The Menstruality Podcast - 192. Part Two: Beginner’s Guide to Menstrual Cycle Awareness (Q&A with Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Today we’re continuing our exploration around the fundamentals of the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, through the lens of some of the frequently asked questions from our community, such as what to do if your menstrual cycle doesn’t look like the archetypal cycle, how to track your cycle if you have menstrual health challenges, and how to talk about cycle awareness with your loved ones. The golden thread running through every response from Sjanie and Alexandra is the one and only rule of Menstrual Cycle Awareness which we call the Big Red Rule: that your own unique experience of your menstrual cycle is the most important thing, with all its quirks, strangeness and challenges. As Alexandra shares in the conversation, your job as a student of your cycle is to stay loyal to exactly what you’re experiencing. In other words, there are no ‘shoulds’ with menstrual cycle awareness, and there is no perfect cycle to achieve. The practice of menstrual cycle awareness is a homecoming to yourself, in a world that conditions us to look outside of ourselves for the answers. The power of the cycle rests in you experiencing your own cycle, and trusting your experience of your unique  strengths, vulnerabilities and needs, exactly as they are on each cycle day. We explore:The ‘crossover days’ - the shift from one inner season (menstrual cycle phase) to another and how to track and manage the disturbance that can arise, particularly between inner summer (ovulation) and inner autumn (the premenstruum).How to practice menstrual cycle awareness when you have menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, period pain, endometriosis, PCOS, PMS or PMDD, infertility challenges or other issues, and how your cycle awareness practice can be integral to your healing journey.What it can look like to share your menstrual cycle awareness practice with your partner, family, friends and even your work colleagues. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, how's it going? Thank you so much for tuning in today. In today's episode, we're continuing our exploration around the fundamentals of the practice of menstrual cycle awareness through the lens of some brilliant questions that have come in

from our community, such as what to do if your menstrual cycle doesn't look like the archetypal menstrual cycle, how to track your cycle if you have menstrual health challenges or irregular cycles, and how to talk about cycle awareness with your loved ones. And the golden thread that runs through every response from Shani and Alexandra today is the one and only rule of menstrual cycle awareness which they call the big red rule that your own unique experience of your menstrual cycle is the most important thing with all of its quirks and strangeness and challenges as Alexandra shares in the conversation today your job as a student of your cycle is to stay loyal

to exactly what you're experiencing. In other words, there are no shoulds with menstrual cycle awareness. There's no perfect cycle to achieve. The practice of menstrual cycle awareness is a homecoming to yourself in a world that conditions us to look outside of ourselves for the answers. And the power of the cycle rests in you experiencing your own cycle and trusting your experience of your cycle. So let's get started with this Q&A with Alexandra and Sharni. Good morning, loves. It's great to be with you. And I'm really excited to have this part two of our conversation about the Beginner's Guide to Menstrual Cycle Awareness. So we're going to be

answering lots of questions that have come in today. But before we get started with the conversation let's start as we always do on the podcast with a cycle check-in and we could maybe do a demonstration again of the cycle check-in in the way that we shared it in the first episode in this series um yeah do you feel like kicking us off shawnee i can do so yeah so looking at the kind of four facets of our experience in the present moment the physical sensations emotional landscape the state of our mind and our energy levels. All right. So I'm with you, Soph. Day 12.

We're cycle sisters. My body is so alive. I feel a lightness, a rushing of sensations through the core of my body and I notice my breathing is fast and I'm aware of a combination of excitement, but also emotional charge, which actually I would describe as like creative energy, creative surge. So my mind is wide, very, very wide. I'm in a very vast sort of altered state that is quite, I feel quite high because there's a kind of surge in energy for me and a real expansion

of energy and my energy is moving really really fast today um so i've just been noticing how good it feels to keep coming back to um this practice of interception which is to do with noticing the physical sensations in my body that is feeling very pleasurable and it's very grounding and very necessary right now yeah that's so funny so we're on the same cycle day and really your cycle checking could be my cycle checking is very similar it's very similar um physically I feel um zingy there's a lot of energy coming out through my eyes like I feel like my eyes are really wide emotionally I feel robust I feel very happy very joyful very like effortlessly joyful my mind is moving

incredibly fast I have loads of energy so yeah I'm really enjoying the feeling of my feet on the ground like that's really what I need to be focused on throughout this conversation is bum on the seat feet on the ground we're not a rocket taking off into space. We're a human having a conversation. Yeah. How about you, Alexandra? I'm Sophie. I love that image. I'm not a rocket.

I'm not a rocket. I'm a little human sitting here. So it's day 27, day of the moon, and I'm locating myself coming into the dark of the moon in these next couple of days and this is where i go into the ecstasy of the void i am physically there is a degree of i don't know just wellness in my being i am weary today sleepy sleepy yeah there's a bit of wearis but there's a kind of sleepiness to me and i am expansive you know it's this luminant liminality that i'm stepping into which

so i get a bit ecstatic and i don't have the same kind of boundaries with things. I'm just laughing now because we choose power cards before these calls to support us. And I got contain. I felt like the universe was going, just contain yourself. Just, you know, come in and discern. I feel like a stern taskmaster has just taken me in hand and said, ground yourself, gather yourself in, be present, hold it. Because I could sort of just float off really now.

But there's a kind of wickedness that gets unleashed in this floating off because, as you know, I have this kind of playful spirit and I could just go off well you know you talk about going off like a rocket I could go off like a rocket on just totally random things and riff on it and play and I just don't have boundaries around things and I mean I had this sudden thought I could just end up corpsing you know just just so entertained what's corpsing? Corpsing it's when you laugh so much you basically fall down it's you know actors when they something happens on stage and then they suddenly make each other laugh and they can't stop you know I'm supposed to be you know a teacher of menstruality and very serious and blah blah but you know anything could set off that wicked muscle in me

now this is why cycle awareness is so helpful when you're working together as a team because when one of you's on one side of the cycle, the other one's on another side of the cycle and you can help each other and support each other. So I'm going to bring my day 12 energy to contain you, Alexandra Pope, and put some boundaries around you as much as I would like us to corpse. That does sound fun. And just for anyone that doesn't know about the power cards that Alexandra was mentioning, we have at Red School these beautiful set of round cards that you can use as a kind of oracle deck, which speak to the different powers of the different phases of the cycle. So that's what she's referring to. But just to walk us into this conversation, I want to share a bit about what we spoke about in part one to set the stage here. So in part one of our Beginner's Guide to Menstrual Cycle Awareness, we explored what menstrual cycle awareness is and how it differs from tracking your cycle for fertility awareness. We went through step by step how to do a cycle

check-in and then we demonstrated it like we just did now. This is quite helpful to hear someone you know do it and see how it's practically applied and then we also looked at how to chart what you're finding from your daily cycle check-ins, how your physical self, your emotions, your mind and your energy are shifting throughout the cycle month and our focus today is to go deeper into this through the lens of questions that have come in from the community about practicing cycle awareness and the first one that we're going to look at is from Grace so we have loads of questions let's see how many we get through but the first first one is from Grace. And she asked a series of three questions that I'm going to bring all of them together because I think they're all kind of needed. And I can't wait to hear what you say. So she says,

what is the archetypal cycle and how does it work? How is the archetypal cycle different to the menstrual cycle? And how does my menstrual cycle fit into this archetypal cycle different to the menstrual cycle? And how does my menstrual cycle fit into this archetypal pattern? And what happens if it doesn't? What a great lineup of questions. Yeah. So maybe to start to answer this, I'm going to take a little step back and just pick up the thread from our last conversation for people who don't know what we spoke about the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, which is about you connecting to your very unique, very individual experience of the menstrual cycle day by day and tracking that over time. And we spoke about how when you do this present moment check-in with yourself and how when you gather that data by charting it, you build this body of self-knowledge. You start to get to know your rhythm of power, how the cycle influences changes you through the menstrual month

and that accumulation of self-knowledge is it's so precious and we touched briefly on how you can begin to use that new awareness of yourself and that new layer of understanding of yourself as a cyclical being we touched on how you can start to use that we mentioned this thing about it potentially becoming like your own personal weather forecast system where you can predict to you know a greater or lesser degree what your inner atmospherics are going to be like in the coming month in different days or different weeks of your cycle so in other words, what your strengths are likely to be, what you might find more difficult, what your needs might be, and so on. And then with that information, you can start to organize your life. When you're scheduling things in, you can do it in accordance with that information so

that you start to plan things that really suit the place you're in in your cycle and this is a beautiful way of just taking care of yourself but it's also a great way to capitalize on the different powers and strengths and capacities that you have in the different places in your cycle so this is really useful now there's another layer that you can go to with this self-knowledge that you've built up And this is where the archetypal cycle teachings come into it, because they are a means of even deeper understanding into what's happening for you through the menstrual month. These archetypal teachings of the menstrual cycle, in a way way give you insight into yourself they give context for what's going on and they become this kind of big sister like a guide useful and i almost want to say essential when you're practicing cycle awareness is to um grow your understanding of this of these archetypal teachings and these archetypal teachings um are what alexandra and i have been doing together over

the last however many years 40 right for 40 ish it keeps it keeps growing would you know as time passes several decades yeah yeah several decades so what we've been doing is actually restoring this archetypal story of menstruality through doing exactly what we're suggesting, you know, you all do through practicing menstrual cycle awareness. That's how we have recovered and restored this information so listening to our own experience and being informed by that but also through listening to hundreds of women's stories listening to people who have a menstrual cycle and their experience and then we've pieced together this timeless archetypal patterning that is within menstruality and that's allowed us to be able to create these maps, these charts, these descriptions of the full power and possibility of this spiritual path and practice of menstruality. And we've called this the menstruality canon. It's sort of the holding of all these archetypal teachings.

It's also been informed by the great archetypal cyclic round that is present in all of life. And, you know, it's this undeniable pattern that we see in everything of uh moving from nothingness death birth and the uh expansion of energy in the first half of the cycle so i'm thinking of the seasons of the year and we words, seasons, to talk about the inner seasons of our cycle. So there is this pattern of birth or rebirth with each cycle and rising of energy and expansion of energy, a pinnacle, coming to a pinnacle at high summer and then uh the withdrawing of that energy slowly that brings us into autumn and into winter again and um we have that same pattern played out in a day so this is kind of the timeless pattern that is organizing our lives at all levels that actually is keeping us alive. It is this cycle of

sustainability. It's the cycle of life we're describing here. And we have that same patterning. We've sort of articulated that same patterning within our description of the menstrual cycle our menstrual archetypal menstrual then our own deep embodied experience and the deep listening to others. And it's like the best way I can describe it, it is like listening, I want to say listening to the listening. It's like there's a, as I listened when I think way back before I met Shani, but then when Shani and I listened, when I think way back before I met Shani, but then when Shani and I together, as we reflected together

and took in together, it was as though we got to see through to this archetypal menstrual cycle pattern. It was like that was hidden behind what women were experiencing. And it's something as simple as I'll never forget this woman came to one of my very first workshops in Sydney, menstrual health workshops around those days. And she had traveled about two and a half, three hours to be there. And her symptom, her problem was that she lied to her family every month that she had a migraine so she could step away from them when she bled. Now, she did not know why she did that. And basically, she came to this workshop to find out, why do I do that? You know, I invent a migraine headache, so I can just go off on my own. She had a husband and I think two sons.

And I mean, it makes me almost want to tear up now thinking about that, you know, there I heard the archetypal imperative in her lived experience. And this is what happened over and over again. Through the apparent symptom people were experiencing, the trouble they were experiencing, Shani and I could hear the archetypal patterning that was trying to happen, that wasn't being recognised, that wasn't being supported. And that's a very profound level of the work for us, isn't it, Shani?

And so the archetypal patterning has risen through all our experiences and that's what we've named. So we have, there is an archetypal pattern and, of course, we all have our version of it yeah archetypal energies as you've described alexandra are universal they're perennial they're in everything and and through the menstrual cycle and through many other means but through the menstrual cycle specifically we many other means, but through the menstrual cycle specifically, we have the possibility of a very personal connection to this archetypal patterning and certain aspects of it

will be very accessible, relatable to us. And other aspects of it will be more of an enigma and we've got less sort of experience or connection with um and that is um really where the kind of inner work of menstruality begins and what i love about these archetypal teachings is they describe the full power and possibility of the menstrual cycle. And so they give you a way of understanding what you're being invited into each month. And more than that, they help you to kind of know how to access that they're both the kind of guide and and the means so it's very very beautiful and and and also understanding how

that then plays out through the whole journey from menarche to menopause and beyond. Yeah, really, really helpful. Okay, thank you. So to Grace's third question then, how do our menstrual cycles fit into this archetypal pattern and what if they don't? it's not about fitting into the pattern it is about having the experience you're having of the cycle so you are discovering how you are discovering your experience of your menstrual cycle how it's showing up for you and that's the the very, very first step. So we have this one big red rule, which is your experience trumps everything we might say. Now, your menstrual cycle, your experience of your menstrual cycle is governed by many things, your overall health, your nature, kind of nature you have, your levels levels of sensitivity the state of your nervous system

the physical environment you live in you know the environmental toxins you're exposed to your personal history and the kind of perhaps trauma you're holding in your body all sorts of things so the menstrual cycle is this exquisite system of sensitivity system, sensing system, where it's giving you feed insight and feedback on yourself. But you're also equally responding. It's it's responding to what's happening around you. It's in other words, it's a stress sensitive system. So in practicing menstrual cycle awareness, following our big red rule, you keep an utter fidelity to what you are experiencing. You're not trying to fit into the archetypal cycle. You're not looking at our map and go, hey, I should be feeling rising energy right now.

And actually, I'm not or i'm supposed to be feeling on top of the world but i just feel as flat as a pancake um you you're not supposed to be doing anything you are simply experiencing having the experience you're having and you are, it's like data. You're getting data about yourself, about your own nature and your energy levels and so on. So it's so important, first of all, to root in to your experience. Absolute, non-negotiable that one and the and where you find yourself deviating from the archetypal cycle this is not a reason to judge yourself your the archetypal cycle is not a judgment on how you're it's not telling you how you should experience it there are no shoulds here there is only this glorious information system if you like that you're getting about yourself

yeah back to the big sister idea the archetypal cycle is this cycle kind of surrounding you like this big unconditionally loving sister that is holding you and so I really like I like I want to give the example of one of the archetypal teachings which is a map we teach three maps and one of them is called the map of the inner seasons, which I would say is the most popular. It's very accessible. And this map of the inner seasons, as with all the maps, you can think of them as giving you a really good lay of the land, understanding the kind of contours that you can expect. They point you to where there are treasures that can be had. And also, the map reveals where there are potential pitfalls and places where you could get lost or run into trouble. So these maps are really, really good guidance for helping you to understand yourself

and to really get feedback on what you are needing to care for, what will support you to deepen into who you are ultimately, because that's what menstrual cycle awareness is about. It's about you becoming more yourself. And the best place I would say to learn about these maps is the cycle power course that you've created. It's the most comprehensive menstrual cycle power course that you've created it's the most comprehensive menstrual cycle awareness course that you've ever created and it walks you through the map of the inner seasons and guides you to understand your own experience of it so that's that's the place to go to and I'll drop a link to that in the show notes and I'll share more about it in the middle of the episode as well. A question came in from Becca which is also relevant cycle power is actually the only place that you teach about the crossover days as well and this

was one of the questions that came in from Becca she said how can I tap more into the nuances and the subtleties of the crossover days? These I'm finding to be key, but also really difficult to notice. Could you say a little bit about the crossover days? Yes, the crossover days are the name we've given to the shift between from one season to another. Now, sometimes that shift is sort of smooth and you don't really notice it and that other times there can be quite a distinct something that happens in your being as it's often a kind of wobble or if you can feel like a disturbance you know you were just you know doing just fine cruising along and then suddenly the ground goes from underneath you and you feel

oof i mean that's pretty classic for the crossover from your season of your inner summer which is the ovulatory phase of the cycle into the premenstruum the inner autumn that's a classic sort of clunk moment isn't it um yes so some crossovers can be very distinctive for us and other crossovers much more subtle. And there's a whole kind of teachings held within each meet those crossovers. And it just brings another layer or level of coherence to your experience of the cycle of insight. Actually, I should say, and then ultimately greater coherence, healing and coherence when you can catch them so coming to um becky's question when i first read your question i just wanted to say slow down but of course we can't always do that all the time you know otherwise you're going at a snail's pace through the whole cycle when you've got stuff to do in the world. But I'm imagining you are noticing some crossovers,

but there are some you're not noticing. So I would prioritize those by going, okay, I never clocked that crossover from the inner spring to the inner summer, really. And I want to see if there is something there. And it may be very subtle, but then I would make that the focus of your cycle awareness practice for that month. So I would just take one crossover a month to perhaps focus on if there's one that's kind of caught your attention and that you just try to create more spaciousness around that time in the cycle and and of course that is predicated on the fact that there's a degree of regularity

with your cycle and you'll roughly know those crossover days i mean you can estimate that it might be i don't know what is it about day 10 9 9 10 something like that of the cycle and to just sort of ring fence those days in your diary so that when you're looking at your diary, you're going, oh, yeah, yeah, we're coming up. I'm going to just really pace myself. So really, it is bringing more presence, more awareness. And that means just slowing down a bit to bring in another level of sight. I want to say we have our kind of everyday sight and knowing but you can kind of drop into another level of sensing when I say sight if you're going a little more slowly and you may start to just catch that

clunk you're changing gear and sometimes you know we change gears really smoothly and other times we're clunky when we change gears Look at you at me. Okay, I'm just going to pause the conversation for a moment to share a couple of invitations. Firstly, if you'd like a copy of the Red School menstrual tracking chart, you can download it for free at redschool.net forward slash chart. And if you'd like to create a meaningful menstrual cycle awareness practice or recommit to your existing practice or simply be immersed and surrounded in a cycle aware community as you continue to deepen your connection to your cycle you can join the self paced cycle power course as I mentioned earlier you can find out all-paced cycle power course, as I mentioned earlier.

You can find out all about the course, the curriculum, see some reviews and testimonials at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. And here's some feedback from Rebecca, who recently completed the course. She says it was really great to be able to do it at my own pace and in sync with my own cycle. I had some really strong visualizations come to me during each of the inner season medicine circles, gifting me with some incredibly helpful insights about my relationship with each of my inner seasons. And I felt a real intimacy grow. I'm blown away by the power of menstrual cycle awareness and how it's already transformed my life so much. Thank you for that feedback, Rebecca. Okay, let's get back to the conversation

with Alexandra and Shani. One of the things you said earlier, Alexandra, was that there are no shoulds with this practice of menstrual cycle awareness. But one question I hear a lot and that came in from Donna, who's one of the graduates in our community but she hears this from her students which is should I bleed on the full moon or the new moon? There are notions I think do you know upon a time, before there were electric lights, way back when we lived very, very, very, very, very, very simply, and we were governed by the moon and the sun,

I think it's quite possible that there was a rhythm to how women bled when they were living very close to the land, very simple lifestyle. However, we do not live in that world. No, you should not bleed or do anything at any time. It happens when it happens in your cycle. And what's really interesting to note is where the moon is at. It's quite fun to pace the moon with your menstrual cycle, because you'll notice perhaps how the moon affects your experience. So I vividly remember my experience of bleeding on a dark moon, and then bleeding on a full moon. Oh my god. Talk about rockets wanting to take off, Sophie.

You've had that. Yeah, I'm noticing it now because now I'm at my summer peak. Well, about to peak on day 12. But the moon is going dark and I'm noticing what that's evoking in me. Yeah, it's fascinating that pl the big red rule, you chart your experience. So the power of the cycle rests in you experiencing your own cycle. It does not rest in trying to be something you are not yeah yeah and to take that one step further the power rests in you trusting in the rightness of the cycle experience you're having yes and this is from sally uh it's not really a question but it's a beautiful underlining so i feel moved to bring it in she says although you emphasize the big red rule I still got caught up in believing the archetypes were aughts as I didn't understand my own authority at that point and had always looked outside of myself for the answers therefore for the overwhelmed non-archetypal beginner I'd say you can't emphasize the big red rule enough yeah right she's another one of our graduates she is getting it okay so next question this is another one from grace

she says are my menstrual symptoms welcome here and who can help me fix them? Yeah, that is a very good and sort of honest question because I I realize that when we're struggling with some aspect of our health, it's very easy to feel that we are somehow wrong. And I know it's very easy to fall into this idea that unless I'm experiencing a perfect menstrual cycle or, you know, not having menstrual pain or so on, that I can't do this practice. I sort of not good enough or um I'm outside of uh what's possible yeah so I think the big red rule is a really good thing to come back to here because so directly to answer your question your menstrual symptoms

and suffering are very very welcome and in fact they belong here they are very integral to this practice of menstrual cycle awareness and we believe menstrual cycle awareness is very integral to the healing that can happen with these menstrual symptoms i really i feel very strongly about this. I feel quite moved, stirred, actually, because I really want to revision how we look at symptoms. You know, we have been taught for centuries to deny the reality of the cycle. And this is how I viewed my own pain. It felt like the cycle was screaming out about the lost power, the loss of this extraordinary power.

So when I encounter symptoms, what I'm hearing is power that is, and bear with me, because people will personalize this and make it about, oh, I'm not in touch with the power. No, no, no, no, no. Your experience is illuminating the cost of us not valuing not just the menstrual cycle, folks, actually cyclical consciousness. Now really hear me on this. I feel very fierce about it because remember, yes, we are getting feedback about our personal overall health. And I got lots of great feedback about my body through my symptoms. But I very choicefully and deliberately decided to see, and I see this for every person, that our symptoms are the powers of the cycle wanting to be known, but are coming out symptoms. So they are alerting us to what is missing in the field.

They're a great warning sign for all of us on all sorts of levels, not just about the power of the menstrual cycle itself, but also because our hormonal system is feedback about the levels of toxicity in the environment and i i always saw the healing of my body and my determination to be sort of very loud about it's toxicity in the environment that's in fact affecting me here as well that my actions were uh i saw all our individual actions of healing as activism for the world not just my own body because for me to be well um i was the canary in the mine shaft alerting us on to this power and all sorts of levels and and you know my wellness is dependent also on the world changing as well so my healing is activism for the world so all your symptoms i want everyone who's suffering with menstrual cycle awareness, to feel like they have a deep home at Red School.

And that in your meeting of your symptoms and, you know, regardless of whether you can heal that pain or not, isn't that radical, regardless of whether you heal it or not, that your act of claiming your menstrual experience is serving us all. Thanks, Alexandra. Yeah, so for anyone listening who is dealing with menstrual pain, endometriosis, PCOS, PMS, PMDD, irregular cycles, infertility challenges, any menstrual challenges, you are 100% welcome here and this practice is is for you and these healing journeys can take time I know this personally we've spoken about it in our episode which I'll link to in the show notes about how menstrual cycle awareness can help with health challenges Alexandra we had a good yak about it didn't we our our decade decade long journeys

there's a question from Mercy which is a bit of an extension of this but it feels important to bring in she says a question I find myself asking what happens if I believe in the power of the cycle rest during menstruation try my best to nourish myself, but still have menstrual troubles. On one hand, when I go to the doctors, they don't find anything wrong. On the other hand, part of me gets tired with the subtle suggestion that these things happen because I don't love my cycle. I remember versions of that for myself, Mercy, or having that loaded on me in my healing journey, not just with menstrual problems, but with other health issues that I was dealing with. And when I spoke earlier about there are lots of influences on our menstrual experience.

And I mentioned things like environmental pollution, diet, and so on, our nature, et cetera, et cetera, all these elements. And yes, dealing with having an impeccable diet or reducing all the environmental pollutants in your life and so on. Yes, those are essential for healing and will make some difference. Well, my hope is that they would. They did for me. They made a profound difference.

And I also want to say there is, along with all those things that I have listed, there is this element of mystery yeah the unknown in other words mercy here and um so I have always chosen not to take my symptoms personally but still take personal responsibility as best I can for them but I have chosen very deliberately not to see them as a failure in any way but also as, how can I put this? As, well, activism. I said it earlier. I'm through the healing of my body.

I'm serving something in the world. And if something is not, you know, if you're still experiencing struggle, I kind of want to say that, yeah, we all, your healing is dependent on all of us healing. It's a collective project. It's so important, this, not to carry the burden of everything on yourself. Of course, there's personal inner work.

I have grown so much. I have learned so much about my shadow side, et cetera, et cetera, through fronting up to my own symptoms. But I will never, ever, ever pathologize myself in that way and to say that I'm a failure or that I am not enough. And I want to share that message with you. Helpful words. Thank you, Alexandra. helpful words thank you alexandra i'm really excited because i get the privilege of having several conversations with you in the coming weeks about lots of the different menstrual health challenges that people are facing and to explore how the practice of menstrual cycle

awareness can support journeying with these symptoms healing these symptoms so um stay posted is that what you say stay tuned that's it it's a podcast stay tuned we'll be talking we'll be talking um a lot more over the coming weeks about about different health challenges okay a really cool question came in, which I feel like we could talk about for hours. But this is from Manu. And she said, how can I talk to my partner about this, about my menstrual cycle awareness practice? And I love that this question's come in because we've been talking about menstrual cycle awareness as this somewhat private affair with yourself that you you know you just do in the privacy of your own inner life and you're bringing in this piece about sharing it with others and that really deepens and expands the maps and particularly

the map of the inner seasons it's just a very great way to explain something about the way you shift and change through the menstrual month because it's a map that is relatable and understandable and in a way gives your partner a little window into your world and they can draw on their own experience and understanding of cycles and seasons and so on in order to have some sense of what you might be going through. And then using the shorthand of the seasons just to let them know which season you're in and when you're moving from one season to another, so that that becomes part of your kind of way of checking in with each other, finding out how, you know, one another is doing, you can bring in this element of what day of your

cycle you're on and how you're experiencing this day and what inner season this is. And I think this isn't a one-time conversation. This is a conversation that needs to unfold over time. And it's you getting to know your cycle in concert with your partner getting to know your cycle. And they'll begin to observe you from the outside, in the way that you're observing yourself from the inside, and they will spot things about your cycle that you haven't spotted, you know, little habits you have, or things that are indicators to them that you're in a certain season of the cycle. So I like to think of it as an ongoing, unfolding dialogue over time. Yeah, I've talked about this before on the podcast, but something that's really helped me to bring my menstrual cycle awareness practice into my life with aid and now with our with our family with

arty is I put my crossover days in our shared calendar so on my day one or two of my bleed I'll put day seven day 14 day 21 and day 28 and it's just become this really helpful shorthand for aid to go cool i know where sophie's gonna be like it's day seven so between now and day 21 she's going to be fairly robust and then day 21 we need to we need to shift gears is probably his rudimentary understanding no i don't want to say sorry aid not that you ever listen to this. It's not. He does. He's being very, very supportive. But yeah, that's a little shorthand way to work with it. And I think this extends out beyond partners as well to like, potentially, depending on your workplace, colleagues, definitely friends, like best friends and close friends. My best friend is a gay man

who doesn't have a menstrual cycle but he you know he's fascinated with mine and um him and his partner they're always asking me what day I'm on and how he's feeling and you know he's he really takes care for me at this next level because he knows about it I'm actually remembering a friend of mine who knew no shame, a lot of other like me, around menstruating. And she used to walk into her workplace and go, I'm menstruating today because she saw it as a celebration, you see. She saw menstruation as this great sort of celebratory moment. She was so wonderful.

So, I mean, well, that's a very radical way of breaking the ice. She did work for a counselling organisation. But, yeah, there's perhaps more kind of low key ways you can bring it in in the workplace. Just with your supervisor or your manager so they can be tracking. Yeah. Or your work buddy or, you know, yeah. Yeah. We did a great conversation with Dr. Lara Owen about the menstrual cycle and menopause in the workplace, actually, that people can look up. And I'm also thinking of a couple of episodes. If you are really interested in exploring how to practice menstrual cycle awareness with your partner.

We had a conversation with one of our graduates, Lucy Peach, and her partner, Richard. And they went into very generously. They shared so generously. And it was so funny as well. And actually, we all cried. So we had a lot of emotions going on in that episode. But they spoke about their sort of cycle of our life together. And then I did an interview with two women, Sophia and Gemma, who are in a lesbian relationship. and they spoke about their practice of tracking actually their menopause process together. So just a couple of resources there.

Really good. And just back to the workplace thing, if you are somebody who wants to bring cycle awareness into your workplace, it's something we offer at Red School is bringing cycle awareness education to the workplace because having everyone in the workplace taught about the cycle and understanding it will immediately make space for these kinds of conversations to happen more easily so that's also a way to introduce it. Yeah I want a world where every single workplace is menstrual cycle aware. Yes, please. Okay, next question.

Are you ready for the next one, you two? Quick fire. So this is from Lisbeth. She says, I'm a pre and postnatal personal trainer, and I think it could benefit my profession and the many women I work with I'd specifically like I'd specifically like to know ways women could change their strength training and cardiovascular training around their cycles and ways women can change their eating styles around different phases of their cycle yeah good question I love it and I love that there has been some research that's actually gone into

this, which is really, really interesting. And what we would say is it's ultimately a very personal and individual thing. And this is where the practice of menstrual cycle awareness comes into it. So I would encourage you as a personal trainer to have the woman you're working with track their menstrual cycle and track it in relation to the kind of training that they're doing, how it feels on their body, the effect it has, how they feel afterwards, and to also really note how they feel before the training that they do and what they feel they're needing before the training to really plug them into their own body awareness and their own self-understanding and to gather their own very personal data on this so that you can help them to create a very customized, personalized health and fitness

program. And the same applies to eating. You know, what menstrual cycle awareness does is give us this or helps us develop this capacity of deep listening to ourselves. And that then connects us with what we are needing and actually noticing the effect that food is having on our body so um yeah a bit like the cycle awareness in the workplace i mean i would find it very hard to um exercise in a way that was really kind and supportive and effective for my body if I wasn't practicing cycle awareness and so I changed the way I move throughout the menstrual month to really lean into the the cycle and its guidance at a more sort of impersonal level there is actually there are people that and this is not our expertise who do teach on nutrition and the cycle very specifically you know tending to the

the hormones uh of the different you know the hormones that dominate in different parts of the cycle and how to support them so um yes there is uh research that's done and people who are teaching that and equally there's been research done hasn't there on exercise and actually just the simple thing of um having you know you have sort of high intensity exercise but then taking a break so athletes you know, you have sort of high intensity exercise, but then taking a break. So athletes, you know, they have very tough, rigorous programs, but they're also finding that that just taking a beat as in, you know, stopping not doing it at that high pace, I can't think what the term is now, is essential, essential for maintaining their levels. And I'm reminded of actually someone who came to a workshop of mine years ago

in Sydney who ran a training center. And she, well, she loathed the menstrual cycle. It was a long story. But anyway, she came to my workshop and fell in love with this and thought oh my god i have to and she changed her whole relationship with this you know her understanding cycles and herself and her body and um because she was a real power over person and she took this back into her she took it lock stock and barrel back into her training organization and she told she had a lot of male trainers you know kind of big australian books just cracked

me up and she sort of basically gave the instructions to find out you know when a woman comes to her comes for training um there was a phrase they use something like i'm in my red tent and the trainer would go okay got it And would do would organize slightly different training for them that day. So it can be just as simple as that, you know, to start with, because it would take time to build up your relationship with your clients and to know where they are, because that's what Shani has described is kind of the ideal, because we are all quite unique in that sense throughout the whole cycle but um as a rule of thumb you know to kind of chill it at menstruation no no push just something very chilled like yin yoga frankly i think there were a couple of articles a few years ago of different women's football teams yeah really taking menstrual cycle awareness seriously I think there were a couple of articles a few years ago of different women's football teams. Yeah. Really taking menstrual cycle awareness seriously.

See how things are shifting. Okay, amazing. I feel like we've covered so much. There are a couple of other questions. One of them is, what does the practice look like if you're post-menopausal? From Anne-Marie. And another one from Manu who said, what happens to my inner seasons when I'm pregnant and does pregnancy also correspond to a season and although we don't have chance to

explore those two now we do we are planning to have conversations about both of those topics right yeah they deserve their own entire episode minimum and for now around the pregnancy one but I did a great conversation with one of our um faculty JD Mountjoy where she she guided me through my pregnancy through the lens of the inner seasons and it was fantastic and she shared so much a wealth of information in that one so I'll drop that link in the show notes yeah well thanks you too this has been amazing do you have any closing words for people who are like at the beginning of the practice of menstrual cycle awareness or really wanting to go deeper oh it is always for me just just do it just. Just do each day.

Just play with noticing. Just see what happens. I would really encourage you to stick with it for at least three months so that you might get a sense of a pattern. Because once you start, the magic kicks in. Yeah. in yeah and I want to add to that and encourage you as you do it to not do it alone to come and join our community because there's something about doing this alongside others who are practicing with you and learning with you that really holds you in the practice and um and there's such a you know having mutual support and understanding also being able to share your experiences with like-minded people who get it is so significant in terms of um i don't know having the resilience to keep going and the

stamina when you hit roadblocks and challenges or you know fall by the wayside it'll really hold you in something so I want to encourage you to come and join our community for that level of support yeah if no one else in your world currently gets this there are a whole world of people who do get it over here and yeah come and play oh thanks you too it's been brilliant thank you thank you thanks so much for being with us today thank you for being part of the community gathered around this podcast and if you love this podcast and want to support it, we would love it if you could give it a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It really is the best way to support the podcast and we would

be so, so grateful. I loved this review from Louise Rogers. Wonderful heartfelt wisdom. I love this podcast. Somehow the conversations always settle me and I feel a deep sense of truth. I came to menstrual cycle awareness towards the end of my menstruating years, but the wisdom shared offers a nourishing perspective in navigating any transition, which we all encounter through the whole of life. From my heart, thank you, Red School, for this beautiful resource. Thank you so much, Louise. We really appreciate that review.

Okay, 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.