The Menstruality Podcast - 189. The Wisdom of Indigenous Andean Moontime Practices & Woman Medicine (Dr Cynthia Ingar)

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

In many indigenous communities across the world, people have long honoured menstruation as a sacred time. Today we’re lucky to be exploring the beauty and wisdom of the ancestral moontime medicine of the Andean people, and our guest is Dr Cynthia Ingar, who is an anthropologist and Andean keeper of Woman Medicine wisdom living in the Sacred Valley in Peru. In her late twenties, Cynthia was guided by a mentor to do thirteen traditional Andean moontime retreats where she was in silence and eating a special diet for four days and four nights while she menstruated.Cynthia has dedicated her life to teaching a woman-centered approach to women's health, to traditional midwifery and to revitalizing Andean Woman Medicine including menstrual cycle and the Andean Moontime traditional practices. In this rich, magical conversation, we explore how her moontime retreats prepared her to live her calling, both as a keeper of this Woman Medicine and as a mother to her children. We explore:How we travel to the ‘Ukupacha’ when we bleed, which is the realm related to the Feminine, where we perceive life differently, experience altered states of consciousness, and receive insights and wisdom.How Cynthia works with the ancestral Andean practice of praying with her menstrual blood, as an offering to Pachamama, to mother earth. What she has learned from grandmother mentors about how they worked with the ancient menstrual practices to give them inspiration and guidance in their work as the keepers of ceremony and the rituals of life for the community.  ---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.hardyDr Cynthia Ingar: @hampiwarmi - https://www.instagram.com/hampiwarmi

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 this podcast or welcome if it's your first time listening. So in many different indigenous communities across the world,

people have long honored menstruation as a sacred time and today we're really lucky to be exploring the beauty and wisdom of ancestral moon time medicine from the Andean people and our guest is Dr. Cynthia Inghar who is an anthropologist and an Andean keeper of woman medicine wisdom living in the Sacred Valley in Peru. In her late 20s, Cynthia was guided by a mentor to do 13 traditional Andean moon time retreats where she was in total silence and eating a special diet for four days and four nights while she menstruated. Cynthia has since then dedicated her life to teaching a woman-centered approach to women's health, to traditional midwifery and to revitalizing Andean woman

medicine including menstrual cycle and Andean moon time traditional practices and in our rich and magical and far-reaching conversation today we explore how her moon time retreats prepared her to live her calling both as a keeper of this ancient woman medicine and as a mother to her three children. So let's get started with the wisdom of indigenous Andean moon time practices and woman medicine with Dr. Cynthia Ingar. So welcome, Cynthia. Thank you so, so much for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you for inviting me. It's an honor we usually start by just checking in around where we're at in our cycles and how it's impacting us and how it's influencing our emotions and physicality and spirituality and yeah i'm curious i'm curious where you are and how it's how it's influencing you today so I'm in my pre-menstrual time

so my moon time is to come like in one week so I'm like still feeling the energy to complete some things and making meals that I still feel the energy for. And at the same time, I'm feeling like this gentle pull of going inward and also finding the spaces throughout the day because I'm a mother of three. But yes, in this stage of my life, yes, I'm finding not throughout the day like little spaces where I can go to, like to the woods, just behind our home, or just some moments to do some creative work for myself.

So actually, that's my mission for today, to find another space to complete this art piece that I'm working on. What art piece are you working on at the moment? So it's a kintsugi. I don't know if you have heard about kintsugi. Yes, I have. Yes, it's Japanese, like art reparation, because I was in a course, in a training course with PAM England two years ago around birth story medicine. So part of the first stage of the training was working

with this metaphor of kintsugi for the birth story and our life stories and how then we find those things as growth. Even maybe it wasn't what we expected in life. It doesn't always happen as we expected. But we can find how that crack that cracks us open can be this opportunity of growth or creativity of building ourselves again. Now there are kits that you can buy. So you have to break the balls by yourselves. And actually, I thought the pieces

were going to come already broken but that was a whole another other process to break them not with a hammer the boys were helping me with that part I bet they love that part yes it cracked in three pieces. So it's a 24-hour process to dry, not with a golden powdered glue. So of course, while doing the process, that evokes a lot of insights and about your own processes. So I'm looking forward to completing it today in one part of the day.

And such a gorgeous pre-menstrual activity um to be with the broken things in the world and then find the deeper wisdom like i love this quote from um leonard cohen the musician leonard cohen there's a crack in everything that's how the light gets in uh-huh yes I feel like that's the kind of pre-manistral anthem for us yeah and in ourselves knowing our lives yes yeah and the world I can already tell we're gonna have a fun conversation and who knows where we'll go well I'll check in for me first I'm on the other side I'm on day 11 so the inner spring feeling and I'm also just coming out of a couple of weeks of what I thought was a cold but I think it must have been COVID because it really hit me hard physically and emotionally and mentally like both my hubby and I had a lot of anxiety and now we're just tracking back oh I think that might

have been connected who knows but where I'm coming out of it now so I have this sort of inner spring energy rising and I like coming out of illness and I'm also it's making me aware and I'm curious because we have kids that are the same age I can feel that I'm entering a different phase of motherhood over this last six months which I might it's got qualities of inner spring about it because I'm I feel like I'm emerging from a more like internal um time where a lot of my energy has been focused on my son and on this process of mothering and figuring out what the heck is going on because my life's completely changed and I'm sort of there's a kind of remembering of myself oh yeah this is who I am this is what I'm about and a bit more kind of fizzing excitement about my own personal projects again that I haven't had for a while so I'm enjoying that feeling too. And this feeling of anxiety has

subsided it was like embodied or more like thoughts or sensations oh it was really big but I also had I've got a cyst on my left ovary at the moment so I needed to have an MRI to look at it so we're gonna get right into this Cynthia so the MRI invoked some medical trauma I have I realized and my body would go in the very small scanner I think I've spoken about this on the podcast already so I went through a whole two-week process of kind of negotiating it's birth trauma but it's also older trauma from medical processes and I went through lots of infertility procedures as well and it was just amazing to feel and it was in my premenstrual phase it was amazing to feel how my body wanted to show me you know that it's hurting from those times and it doesn't want me

to push through anymore and I learned a lot working with my therapist too it was really helpful and so the anxiety was connected to that as well so I'm sure, but all I know is I've done my MRI. And okay, you did it. Yeah. And I'm, yeah, I'm feeling just a lot more calm and grounded in myself. So yeah, I'm excited for this conversation with you. I wondered if we could start with really your calling to preserve this indigenous Andean woman medicine and how that began like there's something that you shared on your website I was raised by Pachamama mother earth in Peru I'm a Peruvian carrier and teacher of ancestral woman medicine and traditions and a lifelong student of Andean traditional midwifery and I

wondered if you could sort of walk us into that like your journey with this woman medicine yeah okay I'll try to be a little bit concise with that yeah yeah so I have Andean lineage from both my mother's side and my father's side and when you say Andean this is from the Andes mountains yes so it's an our culture no that it's all this very yeah rich culture that we have from the Andes no that it's not only in Peru also the Andes no covered other countries but it was particularly and is particularly strong in peru you know if you would have the chance to come i would love to yes always welcome you would see how the culture is very alive here you know it's part of everyday life and it's a very rich spiritual life um particularly in the traditional communities but it permits still like to the two towns and and in

the cities there is more yeah like a mix with urban values as well but in the center in the heart of the of the mountains not a covers like all the Andes, the mountain range in Peru, it's very strong and very pretty much alive. So I carry not that lineage, not in my blood, from both my bloodlines, but I was raised in the city. I was raised in the capital city because there was a lot of migration in the 70s, so that was part of my grandparents from my father's side. So although they are from the Ancash region and born there, they moved, I think, when they were like 10. So I was raised more in the city, you know, with more these Western values. But of course, I could receive from Andean culture

more from my grandmother in her cooking. My great-grandmother still spoke Quechua, that is her native language. And yeah, still in her small house in Lima, that is the capital city. We would have some of the traditional ways, although still permeated with like urban, more westernized life, that is part of the capital city and that influences South America as well.

So actually it was like this longing that I felt together with my own like spiritual opening that, no there there must be another way of not just yeah working in an office and and living in Lima so this began already when I was a student so like in your 18s early 20s sort of time yeah like 18 around around 18, 17, 19. And then, yeah, when I was 19, it coincided with this huge opening where I came to the Sacred Valley and to Cusco for the first time, although I had visited with my family other areas in Peru, including Ancash, that is where my lineage comes from my father. But it was like this collision of my own spiritual awakening and this longing of community living and of my own roots and wanting to remember about that. So, yeah, there was a particular gathering in that time.

That was 2003, so I that time. That was 2003. So I was 19. That was called the Call of the Conlor. That was based in the Sacred Valley. And it was centered on community living, but also inspiring young people by the old ways of our elders here in the Andes. So there was a lot of ritual and ceremonies and remembering. And that's when I felt that while still being very active in these spiritual ways and guided by elders

and working in the medicine ways, that anthropology would be a way for me to remember what I hadn't been told or taught by my family, by my own family. So when I entered into anthropology, I had like one like sabbathic year, like just traveling through the Andes. And I became really interested in Andean midwives when I learned about them, that they existed actually, that Andean traditional midwives existed and not just like professional biomedical midwives. That is the only official way to be a midwife. so I it was like just this pull around birth and women and that in a way was my entrance and also a friend a dear friend that in a way inspired me in all these women's health

world no that I didn't know much about because I wasn't taught about that in school it was only the conventional way you know like this yeah like you have ovaries and a womb but not connected to your inner experience or to your embodied experience it was more like well this external thing yeah yeah that you don't connect no as i don't know 11 year old that that is inside of you and how to relate with that no it was non-guidance at all uh yeah like this is sterile no sterile education menstrual education um so knowing about all this possibility about women's knowledge uh i said okay yes i will enter into anthropology uh focusing on women's health and in general and also andean woman medicine and medicine in general that I had already known been studying with elders directly and an Andean

midwifery so during my field works now I also had the yeah the gift to to be living now with with women andan women from communities that taught me their ways, and Andean midwives at the same time. And when I was living in Lima and still completing studies, I started working in a birth center. So I had this first training as a doula at that time in 2007. And I started working in the in the birth center so also I had this midwife mentor there that also opened all this other way you know because yes I was so

fascinated with birth and all and then it came to me of how I was living my woman life you know I remember at that time I was using I was being on the pill but on and off I I remember how in in these two last year call that we were having it came to me that yes I'm all about this I have about birth and have shifted already for many years to a more healthy way of living and eating and all but I'm taking a pill every day and i'm and i'm not sick no so i was accompanied by this midwife mentor to be off the pill to start tracking my my cycles and that was like a whole revelation revelation in my life it was like a whole new world and understanding no because i could have recallings from when I was in school,

when I maybe was, yeah, of course, for sure I was in my premenstrual time and when I would have like these lows of energy and sadness and of course, no, being a teenager and the changes ahead if I was going to go to university. And I remember thinking,

I remember very vividly no but some whole of school of high school I was like how am I going to go to university if I'm with my emotions all over like many times in the month no but of course it was a pre-menstrual time but not no one had told me about this this map map that I learned afterwards. Of course, you know how the phases of our cycle relate to our emotions, our psyche, our behavior. So then I started it. I started living it for myself and learning at the same time

when I was going in the field works in the Andean communities or learning of the particular Andean ways. So that was in a way how I entered. Then I realized that with this midwife mentor, I started sharing these women medicine workshops. And that's also when I started, under her guidance, to do these traditional moon time retreats. So this is a traditional way we have in the Americas.

It's also from Mexico, in North America, and it's a practice here that usually we would go into a retreat. We go into a retreat when we are with our moon bleeding. But it's recommended that at least once, once in a lifetime that we do this whole cycle of 13 moon time retreats. So you dedicate yourself for one year with a particular diet, with complete silence, for four days and four nights, particular foods as well. So I was like, yes, of course I want to do this.

And yeah, I think that was the best preparation I could have, actually, to have even my own children, to go even into those depths of the medicine that our moon time carries when we are totally allowing this medicine to unfold because the medicine is always there. But if we are distracted in a way, not ourselves, in a way we don't feel it as much. But of course we know it's a different

embodied no bodily sensations not when we are in our own time um so yeah that is that I did it when I was 20 27 to 28 oh yeah big times there's lots of changes tend to happen for people around that age I've noticed in my own life. Yes, yeah, for me, there was some inkling that that 28 was going to be very special. Wow, it's so beautiful to hear your journey. And I honestly don't think I could ever tire of listening to people, and especially women share their journeys of finding their callings you know some of the words that you used you know even as you were raised away from this the wisdom of your lineage in the capital city and that you felt these pulls I think all of us have moments in our lives that are somehow

technicolor when we realize oh yeah this is what I love this is what I'm really here for and you know you shared some of those and I was reading on your Instagram grid profile page whatever it's called you said um you've got this beautiful post I was ignited that um or what ignited this flame for my first birth wisdom circle 17 years ago in 2007, in a Peruvian winter, around three grandmothers and their sacred fire. And I was just, you know, imagining how luminous that was the moment for you in terms of a woman living her calling. And yeah, it's gorgeous to hear your story.

Yeah, so actually that was my first, in a way, doula training. But I think it was a particular, it was less than a doula training, I felt, and how this midwife mentor carried, because she's also a medicine woman. It was really like an initiation, I feel, into these mysteries of birth and how, as women, we can accompany from these more woman-centered ways and honoring the miracle of birth at the same time. So, yes, the inspiration, you know, and this, as you say, this technicolor that was ignited there, although I was already studying anthropology and I was like in love every day and just having the longing to come back to

to Andean land and have my family there and build my house but finding this thread of of how birth shaped me in a way although I wasn't a mother yet it was in that circle in that first yeah in that weekend when we had this ceremony circle. And that became also my inspiration, I feel, after, you know, many years and also through my own rites of passage as a mother to share this inspiration as well, and try to inspire other women that are also in the starts of maybe feeling this, this calling for birth and accompanying women and in this um yeah in this birth keeper trainings that is called the wachakwe sacred birth way program wachakwe means to give birth in quechua our native language we cover a lot around woman medicine as well as well

you know because as i was taught about this, if we want to accompany women around a rite of passage, such as birth, as with any rite of passage, not even if it would be accompanying, yeah, women in the other rites of passage, that we have to always find ways to to know ourselves deeper in our woman selves and no see the ways in how we can go uh like deeper no and depending on what season of our lives we are we are in so that we accompany from that more genuine way where we truly are honoring other women beautiful yeah we can only really um hold space for others through their rites of passage when we know ourselves and have been through our own and that's like i feel like maybe it's one of the core reasons why so many of us feel called to honor the sacredness of

menstruation even if we haven't been taught it we just get something is happening here something important is happening here spoke in the language of of longing well at least personally for me when I am able to really give myself space that's when I really can hear my longings the most deeply that's when I can touch oh this is what I'm here for this is what I'm about and I remember get lined up again so on that point I'd love to hear about these 13 moons a fantastic practice I wish it was happening everywhere in the world and that every woman did that at least once in her lifetime that's incredible what what was it like for you what what would you say were some of the core insights that you gained from those 13

months of being consciously with your cycle in that way when one part of that was acknowledging the power of intention i really wanted to do it but i was like how it's going to work, of having like the four days in total retreat, not every month for 13 months in a row. In that time, I was already in my anthropology program. I was volunteering and knowing that job as an intern. I remember it was Amnesty International. And I was also, I was a TA, a teaching assistant, also for one class in the anthropology undergraduate program.

So I was like, and I remember, I know my mentor, one of my mentors telling me, and she was the one guiding me because that's very important, that there is someone that has gone already through these 13 moon time retreats or that she's a traditional woman, a medicine woman that she guides, you know, because it's a very, it's very powerful and you need to be accompanied. And she said, just put the intention and you will see like how everything accommodates. So I remember at that time I had traveled to Mexico to give some workshops in this birth center in Chiapas, where actually I would give birth to my first son with a team from there, like years after. And I made this intention actually with my moon time.

I wasn't yet to the retreats, but it was first. I felt first to make the intention praying with my moon blood in one sacred site in Chiapas that yes, I have the intention and that I was trusting that everything would accommodate. And actually it did. Everything aligned for 13 moons that I could be on retreat. I think there was one time that I had to go to the university, but as the traditional way in the Americas is that you wear these bundles of grandfather tobacco

that are protecting you. It's like, no, in that exception, you could go and then come back. And at first, I remember the first retreat, it was more my mind, actually. It wasn't like things aligning that I had to do this or that.

It was more my mind, and how things that emerged of how I was raised by my father, like to always be not lazy, no? And always planning ahead or doing something. And I could really watch my mind there, you know, that it was more my mind of I'm being lazy, what am I doing, no? Just being laying here until I could just surrender, no? And actually worked uh with plant medicines as well uh and as part that is our tradition of our medicine ways uh in peru no with traditional elders um so with master plans i think that i could say that being on your moon time, like you could access also like those openings,

no of, of awareness just by, by needing nothing extra. So that was the, that was the main, I think, like teaching that I received to know that it was so, it is so powerful medicine when we allow the space for that um that yeah i could really you know like feel the words of one elder i remember in uh in a sweat lodge no years ago in in canada where she mentioned that you could you can heal anything, anything about your woman life on your moon time. And they also carry it in this way, in this retreat way where you are not having external

distractions. And of course, also, it's so powerful medicine that I didn't anticipate that also I would have these drastic changes in my life. I'm going to pause my chat with Cynthia for a moment to share an invitation. If you'd like to explore the sacred power of menstruation yourself, Alexandra and Sharni, the co-founders of Red School, would love to invite you into the heart of the Red School community and a really good place to start is with their cycle power course where you're guided to drop your bundle surrender and rest during menstruation as part of an

intimate journey into the four inner seasons of your menstrual cycle. It's their most comprehensive menstrual cycle awareness course ever. You can join anytime, it's self-paced. You can explore the course at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. And here's a beautiful story from Olivia Rose about her experience with cycle power, which supported her healing after miscarriage she says i began the course not that long after a second trimester miscarriage and my hormones mind body and spirit felt in chaos not only do i feel deeply nourished and healed from this i also feel like i've been handed a compass for how to live my best and fullest self it is by far the best self-care practice I've ever experienced it connects you to yourself

helps you work with what's stuck or challenged within yourself and I have found instills supreme self-confidence and guidance for how to live a rich full life thank you for sharing that with us Olivia Rose okay let's get back to the conversation with Cynthia I really appreciate you naming the what was happening in your mind on that initial retreat because I think so many of us listening can relate to that feeling of well it's like like a hangover of of the capitalist colonialist cultures that exist in our world of like we have to be on doing producing productive and I think it's one of the main obstacles that so many of the women and people in our community

face when it comes to embracing the the sacred moment of menstruation is like am I allowed to stop am I allowed to rest and so thank you for naming that and for normalizing that yeah just feel so meaningful that you had such containment and holding and guiding through this process. It's so moving for me to take in. And you were saying you were... Yeah, that at the same time as you're embarking in these depths of life and the mystery, so you're really guided, there can be like these dramatic changes in your life. Not necessarily always, but it really makes everything for alignment, for your life purpose, because also that was my intention

to deepen into my life purpose. I already had inspirations and the feeling of my heart, but I wanted to go to the depths of preparing for what life wanted to do through me and in the actually was more in the middle I think it was like around the seventh retreat my boyfriend for like long-term relationship breaks up with me like out of nothing no like I didn't really like see it or connected it and also I felt the power of the medicine that of course it was like this really shake shaking moment and and season and grieving process and not going in the depths even more of of the ukupacha we call it here in thees. It's the realm that is related to the feminine.

And that when we are on our moon time, like we are in that realm. So we are not in this here and now realm, that it's another realm. In our Andean cosmovision, there are three realms as human beings that we can have access to. So being in the moon time, we are in the ukupacha. And that's why we perceive life in a different way. And everyone in the world can tell, even if we are distracting ourselves,

that we feel we perceive different. We are in a different state. But of course, times in your life can also bring you to that ukupatcha, also like a heartbreak or like deep grief or, yeah, sometimes a time of void in your life. So in that time, I felt like I had really, in a way, the power. I don't know. I don't like the word power but I had the like the strength uh to go through that because of the mountain retreats

I think like otherwise yeah I would have been like in a way devastated no and and I had to like months after I I had to move to the Sacred Valley, actually to start living here because I was also starting my doctoral fieldwork. So by living in an Andean community with the people for nine months. So all the plans were shaken. Of course, I was going, but it was this boyfriend that was going to first accompany me and help me set up and all. So it was like, OK, this is asked for me no that i do it by myself um i had the support of my mother also uh of course in this knowing this rite of passage uh but i wasn't anticipating that and i remember how my this midwife mentor no shared with me that that's the power of the of your own

no medicine and on the of the moon time medicine that is really in a way like cleansing everything that is not really aligned with your path uh although it can be painful and all but it was actually making way for for my life no and my my my life partner my children and no in the future and yes only no because it's it's curious he's now one of our best friends in the family this ex-boyfriend he ended up living in the circuit valley i love it how life comes back around yes but it was yeah it was really powerful, the Moon Time retreats. And then how I do it afterwards,

I've had times when I also went back to doing it the official way. At first I was like, okay, now I can relax, in a way that I can speak, I don't have to do it so rigid because I have completed. But at the same time i was missing them no because i realized that it's really an opportunity no and the depth we can go

but of course uh yes living in more these modern times we can't always make it that we go on official retreat but still i feel we can slow down and whatever the situations in our life uh we can have still that's that that time a ceremony time although yes we may still have things to do so i think it can be this balance no of accommodating and that's what i teach in in in this ancestral human medicine workshops that I teach that it's not about like zero or like nothing or all of it, not like, okay, if I can't do that traditional official retreat, I can't take any time for my moon time. I'll just go around. But I share that you can find whatever season you're in your life, the context of your life, you can find the

ways that you can still give this needed rest, no, to, to your body, to your system and to see it as this opportunity of accessing your, the depths of your woman medicine, no, and then you will be even more productive, as you may know, no you give extra rest, not in the rest of the month. It's so true. I love this beautiful teaching. Did you say it's Ukupacha? Yes. So it's this realm of the feminine that is also the guiding thread to the birthkeeper program as well. Because in birth, we are also accessing this are also accessing in pregnancy and postpartum yeah yeah and breastfeeding and i'm curious from these 13 moons of retreat and your ongoing connection to your cycle and your um all you've learned through your studies and your rites of passage through pregnancy and birth and postpartum if you

have a sense of like your capacity to be with that ukupacha is is heightened kind of all the time like that your cycle and these rites of passage have given you kind of a gateway to this to this realm that you can live live in it more or bring more of that into your life does that make sense that question yeah I feel in a way when I find the space as I was mentioning when I'm going just by myself to this corner that is right behind our home no I can really feel no into into connecting no myself yes myself with nature around and our relatives here. But of course, there are particular times when it's more the pool. And in a way, I'm more surrendering to that space of the Ucupacha.

So like in the more pre-pre-menstrual time. And it's curious also when i'm teaching and this started to come like as an inkling but then i realized uh when either i was teaching the the woman medicine retreats or or the watchakui, the Sacred Birthway Birth Keeper Program, is that in my experience and how I feel it is that not only because of me, but we go together into this Ukupacha in a way, collective Ukupacha. And I remember how I could feel it, particularly with the woman medicine retreats, although maybe I would be in my in my ovulation no and although and in all this summer but the four days that I would be teaching I would feel like I remember very thirsty throughout then the night or the late afternoon and like feeling like extra

heightened with my senses and inspired as in in Anuku Pacha's way and receiving insights. So it was like years after teaching that I was like, yeah, I feel that we are going collectively into this. And, for example, when it's the Wachakui, that it's the birthkeeper program that is this nine-day retreat, I started feeling it more and more. And now I share it as in the opening no like in a way to to to anticipate this to to the women because it's nine nine days together that we will be going

together into the ukupacha because it's like so much more so much so many things moves because it's a birthkeeper program like training in a way but also we cover at the same time a lot about our own personal journeys as a balance of checking in how this resonates with ourselves so there's one sharing about the about menstrual blood and our know our history with moon time although it's a birth giver program, for example. But there is so much movement of emotions of every member, of every woman, that only recently I began anticipating that actually, yes, these teachings of the Ukupacha in a way will be going collectively into this. So also to be gentle to themselves while we are in this journey together and that they are checking in with themselves

and being gentle for whatever processes. And yeah, it's very strong. So I feel that we are going together in this, we call it here, this Ukupacha collectively. Beautiful. I love that you named that it has the power of like plant medicine journeys and the states of consciousness i've been in in my meantime at like you know when i really have got space it's it's um revelatory isn't it yes tell me speak about

menstrual blood and you mentioned about praying with menstrual blood and setting the intention for your 13 moon retreat. Could you share some of maybe some of the teachings around working with menstrual blood that you've learned or how you work with them in your life? Yeah. So here, the main practice is that we offer our blood back to Mother Earth, Pachamama, as we call her. So that is our offering back to her. And it's the most powerful prayers that there can be with our menstrual blood.

So while we are offering the blood and collecting it and back to a piece of Mother Earth, that we may set our prayers as well, our particular prayers, and the recognition or the understanding that in this way, Pachamama recognizes us every time that we are putting back the, yes, sharing back the blood to her because our DNA is all there and it's received by her. So like our prayers go directly uh to her um and then it's still the idea of of retreat so for example myself as a mother and also i learned this when i was in my field work years not living in the communities because most of the women that i was interviewing for my, yes, for my research,

they were mothers already. So the practices have been not so strong, are not so strong now, but they would tell me about their previous generations so maybe maybe the grandmothers up until the grandmothers of women around my age in their 30s or 40s early 40s they would be doing the official in a way moon time retreats not just being in their home and eating not the traditional foods and drinks so we don't fast when we are in our moon time but it's more like this nourishing no and comforting foods in a way that are soft so for example no no too much salt no like too much spicy foods so like as you're on a diet no here we have the tradition in the amazon that when you diet one plant, you have a strict diet or like a particular diet to prepare or to receive that plant.

So it's the same with the moon time. It's also this particular diet where actually Mother Corn, as we call her, Mama Sara, she's our main ally here in the Americas as well, so in Native North American traditions. As this fertility ally, but also, yes, she carries this female spirit. So she's one of the ones that accompany us during the moon time, so drinking her, eating her in all the forms. And this is the same in Mexico and in Native North America as well. But I could see that still, although they don't practice, not in many communities, in some, yes, I think they would still practice it,

the more traditional ones. They wouldn't practice the strict moon time retreat as I did it. Still, there are all these common self-care practices around the moon time that are also community self-care, community care practices around the moon time that everyone knows. So everyone follows that in the communities, so around the food, around the cold, around being always warm, around keeping the womb especially warm in these times as well to ensure your well-being. So I also came with that flexibility in my mothering season in a way, because of course I couldn't go into total retreat even if I failed sometimes to do it uh with newborn babies it can be more I think easy no or we're still there small

uh not newborn no but maybe in the first year no yeah I remember having some really beautiful moments with Artie when I was bleeding and sleeping on my body I'd spend the whole day just lower and slower and just take everything as slow as you can with a yes how much they're running around yet when did your moon come back after the birth actually it came back quite early because Artie stopped breastfeeding when he was like nine months. He was just so busy, so curious and like he was just interested in doing. And it came back maybe 10, 10 months or 11 months. Okay.

Yeah. It's different timings. Yeah. I wouldn't say early either. Yeah. So he, yeah, he's asleep on my body and the feeling of his soft sleeping breathing body really helped me to go deeper into my own now I understand the Kupacha connection it's um yeah we have to find our ways don't we with whatever responsibilities we have in our lives

yeah part of how I was taught these ways is that you know it's always a unique process know that we don't put labels in any woman's rite of passage passage you know like we're do these simplistic reasons of why this or or that oh like this is because I don't know she's not bonded or this is because I don't know something is off with the baby. No, like we don't do that. It's always like a unique medicine journey. And we don't have to pathologize it or stigmatize it. So actually, I remember with Coral, my moon time came four months, four months after. Yeah, so she was born on March and my moon time came around the end of July. And I was so surprised, but I felt for my own, yes, knowing in my journey with her that I needed that moon time medicine earlier in a way.

And also she was my first daughter, So it made sense in that way. So although it was early in a way, and I was like, maybe I wasn't feeling already ready for that. I remember also how the slowing down, like by having witnessed mothers in the communities and at the same time with how it was with my boys, that they would understand as well. So even with the boys no since little i have explained them no that i'm with my own time no i'm explaining it in words for them that

they can no understand uh no like this is this blood of life no that would have nourished a baby but there is no baby so then this goes back to no to pachamama for her as an offering uh and i i think that has been like uh yeah like a second in a way medicine wheel of of death of living and uh in a way working in this medicine way with my own time by being a mother and how my my children witness witness me in that and how it's in a way so natural for them no and i feel these hits that we put as mothers also okay yeah this time yeah i can still maybe i'm cooking for the family uh and you can organize my organized with my husband that he knows for many years being together, 13 years that, yes, even before having children, that I go into retreat.

But with having children, I still like to cook for myself. And so everyone is having the same meals. And I feel, I don't know if you have felt it in that way, that it's also like this, in a way, energetical purification, not only for myself, but when we have families, it sets also the will for the other members. And it's like we are purifying, yeah, even, you know, our husbands or our partners, you know, like extra baggages that they are carrying and we are like cleansing that in a way no and and also i feel it's beautiful when we can live in live it this way at least like slowing down and okay and not these times we are more in the garden

or they can help also a little bit more, you know, when they are older. But also we are being this embodiment of the cycles of nature for our children. And they learn from that, you know, because they witness us in that. So that has been pretty, like very magical for me. And I also enjoy it. Sometimes friends would tell me, but didn't you enjoy it when you could just go for four days and clothes?

And sometimes, yes, but I really enjoy my children witnessing me in those times. And how the rebirthing no then happens and it's like like a rebirthing I feel like for the whole family it's beautiful I can feel you it's really woven in everything's woven in I wanted to ask if there was any wisdom that you had received you know you said that the grandmothers of the women of your age had were still maintaining the older practices there are practices of um dreaming menstrual dreaming of the women receiving dreams or visions for the community in their moon time and then having an opportunity to share that i've heard that in a couple of different traditions and i wondered if it's something that you've yeah learned about what they would say is that that they are bringing

knowing that time that you receive your inner knowing and also as women here in the communities traditionally uh like they are keepers no of, of ceremonies, of rituals, the rituals of life, no, including birth, the menarche of their girls, that they would also, no, receive this medicine and inspiration to keep in a life, no, these ways. And also women are, in our tradition, in the community, in the traditional communities, they're the ones, for example, in the community gatherings or like assemblies, you know, that they would have in the communities because they have like their president of the community and all. The woman is the one that makes the last decision so although it's a couple and a family maybe the president of the community would say okay this is what we have agreed and with the others

but there is always the women the woman behind that has advised the not the husband or the partner so in this way women are revered and very respected and because they they know its community is known by the community that they enter into this woman medicine ways when they're in their moon time also in the right of passage of birth and in and in menopause as well well there's so much more we could talk about as we could especially so much more about menopause maybe we can have another conversation about menopause maybe in a few days yeah yeah we're both in it yes when we are more closer yeah yeah and another thing that i wanted to share that i i failed to share uh in this space because i feel it's really, really beautiful. Here there is this acknowledgement of the sacredness of the complementary tea between male and female,

so in the partnership. So something very, you know, that it's there in my doctoral thesis research, but I think it's online, but in Spanish. But something very moving I remember that really touched me in these times when I was doing this long-term field work was that it would be about

the moon time also would be about the Aini so Aini is a key concept here in Peru in the Andes that it's this sacred exchange or this fair exchange. So we have to have this in our everyday lives, that we give something, not because it's in our minds, but it's to keep the natural way of life, that we have this exchange,

this balanced exchange in this way, sacred exchange. So they would say that the moon time was also about the Aini between the partnership. Because if the partner had followed the traditional Andean ways and allowed for the woman to be on retreat, then the Aini would be when they grow older and usually the mother will have more stamina. The woman will have more stamina because she has purified herself

and rebirthed herself continuously during all her moon times. And this is the same understanding in the Amazon here in Peru as well. So she, in a way way will age less than the partner so then she will take care of him in this way in this sacred exchange because he really supported her in her moon time wow it's really long vision it's a lifelong vision isn't it it's the when we pass down from generation to generation like this it's like we can see how it

just unfolds and holds people through their whole life journey so beautiful wow if like me people are listening wow I want to learn more this is amazing how can people find out more and learn from you. Yeah, so around this topic, actually, I used to teach this four-day retreat about woman medicine ways. And I feel soon I will still teach it like life, but in my mothering years, I was feeling more to teach only the life watchakui but actually by many uh like women particularly that had some roots from south america and even if not but they were inspired to to learn these universal ways no and this is part of our of our andean

ways that it's to share with everyone if you ever again come to Peru, you would see how people are so generous, that it's not that the others left just for us, but it's for the benefit of humanity. So I realized that for women that can make it to Peru, that I would do like a condensed version of a two-day, like distant retreat workshop, soul workshop, that is called Ancestral Woman Medicine in Full Bloom. So I teach this two or three times a year.

And I had inspiration last year for my birthday, for my 41st birthday. So on March, on the 15th and 16th, I'll be teaching the next one. And it's on Zoom, not live. It's live on Zoom. And then the Wachakui Sacred Breathway Breathkeeper Program that is like this baby offering, like my baby offering that I love very much.

I share it. That's only like an in-person nine-day training program that it's here in the sacred valley in in peru and i teach it every january and every august so also registrations are starting next month for the august one know that it's the month of pachamama here so it's it's a special it's a special watch agree wow beautiful and where would people find that the information about it the information in my web page that it's a hampiwarmi.org yeah h-a-m-p-i that means medicine and warmi means uh woman w-a-R-M-I. Woman medicine would be the translation. Still there and in the Instagram account

that it's also Humpy Warmi. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll also put a link on the show notes for the podcast. So if people want to find it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much, Cynthia. I really could carry on talking to you for a long time,

but let's honor our time and all the different responsibilities we have. And I hope you have a beautiful time with your Kintsugi project. Yes. Thank you. Good luck with all your beautiful work. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sophie, for this space. Blessings. Thank you so much for being with us today. I'm so grateful to Cynthia for all of her work and her deep personal practice and for how she's revitalizing this Andean woman medicine for all

of us. Thank you, Cynthia. Please, please share this with a friend who you sense would love to learn about these ancient sacred menstrual practices. that's it for this week I'll be with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm