the kind of pre conversation before we do this come on over to our red school community hub because that's where I say hey we're doing an episode about this would anyone like to bring their questions and i'll put a link in the the show notes um at red school.net forward slash podcast you'll be able to find the show notes for this episode and you can find the link in the instructions to come and join the the community hub yeah so thanks maybe maybe all of this inner summer talk will convince the outer summer to come back here in the UK come on yeah let's see if we can just work a bit of magic here

Charlie maybe you just need to dance around to um True Blue by Madonna in the garden and do a sun dance oh actually I've got a great playlist for the inner summer, which I can share with everyone. And then I don't need to dance alone. We can all do a little summer dance. Yeah. Will you share that in the show notes, Soph? I will. I'll put it in the show notes. Definitely. Oh, thanks, you two. That was really that was so much fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today I really felt quite summery after recording that and after

editing that and I'm curious to hear how it landed for you and hopefully it can enhance your experience of your inner summer so that's it for this week I'll be with you again next week. And if you know someone who's experiencing challenges around ovulation, please forward this episode to them. So 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.