The Menstruality Podcast - 186. Menopause as a Gateway to Magnificence: Wise Power Series (Prune Harris)

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Today we’re exploring the immense capacities that open up to us as we move through menopause, and it’s a special episode as Alexandra, the co-founder of Red School is your host, and it’s our next Wise Power series conversation...The Wise Power series began with our Wise Power retreat when S+A’s book Wise Power was published and Alexandra is continuing to have sporadic conversations about what menopause awakens and reveals within us all.  Today her guest is Prune Harris, an energy expert, a consciousness educator, and soul activist, who has trained with healers, elders, and wisdom holders throughout the world. Prune shares her personal experience of navigating the great threshold of menopause, and how it can collectively awaken a new, immense capacity to reclaim our deep worth as human beings, beyond concepts of gender and status, but as a lifeforce that is part of the great web of life. We explore:The different cycles that Prune is tracking now post-menopause, and how our life force moves into different expressions of wisdom once we’re no longer being held in monthly cycles. Menopause as an identity death process which brings us face to face with our inner soothsayer, to hear deep truths about ourselves, our relationships and the world, so we can choose the new identities we want to embody in our third act. How menopause is helping to meet the modern day crisis of separation and call us home to our essential place of belonging, so we can radiate it into our lives and into the world. ---Order our menopause book - Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com---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.hardyPrune Harris: @pruneharris - https://www.instagram.com/pruneharris

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the Mentor Charity podcast. Thank you so much for being here if you're coming back and thank you so much for continuing to come back here and a warm welcome to you if this is your first episode with the podcast. It's a special episode today. Alexandra is going to be your host and it's our next Wise Power

series conversation. So the Wise Power series began with our Wise Power retreat when Sharni and Alexandra's menopause book Wise Power was published and Alexandra is continuing sporadically to have conversations about what menopause awakens and reveals within us. And today her guest is Prune Harris, an energy expert, a consciousness educator, a soul activist who's trained with healers, elders and wisdom holders throughout the world. And together they explore menopause as a gateway to magnificence. Welcome to the Wise Power Retreat, where I'm having a series of intimate conversations with people about their menopause experience and what it's revealing and liberating in them. This series of conversation is about the power, authority and purpose that menopause

awakens in us, about what's possible individually and collectively when this rite of passage is supported and dignified. And today I am delighted to be speaking with Prune Harris. And I regard Prune as one of the world experts in understanding energy. So since birth, Prune's been able to see energy, the energy of humans, animals, trees, and the earth. And she teaches and empowers thousands of people across the globe, myself included, to bring consciousness to our energy systems and how we can make small, because they are small often, aren't they? Small yet powerful changes that elicit real change in our lives. And Prune does this through her in-person work and online courses,

her social media presence, her membership, what do you call it? We could say platform. Platform, that was good. I was thinking of that earlier, your membership platform and your YouTube channel and your wonderful book prune of which i have a i can see a copy of it there in the background but your book and it's called your radiant soul understand your energy to transform your world and folks get the book i'm going to do it now it is just so beautifully um designed the energy the energy of the book is gorgeous and it is just a joy to read it's just you you teach you write so and you teach but you write so clearly and simply, and it's so obvious and it's so accessible and it's so useful.

So fantastic book. Wow, Alexandra. Well, thank you for all of those beautiful, beautiful words. And thank you for noticing the energy of the book as well. It was crafted with very much that intention. And so many people feel it, even when they see the cover so thank you for noticing that that's really beautiful for my heart it was immediate prune yes and i'm not surprised people were noticing and i imagined you'd actually really tended to that yeah that

that was very deliberate what you did well well true we are here to have a conversation about menopause and what we're going to do is go into your experience of it and then see where that leads us in understanding about more bringing more light really to this extraordinary transformation that we go through at menopause and so that's what we're doing with these individual conversations so I'm going to ask you first where are you in your menopause journey how are you I am in I'm in a really really rich luscious and beautiful place within it. So here at the beginning of 2025, I have not bled for about three years. And I was so grateful, so grateful for circumstances that helped me really honor that last bleed. For much of my life, I've always honored and loved the bleed time. I love the lusciousness of it,

the thickness of my energy at that time. I would often offer that blood to the land. I was always deeply aware of the vitality and life force that exists within our blood. And that big gifting of that cycle within my body system was something that I was always in deep connection with. But, you know, as we get into menopause and there's bleed times here and then not, and then there is, and then there's not, I was always aware that I might not know the last time that I was going to bleed. And so I was very conscious of that. But as I remember so clearly, even now, as we're talking, I can completely go back to being in my bedroom, those three, three and a bit years ago, and loving, honoring, feeling such reverence for that blood. And that was the last time I'll ever see it.

So that feels really, really precious to me to have had that process of really witnessing that rite of passage, as you say, really witnessing that there is a significant change that has been coming and will continue coming, but a very big threshold had been crossed at that moment. So as far as kind of how I am in myself right now, I'm aware of some cycles. Of course, for me, everything is translated through that lens of energy, because that's my natural language. And I'm aware that there are big cycles that play in my body system. I'd say right now, they're between three and a half and four months, that these times of like, I feel that sort of surging more of that hormonal energy in my system. And during that time, I may have some more hot flushes than when that surging, as I would call it, isn't in my system. So there's still a cycle that's moving through my body, through my year, but it's a much, much slower one. And it has been

slowing as well over these years at first even though I wasn't bleeding there was still that feeling of like oh my body is in some kind of monthly cycle and then I witnessed it go more to kind of six weeks seven weeks and now it's more in that three and a half four month stage so that's really interesting um to witness that in myself. It really is, actually. I've never heard someone articulate it so clearly. It's like you're getting an echo of that monthly rhythm with the menstrual cycle and and i almost have a sense now as time passes that the echo will get sort of more and more subtle and quieter and quieter and then it will i i know that's my you know imagining but yes so you are in a kind of echo of that and it's extending more and more.

How interesting. And I'd love to hear, oh, I'm just really with that image now of the echo and you inside that, actually. Yeah, well, Alexandra, let me maybe just talk a little bit more about that because I think it is a. We've learned within our kind of mainstream medical or patriarchal worldview of menopause, we've we we've learned we've taken in in those deep subconscious understandings. One, that it's horrible to that. We're pretty much useless afterwards. We've lost our valuableness or our worth um three it's black and white you you are menstruating you have your menopause and then there's this

space afterwards and i think what i've observed in both working with women at all stages of that journey but also now of course having the personal learning in myself, is that we live within cycles, don't we? The cycle of the 24-hour cycle of the sun, the 28 and 29-day cycle of the moon, the great cycles of the planets, the cycles of the seasons. So we are, we are absolutely hardwired, softwired, everywired for understanding cycles. They're so deep in us. We never even have to think of them when we do think of them. Wow. It gets even more juicy, but we don't even have to think of them. So it makes sense to me that as my monthly menstruation cycle has changed, then my body's finding ways to move that transition through in still cyclical fashion, but it's changing, it's moving. And I love it I love those times when I feel energetically when I see a woman who is ovulating or menstruating their energies are quite similar and they are thick thick juicy amazing it's a it's a incredible electrical field and we feel it don't we how many times I remember for me it was

so frequently mostly when I was ovulating rather than menstruating, but maybe I go to open a car door and a great big spark would fly off. Have you ever experienced that? Yeah. Those times when electrically we're much thicker, we're far more conductive. And of course that also makes us far more psychic, far more connected into our intuition. We can really access the richness, the throbbingness, the thrummingness of our own emotional states when we're in that denser energetic fields that those reproductive hormones bring in, which is why sometimes our moods can alter so much. So when I feel that thickness in my system now, and actually it was about a week ago, 10 days ago, when I had for the first time in three and a bit

months, I had that thickness in my system and I just celebrated it so much. Yes, it meant I had a few more hot flushes, but being someone who's been told all my life I love the hot flushes I totally love that feeling of like ah here it is but also energetically I can work with it in a way that makes sure it's not too intense yeah it's the intensity that really can drain us or move us towards panic can't it so they don't have to be intense in my system, because I can understand just how to invite them to move out, rather than to move up in that huge flush. So being able to really witness that in my system, last week, the week before, it delights me, I think of that big energy of creativity that's still coming in those cyclical patterns in my system. I really want to stay with this theme of cyclicity because

in just sort of to deepen into it actually because as you say, we are embedded. Well, my word is embedded, but I think this is embedded in all sorts of cycles. And I always think of the menstrual cycle as giving us, because it's inside our body in such a sort of obvious way. I mean, obviously, we have the circadian rhythm and other more subtle rhythms in our body. But the menstrual cycle is so, you know, consuming. I always think of it as tutoring us in cyclical consciousness, really grounding us in the imperative of caring for cyclical consciousness. Because when you don't, there's trouble with your menstrual cycle where you fight it and I always like to say that at menopause we graduate you know we don't need that tutoring anymore now because we

we've been so well so well tutored in it and there's a sort of implicit understanding and connection with it which give us us which gives us an acuity for sensing all sorts of other cycles going on. I do think of the menstrual cycle journey as a journey of attunement, all sorts of levels to ourselves, to the world, natural world, to subtle worlds, to our soul and so on. And, yeah, we don't we've graduated and now um we have a sort of acuity or an attunement to all the subtle cycles that work in our being and um just one of the ones i'm tracking is actually the the creative cycle of my calling i can feel myself held by that now because the menstrual cycle used to hold me and i can feel that holding along with of course all the other cycles that you just named that's enough yeah i i, love that concept. And I would absolutely agree. Thinking of that place of the, you know, if we put it into the concept of the maiden, the mother, the crone, or the place of beginning initiation, that place of maturity, and then the place of the wisdom keeper, the

wisdom action, and or the wisdom inspirer, even, I love that concept of that cycle of the soul calling as we, as we deepen into a completion and a stepping forward into the next place. I'm going to think about that moving from this conversation. Well, maybe the next question I would love to ask you, which we know we're probably feeling into already, which is, you know, what has menopause given you you know what I want to say what powers or capacities you have now that you relish I mean I'm yes how does that question land for you there's a word that really comes to mind there Alexandra which is um magnificence i think as we as our power our energy as we move through that great doorway you know it's a big doorway the menopause doorway isn't

it's a big threshold massive yeah as we move through it there's the capacity for an immense reclaiming a reclaiming of ways of being that in our mature years we were growing into exactly like you say cycles, those places of understanding more of our deep worth as a human being, outside any concepts of gender or status or any other limiting concepts, but that place of us as human beings, as a life force, that's part of that great web of life it feels like the depth of our wisdom when it's not being moved in that cyclical nature it means that that life force that creativity within me, within us has different expression.

And for me, I think that word magnificence really holds the bigness of potential expression that I know I didn't have even 10 years ago. I certainly didn't have 20 years ago or 30 years ago. And was I a magnificent person? Yes, of course I was, just like every single one of us are. But there is a deep freedom having moved through that threshold. And I think that magnificence, or even the word sovereignty, that capacity to say, this is who I am it feels like as you're saying that cyclical nature that attunement that deep learning it evolves in a whole different place of freedom during the process of menopause and beyond. So yeah, I think those are probably that magnificence and freedom

would be two of the big gifts that I perceive that the menopause is bringing me. As well as, and this is something I see regularly as well, it's kind of a feeling of like, I don't give a damn. I want to do it my way. I want to step into it in the way that my soul and my spirit calls me. And all of those, all of the potential limitations of should or must or need suddenly has a different framework of thinking around it. and I think some of that Alexandra for me certainly I've I've really I'm very comfortable with death I've worked with death a lot big beloveds of mine um I was born

one of twins and my twin died at birth so death is a very familiar companion. Yeah. But as I've gone through menopause, I am deeply aware of my upcoming death. Yes. Yes. That is inspiring. And maybe that death is tomorrow. And maybe that death is in 35 years time. I'm 52.

I have no idea. And I don't need to know. But it's coming. And that gives me immense freedom and immense commitment to myself and what I want to do or be in this world. And I think that's the huge gift of menopause as well. Wow, what a clock, the things you've been saying there.

This word magnificence. It's so powerful, that word. It's got this glow about it. Yes. And this claiming of something that I feel as you're speaking, really a recognition of yourself and the claiming of that and you use this phrase commitment to myself and um you speak about death yes i feel very strongly that you know menopause is such a it's a such a classic moment of recognizing oh my god my life is you know death suddenly appears on the horizon for real you know it's up until that point you know you kind of live in it's not there it's like in the dial or something but going through menopause suddenly yes it shows up and there's this sense of, I was going to say urgency actually, but it's, I think initially when it shows up, it really, it can crush. It actually requires something to, it demands something.

Because I think menopause itself demands something of us to be able to claim that magnificence. And I can't help feeling the recognition of our mortality is what actually really activates something in us. And in menopause, we're really asked to meet that, and that's the sort of workout that we have to go through to be able to, it's quite a strong word I want to use, and I'd be interested to see how you hear it,

but to earn that magnificence. Because at some level, of course we don't have to earn it. It's always there we are magnificent and at menopause we get to realize it but i guess when i'm using that word earn it is that we have to go through some kind of emotional initiatory process to be able to claim that word yeah yeah yeah i really hear that it because we're going through a death aren't we yes we go through menopause we are going through a and that death is um not only of that cycle of um of the creativity of our blood um but often it's a death of identity and as we move through that death of identity we're asked to be in relationship an emergent

relationship with a new identity and that is an amazing time but exactly like you say, we have to actually choose to step into that place. It's a choice. It is. And I think that's what your work and Sujani's work does so incredibly is empower people to recognize that right there at that time, no matter what has been our cultural norms or our physical norms right there at that time wow we have a choice and for me I mean I do agree with that word urgency in the most relaxed and gentle way if it can be held like that because when we are working with tenderness with that place of our own mortality, when we're working in that threshold place, then we do feel like, goodness, if I only have a few years or decades left, what do I want to do when I grow up?

Exactly. There's a whole different question. I mean, my immediate is as I'm listening to you speak is I don't want to waste another second of my life you know it's that feeling I'm going to swear here now it's like I'm fucking not holding myself back anymore you know it's it's yeah you know if I have been because when I remember when I went through menopause, I saw all the ways that I had sort of subtly compromised myself, you know, capitulated to, well, for what, it's a very clunky word, but to patriarchy, it's very clunky.

But at such subtle levels, i saw how i had compromised and it's like menopause throws the gauntlet down to you and says you know are you gonna are you gonna continue doing that you know because you haven't got that much longer left you know what are you gonna do yeah yeah i really hear that and it feels like in that choice point, really, we only have, well, possibly we have three choices. One is we run away from it. Yes. We completely escape and deny the potential of our own empowerment in that situation. The other is that we feel utterly stuck in it. Yeah. And, and I think

each of us are all three of these in varying ways, we get utterly stuck in it. But the other one is that we dive deep into it. I like to think that in the heart of every one of us, there is, or in the core of every one of us, there is the, the, the soothsayer, the truth teller of our life, our story, our experience. And it feels like, wow, being in the menopause gives you a chance to really meet that inner soothsayer so that your truths can come out into well at first from the core into your consciousness but then from that place into your relationships into all aspects of your life and from there into the world and when that starts happening wow we're empowering not just younger women approaching menopause but we're empowering everything from that place of empowering ourselves so yeah juicy magnificent i'm going to pause the conversation with prune and alexandra just for a moment

to invite you to get your own copy of wise power discover the liberating power of menopause to awaken authority purpose and belonging if you don't have your copy already so alexandra and shani have a vision to create a world where time space dignity respect and honor is given to everyone when they're going through menopause. And it's why they wrote this book, Wise Power. You can order your copy today at wisepowerbook.com. OK, let's get back to the conversation with Alexandra and Prune. I just really want to pace those three things you named, because actually, you're absolutely right, they all come up.

And I almost want to say they're archetypal, actually. You're going to encounter each of those and it's part of your initiation. You have to meet, you know, I mean, the running away bit is really classic at the beginning of Benapause, actually. And I say, yes, totally, totally normal. You go absolutely go into denial. This is not happening. I'm not going there. And it's like you have to tick that box almost, you know, archetypal. And then comes a woof where you're really there's this feeling of being slugged of just yeah it feels like death it actually just feels like yeah this is over it's over it's over you know my meaningful life is over um and then that third one of choosing to meet it as this awakening to something.

And it's so, actually, I'm suddenly feeling tears come up in me, Prune, because I think because we don't understand what's trying to happen at menopause, what menopause is actually trying to gift us. And we're therefore not supported. It's not named. And we're not supported. The reason I'm feeling really moved right now is that some of us can get lost along the way and don't make it to that third place you know that that you know come out of menopause sort of limping and sort of giving into a kind of cultural

the cultural number that's that's oppressing us with men you know. And I find that, well, distressing. Yeah. And you bring up this thing, Prune, about if we can meet that challenge, something extraordinary is freed up in us. I it's power it's power it's this extraordinary new energy it's a different energy it's power and the earning bit is important because we've got to take responsibility for that power because power can we can still abuse power very nicely thank you very much if we're not careful post-menopause but i do feel that the

kind of process of going through menopause really prepares you to be able to take responsibility for it and the point you were making was that we have within us post-menopause this energy to really contribute something. These are my words of what I've heard you say. We have something that's needed, actually, in the world. Yeah, deeply needed i mean every part of our life is deeply needed if we claim it at that level isn't it um yes and also just by our life just by being alive we're deeply needed we don't have to do we don't have to claim we don't have to step into empowerment to be utterly essential in that web of life but when for me one of the kind of journeys of our lifetime is being able to become

more and more an active co-creator of our life yes we're a co-creator of our life we're a co-creator of our world and if we're a co-creator of our world we're a co-creator of our world. And if we're a co-creator of our world, we're a co-creator of the world. So it feels like as we move through our big life cycles, menopause being definitely one of them, then we get to choose to claim that further. And I so hear what you say about support. You know, even think of those three archetypal places of avoidance, stagnation or stuckness, overwhelm and declining. When we think about those, no one chooses to avoid or get stuck. No one chooses that. That's because we're not being empowered to make other choices yes that's so important we're not being supported yeah yeah you're so right you're so right we're not choosing

to avoid we're not choosing to get stuck we are in the dark because we haven't been given the lights to guide us along the runway so to speak of absolutely we're sitting in the dark and yeah that's brilliantly put actually prune thank you for that well i hear this word a lot in healing circles of self-sabotage and quite frankly i think it's a ridiculous word there there you go you get a little bit of my menopause reclaiming there. Because self-sabotage suggests that we choose to sabotage ourself. And I've never what we lean towards a default pattern. So just really kind of popping that into the place. And that, and that again, is where for me, energy understandings are so empowering because as I've gone through my menopause and how thousands of women go through theirs, I'm able to understand, ah, today, you know, let's say um it probably hasn't happened for for a month or so

but some sometime back in december i woke up and i felt utterly flat which would be a very familiar feeling to anyone going through menopause that like oh blimey someone someone turned the switch off me okay um and that's not my normal way you can have a sense that normally i have quite a lot of life force of flatness so immediately i'm able to check in oh am i working with something um emotional really big have i had a really challenging time with a beloved or something no all right then it's hormones so i know exactly what i'm working with and I have the understandings to say, right, well, if I'm sort of flatlining right now, then I know that my liver energy, which is so responsible for moving so much through my body system, isn't doing its job.

Because if it was doing its job, I'd have the sparkiness in me somewhere. So then I know, great, I'm going to do some liver practices. I'm going to give my liver meridian a little bit of a, hey, let's wake up, let's do a little bit more. I'm going to do a glorious crown deep spin to kind of say to many parts of my system, we need to start getting those things firing again. And I'm going to do that before I even get out of bed. Then I'm going to do that before I even get out of bed. Then I'm going to turn to my husband and say, I'd really love a cup of tea because I'm working with some hormonal thickness today. So suddenly I have choices. I can get up and think, well,

how am I doing? Knowing I'm empowered to bring the changes in that normally in a short amount of time, when I wake up and I'm utterly hormonally thick like that, within 20 minutes, I've got something firing in my system with very little effort. Maybe within an hour, I'm back. Now underneath it, I know the hormones are moving in thickness. So I'm going to respect that. I'm going to adjust my day because of that when I can. And usually I can. In the evening, I'm going to do a little bit more energy work just to say, come on, I don't want to wake up in the morning feeling like that again. So these places of empowering our with with true choices informing ourselves so that we have true choices that's definitely a big part of that stepping through the threshold for me

it's fabulous hearing that you'll be amused to know i did a liver thing following you, one of you, this morning. Because I'm usually like sleep and I thought liver, I can feel it. Yeah. And I was doing it this morning. That's fabulous. Yeah. Those energy practices are so good for supporting this process. Along with just, I'm just thinking of things like well if it was me you know

I would be it's what I my diet you know what I'm foods I might choose that day I can feel for when I'm all sort of spleeny and stuck and and I know particular foods I like need to eat to support that it's so I mean that energy work is just so amazing in what it can do um within a very short period of time to support ourselves yeah you know i want to just go back to this power conversation we were having and contribution to the world because you made such a good point and i want to expand on it you spoke about uh so uh this i i had spoken about how postmenopause you know we've got powers that are really needed you know in the world to contribute and you really emphasized um yes of course we're needed all along,

you know, just our existence. I just think that's so important that you emphasize that just our very existence is contribution, is meaningful in the world. We are needed. And each stage of our life journey, we bring different kinds of things to the world and I think what's really important around this you know restoring menopause is of course to do with restoring the powers that we hold post-menopause because basically we have sort of worth and meaning and contribution up until menopause and then we fall off a cliff and actually to be honest I was only

just getting going by then and it's actually post-menopause that the big game has really begun because of the, because of the inner work that menopause demands. You know, there's a real growing up process that happens that helps to liberate us into that magnificence and so yes I'd love to and and and this idea I want to just circle back to it again because I feel so strongly about it and it's such a strong theme that I know you hold we haven't actually said it like this but I'm going to say it now and this is something that you said that's sort of implicit in all that you do now it's like a deep thing this is what I understood a deep thing that you are serving tending to all your life with your energy work and i would have to say uh that is absolutely what i have been tending to through all our menstruality work is restoring connection restoring connection and I think post-menopause that is where that work really

takes center stage I think that's the powers that we hold post-menopause be really interested to hear how you hear what I'm saying here but the powers we hold post-menopause i if i speak for myself i feel utterly in service of this restoration this restoration of belonging to life to the world to nature yeah really really beautiful. And I, and I completely agree. And it's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting, Alexandra, that it, it takes those levels of initiation, those thresholds, those rites of passage before we really understand the deeper vibrations of that calling or purpose or capacity within the world I think when we I found that when I use words like soul purpose or life purpose or soul calling people get panicked and they feel like oh I'm not, I don't know mine yet. Well, mostly we do. Mostly we do.

Mostly we do. Yeah. And if we take away the kind of trappings of could you write an essay on what your soul calling was and actually say in one sentence, what is it? we want to live our fullest in being part of the healing story of the world or part of the great interconnection between um the individual self or the individual soul and the world soul or the cosmic however big we want to go like to really understand our essential place of belonging and to radiate that sense into our living experience. In lots of ways, it's very simple, isn't it? We want to experience joy. We want to experience love.

We want to feel compassion towards us and experience compassion. We want to enjoy life and we don't need big houses or big cars or a big bank account to do that. In fact, a lot of the happiness studies have shown us that those things rarely impact happiness in any way the happiness is what we have is that inner relationship to our sense of self and our sense of why we're here in this world and there's been well i think right now we're in a real crisis around that aren't we and we we are, we are, we are deeply seeking that connection to support each other in our individual lives so that we can feel that grounding beneath our feet. And from that grounding really inspire the heart to radiate out more. So it's that place of like for me when I'm thinking of menopause it's that we have gone through vibrational change yeah that vibrational

change so you think about being a little girl and you're you kind of got whatever it is you've got whatever your specific constitutional makeup is and then you move into puberty and puberty changes that vibration. We become, we become attuned to a slightly different, definitely a very different rhythm, but a slightly different way of being. And then we kind of grow, learn, expand, move through that. We nurture our, our little ones ones whether they are physical children whether they're projects whether they're dreams and we grow them and we grow them and we tend and we grow and then we get to this incredible time of death and rebirth and it's not a brand new rebirth we're not coming out of the egg we're actually just learning through that vibrational change how to vibrate in

an even more i'm going to use the word um clear way we're no longer vibrationally going in this um short cycle now we're moving in far bigger um waves let's think of ourselves as an energetic beacon sending out waves yes the process of menopause deeply changes that so they're thicker they're cleaner they're they're more committed and that impacts everything us our choices our actions and the world so that that's kind of that's the purpose of initiation or thresholds isn't it that we go through a vibrational change and therefore a consciousness change yes exactly and the word i'm actually holding as i listen to you is coming into greater and greater coherence within ourselves that allows our expression to be bigger, to be clearer. Yeah, that's really how I remember how I experienced just this utter recognition.

Oh, this is what I'm about. And then how that clarity then just released what it is I was here to do and serve. You know, it was there. It was obvious. It started just pouring out. Yes, I love the way you describe it, Prune. Well, in so many ways, when we think about that moving beyond separation, moving beyond that legacy, it's a damaging story, isn't it? And it's one that is at the heart of so many of our modern cultures and therefore our psyche.

So consciously thinking about the story of connection. And that starts here doesn't it that starts here I can't be any kind of force for connectivity in the world if I'm actually deeply separated in myself um and so another big gift of the menopause is that you know there's so much moving there's so much thickness there's so much um to either try and run away from or get stuck in or dive into that we're kind of beginning to weave parts of ourselves together that we haven't had to most of us haven't had to in those other periods of our life exactly that that's very well put um you you can't avoid yourself anymore and um i love this image of weaving um because i think there are sort of um it's like you do, and we describe in our work, you know, an initiatory process,

sort of five stages to that initiatory process. And it's almost like you go through it over and over again, deepening and deepening. It's like spiraling down more and more until you hit pay dirt, you know, which is the ultimate moment of am I really going to claim myself or not you know this is it you know if I don't I don't you know yeah there's that sort of do or die sorry it's melodramatic what I'm saying but it is that strong where you have to go I'm claiming myself yeah now I've lost my thread of what I was talking about there I'm going to jump in right there

while you explore your thread come in because I I it is melodramatic but we also or very dramatic rather um but we also get choice we always get choice do we want to step into that place of reclaiming or not and for some people it, it's an instant, amazing dive in. This is what I've been waiting for all my life. Let's dive into that choice. I am so ready to claim it. And for other people, it's very much that we sit there in that space. there and we kind of look around and we feel and we're still reflecting and we're still weaving parts of ourself we're still calling them home essentially those those traumas those pains those times that we feel we let ourselves down where we failed some part of ourself in a deep way and we sit there in that place of unknown and we could say that's the place of the mystery as well. It is. Sit there and we accept that we're sitting there.

So it doesn't have to be dramatic in any way. We know that at some point there's the choice to stay sitting, to think I cannot be bothered and I'm pretty much just going to deal with whatever comes my way for the next 20 years okay it's a choice yeah or we say yeah wow I'm kind of excited to see what treasures I am and then we start exploring that so So it can be dramatic, or it can be incredibly peaceful. And I would say that this period of my menopause, this experience of my menopause, being able to witness it, being able to feel compassion on those days where I kind of think, I'd really like to have sex with my husband. But actually, that's just a cognitional thing, because my body doesn't want to at all. And think, oh, but, you know, normally I love physicality. I'm a I'm a I'm a delicious person. I

love the senses. But no, today I'm not that person anymore. So I wonder what kind of person I am and what kind of person and what my experiences will be as I just bear witness to them and experience them in truth, in communication with myself and my husband or whatever other person I'm in relationship where things are coming up because of menopause. So I think there is, it feels important to say that we can pace our experience of the menopause. We can find our ways to bring in the deep peace and the deep joy, even on the difficult days. And I think that's an important rewriting of that story. That's absolutely crucial.

And I think the key word here is support, that there has been support or resourced. Yeah, because without resourceness uh uh it where there isn't yeah without resourceness there it's much harder to actually be able to be in those places and the other thing i want really um want to acknowledge is that i always this is in our work we teach you know menopause is the final chapter of a journey you have been on but most people haven't been consciously working with the menstrual cycle you know aware and and pacing it and and honoring the changing moods and energies of the month so they sort of slam into menopause and it sort of explodes in front of them but that actually was not my experience

because of course I had been working with my cycle for years so it was this kind of actually remember the moment where I felt ready. I remember a feeling of dignity and stepping up to something, even as I was very confronted by things, confronted by, you know, what I had and hadn't done in my life and the reckoning I had to make with that. But I had been prepared, you know, I had been on a journey and that's what's so tragic is that so many are rocking up at menopause, completely untutored in a sense, in the cyclical journey of the menstrual cycle, you know, of menstruality. And so they haven't been prepared.

Actually, the menstrual cycle journey, menstrual cycle awareness, prepares you for, it tutors you in how to meet menopause i mean it's still ultimate it's a bit like childbirth you know you can do all the preparation but i'm told because i haven't had children but actually experience it as another thing but still the preparation is important yeah so yes and one thing i'm just mindful of the time actually we're going to have to end very soon but i just really want to acknowledge this for those people who are having a really tough and extreme time with their menopause right now it's to me it's a mystery how some people have i mean at one level it's not a mystery it's a mystery how some people have.

I mean, at one level, it's not a mystery. It's about resourceness and preparedness and support from our culture and naming and affirmation, education and all that. That will transform things. where, you know, for some there is an inexplicable, unbelievable shock and kind of that is profoundly challenging. And I often, you know, I think to myself, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the power, you know, I want to say to people, there is an enormous power that's wanting to unfold here. You've got something here and you're being taken through. What you're going through is is your awakening to that power. That power can't you can't just have that power.

You've got to step into it. You've got to evolve into it. You've got to grow into it. You've got to be able to take responsibility for it. Yeah. Very, very much agree. Pruna, I've just realised the time. Just got a couple of minutes left left i want you to have some space

just to tell people about where they can find you because you're because i want to be able to go to you and learn all this incredible energy work alexandra i feel like we could probably talk for 10 hours together. That's cracking me up. We're just getting going, Prue. We totally are. So the best place for, well, thank you for already mentioning my book. Please, if you're interested in understanding more about your energy, that's a brilliant place to start. But also my website.

I've got a lot of information about energy. YouTube has so many videos for hormones, for menopause, for liver, as we talked about. So wherever you are called to start exploring and being supported in that journey of energy and hormones, not just menopause, but through the whole cycle. My website, pruneharris.com is the easy start point to direct you wherever you need. Yeah, you've got so many courses on there, but you've got, I mean, just going to YouTube and type your baby, and then there's just a ton of stuff, you know, your problem, whatever it is, and the stuff that comes up.

It's so good. It's all freely available on YouTube. It's amazing. And then you've got all these marvelous courses and your book, which I highly recommend to everybody. Thank you, Alexandra. Prune, thank you. We've just begun. We've just begun.

Just getting going and I feel I've had a very very satisfying rich experience with you I feel deeply supported and enlivened as well and hope that for everybody, yeah, going through menopause, then they can experience being enlivened and supported. It will change the world. Yes, and that everyone finds their juicy magnificence. Thank you very much.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye thank you so much for tuning in today I loved hearing that I felt like I was sitting at the feet of two elders who were sharing so much wisdom and I also just loved hearing how much they were loving each other and how much insight they were sparking for each other it was such a delight to listen to if you heard something in their conversation that you know a friend could benefit from or would inspire someone that you know please do forward the podcast to them and we'll be with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm