The Menstruality Podcast - 172. How Cycle Awareness Grows Your Intuition (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

In a world that can overly prioritise the linear and rational, so many of us long to connect with and express our instinctive, intuitive knowing, and today we’re exploring how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can help us to hone the art of intuitive living. Alexandra and Sjanie unpack how the first half of the cycle has an outer-focused thrust which takes you out into the world (it almost takes you out of yourself if you’re not careful) where your rational mind is at its peak. And then the tide turns, and in the second half of the cycle, your energies contract and you’re naturally drawn back into yourself, and the instinctual, intuitive, psychic knowing within each of us. Then, at menstruation your intuition can reach its greatest expression. The left brain retreats, your capacity for rational thinking goes offline, and you’re opened up to a much more holistic way of knowing, sensing, and feeling. Your subtle senses are blown open, you have access to something way beyond yourself… and you can feel the deep meaning of your own life. We explore:How to follow the intuition instructions that your cycle is giving you. We need to pace the contracting energy in the premenstrual phase, and allow ourselves to adjust, slow down and allow a greater sensitivity to happen. The intuitive knowing that Alexandra and Sjanie received at their Big Bleed this year, and how it has totally changed the trajectory of Red School, bringing Menstruality to thousands of new people. The menstruality leadership skills which help us to hone our intuition, including intentionality and interoception, which are a key part of the curriculum on the Menstruality Leadership Programme. ---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, how's it going? Thank you so much for coming back to the podcast. I hope you're well. Today we're talking all about intuition, which is a really important topic in a world that can overly prioritize the linear and the rational. And so many of us, I hear it from our community

all the time. I feel it in myself. So many of us I hear it from our community all the time I feel it in myself so many of us long to connect with and express our instinctive intuitive knowing and today I asked Anilandra and Sharni all kinds of questions about the connection between menstrual cycle awareness and this art of intuitive living so they unpacked how the first half of the menstrual cycle has this outer focus thrust, which takes you out into the world, and it can almost take you out of yourself if you're not careful. And that's where your rational mind reaches its peak, and then how the tide turns. And in the second half of the menstrual cycle, your energies contract, you're naturally drawn

back into yourself. And this instinctual, intuitive, psychic knowing within each of us is highlighted and enhanced. And then they explore how at menstruation your intuition can reach its greatest expression, the left brain retreats, your capacity for rational thinking often goes completely offline and you're opened up to this much more holistic way of knowing and sensing and feeling. So let's get started with how cycle awareness grows your intuition with Alexandra and Sharni. Okay so we're going to play a new game this morning and we're going to include a bit of the conversation that we often don't include in the recording, which is Sharni is going to draw a power card from the Red School power cards to guide this conversation. And I'm drawing one too.

Yeah. Oh, really? Two powers are better than one. Right. Let's see what we get. Now, be nice cards. So this is a power card to support our conversation today and for those of you who don't know these cards are the menstruality powers they're the cyclical powers of each season of the cycle so ah well just to prove a point, I've drawn the same card twice in a row. I drew a card for myself before this, and I've just drawn a card now,

and I've got the same card. So I got connect, which is an inner summer power, the power of connection. And that makes so much sense to me in light of this conversation, because everything to do with our intuition depends upon connection to ourselves, to our cycle, to life, to the world, to one another. It's all about being in relationship with and listening to and responding to. So it's absolute perfection. Yay. Don't fuck it up, Alexandra.

Well, this card felt quite a sort of grown-up power. You know, I feel I have to be quite grown up with this power. And it's the power of discern, because I think of discern as a high spiritual quality. And it's something that really ripens with age and discernment is i mean it's the ultimate card when if we're talking about intuition really i mean connection is you know it begins with connection and then it deepens with this power of discernment because discernment requires this yielding and patience and allowing and discerning is a totally a non it's wisdom at work yeah so it's a very embodied uh knowing power yeah yes and it's really to do with such a deep fine tuning isn't it it's not about brush strokes it's about an absolute kind of finesse of awareness.

Yeah, real precision. Not this, not this, not that, not this. Ah, this. Yeah. Oh, I love it. All right, so we're already deep inside the intuition conversation. We're right in there. And let's fine tune ourselves in the way we always do at the beginning of the podcast by

getting as precise and discerning as possible about where we're all at and how our cycle days influencing us. Who feels like kicking us off with that? Well well this is a very good way to start because a daily cycle check-in does attune us to ourselves and bring us into connection so for anyone wanting to grow intuition just today. And very much in the inner autumn of my cycle. And those of you who know me, I'm in my late 40s, I'm actually turning 48 in like about three weeks time. So I'm very much in the autumn of my menstruating years and I've had such an interesting experience this month which we can talk more about actually when it comes to this conversation about intuition and sustained intuition

the piece I'll tell you now Sophie Jane is I had such a powerful inner summer experience this month I could really feel the embodied power of the inner summer of my cycle but it was in concert with these autumnal energies that are really like my baseline these days. I mean, I was joking with Alexandra. I said, you know, my menstrual cycle awareness practice is basically just experiencing four shades of autumn, which it is. It's like there's this very strong autumn overlay on my experience, but feeling this deep inner autumn power of the place I'm in in my life in concert with this inner summer energy a little while back was so beautiful I felt like I was in one river very full-bodied river, fast-moving river,

a river that has very clear purpose and is full of abandon. You know, that's how I felt. It's just such free-flowing, creative energy. And by contrast, today, in my inner autumn I feel like I've become uh the multiple tributaries of a river this is real complexity in my system a lot of contradiction like I'm holding all these multiple layers and multiple experiences and there's a huge amount of kind of sensitivity in that I was thinking it's a bit like in the inner summer I was there was this sort of amplification of my like central nervous system this core this backbone and now I feel like I'm really in the peripheral nervous system and all this sort of sensing out and taking in a lot of information. And it can very easily become anxiety or overwhelm.

And at the same time, it can very easily become this deep, rested peace and this profound trust. And with what's going on in the world right now, I mean, I feel like I'm feeling it all. It's all collective. It's a lot. It's a lot it's a lot thank you for naming that piece around the four flavors of autumn because I can it's almost like I can hear so many people listening going yep that's my experience there's so many women in our community women and people in our community who are feeling that

yeah and it is a lot thanks Shani how about you Alexandra waxing moon it's um day six of the moon and uh I had such a deep experience of the moon uh this time because it was it was really the void of the year as well and you know the dark minumen and it felt very amplified and i had an intuition to i had an intuition a few days before i thought uh i really have to can everything i do at the weekend i just gotta really i've just gotta have real spaciousness and not have technology going, you know, just drop it all. And beyond the absolute basics, I essentially did that.

And I was in this really, I had memories of when I bled, being just feeling my own nature. So it's just the, what I'm about. Oh, God, it was so almost it when i say if i say orgasmic it sounds really really ecstatic but it had this deep river quality of just oh but it oh it was so beautiful and i was i had to be incredibly slow I felt like I had no buffering, nothing. And that deep feeling is past now. And I'm sort of left with the no buffering bit. And not so physically resourced or more so today, because I can feel something of the vitality of the moon coming into me,

that waxing. And there's a feeling of that there is some life there, but I have to be so paced with it, so paced. Yes, very paced, Sophie. And I feel the depth yeah yeah it's just amazing hearing you both speak because as you're describing through these different visuals that the river and the tributary and the lack of bufferedness especially it's like I'm hearing all of the things that cycle awareness has worked in you over the years that opens you up to your intuitive capacities like I'm

hearing them already so I can't wait to get into this but I'll just share a bit about where I am too so I'm on day four of my cycle also having had a more rested bleed than I've had since Artie was born so for four years and then a year before that because I was pregnant um and I feel so in touch with myself it's the the day after the election we don't know who's won yet but either way the fact that the election in the US has been so close has triggered many different parts of me young parts of me that feel afraid. And also the one that I'm really in tune with is this like 20 year old part of me who was fighting for women's rights so fiercely. My heart is racing as I really touch into her, you know,

and listening to some of the brilliant activists that I follow. I'm thinking of Lila June especially this morning who's an indigenous activist she said look whichever way it goes we'll keep fighting for the people who need us to fight and for the planet and that's really like on my day four having touched in to the depth of you know connection that's possible at the bleed I'm coming out absolutely doubling down on who I am what I'm for let's go um and tending to the parts of me that that feel afraid yeah so doing both of those things oh yeah big times big times require big intuition so let's see let's talk about it like I I'm really curious to hear first of all how you two define intuition because I think

it's a word that gets thrown around a lot and people have different ways of understanding it so when we were yakking before this conversation Alexandra you said so many great things about what intuition is but one of them was it's an inner knowing beyond rational thoughts a knowing that comes from my being, from my organic felt sense of felt sense. And I think of it as another faculty of knowing, like, you know, smell or touch or, you know, my rational brain. It is a sense of something, an intelligence rising up in my being in response to something. And it doesn't, it's not on command like my left, well, my left brain isn't always on command. It goes out to lunch occasionally

but if the intuition is not on command it's a deeply relational thing for me it's about me being in relationship with myself so if i'm not rested in myself in way, I'm dulling that capacity. If I'm not connected into myself, I'm dulling that capacity. And it's about being able to be in relationship with what is happening and not reacting to it. Because again, when I'm reacting, I'm shut out of it. So actually, the quote that always comes to my mood i just love it was this italian midwife on um i think you know what my first menopause workshop actually no it wasn't it was my first workshop ever in italy and um i was teaching on the menstrual cycle i think i must have been

talking about the premenstrual phase and you know how you have that kind of gut knowing but she said yeah i know without knowing why i know and it's like the why actually will often come later it'll often be self-evident you know yeah that's that's why i said i just knew at the time it was i was not to do that or you know whatever it was and then later you know other pieces come to the fore so it's like foresight sometimes it's like you could tune into the future and and it's a way of actually relating and um it's part of our emergent skill set isn't it Chani really it Really. It's about how we unfold a future rather than repeating a traumatized past, really. You know. Yeah.

What about you, Shani? Yeah. Wow. I love what you said right there at the end, Alexandra. Absolutely. Which is why intuition is so core to menstruality, why we grow intuition from practicing cycle awareness and why we need intuition to track our cycle experience. It goes so hand in hand.

And it also, what you're saying there explains a little of why why we say menstrual cycle awareness is healing both for us personally but is also healing for the world i notice so when you asked that question about our definition of intuition, I feel a little bit sort of cautious to define it because I've been on a huge journey with intuition in my adult life. And it began really in my twenties when I was on contraception and I had no menstrual cycle. And I just had this incredible fascination with this idea of intuition and what it was and how it worked. And I was really shut out of something. I mean, possibly not quite as shut out as I thought I was.

When I look back now, I can see that I was being guided and a bit like the fool. I was taking steps in the right direction. Life was taking care of me. So it's quite nice to know that, you know, even when you don't feel in touch with your intuition, there is still something guiding you that you are responding to. So I find that quite comforting. But I remember hearing people talking about intuition. And what it mostly did was just confuse me because it's not something we can really understand with our minds. It's so deeply personal. It's about awakening a faculty

in ourselves. And if you haven't awoken that faculty, or you don't have access to that faculty, all the words in the world aren't really going to give you access to it. I remember, for example, being in a group where we were learning healing skills and being guided to sense, intuit, and feel the history of a particular piece of land that we were standing on. And I was like, what the? I can't feel anything except the cold, wet English earth under my feet and the breeze. And I was in a very literal place with it. But what's so interesting is that the way that this faculty opens is by noticing what we notice, is by being aware of what we are aware of. So in my case, it was the physical sensation of my connection to the earth, you know, the feeling of the earth on my feet, that was the gateway in. And as we pay attention to what we are noticing,

we begin to become aware of more and more and more. And that has really been my journey with intuition, is bringing more attention to what I am aware of the little fleeting things that I dismiss the temperature of the air, a little flicker of a sensation in my body and so on. I've paid more and more attention. And in that I've become more and more aware. And the more aware I've become, the more I've been in connection with life and the more I have felt knowing in me. And I would say now that intuition is my absolute superpower. It's like how I run my business.

It's how I parent. It's how I live. It's how I live. It's, you know, leads my friendships. So it's the place I go to again and again. And cycle awareness really has been the thing for me that has brought me into this learning experience with what intuition actually means to me. And so we've had so many people contact us over the years who have said things like, I've just read your book, Wild Power, and I've started paying attention to my cycle and I'm not experiencing any of the things that you're talking about um you know and implied in

that question is either a is there something wrong with me or b has everything you've said maybe not possible or true and the truth is that it's a relationship and when we first meet someone when we first meet our menstrual cycle we don't know it very well we don't have these deeper levels of access to it um and it's by paying attention to what we are aware of in our menstrual cycle that we begin to become aware of more and more of what is actually going on so you can hear in that how the practice of cycle awareness really expands self-awareness. So it starts with this body literacy, like you become aware of the physiological changes in your body and you pay

attention to those. Then you become aware of, you know, emotional literacy, how your mood and energy changes and all of this is building greater and greater self-awareness yeah and then over time this self-awareness gives you this much greater level of access to yourself but also to how life is guiding you and holding you yeah I am so turned on by what you're saying everything you're saying I'm like vibing on it majorly especially the time it takes to develop intuition because I think there can be a mistake around it or a challenge around intuition where we think we have to know something or get something. Like as if we have to kind of make something up that we're intuiting. Like you said back in your ceremony when you were feeling the earth underneath you.

And it's the beauty of cycle awareness is we don't there's nothing to make up our bodies are showing us guiding us you know our bodies in relationship with all of the other kinds of intelligence within us it's and I love how you point to it's just becoming more and more aware of what's going on within us in a world which often tells us to look outside us for meaning and truth like nope let's keep turning back in let's keep turning in listen be aware we don't have to make anything up it's all here waiting to be related to yes you know I was thinking about this this morning Sophie I was thinking how is it that I'm honing the skill of intuition every day? And it is cycle awareness, which has really taught me that when anything happens in my life, I don't then outer reference

that experience, I always come back to my experience of what's happened. I'm always coming back to how it feels in me, how it's affected me, how I'm responding to what's happened. So it's that, exactly what you're saying. It's about this continual return to our own experience of life. And that's what connects us to this knowing field. It's, I often talk about the menstrual cycle as like, well, menstrual cycle awareness, the act of it as the umbilical cord to one's deep self. And there's one other word I want to throw in here,

which is about, so it's about awareness. And the other word is, and our daring to, from that awareness, to work with who we are in that moment, to pace ourselves with our actual energy and the state of our nervous system rather than the agenda of all we have to get done today, but to dare to find some way to yield more towards our actual state, even as there may be a huge agenda that we have to turn to. Just the more we can dare to 1% more, 1% more,

actually move with the state that we are noticing that we are in. It's that key. So it's awareness and really learning to trust and work with the place we are in. It's building this incredible affirmation of oneself. It's like an act of love, really. And that act is awakening this inner spaciousness. We're creating more space within ourselves. It's like we're pushing back the walls of ourselves

and we've got a greater spaciousness around us, a buffer, as we were talking about earlier, between ourselves and the world. So the world's agenda doesn't inveigle its way in and take over and dictate how we're supposed to be there's like this breathing space so menstrual cycle awareness creates this breathing space around us and that act of doing that allows allows the kind of instinctual and kind of knowing faculties within us to breathe almost, to take up space, to talk to us.

We've got space to hear ourselves, you see, because actually we're always being guided by something, but we don't have often the wherewithal, the connection to ourselves and the spaciousness with ourselves to be able to hear and actually receive it so that's i mean menstrual so much packed into that phrase menstrual cycle awareness, isn't there? I mean, there's a freaking cosmos waiting for you. Yeah. Yeah, really, Alexandra. And I mean, there's so much in what you said. And the word that comes to me from what you're saying is, it's this practice of presence. You know, when we practice menstrual cycle awareness, we're coming into presence with the place we're in.

And I know for myself, when I don't have access to my intuition is when I'm moving faster than the pace of my body. In other words, my mind is in charge. My mind is running the agenda and planning and creating and future forecasting etc trying to manage life and I'm not present in the experience I'm having and that really just takes us out of this connection to ourselves and our intuition and I have a sort of little image in my head of when I'm in that place where my mind is in charge and I'm not actually in sync with my cycle it's almost like I'm this little two-inch high human you know on the on the face of the earth trying to manage this whole big world and all i'm

managing to do is move what's in my immediate sphere not really having any effect but when i come present with the place i'm in in my cycle now i have like grown to include my experience. And now life is inside me. Life is happening through me. I'm having an experience of what's happening. And that's where guidance comes from. I mean, we could say that guidance is happening in the experiences we're having, whether we like them or not. You know, every experience is guiding us

if we dare to trust it as you said Alexandra if you're loving this in-depth exploration of cycle awareness and intuition you might love our menstruality leadership program it's a three-month deep dive into the power of the menstrual cycle for healing for professional development for connecting to your feminine wisdom for understanding your purpose and finding the courage to live it more fully which is really the way that alexander and sharni define leadership you can find out all about the curriculum at menstrualityleadership.com. And before we get back to the conversation, here's a story from Dr. Cree Dye, one of the graduates

of the menstruality leadership program about her experience. I am excited to share why I chose to participate in the Mr. Alley leadership program with Red School. And so coming across Red School was just like a gift because I think the way Shani and Alexandra have put together this work, it's just so life-giving. Some of the things that I've discovered or experienced while being in the training, and I haven't stopped following them yet for other trainings or other offerings that they have, is that how much I need us. I need us as women, how much I need us. And it really saved my life. Like participating in the Mr. Ali leadership program told me that one thing that I

really knew all along is that there's nothing wrong with me. Like I'm not crazy. All of these things that I'm experiencing, it's okay to be who I am and how I show up in this world. My inner landscape has grown. All of the little community inside of me has grown. And I get to live that out as a leader in all the things that I do. As a therapist, I integrate this work into working with individuals, not just women, not just people with wombs, but also with families, with men, with my son, they are aware of my inner seasons. They're aware of when I am in my inner fall and it's time for me to just slow down and have some time with myself. The way that Shani and Alexandra teach, it is it's like it's like you're talking to a family member. Right. They don't know this, but I actually describe them as my mentors, because once I had one session with them and I just sat with them and it's just like we're talking in a video that I'm listening to of them.

I'm like, oh, they're my mentors. I really loved what you said there about going faster than the speed of your body and how that blocks the intuition. And I'm thinking of how I feel like my main role in my family is to slow everyone down and that doesn't come naturally to me because I'm a speedy person this is hard but aid is wonderfully rational you know and it's it's difficult but great being in relationship with him because I have to take my own side and hold to my intuitive knowing. And it has to take it. It takes a real hammering from his rational, logical brain regularly. And I'm having to become much more robust. You know, it's eight years in.

It's a work in progress in expressing my own knowing and taking my own side but anyway I'm always slowing his head down and Artie down so that we can be together and feel together and you know I just feel like parenting is one of the arenas of life where intuition just comes into its own and I think Ada's seeing it too and regularly I hear us say to each other now, I'm just sensing that Artie needs this right now. And I swear, before we were parents together, Ada had never said, I'm just sensing anything. And it's beautiful to watch us, you know, because you can't know what's happening inside a little child's body.

They don't know. They can't tell you. So we can't get any knowledge from outside. We have to go inside. And it's guided everything we've done as parents um it's so practical this isn't it you know it's so practical yeah absolutely such a good example because it's that intuition is born out of your connection with your child and your knowing of them moment by moment and you being in the stance of listening and responding to them and so yes a mother's intuition any parent's intuition is the guiding light because no one else knows what you know no one and I trust my knowing because of the dance I've had over these 13, 14 years of how am I doing?

How am I feeling? It's day 20. It's day two. It's day five. What's going on? Oh, this is what's happening for me. And then trusting it and trusting it and trusting it. It's like working out, just building trust muscles with ourselves.

This is how I'm feeling. It's true. It's real. You know, that's what cycle awareness has given me yeah and I love Alexandra how at the beginning you mentioned the midwife the Italian midwife because wow like a midwife is a woman steeped in menstruality like through through that particular lens of the initiation of childbirth in the menstruality life arc. And there's so much about childbirth that you cannot know. We don't know it. We know nothing about childbirth still. Well, the midwives know,

you know, the doulas know, because they've been there, they've witnessed, they have this intuitive knowing. So it's clear that menstruality, cycle awareness is a massive gateway to intuitive knowing let's start to tease it apart a little bit maybe starting with the menstrual phase of the cycle how this part of our cycle. So the first, so yes, I'm just going to pan back for a moment before talking about menstruation. this kind of rising energy as we know and that thrust takes us out into the world and also it yes it's it's really it almost is taking us out of ourselves if we're not careful and and into the kind of doing mode in in the world and actually really at ovulation our rational mind is sort of at its peak at that moment and in the second half of the cycle the energies are now contracting and this just naturally pulls us into ourselves so of course the whole cycle is implicate in developing intuition.

But in the second half of the cycle, one will start to feel that instinctual, intuitive knowing, psychic knowing coming to the fore more and more strongly. And so, yes. And then menstruation, it reaches its absolute sort of greatest opening. You know, it's like your left brain really does shut down. There is a moment, isn't there, just before, you know, bleeding. We talk about it as the void where that rational thinking really goes offline and you are now like whoa with another kind of cosmos and because you're really being opened up to a much more holistic knowing um a more um sensing feeling i mean you're wide open. It's like all these senses, these subtle senses have just been blown open. And basically, you're kind of channeling something. You have access to

something way beyond yourself at menstruation. I mean, it's freaking incredible, actually. I mean, you can really know the meaning of the universe, or well, maybe not quite that, but the meaning of the universe or well maybe not quite that but the meaning of your own life which is pretty cosmic actually and like knowing about the meaning of the universe knowing about oneself however it has to be cared for you've got to actually follow the instructions that your cycle is giving you so you can if you're in that second half of the cycle if you can actually pace that contracting energy and not and not try to keep the same energy going that you had in um the summer of your cycle but if you can allow yourself to to adjust the more you adjust and slow down and allow this greater sensitivity to happen so it's increasing as you move through the premenstruum um you uh will start to feel this intuitive knowing

kind of wins the day over rational thinking and the age that italian midwife was referring to her premenstrual experience she was in her premenstrual she just knows shit and you get the sense she's not to be argued with by the way you can feel it I'm thinking of an example that you've you shared with me both of you of your intuitive knowing at um well it was in your big bleed for red school that you do twice a year um so you weren't I'm not sure if you were actually in the menstrual mode or not but because you both have journeyed so deeply with menstruation you what what I imagine is you invoke the energy of menstruation when you're doing these big bleeds so you're inside this field of expanded consciousness and it was at the start of the

year and you both well I don't know if you both did but Sharni for sure did got this clear intuitive knowing that red school needed to focus on expanding visibility this year. And you came to the team so strongly, you were like, right, I've heard it from on high, from within. Red School needs to expand our visibility. And we were like, okay, it's not something that we'd been thinking about at all. But now we're in November and looking back back I can see how that intuitive knowing has guided our whole year and has created incredible things at Red School like you having your biggest interviews yet with like like we're talking tens of thousands of people listening and then you know suddenly there's double the amount of listens on the podcast that week suddenly there's like 8 000 listens I'm like whoa where did everyone come from

and it's really expanding the reach of this work and it came from an intuitive knowing from the this deep menstrual space that you were in together I mean it's so fascinating yeah yeah it's um as you're kind of telling that story back to me I'm feeling quite moved because I feel so grateful for being in contact with that knowing in myself because I can lean into it so heavily I trust it so deeply and it gives me such a sure footing um and yeah I kept coming back to me again and again but you know what's interesting sophie there is um the intuition that comes from our connection to ourself in the moment and then there's also this sort of ongoing faculty of awareness we call this sustained intuition which allows us to stay in contact with the deep river of what's unfolding over time in our lives in other words stay in touch with the process that's at work.

And so, you know, we do these big leads twice a year where we have these times of really just deep listening and reconnection with that deep river. And so over the years, we've been tracking a creative process that we've been in. So this knowing about visibility didn't come out of nowhere. It was the evolution of the process that we've been in. We've been doing all this development of our work, growing foundations, getting our work out into the world in our books and really establishing our ideas in the world. And the thing that's needed next now is for people to hear about it, for more people to hear about it.

It's the creative process that we're in. And then, of course, that went and informed all of our business decisions, our marketing strategy, absolutely everything we're doing, including how we're spending our time, what we're putting our energy into now. And it was actually the simple act of intentionality with that. You know, there was like an orient, we brought our beings into an orientation with that knowing. So we were kind of lined up with that as an intention and i always feel that that acts as a kind of magnetic creates a magnetism draws in yeah yeah in the same

way we can kind of track the creative process we're in in our lives in our parenting journey in our business that's what we're doing with our menstrual cycle every month we're in in our lives in our parenting journey in our business that's what we're doing with our menstrual cycle every month we're feeling the season that we're in and we're feeling what's needed in that place and that's exactly what alexandra and i were doing there with the big lead we're feeling the creative season we're in and what it's asking of us. Yeah. This is so good. So I feel like in the conversation so far, you've named so many pieces, which are key to growing our intuitive capacities. There's obviously practicing menstrual cycle awareness, just starting to track where we're at in each phase of the cycle and trusting our own experience and listening and leaning in and so that involves this capacity to go at the speed of our bodies to sense where our

bodies are at and be with that you just mentioned intentionality alexandra so there's some really key pieces here can you expand on the the body piece because it feels so key to all of this and I know interception is one of the dark arts the menstruality leadership skills that you teach on the menstruality leadership program let's look at that a little bit can you walk us into interception yeah yeah it comes back to what i was saying right at the beginning um of our conversation which is that intuition is born out of our connection with ourselves and ourselves live in human bodies and so our connection to our body is the gateway to our intuition and the ongoing connection to our body the ongoing somatic awareness of our cyclical body really grows this muscle of knowing. So this ability called interception

is very much about our capacity to perceive inside our body, you know, from inside our skin inwards, to be able to perceive the physical sensations, what's happening to our heart rate, our breathing, our nervous system, etc. And it's the ongoing attention to that through menstrual cycle awareness, where you're checking in regularly each and every day day that you become more aware of your physiology. I mean, you can learn this skill of interception through any embodiment practice. I mean, I practice movement medicine. That's another way I've learned through yoga practice. There are lots of ways you can learn interception. But menstrual cycle awareness is a really for me core core practice for this because it builds this body literacy and then it's like you uh come into the the knowing field of your

body you you come into sort of what's behind the sensations or the kind of life that's inside the sensations. You're nodding your head, Alexandra. Go on. No, no, I'm agreeing with you. You keep going, Shani. Okay. Well, you know, what I love is that when this ability for interception has been researched, they've discovered that people who have stronger interception have got greater emotional intelligence, more empathy, and more intuition. direct correlation to this physical sensing of yourself and your ability to feel others and be in relationship with life and then when you're doing that in the context of menstrual cycle awareness

what you've got going on is I'm wondering how I can describe this but as you move through the different phases of the cycle you've got you know uh different degrees of sensing capacity going on so you move through different um uh you move through different levels of connection, actually, with yourself or different types of connection with yourself. And it is this shifting current of shifting way of connecting with yourself. It's sort of exercising you in something. You're never the same. And that's the point. And your relationship to these changes is sort of exercising.

It's keeping you alive and lively, this changing nature. It's keeping your being responsive. So intuition rests, well, interoception rests on responsiveness um but also um you know i'm it's i just don't know how to describe this it's really strange but your levels of connection to the subtle realm shift over the menstrual cycle journey so i would dare to say you know ovulation you're most sort of grounded in material materiality so your subtle realm collection connection is is not the same you know and then uh as you move into the second half of the cycle it's like there's more holes that appear in the in the sort of screen

around you that, you know, is sort of blocking your connection. Now there's more holes coming and there's more getting in from the subtle realms. And then by the time you get to menstruation, you're totally blown open. You've got no buffering. You're wide open to the subtle realms. And then you come out of menstruation and then you're starting to sort of i want to say armor up but i don't mean that negatively you know you're starting to put up this kind of skein around yourself um that sort of keeps the subtle realms at bay more because we've got things to do haven't we like it's too much bloody information coming in and you can't live from menstruation all the time. I mean, really, you know, it made me laugh on day two of the moon, you know,

this moon that's just passed that morning. Cause I get very ecstatic. It's like, there is no, and I have less and less buffering as I get older, by the way. So I'm sort of permanently liminal. But on this um dark new moon at Sir Wayne I was like blown open and I was being bombarded with all these feelings all this knowing about myself but then I was having all these ideas coming and I thought this is just too much I just can't want to turn this off and i had to just go write everything down so i could

just calm it and then i had to slow right down and you know move really slowly and deliberately to sort of somehow hold myself um because it was too much i couldn't get on with business it was exhausting actually it was exhausting which is why at registration you need to stop you know you can't do you can't multitask you can't do the day job and be channeling the cosmos simultaneously they don't go together very well no the amount of times at the dinner table over the last three days that i've said aid aid I really want to talk to you about like quantum physics tomorrow. Like I can't do it. You should see the amount of information

I'm processing just from my senses and the world. Like I can't have this in-depth conversation about this very interesting thing right now. It's like you've got this whole other conversation going on. Yes. And so that's why you just can't handle day-to-day mundane questions you

see you know or even less mundane questions like conversations about quantum physics you know whatever it is it's very basic quantum physics by the way he's starting to teach arty i'm not trying to pretend although can i say soph, you are experiencing quantum physics. I mean, excuse me, I do not want to talk about it. I'm just in it right now. I'm actually just totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is it. I'm in the quantum field, baby. Got my answer lined up for next month already. So it is the fact of managing these changing states within you that is

exercising something within you that allows you to be more intuitive you know it is it isn't just the fact of the state itself it's the process of managing it that uh expands things within you and makes you more available really for intuition to experience intuition so i feel like we've really painted the picture of the importance of intuition and how cycle awareness is helping us to grow our intuition and the impacts this can have. We haven't spoken about health, but for our own health, the health of our bodies, parenting, relationships. I think it'd be good to speak about leadership. You know, we have this program the menstruality leadership program how is the cycle helping us to lead intuitively

wow well I mean really the menstruality leadership program unpacks that question in a lot of detail not just with information but with practices and experiences that help to grow and hone the skill and really deepen into the practice of cycle awareness so that you are ongoingly tutoring yourself in this skill of intuition and growing your interception as well. Amongst many, many other skills, you know, we talk about the menstruality leadership skills, the dark arts, and they all in a way feed into this intuitive capacity in one way or another when I think about it for myself um Sophie Jane I feel like my leadership is well sourced from my connection to but also from trusting myself over outer authorities. And the menstrual cycle is such a good teacher in trusting yourself, trusting your own timing.

And so just to give you an example of what I mean by that is we live in a world that's not organized around our cycle rhythm and whilst that seems really cruel on one hand it's like can the whole world not just stop when I'm bleeding that would actually be so nice now that I think about it whilst we don't you know whilst that would be lovely what is so fabulous about the fact that there is a world's timing that is different to our personal timing is that we get to really practice very very deeply what it means to stay in ourselves and to move at the pace of our bodies and beings, at the pace of our nervous system. And every time we choose that over being co-opted by the pace of the world or what other people think we should be doing. We're growing this inner authority and this trust in ourselves.

So that's really been one of the key things for me in terms of leadership. Oh, yes. It's, I mean, intuition. I intimated earlier about this, actually, in the conversation about intuition, really helping to unfold my future, my leadership in the world. It has been everything. It has not come from my rational mind at all. tried i tried to do rational sensible things you know because i was really compelled by this menstruality work you know in my 30s and 40s as you know i was growing it and developing it and i tried to do rational things like going and getting it ma and psychotherapy and then i even

considered phd and in social ecology with my focus on menstruality. I really thought those things. And then every time I thought about those things, my heart sank. And I thought, no, I can't. And then I would keep thinking, but this is not a rational decision. No one's interested. So few people are. How am I going to make a living out of menstruality? But I couldn't abandon it. It just, every time I bled, there was my absolute knowing speaking to me.

So this is my intuition guiding me against all rational, you know, odds. And really, you know, as I was in my 40s, I mean, I did not have much to show. I mean, I was a good psychotherapist, but, you know, but it still wasn't me, fully me. And it was actually leaning into my cycle because my cycle kept bringing me back to what I was about when I would go off on these meandering journeys, you know, and then I'd bleed and I'd go, oh my God, oh my God, oh God, oh yeah, oh God, this, yes, yes, yes. And somehow my cycle was actually holding me in my leadership. It was holding me, not letting me abandon it. And it was like this intuitive knowing, nudging me, nudging me. And then I remember this huge intuitive hit I got at 48

of stop being a therapist, return to England, because I was living in Australia. And I thought, oh, holy bajolly, but this is therapy. That's what I do. You know, it's like I'm unemployable for anybody. And returned to England, you know, I had to start all over again from zero. But I couldn't abandon it. And, you know, I have to start all over again from zero. But I couldn't abandon it. And, you know, I followed the instructions and here we are, Red School. I mean, everything has come out of just following these hits, if you like, this knowing.

And honestly, if it had not been for the menstrual cycle, I mean, I could almost weep saying this back and then what Shani and I together have been deeply, deeply refining and and clarifying. people to develop their own knowing, their intuition, their own knowing about who they are and what they're here to be and do and serve and celebrate in the world. That is leadership. That is the leadership that we are teaching on, you know, teaching about, bringing people into the river of who they are and liberating their gifts. Because when you liberate someone's gifts, it's a gift to the world. And that's the kind of leadership we need today. And that's what menstrual cycle awareness is serving. It's beautiful what you're saying, Alexandra, and it's making me think of all the women and people that I know in our community who are doing this really awkward, difficult, uncomfortable, messy work of hearing that they're here for something and getting these nudges and

then going, I don't know how to do this and put bread on the table and pay the rent, pay the mortgage. You know, I don't know how to make this and put bread on the table and pay the rent pay the mortgage you know I don't know how to make this work within the constraints of my life and it keeps coming up and I've just got to you know and I'm just so grateful that you two have created what you needed back you know what you needed when you're 48 Alexandra the dementia leadership program is what you needed right to hold you to help you so I'm just yeah and I was warmly welcome anyone listening who wants to be in a community of people who are doing this work it's a beautiful place I've been through it myself it was a delight I'm still in connection with the women that I was with it's yeah it's such a fruitful generative beautiful space to be in and um to hone our intuitive capacities together in

yes sophie it is indeed it's incredible i love it oh i will say thank you to i feel like we could talk for at least 10 more hours about this but we've you know made a start and curious to hear from you if you're listening you know what questions you have about intuition and what's this sparked for you, you can always let me know, sophieatredschool.net. But yeah, for now, say bye and we'll be back again in a couple of weeks with another episode. Thank you so much, you today i hope you feel your intuitive capacities coming more online from this conversation i'd love to hear how it landed for you you can always get in touch with me at sophie at redschool.net and if you're interested in the menstruality leadership program there's a few more weeks to join the 2025 program you can find out all about it at

menstrualityleadership.com okay that's it for this week I'll be with you again next week thank you so much for being part of this community until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm