The Menstruality Podcast - 190. A Beginner’s Guide to Menstrual Cycle Awareness (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

When people hear about menstrual cycle awareness, they’re often surprised, confused and baffled by the idea that there could be a connection between the menstrual cycle and your creativity, power and wisdom. It’s no surprise given current cultural attitudes around the menstrual cycle and menopause, which are largely ignored or dismissed.So today’s episode is designed to both build a bridge for you if you’re new to the practice as well as offer a refresher for you if you’ve been tracking for years and want to rediscover the fundamentals of tracking your cycle, as your unique rhythm of power. As you may know, Alexandra developed the early prototype of this practice as she worked to heal her own menstrual pain over forty years ago, when she dared to listen to her body and began resting at menstruation. The practice evolved over many years working with groups, then Alexandra and Sjanie founded Red School to teach it, and wrote about the practice in their book Wild Power, and now guide thousands of students to deepen their practice through their Cycle Power course, as well as teaching next level cycle awareness on their Menstruality Leadership Programme. We explore:Some frequently asked questions, including the difference between fertility awareness and menstrual cycle awareness, how to listen to your body if you’re more used to paying attention to your mind, and how to respond to what you discover in your cycle check-ins.A demonstration of how to actually do a daily cycle check-in, including listening for your physical sensations, your emotions, and your thoughts. And for those who are postmenopausal (or don’t have a menstrual cycle for another reason), Alexandra shares how she works with the moon in her lunar cycle check-in. Other cyclical elements you might want to pay attention to, including your dreams, your habits, your sexual energy and even the arguments you tend to always have at certain times of the cycle month. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, how's it going? Welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast or welcome if this is your first time listening. So often when people first hear about menstrual cycle awareness, they feel surprised or confused or sometimes just baffled by the idea that there could be a connection between the menstrual cycle and our creativity and our power and our wisdom.

And it's no surprise really given the current cultural attitudes around the menstrual cycle and menopause which are just largely ignored and dismissed. So today's episode is designed to both build a bridge for you if you're new to the practice as well as offer a refresher for you if you've been tracking your cycle for years and want to rediscover the fundamentals of tracking your menstrual cycle as your unique rhythm of power. As you may know Alexandra developed the early prototype of menstrual cycle awareness as she worked to heal her own menstrual pain over 40 years ago. The practice evolved over many years working with

groups and then Alexandra and Sharni founded Red School to teach the practice and wrote about it in their book Wild Power and now they guide thousands of students to deepen their practice through their cycle power course as well as teaching next level evolutionary menstrual cycle awareness on their menstruality leadership program. One of my favorite bits of this conversation is when we explore some of the other aspects of yourself that you might want to pay attention to with your daily cycle check-ins including your dreams, your habits, your sexual energy and even the arguments that you tend to have at certain times of the cycle month. So let's get started with a beginner's

guide to menstrual cycle awareness with Alexandra and Sharni. Good morning Alexandra Pope, good morning Sharni Hugo-Wurl whirlitzer it's great to be with you both we normally start these conversations with a cycle check-in but since this conversation is a bit different in that we are actually going to take part of part of it to describe what a cycle check-in is we're going to do our cycle check-in a little bit later do we all just want to say what day we're on i'm on day 27 22 for me uh it's about day 13 of the moon okay so we'll share more about what that's meaning for each of us a little bit later to kick us off with this conversation alexandra i was wondering if you could share some of what's inspired us to have this conversation today.

Oh yes Sophie, it's pretty wild to speak about the menstrual cycle as a spiritual path and practice, you know, as something that can support us in our creativity and something that can be a self-care practice. I mean, we make very big statements about the menstrual cycle of menopause. And for the majority of people, it's completely incomprehensible. And I totally get where they're at. I can really feel it. It's like the menstrual cycle. What can you say like the menstrual cycle you know what can you say about the best i mean it's it's just something we have to put up with if we want to have children yeah it's like what do you want what do you want i can really get it and i can when i'm talking with people about what i do now

because i'm very bold you know i'll be in any kind of situation. I go, oh, I teach on the spiritual power and practice of the menstrual cycle. And it goes down like a lead balloon sometimes. This is in the like supermarket line or in all sorts of very ordinary situations. I don't pull my punches. I used to have to sort of massage it a bit, but I'm over that. So today we really want to bridge that gap between the, you know, it's just something we've got to get through to, my God, you can have cosmic experiences with the menstrual cycle.

And how do we, you you know cross that bridge and and it is in this magic phrase that shani and i um came up you know came up with which is menstrual cycle awareness the practice of menstrual cycle awareness which of course is what we're going to unpack today yes i mean now i'm just so excited to say all the wonderful things that that can do yeah yeah i mean that's the key and the bridge isn't it i often have a similar experience but i tell people what i do oh i host a podcast about the menstrual cycle and menopause and the reactions vary from confusion to disgust as well because there's a lot of taboo and shame around the menstrual cycle but also there's a lot of suffering around the menstrual cycle so today I'm hoping we can build a bridge between okay

the menstrual cycle is a beautiful spiritual path and practice and the key is menstrual cycle awareness and let's get into it. Could we start by looking at what the difference is between menstrual cycle awareness and fertility awareness because people might be more familiar with that. Yeah actually for anybody who has engaged with their menstrual cycle it oftentimes has been through the practice of fertility awareness. And people come to that either because they're wanting to learn natural conception, or they are wanting to avoid getting pregnant. So as a contraception practice. Really brilliant, really, really brilliant practice. Alexandra, you started with fertility awareness, so maybe you should describe what fertility awareness is

and how to do it. Yes. Gosh, it is such a, it's so yummy. I was remembering how yummy it was knowing what my physical body was doing. It's the daily charting of the physical signs of your fertility or, you know, your fertile and not fertile phases of the cycle. So you notice your mucus because your mucus changes, your cervical mucus changes through the menstrual cycle month.

And so you're charting the texture, the color, the quality of that. The position of the cervix changes. And your temperature, you notice that you take your temperature each day first thing in the morning before getting up before moving and your temperature will change as you come into the point of ovulation and it's so magical when you know about these signs and signals to actually be able to clock that moment of ovulation. Apart from it being empowering in terms of, you know, just knowing when you're fertile and not fertile and taking, because, you know, I didn't want to have, I was doing it for contraception and making you know making my sexual choices around that it just so good it just puts you in charge of your own fertility instead of outsourcing it to well the pill you know which i was on moment for a brief while in my early 20s so so there's that

but that that sense of empowerment but there's also also this inner feeling of yumminess I used to have with just knowing what my body was doing, the magic of my body. So learning about fertility awareness for me was one, empowering me around contraceptive contraception but it was also giving me this feeling of being kind of inside my body perhaps kind of in charge of my body in some ways yeah that's beautifully described Alexandra I've practiced fertility awareness for myself not for contraception or conception purposes but just really as a way of getting to know my body that intimately and deeply. And as we often say, fertility awareness builds body literacy, body knowledge, which is really the foundation for this practice of menstrual cycle awareness, because very key to menstrual cycle awareness is knowing where you are in your cycle at any given time.

And that's what fertility awareness gives you. It helps you to know what day of your cycle you're on, helps you know when you are ovulating, what your cycle length is, so when you will bleed. So you've got this lovely kind of orienteering tool, which is very grounding, really, really grounding. So we highly recommend this for beginners as a great way to start your practice. So let's talk a little bit about menstrual cycle awareness, because with fertility awareness, you are really working with the physical signs and cues of your body. Whereas with menstrual cycle awareness, now you are starting to kind of look at the more subtle cues. Yeah. How you shift psychologically, emotionally, how your behavior changes,

how your energy shifts through the menstrual month, your spiritual process through the menstrual cycle. And how your needs change as well. Absolutely, how your needs change. So it's really these kind of subtle aspects of your experience and how they fluctuate. And importantly, how they create a repeating pattern through the menstrual month so this practice of cycle awareness builds emotional literacy so together you know we really think of these two practices as like sisters hand in hand you've got your body literacy piece and your emotional literacy piece it's a really powerful combination and then the core practice is the cycle check-in a daily or maybe multiple times a day check in with yourself about how you are on this particular cycle day so we'll demo this in a in

a moment but can you walk us through what it is that we're checking in with and how this works yeah um i can do so a cycle check-in i mean this is a little this is really a formal moment of practice i just want to emphasize this is a practice and practices all require kind of discipline and repetition. So a cycle check-in is something you're going to do each and every day of your cycle. And it's a combination of knowing what day of your cycle you're on and then kind of checking in on these different levels with yourself. So I'll give you some of the key markers that can

really help with cycle check-in, but maybe a good way to frame this core piece of the practice is that it's about a present moment connection with yourself. So it's really about this profound practice of listening to how you are in the moment. And to do that, you need to let go of any idea of how you think you should be. And it's amazing how often we carry an agenda for how we should be on a certain day. You know, depending on what our day is demanding of us, we might be like, right, I need to be X, Y, or Z today in order to do what I have to do. So we're really dropping that idea of how we should be.

And we're also dropping judgment of how we are. And we're also dropping judgment of how we are. And we're also resisting the temptation to go into a sort of story about what we notice, about what we're experiencing. So it's about coming into connection with yourself in the present moment. And a lot of spiritual practices have this at their core all right so here you are just taking a moment or few to maybe you need to close your eyes to do this maybe you do this uh sitting still perhaps you do this in movement with your eyes open or while you're walking but first you're noticing the physical sensations and actually for a lot of people this is really hard i just want to say so when i say walking, but first you're noticing the physical sensations. And actually for a lot of people, this is really hard, I just want to say. So when I say physical sensations, I'm really talking about things like

warmth in a certain part of your body or a tightness or a physical pain or a heaviness or a numbness so the physical sensations in your body and actually that piece of a cycle check-in really helps to anchor you in the present moment it's very significant that's the first thing the second thing is your emotions so how you're feeling happy sad lonely tender and then your thoughts and often this is for most of us the loudest thing and equally the thing we are the least conscious of which is kind of funny right so here with your thoughts you're actually almost taking a little like broader perspective on your thoughts and looking at your mental state. So kind of the nature of your thinking, for example, is your mind very dreamy today, you know,

or are you having really deep thoughts or is your mind very flighty and all over the place? Is it like really fast and racing or really kind of slow? Maybe your mind is very outward focused or perhaps your mind is very focused on yourself, your own inner experience. So it's kind of looking at the state of your mind and the kind of quality of your thoughts. And also maybe any repeating thoughts would be worth noticing there as well. And then the fourth thing is your energy, your energy levels. So do you have a lot of energy or a little energy? But also like how is energy moving through you you know do you feel like your energy is expanding or is it contracting does it feel like it's moving quickly or slowly perhaps it's sort of sluggish

static or maybe it's really sort of fast moving so you're just feeling into the kind of energetic experience you're having and as I kind of energetic experience you're having. And as I kind of name these four things, and by the way, there are lots of other things you can pay attention to on your cycle day, and we can talk more about that later. But these are really like four good little markers that dock you into yourself to begin with. I realize everyone is going to have strengths in different areas. You know, for some people, your physical sensations will be easy to be aware of, and you might find it harder to notice how you feel. For others, the kind of energetic layer of your experience will be very present for

you. And for others, you won't really know how to sense that. But regardless, I would do the inquiry because it's through the practice that you begin to develop this awareness at these different levels of your own being. Yeah, I love how you emphasize that this is a practice. I felt a fire alight in me when you said that because we're swimming upstream upstream here we've been conditioned to show up for others or to be a good girl or especially as women you know and I just it's such a radical act I don't know actually how am I how am I feeling how are my thoughts it's um it's a beautiful radical form of activism really should we demo it do you have anything to add before we do Alexandra no let's go in and do it I think Shani described it beautifully and especially emphasizing starting

with the physical you know that's such a great place to begin what are the sensations I'm noticing in me in my physical body yeah well I can kick us off on my day 27. so physically i'm feeling quite heavy my my legs feel heavy there's a kind of drawing down feeling in my the lower half of my body i can feel i'm preparing to bleed because i know this but that's also a story that i'm holding i loved what you named shawnee about we're not looking at the shoulds we're not looking at the judgments and we're not looking at the stories it's fantastic emotionally I feel very tender very connected to the world there's also a feeling behind my eyes of softness and almost tears that could come at the beauty of the world and the suffering in the world um mentally I'm my thoughts are very floaty like clouds moving around in my mind and I'm needing to really concentrate to be able to

have this conversation and energy wise my energy is fairly low I'm I'm not going to go for a 10 mile run anytime soon I feel like I need I need to keep things pretty chilled today because my energy is quite low beautiful shall I go next yeah all right so being true to what I've just said I'm going to because I've already done a check-in with myself this morning but I'm going to do it right now in this moment. So I'm day 22 and my body is really heavy and thick and there's a lot of physical pain in my body particularly particularly in my right arm. And I notice a sort of choked sensation in my throat, which brings me to my feeling landscape, which I can feel there. I feel very emotional and like I could cry just a river of tears my heart's very kind of tender and mentally my mind's like trying to stay on top of everything and like know what's going on and manage, organize.

My mind is working so hard. And, yeah, and energy-wise, I am tired. I'm so tired. Like my energy is dropping. And, yeah, my energy feels thin um okay and i'm going to bring in a fun little piece here for people who like to play because this is coming to me which is once you've done these four levels of checking you might want to ask yourself you know what metaphor uh captures your experience i'm having one come to me in the moment so i'll share i don't know why i'm laughing it's not funny

so the way i feel today is like an open wound that is kind of laid on the sidewalk and my mind is like the policeman standing in front of this crime scene in front of this open wound like trying to tell everyone coming by nothing to see here business as usual just keep going nothing to see nothing to see, nothing to see. Just, you know. That is potent. Funny, it's funny if you're not me. Can I play that game too? Because if I was something, I would be some kind of really overripe fruit,

like a pear that's fallen off the tree and sort of flumped on the ground. Starting to kind of become a bit alcoholic, you know. It's ferventing. Yeah, I love that image and the kind of alchemical nature of that death process. You're right, that is a really fun playboy as well. That is really fun. How about you, Alexandra?

We should include in the cycle check-in what's the state of my sense of humor today yeah probably intact given where you are i've it's i'm more complicated you know it's not black and white because i don't have a menstrual cycle anymore so i don't have that deep embodied experience being organized by that, which is so, you know, I am outside that now. So there's a lot more sort of evenness, shall we say. And frankly, my energy and mood can be affected by how well I slept last night interestingly however I do chart with the moon and it's much more subtle and and there aren't particular days that stand out like it does with the menstrual cycle when you've done cycle you know cycle check-ins for a few months you'll

start to notice the same day has the same experience on it, things like that. You know, certain days, not every day. Well, the moon charting for me doesn't feel like that. It just feels like more of a general number of days of a certain general sense of something in relationship with the moon because I am affected by the moon. I feel how less to do with my physical energy but a little bit to do with that um but more to do with because my sleep is the dominant thing there how can i put it anyway it's coming up to full moon physically i'm sort of feeling quite chilled and good in my body you know pretty fairly

resourced actually i want to get on with things just i just want to get on with things i've got got so many brilliant ideas i want to just work on i don't want to just tick things off emotionally that's what i need today to feel good I feel a certain bluntness in me you know you don't want to come to me for sympathy probably today the wound has noted get over yourselves time I've got business to get on with if you were something you would be a to-do list and a pencil yeah yeah it's beautiful to hear you both something I'm really noticing is your lack of judgment about your states and it's something that you pulled out at the beginning Sharni like what we're trying

to do here is see how we're feeling without judging which in the world that we live in woof that's again another radical rebellious act and there's a couple of questions that came in from the from our community around this that I'd like to bring in here and one's from Tamara as she says to me the question of how am I feeling was and still is the most difficult one? How can I taste my inner atmosphere when there's so much going on around me? What is mine and what's responsive? And what can I do when there's just no feeling to catch or no answer coming? It's a very, very good question. And I in a part want to answer it by just repeating this thing of it's the act of listening to yourself is that you notice it's hard to be in touch with how you're feeling today. So to really just hold to this thing of a cycle

check-in is at its heart about listening to how you are and noticing how easy or not easy that is, I think is really, really helpful. But also in terms of this thing of, you know, what's mine and what's the world's. The thing I love about the menstrual cycle is it is the stress sensitive system in the body. And it is giving us feedback on actually how we are, how we are, but also what the state of the world is. It's both feedback on for us personally, but it's also collective feedback that we're getting. It really tunes us into a knowing across the board. And so I don't personally feel there's a need to differentiate, you know, what's mine versus not mine. What feels important to me is just to notice what I'm noticing,

to notice what I'm experiencing, which might be in response to the world and is certainly being shaped by the place I'm in, in my cycle as well yeah so I hope also that our kind of those four things also helps you to have these different points of access that it isn't just about emotional feeling you can actually check in at these different levels of your being as well and actually in in a little moment we can talk about other things you can look out for Alexandra I wondered if you had any thoughts I actually just love what you've just said there Shani around listening it's about list listening to yourself and how well you can do that because

I know that in myself there'll be days where it's like actually connecting with how I'm feeling in the moment is takes effort. Like it's really hard to just be and actually listen. And and that's information. That's information that I am actually not very with myself. This is for me. I wouldn't speak for anybody else. But when I'm experiencing that, I realize I'm struggling to just really connect in, drop in.

And actually, for me, that's a signal, actually, that I am stressed. Actually, yeah. It's just illuminating to me at this moment. I think that's just so good, Shani, to have crystallized it as just notice your capacity to notice yourself. And so for you, Tamara, it would actually be interesting just to notice through the menstrual month what days you find it easier to notice how you're feeling versus the days you find it harder. That would be really good self-knowledge that you're growing. That makes me laugh, Shani, because that is so true.

It is so true. So true with the moon cycle for me, actually, because basically I'm not interested in checking in with myself today. I just want to get on with business. But if you spoke to me just before the dark of the moon, oh, would I be swimming in something very delicious I know I always just say yeah yeah they're definitely days of my cycle where I'm fine like a one-word answer not much else to report I'm fine yeah it's so good it's making me laugh okay the second question here that's relevant is from becca

and she says your cycle check-in shani as part of the cycle power course has been really helpful and a practical tool to help me with this yet i still really struggle to connect and hear and deeply listen to how my body is listening to my emotions and mental states I find not so difficult so any further tips advice on how to connect with my body and really hear her and what she needs would be so helpful yeah this is a really really good question so we're talking here about interoception, which is our ability to sense and feel our physiological experience, our sensory experience of ourselves. And it is a skill.

It really is a skill. So the repeated paying attention to your physical body each day as you practice cycle awareness is going to help you build the skill. All right. So that's the first thing to know. And hopefully my suggestions earlier of noticing things like the weight, the temperature, the pain or not pain, et cetera, in your body is going to kind of help give you some cues for what to look for and what to notice. But I also want to say,

there are so many brilliant practices in the world that help you to develop this somatic awareness. So if this is something that you personally are struggling with, I really want to encourage you to seek out those practices as it'll really deepen and complement your menstrual cycle awareness practice. So for me, movement medicine has been really a profound practice, which is a form of dance, but dance with awareness where you are noticing and paying attention to your physicality as you move.

And that's really helped me to develop the skill. But things like yoga are really going to help. And actually, I also want to just talk about physical exercise. If the more you use your body and move your body, the more you're able to feel your body and engage with your body. So that's something I would encourage as well, whether it's walking or stretching, actually physical exercise puts you in contact with your body. And particularly if you do that physical movement mindfully, that really helps to develop the skill. So those are the kinds of things I would focus on. And sometimes for me, when I'm actually doing a cycle check-in, I actually have to move my body to be able to feel my body.

The actual movement and the sensation that that creates in my body brings my attention into my body. So that might be something that you play with, is do your cycle check-ins in movement. Hey, I'm going to pause our conversation for a few moments to share a couple of invitations with you. Firstly, if you'd like a copy of our Red School menstrual cycle tracking chart, you can download your own free copy at redschool.net forward slash chart and if you'd like to create a more meaningful menstrual cycle awareness practice or recommit to your existing practice or simply be immersed in a cycle aware community as you deepen your connection to your cycle and how you ebb and flow throughout the menstrual month alexandra and shani warmly welcome you to join them on their cycle power course

you can find out about it at redschool.net forward slash cycle power and here's some feedback from Pippa who recently completed the course she says I thought the course was very thorough and a great length of time to fully immerse in study of the menstrual cycle I had high expectations of it because I follow your work and of course it did not disappoint. Above all the most powerful thing was being held and supported in this deeper dive by beautiful like-minded women and being given permission to really lean into my cyclical nature and what I need to thrive. It was a wonderful space to find myself in. You'll never regret carving out the time to know yourself and your cycle better it's such an investment in yourself which is the greatest act of self-love I'm so glad I did it

okay so we've noticed the core things to track there are also other things that we can be tracking with a cycle check-in yes we can indeed and um the thing that leaps out at me because it was so vivid for me uh dreams dreams it's so wonderful to pay attention to the dreams you're having through the whole cycle month and um you uh just note those dreams because you may start to notice a pattern certain dreams types of dreams that turn up at certain times of the month um and um can just bring another rich layer of insight into your emotional, spiritual even, well-being. It always used to amuse me that in my premenstrual phase, the freaking mafia turned up. I have dealt with the mafia in every single disguise

in my premenstrual phase trying to outwit them extraordinary this mafia dreams that happened that was a particular one that used to stand out and something I really tracked and worked with actually as as part of my sort of emotional developmental process if you like yeah so um it just brings another layer of depth and richness and insight to who you are I've just told everyone now I've got an inner mafia going on. Well, we know you can outwit anyone really. Yeah, actually, they did turn up recently. They don't really bother me in menopause, but I did get one not so long ago I had to outwit.

That's nice. The mafia don't bother you in your dreams in menopause anymore. I had a really integrative dream last night where a figure from my past arrived and I held space I held my power in the in the face of him in a way I never did back then and it was a beautiful experience of claiming my power and claiming who I am in the world thank you dreaming self for doing that work for me at night I appreciate that oh yes because I feel like charting our dreams when we're practicing cycle awareness gives us insight into how our psyche is shifting and the kinds of power that we're accessing or the kinds of power

that we're negotiating you know Alexandra and the mafia and you in this kind of claiming of your own power in the face of that. That's beautiful, Sophie. Okay, what else? Dreams? I think, you know, there's this formal cycle check-in, which you can do at the beginning of the day or really in any attention throughout the day to your kind of mood and tendencies, to be just practicing this awareness of yourself throughout the day and in a way kind of collating that information. So noticing what your tendencies and habits are, you know, is today the kind of day where you just try and fit in like one more task you know it's just you you're just gonna always do that go that extra mile do that extra thing or is today the day

where you're more likely to take a longer lunch break uh or take longer to get out of bed in the morning um or is today the day when you're really going to notice that someone didn't replace the toilet roll on the toilet roll holder again exactly exactly absolutely those days whereas there are days where you might not notice and just like mindlessly put another one on like you always do yeah that is such a good example and it's actually those little quirky things that are so interesting to note. The truth is, you can track any aspect of your experience when you're practicing menstrual cycle awareness, from some health symptoms that happen to kind of how your relationship with your partner changes over the menstrual month. And you will find mostly that there is a cyclical pattern that underlies these things. And I think this is the revelation of cycle awareness. So you can

track whatever's actually most interesting to you. And then you will notice if there is a cyclical component or a cyclical pattern to that. And my experience most often there is yeah a few months to see it which is why it's a practice and why it takes like discipline at the at the beginning yeah this is actually the important thing we're talking here about a daily check-in but it's actually you you do this every day and over, you're accumulating this embodied knowledge, you're accumulating a body of knowledge about yourself. So it's self knowledge that grows, because you begin to see that there is this unique pattern that you have, you know, we've called this your rhythm of power. And it's a unique pattern that is shaped by your unique menstrual cycle so yeah it's um it's really powerful to know yourself in this way when you mentioned the relationship process just really noticing your sexual energy through the month how that shifts and uh or when you have arguments actually really noticing those um i mean the classic time is in the premenstruum when they often happen oh there was something else that was flirting with me

oh yes i used to remember the deep loneliness moment just before bleeding that happened that was so distinctive but then they transform yes it's very distinctive things that become illuminated and i just loved what you said there shani about it really putting you in the body i can't remember how you said it, but the body of yourself. It's like the cycle check-ins over time are just lowering you into yourself more and more. It's like you're inhabiting yourself more and more month after month through this simple, simple process of how's my body today? What's my energy? what am I feeling in this moment the accumulation of that and when you say lowering into yourself

which I really get having done this practice for many years now what are we lowering ourselves into ourselves from good question Sophie actually and actually what immediately came to mind is my head to my heart it's like from my head which is all about shoulds and oughts and agendas and the push you know and it's where my tendencies, you know, my drive, which is my strength, but also my total undoing and ambition, those two together, double trouble. And that with the head, and not my heart involved, just my head, I'll run myself into the ground and lose myself completely I just end up feeling empathy yeah not at peace with myself so is this it is this journey from the head into the heart and what does that mean it means that I am moving from a place of greater connection to who i actually am in other

words what my actual feelings are and needs are and there's um shoulds and oughts do not cannot live here in in the realm of the heart when the heart is opening more and more, shoulds and orts just die. They just, they can't actually, there's nothing to fuel them. And so they, you know, they can't exist there. Very beautifully described, Alexandraandra particularly that phrase when we're moving from who we are from inside who we are and uh that really reminds me of um this kind of cooperation with ourselves this incredible kindness and allowing of how we are,

which in terms of menstrual cycle awareness really is the next significant piece because when we cooperate with and allow who we are and how we are, we receive profound physical, and spiritual support profound support when we cooperate with ourselves and with our cycle so just as um denying our cyclical nature, like denying the day-night rhythm, negatively affects our mental, emotional, physical health. When we deny the menstrual cycle rhythm, the synphrodian rhythm, it causes stress, disruption, disharmony. And so equally true is when we cooperate with it, we actually find ourselves held by this incredible, intelligent resource.

So this is really the second key piece of this practice of cycle awareness is the cooperating with, the responding to how we are that's one thing to notice how you are how you feel and then it's another thing to take that information and just to find some some sort of small way to honor that to respect how you are so back to the kind of judging piece, rather than because often what happens is, you notice you're feeling tired. And you judge yourself, for example. Or you notice, you know, you feel whatever the case is, and you judge yourself. So rather than judging yourself or feeling tired, or maybe very introverted or unsocial, you actually just give yourself permission to rest. And it can be in a very little way that you do this in your day. You know, it could just be that you go to bed a little bit earlier.

Maybe you have the luxury of being able to have a little 15-minute nap or lie down or maybe you notice you're feeling very introverted. So you cancel your social plans or postpone them. So that's the kind of cooperating we're talking about rather than bullying yourself into being another way. You actually create space for being how you are and supporting that. Do you know what this is often look like for me? Because I'm a very highly sensitive, yeah, create space for being how you are and supporting that. Do you know what this has often looked like for me? Because I'm a very highly sensitive, very introverted person. How many times have I gone to the toilet in social situations when I didn't need the toilet, but I was on a certain phase of my cycle where I just needed to breathe

for five minutes and then I adjust and come back out into the social situation? Yeah, really good example. And so sometimes it's big things you do, but sometimes it's just how you adjust your behavior. So let's say you're feeling quite introverted, but you do have a social event. Rather than forcing yourself to talk and be out there, you let people come to you

and you spend more time listening and you say less. You know, it's those little kind of subtle things or maybe if you are meeting with friends you choose to meet in a quieter place because you're feeling more sensitive that day so it can be these subtle adjustments that ultimately go a long way to kind of responding to how you are yeah i just i just so want to sort of come in here and just sort of pause and drink in what's been said it's so this is for me the epicenter of the power of this menstrual cycle awareness work is cooperating with the place you are in it is such a radical act i almost wanted to weep when you spoke those words shani and then you said that magic word kindness because the moment

you stop judging it and just going jesus i all i want to do is curl up today yet i've got to go out and do blah blah blah and you just let that be and yes you've still got to go out and do blah blah blah but suddenly you have shifted something within your being and just by letting that being go yeah yeah, this is who I am today. I'm very, I feel very tender and interior. And you just make that right rather than wrong. And it's that incredible act of recognition that's an act of kindness. And that is another nail in the coffin of that shame piece that we, you know, we're all shadowboxing. And here's the really daring bit to really trust. You know, I'm just going to do the best.

I'm just going to go out and care for this as best I can because I've still got to go to work and blah, blah, blah. But you have shifted the axis of yourself in the most profound way. And I just know you would hold yourself differently at work today and you will spontaneously find you doing things subtly differently. And you may surprise yourself with the kind of insight or intelligence that you bring because of the place you are in. And I cannot emphasize this enough. Yeah, really, really good, Alexandra.

I'm just appreciating how, you know, you spoke about this as a shift from the mind into the heart body, into our felt sense and oftentimes when we're judging our experience and we're not cooperating with our mood and energy it kind of keeps us stuck in a sort of perpetual hamster wheel I want to say and we often fear that what we're experiencing is going to be permanent but what cycle awareness does through these kind of day by days checking in with yourself and responding day by day we notice that when we allow ourselves to be how we are, actually the cycle naturally shifts us. It naturally moves us on. So we become carried by our cycle instead of fighting against it. So let me give an example of this. I think this is one that a lot of people could relate to if you feel tired before bleeding which is actually to be expected because our

energy is at its lowest at that point in the cycle if you allow yourself to rest when you feel that tiredness rather than pushing yourself or judging yourself so when you then rest and let go as your bleed begins, surrender happens. And because surrender happens, renewal naturally follows. Just like a good night's sleep will bring a renewal of energy the next day. The cycle, if you trust it and lean into it, it naturally moves you on. It naturally restores you. So you start to, you know, build a trust in that and a trust in how you're feeling. And that is no small thing.

It's no small thing to trust what you're feeling as being meaningful. Yeah. what you're feeling as being meaningful yeah one of the things that you often teach that I think really supports this trust is the one percent teaching because I can hear myself and other listeners saying okay I would love to be able to rest but the truth is I've got x y and z to do but if we can find the one percent way of resting whether that looks like what I'm going to do tonight which is put arty in front of a screen while I make dinner because it's going to be more restful for me um even though I don't love doing that a lot it's it's just finding the one percent and then that one percent will create the one percent shift and then slowly over time that can grow so it feels really important to bring that in we're not talking about massive changes we're talking about little shifts that can make all the difference

when they accumulate over time the act of simply being able to be aware of what you are because of what you're feeling so sometimes you know in the moment just before bleed, where that tiredness comes, we don't have the space or feel the permission, actually, to stop. We will resist it and just kind of push on, and that will then just deplete us more. But just simply be able to do your cycle check in and know, geez, the energy banks are empty today. And to not make that wrong. That is a 1% shift. Yes. To have that awareness and let yourself have the awareness,

even as, yes, you've still got to make dinner tonight to get your child to bed sophie you are inside yourself rather than outside yourself in your head you know pushing yeah okay great so we're wanting to do this practice of a daily cycle check-in and slowly over time to see the patterns that emerge. And there are ways of harvesting these patterns or understanding these patterns. And so the way we chart can really help us here. So can we look at practically how to chart and track the cycle and some different ways and approaches for that? Yeah. What's great about

doing this every day is, as you said, there's a pattern that emerges and this pattern is giving you insight into yourself, into your feelings, your needs, that's really important, your strengths and vulnerabilities at different times in the cycle. So you're getting this incredible self-knowledge about who you are and how you change through the menstrual month. And that then allows you to have this like personal weather forecast system where you actually know,

all right, in this phase of my cycle, this is what my inner weather is like. These are my strengths. These are my vulnerabilities. So how can I prepare for that? Like what's the best weather gear for me at this point in my cycle? But you need to be actually recording your experience over time to start to get that kind of information and start to have that kind of knowledge where you can start to plan your life according to your cycle more which is one of the great gifts of practicing cycle awareness

so gosh yes there are so many ways that you could do this piece of actual charting and in a way everyone has to find what works for them but maybe I will say what the kind of key things are to chart and then we can sort of look at some of the different ways that people go about this so you've got your practice of listening and responding to yourself and what you want to write down is what your cycle day is and then anything that really feels important that stands out to you from your check-in both in terms of what you've noticed about how you are, but also in terms of what you're needing and the kinds of sort of behaviors that have happened, really whatever captures your attention about that cycle day.

And we suggest that you find a few words to sort of distill the day so that you've got some kind of shorthand way of looking back at your month and getting an overview of the dominant mood or energy. So if you're somebody who likes to write, you might want to do a more lengthy written cycle check-in, but at the end, pull out a few keywords for your overall mood, energy, etc. You could also capture the essence of your day through some sort of shape or color or quick illustration or a symbol, something that you can easily look back on. I heard recently somebody was using emojis, like a different emoji for each cycle day, which I thought was genius. But ultimately, what you want is a way to see the whole month at a glance where you can see the cycle day, your cycle length, and you can get quickly look at how things are shifting and changing.

The thing that really helped me for the first 13 months that I did, because I committed to 13 months, was there was the Red School cycle chart that it's like a pie divided into 30 different slices. Yeah. And I had 13 of these by the end of the 13 months, and I could flick through them and see the words that reoccurred. Basically, it was like day 22 to 24, angry was the core pattern that I saw at first. And it changed my life. It changed my life. I could cry by seeing how cyclical that was

and so that was one way and then another way I've heard is people um just do it on a piece of paper but they put the day on the piece of paper and then they can gather all of the pieces of paper together and they have like 10 day ones 10 day twos 10 day threes and they can track it that way that can be really helpful too yeah oh it's so fun i love hearing how people do it and people seem to develop their own own methods but actually if anyone wants a copy of that chart um that's something we could put in the show notes so if people who want a at a glance chart for tracking each cycle day and being able to see that over time yeah there's so many different ways we actually have a blog about how different ways to chart the cycle so i'll put a link to that in the show notes at redschool.net forward slash podcast as

well um what about if your cycle is really irregular with charting how can you approach that well you approach it exactly the same way that we have been speaking about it through this whole um conversation um you just you you chart the cycle you are having and because it's irregular um so that might mean it, you know, you go for 40 days or even longer before you get a bleed. It's going to be much harder to see any kind of patterning. However, the act of doing it anyway brings connection, is bringing you into yourself more and more. So the more you are inhabiting yourself, as I said earlier, the more you're actually going to get insight about yourself and about your needs. So, and sometimes there might even be a kind of regularity within

your irregular cycle. But it is what's important here is your act of awareness of consciousness of yourself that is that is medicinal in and of itself so yes just and i believe we actually have a whole podcast haven't we on the regular cycle so i would really we can perhaps put that in the show notes yeah i'll put a big list we also have other episodes about different menstrual health challenges that you might be facing that. So I'll point to lots of different resources in the show notes. Wow. I feel like we've covered so much, you know, what is menstrual cycle awareness, how to actually practice a check-in, what are we really tracking and noting, how to chart it all down. It's been such a rich conversation if anyone has questions we would like to do another episode with everyone's questions about you know this these foundations

of menstrual cycle awareness so please email them to me at sophie at redscore.net and we can we can weave them in or you can always come and join our community hub on circle and i will drop a link into the show notes there as well for you to come and join the the community there do you have any closing words about this the the power of magic of this practice you two as we close menstrual cycle awareness is this magnificent little route back home to yourself your deep embodiment in who you are it's yeah it's a process i believe of dismantling shame slowly over time yeah i just really love how i love the simplicity of menstrual cycle awareness. And it's something you can do even when you're busy or regardless of what's going on in your life. But even in its simplicity and incredible accessibility,

it packs a punch like nothing else I know. The implications and impact on who you are and on your relationships and on your communities. It's so profound. So I really want to encourage anyone listening who isn't yet doing a daily cycle check-in to begin today. And on the days you forget, don't worry. Maybe note that you've forgotten and then wake up the next day and come again. wow I left this episode feeling really inspired to deepen my own practice of my daily cycle

check-ins like to really get into okay how am I feeling physically what's going on emotionally what's going on mentally and I hope it's inspired you as well as I mentioned we'd love to hear your questions about your practice so that we can go into them in a part two episode so please message them to me at sophie at redschool.net a reminder that you can download a free copy of the Red School menstrual chart at redschool.net forward slash chart and 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