The Menstruality Podcast - 204. How Cycle Awareness Helps to Create a Rest-Centred Life (Lou Perham)

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

I don’t know about you, but rest can be an elusive thing for me. I know I need it, I know I want it, but how do I actually get it? Enter Lou Perham who is rest-obsessed and has devoted her recent years as a Cyclical Living Mentor to helping people, and especially women get more rest. Today we start by exploring Lou’s powerful personal story of the healing power of cycle awareness. When Lou was diagnosed with PCOS - polycystic ovarian syndrome - in her late 20s, she was crushed when her doctors told her that she was unlikely to be able to have children. Having always wanted to be a mother, she responded by trying several holistic healing approaches to heal her heavy, painful periods, eventually committing to a two-year Yoga teacher training which supported the regulation of her hormones, and also included teachings about menstrual cycle awareness. Wonderfully, a year after she started tracking her menstrual cycle she had pain-free bleeds and six months later she was pregnant with her son. This led to her joining Red School’s Menstruality Leadership Programme, and since then, she has been applying the healing power of cycle awareness in a new way, using it to craft what she calls a rest-centred life, and guide others to do the same. We explore:Today she shares the ten types of rest we all need, and how to access more of them, including; physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.  How Lou created her own map of self-care practices based on the inner seasons of her menstrual cycle, and it all started with the vital cycle awareness question; what do I need on this cycle day? How Lou practices cycle awareness and lives the wisdom of her cycle as a single working mother.---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.hardyLou Perham: @louperham - https://www.instagram.com/louperham/

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 Skool 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, change makers 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. your community and the world.

Hey thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. I don't know about you but rest can be an elusive thing for me. I know I need more of it, I know I want more of it, but how do I actually get it? Enter Lou Purim, our guest today, who is rest obsessed and has devoted her recent years as a cyclical living mentor to helping people and especially women get more rest. We start today by exploring Lou's powerful personal story of the healing power of cycle awareness. When Lu was diagnosed with PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, in her late 20s, she was crushed when her doctors told her that she was unlikely to be able to have children. Having always wanted to be a mother, she responded by trying several holistic healing approaches to heal her heavy painful periods, eventually committing to a two-year yoga teacher training which supported the regulation of her hormones

and also included teachings about menstrual cycle awareness. And wonderfully a year after she started tracking her menstrual cycle she had pain-free bleeds and six months later she was pregnant with her son. This led to her joining Red School's menstruality leadership program and since then she's been applying the healing power of cycle awareness in a new way, using it to craft what she calls a rest-centred life. But before we get started with Lou today, I want to share some news.

We're going to change up the rhythm of the podcast. From next week onwards, it's going to be bi-weekly. Red Skool is focusing on some new exciting things, and I'm stepping back a little because Arty is going to be bi-weekly. Red School is focusing on some new exciting things and I'm stepping back a little because Artie is going to school in September which is amazing and it's time to focus on my writing and my cyclical, ethical, intuitive business coaching. So if you love a weekly listen and thank you so much if this is you, this podcast exists because of you and we're so grateful to you for tuning in and being part of this conversation. But whether you listen every week or you listen in occasionally

there's now an archive of over 200 conversations and we recommend going back to explore them. We're going to share one of our favorites each week in the red thread which is our weekly email newsletter and you can sign up for that at redschool.net. Okay let's get started with the wonderful Lou Purham. Hey Lou, it's so gorgeous to see you. Thank you so much for making the time to be with us today on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here. I can't wait to talk about this theme, which I feel like you and I have been talking about back and forth together in so many ways for a long time,

how cycle awareness helps us to live a rest-centered life. Just saying those words, my body, something my body just, ah, lets out a sigh of relief, like, ah, this is possible even in our world today where there's so much going on, so much to tend to, so much trouble to meet and face, so much speed, movement, you know, it is possible for us to live a rest-centered life and cycle awareness can help. Yep, sure can.

Let's start with our cycle check-in. How are you doing? So yeah, I'm late summer, early autumn. I can definitely feel a shift happening. There are certain cues in my body, my digestive system and stuff like that, that I pick up on at this time and I know how to manage and we'll do certain things to support myself, but all of that is going on. How are we about to about you? Day five.

So distinctly day five for me. So I follow quite closely this idea from Alexandra and Shani of these five chambers of menstruation, which we have spoken about on the podcast, the final two being vision and clarity. Just over the years, I'm seeing that day five is my clarity day. And sure enough, I always either like find a podcast or a book on the, like around this day on day four or five that makes me zing and come to life and remind me who I am and what I'm about. And the book I found was this new book by Iana Elizabeth Johnson called What If We Get It Right? And she's a marine biologist and climate scientist

and I didn't realise how much I was needing with all the chaos that's happening in the world. I need to think solutions. I need to be around beautiful creative thinking pointing towards solutions. It's like, oh, thank you Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. So I'm, I'm looking forward to reading it and maybe we can just plant a seed here that like, please can we get Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson on the podcast? Just planted with us loose. Setting our intentions right? Yeah, I love that. Yes. Yes, please. Yeah. So I'm very upbeat. I've got a lot of rising energy. And the second half of my last cycle really took me through a deep healing process, which you and I may have talked about over the last couple of weeks, I had to have an MRI basically, and my body and particularly my pelvis has been through so much over the last 15 years, as years, as I know, has yours has and we'll

hear your story, Lou, like I think for many of us who are fascinated by this topic and maybe for you listening, maybe there's been a lot going on in your pelvic bowl and that's why you're here. There's been a lot going on in mine and I now have a new cyst, big cyst on my left ovary and they just want to check it out. They think it's benign, but they want to check it out. So, but the MRI brought up quite a lot of medical trauma from all the investigations. People have looked in my vagina over the years. I've just reached a point where my body's going, actually, I don't want anything else. And so I had a real process, had to negotiate with myself to be able to do it.

And then the wonderful nurse who just he could see I was physically shaking to go into the machine and he said, a big tattooed man. And he said, Would you like me to come with you? Would you like me to hold your hand? And I was like, Oh, would please and I was crying and he held my hand the whole way through this MRI scan and what proper angel, you know, here on earth, he really helped me. So isn't it beautiful to see that divine energy show up in the outer case of something you wouldn't necessarily perceive as gentle? I love that paradox of that and how much more that probably, I mean, you needed it either way, but because it was wrapped in maybe a unconventional container, it almost meant more, or it was more surprising maybe. Yeah, yeah, it spoke to a part of me that hasn't trusted the masculine for so long.

And here he is showing up, you know, sacred masculine. Yeah. Sometimes the words feminine and masculine don't mean that much to me anymore. It was just like the sacred force of love moving through this being. And yet, like you said, unexpectedly. Yeah. So I'm, I'm in a good place. It's the summary of my very long cycle check in. But let's hear about your beautiful pelvic bowl and what's happened inside it and you know, what called you to cycle awareness in the first place? Yeah, so really interestingly, my pelvic bowl, my body in general has been trying to talk to me for a very long time and I don't think it was until I understood

the cycle wisdom, specifically the teachings of Red School, was how I was initiated into this knowledge. I understood that actually it was my body's way of communicating. Pain is our body way of communicating. So at 25 I was experiencing extreme pain every month with my cycle, really heavy bleeds, mood swings, lack of confidence, like all sorts of like dreading, you know, that run up to your period. And then you kind of get into this phase of like dreading the fact that your period is going to come because you know, it's going to be so awful. Having to take days off work, feeling unprofessional, feeling like I couldn't keep up with my peers. And there was like emotional and social stuff going on around all of that as well.

Would you mind saying a bit about the emotional and social stuff? No, not at all. I think you know at that stage in my life now as well like I was transitioning from maybe one stage of my life into the next. So I was moving from being in my maidenhood into being into my mother phase. So that's like moving from your inner spring into your inner summer. And actually what's so interesting for me now is day 11 of my cycle, day 12 of my cycle are always wobbly. So it's this thing of what shows up in your menstrual cycle is what shows up in your life

is what shows up in your experiences of whatever it might be. And actually, I think I so desired to meet a partner and I so wanted that next step and I kind of didn't really know who I was and what I wanted and how I wanted that to look. And I just feel like I was quite lost for a few years, but I was in this environment where I was, you know, it was high demand, high stress work environment. And I was very good at it because I'm personable, but it wasn't necessarily the right role for me.

And I was surrounded by good people, but I wasn't necessarily taking care of myself. And I went to the doctor and said, something's up, something's not right, obviously. Here, take the pill, you know, was the first thing. And when I said I didn't really wanna take the pill, I wanted to understand what was going on in my body, which actually at 27, 28 was quite a bold thing to say

when I had no knowledge about what I know now. But I just had this instinct. Like I was like, I don't want to be on the pill. This has to do with my cycle, but I had no education around it really whatsoever. But I did know that I wanted to be a mother one day. And I thought to myself, if I keep trying to control my hormones and my body, it just didn't make sense to me. So let's put some more fake hormones in your system to try and regulate quote unquote you. That doesn't

make sense. We need to figure out what's going on the root cause of this. And if it's something completely different, then I'll deal with that. But you know, if it's nutrition, I was thinking, or if it was, you know, am I allergic to some kind of food? Am I celiac? Or, you know, I'll be gluten some kind of food? Am I feliac or, you know, I'll be gluten free. I don't care. Like I just want to feel well. Thank you for naming that. It's often the very quick response to, I am experiencing something difficult as a woman, often as someone who has cycles. And we can feel disempowered, uprooted from our power, from ourselves. Gaslit even. There's subtle or maybe not so subtle gaslighting that goes on and there's just such a

need for education. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for naming that. I imagine there's, I can kind of hear a kind of sense of relief from our listeners or some of our listeners to hear that like yeah Can we please honor that there might be other ways? It's right for some people to go on the pill and have me honor that there might be some other ways Yeah, yeah, and I don't know what made me so bold I honestly think it was just my intuition because I also had a boyfriend at the time who was like it would be a lot easier If you were on the pill. There was just this really big no in my body other than wanting to have a baby at some point and not wanting to screw up my system.

That desire to be a mother has always been strong in me. I think I was very protective of that. So then I'll go through this process of speaking with the doctors and I got tested and my hormones got tested and my testosterone levels were through the roof. They were like, you've got PCOS. And I was having dark hair growing in places that, you know, a young woman wouldn't want dark hair growing and you know, I felt that was leading into lack of confidence and wanting to meet somebody and feeling unattractive and you know all of these these domino effects all of this stuff has. Could you just name what PCOS stands for? Yes of course polycystic ovarian syndrome so I am in no way an expert on this I'm just talking from my personal experience here so they essentially told me usually what happens when you have PCOS is that you have cysts.

So then they were like, we've tested your hormones. We think you should go and have an ultrasound and have a look at your womb and your, uh, fallopian tubes and your ovaries and, and we will do that externally. So I was like, okay, that's fine. I'll go and do that. And they were like, you don't have any cysts, Okay. But you can have the syndrome without the cysts. So they were like, you have a hormonal imbalance, but you're lucky, because you don't have the cysts, which I completely understand if they are

excruciating if they burst. So I appreciate for women and people who do have that, it could feel like luckiness, but they were turning around to me at 26, 27 at this age and saying, you have the syndrome and it will be very unlikely that you'll be able to have a baby. And that for me completely floored me. Yeah, that sentence gets thrown out. Yeah. And I've heard it time and time again. So what happened? What happened within you when, when you heard that? So what happened, what happened within you when, when you heard that? I was devastated.

Yeah. And I was like, this is not my truth. Again, I don't know where that boldness came from. Sometimes I don't take no for an answer. So I was like, it's fine. I need to invest in some kind of process where I can do this in different ways. Okay, so if you're telling me my hormones are out of balance, what can I do about that? Can I heal this?

But what can I do for myself? That's where I got to very quickly actually. I was really upset. I was really upset. And I probably didn't talk about it or process it well enough because again this comes back to education. And I took action because I think sometimes when you get told the thing that sounds like the worst thing in the world to you, you can't be a mother. I'm going to do absolutely everything in my power to try and change that truth that you're apparently telling me. So yeah, I worked with a nutritionist, I worked with a personal trainer, and then I realized a lot of my stress was coming from my work,

and so I was earning six figures at the time, and I quit that job. And again, it was a really bold move. I wasn't in a great mental health space. I was really struggling because of stress and I needed to be home. So I moved home at 30, very lucky that my parents took me in. Thanks, mom and dad.

Now I remember ringing my mom and being like, if I quit my job, can I move home? Because I was like, if I don't have an income, where do I go? What do I do? I don't think they fully understood where I was at until I got home. And then she was like, yeah, you just need to decompress. Thank you for sharing this Lou, because I feel like it's a topic that society, our culture that we live in anyways, really skirts around a lot. And I'm always grateful when someone I'm speaking to on the podcast names it like this intersection of career and fertility. Because there are real life realities for women and people who become parents who have cycles is there are certain

tough decisions that need to be made sometimes. I made my own version, like tough decision version of that by leaving Tree Sisters when I hadn't been able to get pregnant for two years because I could feel my stress levels were so high. But you know, because we talk about calling at Red School, it's like, it's very interesting. It's like, if you're living your calling, but you also feel called to motherhood, which one do you follow? Does it all weave and end up in the same place? Anyway, we don't know. We'll find out. We'll chat when we're 80. We'll look back and we'll see. Like it did work out, didn't it? Well, so for what's hilarious is I'm now back at that company, like literally three weeks ago, I started a new job back at that company. It kind of is full circle. And what makes me smile is my son's just turned seven spoiler alert, or I should say that. So that sort of matriessence seven year journey as well. It's all bit magical. talking at this time. It's amazing. Okay, okay. So let's track back. So you've been told you've got PCOS. Yeah. You are doing lots of different pieces to create hormonal balance in your body. One of

things is your stress levels and moving and stepping out of this job. And I think one of the things that I will say is I lived away from home for over 10 years and then I move home and it's like you're under your parents roof, you're back in your kid bedroom. I'm now seeing there's a mirror here that's being held up about maybe how I've been living my life and how I had contributed to my own dis-ease. That was part of it for me actually was having a level of accountability. I think when you live on your own or you have nothing to bump up against, sometimes easy just to not see the things. And then I met up with some friends across Christmas, they were old, old friends of mine. And they just said, How are you? And I just burst into tears in the middle of this pub. And they were like,

you need to go and see Steve, who's my yoga teacher. Okay, that's nice. Great friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They were just like, we're not going to try and fix this for you. You just need to go and be in the right environment. You know, they could see. And one of my friends had signed up for the teacher training. One of them had already done it. I was like, you know what? I've got nothing else to lose. I've got no job. I have no social life. Mum and dad are driving me crazy. I feel like, you know what, I've got nothing else to lose. I've got no job. I have no social life. Mum and dad are driving me crazy. I feel like such a failure.

I am so lost. I'm 30. What the heck am I doing? I'm still experiencing chronic pain. I can't have a baby. What the hell is my life? I'm going through this big drama going on in my head. Well, you say drama going on in your head,

but to me, it sounds like a major dark night of the soul. Yeah, it was a real low. And I remember sitting in front of Steve and him saying, so what's going on? And saying all to him and then hearing it. And I was really interesting, I could cry right now just thinking about it. When somebody sees you, when somebody can hear all the aspects without judgment. And I think all he said was, let's let's do this together. And it was it was that feeling of being at the bottom of a well, and someone reaching down, I had to do the climbing, I had to do the work, but somebody saying, we can get you out of this. And I will forever be grateful for that moment. It was a real turning point for me, but it was also a real commitment.

So it was two years. I kind of within the space of a week just said, yes, I went from boozing every weekend, smoking, like all the rest of it, eating meat, do stuff, to then doing like this one 80. The first month, I think all we had to do was, was notice when we weren't pausing in this, in, in our teacher training. So it was like, can you create a pause between you and your reaction? And that probably was the hardest month of teacher training I had. And then we went through the process of the actual practice. You know, it's science and the technology that the yogis developed years and years and

years ago. And through regulating my hormones, through doing some salutations and getting up at the same time every day. It was like I was in bed at a certain time because I was getting up to do my practice every day. So bedtimes became very regular, my morning practice became very regular, I was eating at certain times a day, I'd cleaned up my diet. It just worked for me in that environment. Okay so you were sinking in with like the circadian rhythms and cycles in a different way and where did menstrual cycle awareness come in? So my teacher's wife Sarah had been one of the first people to do what used to be called the women's quest, which was the original training that Shani and Alexandra did.

And the Menstruality Leadership Program. Exactly. I remember that there was a workshop she was putting on. It was actually because my best friend at the time was trying to get pregnant. We used to do these things called decadence days, where you'd like you'd go to a spa, then you go to a fancy restaurant and one day we'd be walked over the O2 dome, had dinner, went to see Beyonce. Oh like it was like the most ridiculous day. I would be in your friendship group this sounds like the best. Honestly yeah yeah yeah from a self-care perspective everybody should have a

decadence day every year in my opinion. We were doing decadence days before I went into my yoga teacher training. So when I went in, it was like, well, there's no booze, there's no meat, there's no, like I was in a different space. So I was like, why don't we do like a wellbeing day? Part of that was going to this workshop. And I remember Sarah going around and asking everybody why they were there. And there was maybe 30 women in the room in a circle. And I just said, because my womb hates me. And that's how it felt. It felt like my body hated me.

And my pelvis was screaming at me every month. And I just felt helpless. And then by the end of the session, I remember turning around to Sarah and saying, I feel sorry for men that they don't have this. And that was the impact of the teaching for me. What was it that struck you? What was the insight that you had? I think I went through, you know, what's it, the seven stages of grief, or you get to like

acceptance at the end. I was raging in that three hours as well. Like I was so angry that I hadn't been told this information when I was younger. I'd started to connect with my spirituality, I guess, through my yoga practice. I therefore understood that I was made more of just body and water and flesh and bone and energetically, there was more going on. I think when somebody gives you language to explain a process that you're living with but you've had no words to articulate it, there's something incredibly profound that lights up. Oh, it's not my fault.

It's not me. I'm not broken. I'm not failing. There is a system in me that I had no idea how to label or name or work with or do anything with that now I know about. I can do something about. I felt so empowered. And it's more than just, oh, you ovulate and you bleed every month in school. It was all very practical. Here's a tampon, here's a pad, this is your reproductive system, this is how you make a baby or this is how you prevent having a baby versus this is a spiritual experience that's happening in your body and now every bleed whether it's painful or not I feel like a fucking goddess, Soph. You are, Lou. We are, aren't we? We so are. Yeah, so to go from that in three hours, it was so profound. And then I started tracking my cycle

after that. And there was the Women's Circle post, that workshop that I went to, and that was really profound as well, sitting in circle with women. And then about 12 months after I started tracking, my pain had gone. And 18 months after I started tracking, I was pregnant with my son. Wow. So for me, the proof was in my experience. And then after my son was born, I chose to go and train with Red School and to do the MLP. I remember sitting in the circle because you had to do one of the workshops in person before you did the MLP. I remember going to London and I was still breastfeeding Finn.

There was this like, I was pumping in the background. It was just womp, womp, womp in the background. I remember Alexandra stopping me like, what is that noise? Shani's like, oh, she's pumping. She's like, great, great. So just felt very welcomed in that space. And actually it was really profound for me, particularly doing the held session with Shani.

Shani and Alexandra both have such amazing voices as well, like when they take you into any kind of like relaxation process and get you to bypass your brain and get into your body. It just feels like honey. Like it's just so delicious. And we took a walk of the four inner seasons. And that was so significant for me to actually take a concept and actually apply it in my system. Okay, I understand the concept of it. I understand the idea out there, but actually now it's my lived experience. And I've got a walking, talking connection to my womb, to my cycle. And I can have a conversation with it, and I can evolve with it. Mm. So it sounds like the MLP, and it did the same thing for me. It really helps you take the ideas around the cycle. Oh yeah, cyclical living, intelligence of my womb, that all sounds lovely, into like, okay, this is how I can live this in my life, this is how it's alive in my body, and to really bring it into technicolor in your life. How would you say that

the MLP helped you to live, you know, what Alexandra and Shani could say is your calling, your purpose? What was the main way that it supported you with that? I think for me it gave me a depth of experience. I mean first off there was a community of women that I sat with and witnessed and heard and was held by. For me that was really profound to be privileged enough to hear other women's stories and experiences. I think also the subtlety, it's all the unsexy stuff, right? Like it's all the opposite of everything in our current culture.

The embodiment and the slowness has to occur for you to really connect and for us to make those observations and to be that acutely aware of what's happening in our system. And there was such a beautiful role modeling of that through just the delivery of the training. Such incredible witnessing of how this work could be brought

to life in the real world. I'm a single working mother. How do I do this in my life when all of that is real. And I think what I witnessed was that in action. It made it possible for it to be real for me too. And it was my work to go away and figure out how. But for me, there was an unshakable foundation of this is possible. is possible. Okay, I'm going to pause the podcast for a moment to share a couple of invites. Firstly, if you're just discovering the practice of cycle awareness as a way to get more rest and create a rest-centred life, then we recommend downloading the RedSchool free menstrual tracking

chart at redschool.net forward slash chart to support you to get started or to go deeper with your own menstrual cycle awareness practice. And I also want to let you know that the doors for the menstruality leadership program are opening soon so this is the leadership course that Alexandra and Sharni run every year and I know some of you have been waiting for this to happen and we'll let you know as soon as registration is open. In the meantime Alexandra and Sharni's Cycle Power course is a great way to prepare for the Leadership Programme. Many graduates have shared that they were grateful to have

had the context from the Cycle Power course and it really supported them to get the most out of the Menstrualityal leadership program. So you can find out all about the course at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. Okay. Let's get back to the conversation with Lou. Thank you for sharing your story so generously Lou. So you have moved from very painful, heavy periods, PCOS diagnosis, to following your body wisdom and your cycle, what your body and your cycle were telling you and stepping into a different

way of living in your life, making lots of different changes, doing yoga teacher training, doing the Mentality Leadership Programme. So just to reflect what I see in you, you know, you speak about living a rest-centred life and how your cycle has guided you to live a rest-centred life. And that's what I'd love to devote this second half of the conversation to. What does that mean, a rest-centred life, and how can we all live it? life and how can we all live it? I love this question. So I found that my way in was to really get curious about maybe it was rooted in decadence days. It was like, what if I really, really prioritized me? At the time, I was single, I only had myself to worry about. It was a really cool time to experiment. What would that look like if I just channeled all of my attention into what do I need today, what is

going on in my system, I'm charting my cycle, I'm doing my yoga practice. What does that look like then? And how does that change across my cycle? I just got really curious and I used the cycle as my framework and I used different things that came up across my path like a massage here, or I really want to have a cacao here, or I'm gonna have a magnesium bath here, or I'm going to read here, or I really want to have a cacao here, or I'm going to have a magnesium bath here, or I'm going to read here,

or I'm going to call a friend and do a listening partnership here in my cycle. And, and it was just all of a sudden, I started getting a spider's web of this is what I need and when. And that for me was the most profound piece of my cycle awareness tracking and taking it and putting it into action was asking myself what do I need today? What do I need in this moment? What can I get access to? Maybe I can't go to the sauna in the sea right now and go and do a cold dip but maybe I can have a warm shower and then turn it cold. Yeah. I got really curious about all of that and prioritized, I guess, that more in my

life than anything else, and I had the space and capacity to do it. I just want to pause you for a sec because you've named so much there. And I'd like to tease it apart a little bit because the first thing that I heard you name was, well, through your cycle awareness practice, you found this question, which I think probably if there was one question that defines cycle awareness and how much impact it can have on our lives, it's what do I need today? What do I need on this cycle day? What do I need on this cycle day? It's like, it unlocks so much and it's where all of the physical healing, emotional healing, nervous system regulation, connection to our calling, spiritual connection, it's where it can all

stem from really, like what do I need? And in a world that is not that interested in helping women, especially meet their needs and even more so women and people who have identities that are marginalized. Like, culture's not so interested in helping us meet our needs all the time. So that question I wanted to illuminate. And then you put, you teased out that you realised you needed different things in the different phases of the cycle. And it's something that you teach that I think is really unique. There are many ways to take care of ourselves. There are many ways to rest. And it's not just when we have our period that we need to rest. There are ways to do it all the way through the cycle. I wonder if you could walk us into this teaching.

I think it's from a woman called Nicola that I've learned from you about the 10 types of rest. Yeah, so I think for me, self-care felt very down regulatory. So when we talk about down regulation, we talk about parasympathetic switching on, calming down, doing less. And actually, what I've learned is that we need both sides, we need a healthy, healthy balance of the both, right? Like the positive and the negative, which is what again, the cycle teaches us. And when you say the both, so you're talking about nervous system. Can you just say more about that?

both. So you're talking about nervous system. Can you just say more about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I could physically rest in two very different ways. I could physically rest by going for a long run or even a short run. Or I could butt butt through movement is my point. Or I can do a yoga nidra and lay down and be still. But both of that is physical rest. nidra and lay down and be still. But both of that is physical rest. My spiritual practice could look very involved, lots of movement, but it can also look very still and very internalized. Or it could be chanting and kirtan and you know dancing and embodied dance and you know like I can express that particular type of rest in many different ways. And actually, that's the thing that changes the most across my cycle. So I really enjoyed and well watched TED Talk on seven different types of rest. And I could sort of watch that and then went down a bit of a rabbit hole

about like types of rest and, and doing some research into what rest was. I just love a sacred nerd. Give me give me give me loads of information. And then I found the rest is resistance book by Trisha Herthy. Thank you. And that for me was like poetry and medicine. And I also listened to it. Like I really recommended her voice. And she has a track on Spotify that you can also have called Rest is Resistance as well. Really great if you're holding space or wanting to anyway, I just I love her body of work. And the energy that sits behind it as well is really powerful and to understand it. So I was doing all of this nerdy research stuff and then I found Nicola Jane Hobbs on Instagram and she had 10 different types of rest and the thing that was really missing for me up until that point was this idea and because I'd become a mother, she included play. And play for me

is such an integral part of how I find peace. And I guess for me, I had to redefine what rest is to me. And I think everybody might, and you might have a different opinion. I'd love to hear yours, Soph, but like rest for me is how I nourish myself. When I'm bleeding, I'm probably not that playful, like I don't want to do flying angels and have bed battles with my son. So you can start to see how these different kind of categories across our model work in different times and different places in your life. Would you be able to walk us through these 10 different types of rest? Would you be able to share an example of what that type of rest could look like for each one? Of course. So I'm going to give my examples. Sophie, if there's anything that comes through really strongly, maybe you want to give some as well.

Like if there's something that you want to call out and just be like, oh, this is what that would be for me. That could be really enriching for people to hear. Honestly, I feel like a beginner with rest. I feel like I knew what I was doing with rest and then I had this identity shift and I'm so fricking grateful for it because I wanted it for so long to become a mother. And I don't I still don't know how to rest. And I'm four years in. So I would really appreciate the opportunity to reflect with you. Yeah, let's do that then. That's brilliant. Okay. So I'm going to start with physical just because

first of all, how I track my menstrual cycle probably is with this analogy, PIs. So physical, in this, with this analogy, PIs. So physical, P, I, intellectual, E, emotions, energy, and S, spiritual. Now, one of the reasons why this model from Nicola Jane Hobbs works for me is because it includes all four of those things. So I'm gonna start with PIs, and then we'll move on from there.

So physical, again, depending on where I am in my cycle, I feel like I've already kind of touched on that. Have you got anything that jumps out with you? Like, what feels like physical rest to you? Well, I hadn't thought of going to the gym as physical rest. But if we're talking about what nourishes me, I come out feeling on top of the world, like I'm strong, I'm resilient, I can handle my life. So I had but I haven't thought that's helpful. And I think sometimes as well, like, you know, especially in the pre menstrual week, going and lifting some heavy weights,

going and doing a boxing class, going and using that energy that's inside you in a really physical way can be really cathartic, like you're saying, and can feel like, oh, I'm actually using this in a really purposeful way. Also something really about like really good dig in the garden. Oh, and really like to do it with really loud music, I'm literally thinking I was furious on maybe probably day 23, it's usually day 23 last month. And I said, I'm going to the gym. It was the weekend I just drove.

But I put a million dreams by Pink, which is my current favorite belter song from the greatest showman. Literally full blast in the car and I screamed, I roared it all the way to the gym. And it was so cathartic, it was so helpful. And then I did a big physical workout and I felt totally different after. Yeah.

So that to me then goes to kind of this, like almost like an emotional release, right? Like the using our voices usually is the way that we obviously can do different other things with emotion. Well, I'll come to that in a moment, but thank you for that example. So that's physical. So you've got the up and you've got the down. So it might be the bubble bath, the yoga, nature, the meditation, that that might feel like physical rest to you having a massage, going for Reiki reflexology, acupuncture, all of those kinds of things

would probably be included. Now, some of this stuff crosses over guys so I'm not like saying that this is complete silos you'll get other things from these bits. So we've got the physical so then if we go to in the model it's mental so intellectual mental so what's going up step going on upstairs in your noodle so mental rest might look like delegation So mental rest might look like delegation. It might look like switching off from social media. It might be getting into a, for me, what mental rest is, is when I get into a flow state. So that can look very different. So it might be dance, it might be cooking,

it might be cleaning can often get me into a flow state where I just put some music on in the house, put the marigolds on and off I go. But I'm not really thinking about anything. Mental rest is letting your mind rest. Turning it off. Like not giving it something to work with. Yes. But letting it switch off. Okay. Yeah. Sometimes a

podcast helps me with that because say like, I love listening to We Can Do Hard Things, Glenn and Doyle and I have one back and Amanda Doyle. And often I feel so like, like I'm with sisters that it relaxes. So that is mentally relaxed me even though it's content, you know, even though that's, you know, okay. My thing is also the one of the biggest mental rest things. And I often do this before bed as well. If you have a whirling mind is listen to stories. Like I will listen to anything Austinian before bed. What?

Austinian? Austinian, Jane Austen. Okay. So like, you know, Pride and Prejudice, Sense of Sensibility, it's the one I was just listening to Pers persuasion, just those audio books and just having them on quietly in the background. It's just white noise almost. And that just allows my mind to just feel safe as well.

Because I think there's like a mental safety that sometimes we need to ensue if we're feeling really stressed or if there's a lot going on or we're going through some kind of a transition. And I don't, I don't, I don't think that there's a problem for me in allowing myself that comfort. Sometimes that comfort that like, it's like a comfort blanket almost. Oh, I had a prejudice of someone in the background. She's obviously having a moment. I had a prejudice on in the background. She's obviously having a moment. Yeah, my sister-in-law listens to the secret garden always. She goes to sleep. She hears the story of the secret garden and then her brain goes to sleep. It's like she's created a connection. I do a specific kind of drawing. Like I draw an eight-leaved flower and there's something about

leaved flower. And there's something about the eight that relaxes my mind and I just I just doodle. And it gives me it gives my brain enough to do, but it can also relax. This is really helpful. Okay, so we have physical, mental, then you've got emotional. So emotion and energy, as we know, can be kind of interchangeable because all the emotion is this energy in motion. So for me the two kind of go together. So if I'm feeling really like hyped, if I've got like a lot of cortisol in my system, trying to get me to go from up there to down here, I need a transition. Yes me too. So I imagine like a dimmer switch as opposed to being a light switch when I come to my energy and emotions.

I'm like, ah, cause again, this is what cycle awareness taught me was this from the South Pole of your bleed to the North Pole of your ovulation, we change constantly in between. We're not on and off. We are this moving target almost. And that is the same for your energy and your emotions.

So for me, that emotional might be turning off social media, it might be putting my phone away, it might be calling a friend and talking it out. Basically what you're looking at is what is triggering me emotionally and what can I do to either remove myself or soothe myself. It's really interesting. I think my go-to's with that would be sending a WhatsApp voice note to a friend to say, this is what's happening and I need a soundboard or journaling. Yeah, journaling is a great one. So it's interesting because emotional and psychological rest can be quite close together. So for me, psychological rest is that deep and meaningful. What do I need to unburden myself from? Whereas emotional rest is looking at,

do I need to take my jumper off? Do I need to go and change my clothes? Do I need to take my bra off? That is one of the biggest emotional releases for me. It's like all day my body's being held and I've got big boobs. So it's like, oh, can I just let it all go? And it's quite significant. When I used to live with mum and dad in my thirties, my dad would laugh because he'd be in the kitchen. Mum would go upstairs. I lived downstairs and both of us would take our bras off. Like a mother, like daughter. But it's like this holding in your body and then you can just relax. So yeah, it's those small things that you notice that you might not even see like,

oh, I come home and I put my sweats on or I take my bra off. You might not see that as an act of rest, but actually if you're living a rest-centered life, it's acknowledging those moments and those things that you are doing for yourself because sometimes they become invisible. And then we think, oh, I don't have anything going on

that's helping me. And actually, you're probably doing a huge amount that you don't even realize. It's also then the energy that you're bringing to something. So I can be pissed off stacking the dishes at the end of the day, or I can be like, I've just got to cook my family a beautiful dinner. And yes, I'm responsible because I'm holding all of it and I'm really grateful that I've got enough to put food on the table and so it's also for me there's sometimes gratitude comes into that emotional piece as well. Gratitude is like such a direct line into rest for me. If I can find a grateful thought, I can shift things very,

very quickly. Yeah, and that's that transition piece, right? If I'm up, and I need and I know I need to go to sleep, for instance, or I need to move from being at work to being at home, or you know, there's a transition between those two things. Identifying those things that help me transition are really, really, has been really powerful. And they are, that's probably the most significant difference that I see across clients, if I'm really honest, is what helps people go from up to down or down to up.

Because it might be that you wake up in the morning and you need support to get yourself up and going and doing something as well. So you can be down- regulated, needing to be up. It's interesting to explore those things is my point for yourself to see what works for you. Yeah. Okay, so we've got to eat.

So S, pies, the last one is spiritual. So again, depending on where I am in my cycle, it might be that I sleep with anointing myself with my blood on my third eye. That would be a spiritual practice that I take into my bleed every single month. It might be that I and the other thing that I do for from a spiritual perspective when I menstruate is I soak my period pants in a bucket of

water. And then on day four or five of my cycle, I'll take that bucket of water and I will go and water my plants with it. That's another spiritual practice I have around my bleed. I then have breath work and yoga and I work with plant medicines, which help me in the physical and mental space and emotional space as well. Yeah, it's my connection with source. How am I connecting in every day? My menstrual cycle awareness practice does that for me too.

How about you? If I said. Very similar when I'm bleeding. Um, but thinking of the different phases of the cycle, there's something that's been happening recently. And this was really sparked by my listening partner, Cicil. She started talking about big ovulation, like we have a big bleed, but we can also have a big ovulation. So instead of using all my ovulatory energy to give, I've been keeping some of the pleasure of that for me. So what it might look like is going for a long walk with the dog. And I, I've started to track something going on with my, you know, sense of calling and purpose when I ovulate, like usually some big ideas want to come through. So a spiritual rest practice around ovulation for

me would look like going for a walk and just giving space for these ideas to happen. Love that, like the intention of we're going to take a big ideas walk. Yeah, a big ovulation listening session to myself. Yeah, that's so beautiful. And that's the thing is it and this is this is the wonderful thing about this work is that, you know, we're talking originally about like, how do I do this as a solo mama, but even if you're not, you've got a busy life, there's lots on your plate. How do you balance it all? Well, I'm doing the dog walk anyway. So actually, I'm going to put the intention in that this dog walk is about this thing.

You do the resting on the job and you integrate it into the things that maybe you're already doing in your life is one way. And then also, we talked before about what stops us from resting, you and I just personally. And I think it can be a lot of the time, it's this permission and also not necessarily knowing what to do. And I think that for me is when where something like play comes through so powerfully. And play I think could also mean I interchange play and pleasure, especially ovulation.

I mean, one of the things I did, I looked at how my orgasms change across my cycle. That's fascinating. If you haven't done that piece of work, go do that. That's fascinating. If you haven't done that piece of work, go do that. That's amazing. No, I love the homework that you give. Yes, so play is a really integral one. Altruistic rest, so altruistic being, being of service. So that could be anything from volunteering for a day at your kid's school to doing a volunteer day through your work program through, do you know what I'm really in my mother phase of my life right

now and I'm of service, taking care of your parents if you've got elder parents, like what is it that you're doing where you're in service to people and actually there's often such nourishment that comes back to us when we do do that kind of altruistic resting. You know what very kind thing I did? So I gave my friend an opportunity to practice altruistic rest by saying please come to this MRI with me because I can't do it by myself. So my wonderful friend got to rest and knowing that she was doing a good thing by taking me to the MRI. Oh, Sophie, do you know what? I think this is really speaking to something powerful that I hear

in the communities of women that I'm in with, which is that we all feel quite siloed, and yet we all are very aware that everybody else has lots of things on their plate too, and so then we don't actually reach out and ask. So I just want to celebrate the fact that you did that. It was so hard to ask because she I know, I know she's got a really full life. She's working kids, lots going on. And I thought, no, I need it. And and she knows I would do it back. I just think it's such a powerful thing, because when we let the people in our life who love us help us, there is something that is so deeply reciprocated.

Yes. And I love that. Thank you for naming it. So we have sensory rest, which is a really big one for a lot of women with the cycle. And I think I have particularly, you know, from taking off your bra to lighting in the sense to using essential oils to the clothes and the textures that you wear to the food that you're eating. Like if you think about the five senses, like going through and being aware of the light maybe that's in the room, actually turn the overhead light off and turn the lamps on or, you know, what and how that might change across your cycle. Do you have anything that jumps out for you from a sensory perspective, Soph? Well, I'm sniffing something right now to keep calm as I manage the timekeeping of this wonderfully wild conversation, which is, it is a kind of rest. So it's a beautiful, Alizan Trashani gave it to me actually. It was made kind of a scent that was made for me specifically by a woman in our community, Abby Clough.

Oh yeah. So this is since the rest for me. I think a lot of women talk about intuitive eating in our worlds and like what does what do you need for your cycle at any given time? Turning your phone off. Turning your phone off. Yeah your phone off, yeah. So you stop getting that input of information. Yeah.

Also your environment. Do I need to tidy up? So I think one of the biggest things that I recommend to women, especially around sound, is where you've got loops. I know that's a specific brand and there are other things out there, but if you haven't heard you can turn, you put like little earplugs in and it just downplays the sound. So sometimes women that I've worked with have needed that by the end of the day because they're so overstimulated, especially if you've got something like ADHD or autism. If you have a diagnosis, those kinds of

things, you can get particularly overstimulated. Those really easy things to do where you're still doing life, but maybe you've just popped your loops in and then you give yourself a little bit of kindness by doing that. Then we've got psychological rest, which I mentioned already, which for me is like, how do I offload my brain? So that might be therapy. It might be deep and meaningful conversation. It might be a listening partnership. Then we have creative rest. Creative rest can be very different than what you think it

is. And I think that I see a lot of creative rest in my mothering, in how I will maneuver myself around a situation. I can see a resistance is coming or I can see an upset is coming. And then all of a sudden I create a different way of viewing it. Like I really wish I could, you've probably got a one on the tip of your tongue. Um, Artie's probably that much younger than, than my little one, but I have one. Okay, great. So I had a conversation with Elena Brower for the podcast and she's a bit of a parenting

expert. And I said, what's one piece of parenting advice you'd bring? You'd give me and she said, always offer two choices. And there's some of my most creatively restful moments as a parent of going, Oh, hang on. If I say would you like an apple or a banana right now? I know he's gonna eat something healthy, but I'm giving him the choice agency. So that's, yes, that's one of the ways that I get my creative rest. I think the other thing that I do as well with creativity, creativity and play come in really close for me as well. So it's like, can I go from all this could turn into an

argument to can I make it funny? Yes, I think that also like that for me really works as well with the personality of my kid because I appreciate that everybody's different but I think yeah I think but I so that's just about motherhood but I mean like creativity across your life it might be cooking is creative expression for you gardening is a creative expression and for you just doing something for the sake of doing it. And I often find that creativity gets blocked because we think, why am I doing this? What's the purpose for it? And creativity is for the sake of creativity. It's okay just to draw a picture.

And if anyone's hearing this and thinking, I so agree, Lou, but you need some more inspiration. The whole of Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic podcast series is literally about creativity for creativity sake is wonderful and life affirming and we should all do it. Yes. Okay. And number 10? And number 10 is Ecological Rest, which for me is about the environment that we're in. So I think considering our environment is a really interesting one and how we can either change it, alter it, change our perception to it. Sometimes we can't change the environment we're in. We have to change ourselves. I quit a job, you know, like, like, okay, cool, that that is what it is. Like, that's the situation that it is. Relationships, that goes for relationships as well, I think could be a really interesting one of like, how can I make this more peaceful

for myself? I think of ecological rest too as remembering ourselves as animals, as part of the natural world. We're not something special. I mean, humans are pretty special, but we are also just life, like everything else on earth. Looking at the sky, back against a tree, listening to the river, and like, oh yeah, this is who I am. Bare feet in the grass. Yeah, it's a remembering, beautiful. Oh, thank you so much. It's so enriching to feel all of the different possibilities of rest and also cycle it background, circle it background, that your body, your wonderful wise body has taken you on this journey and then you're listening to it from, like you said at the beginning, from feeling that your womb hated you. Through the practice of cycle awareness and your devotedness to that practice has

opened up this possibility for you to meet your needs through this rest-centred life. And now you're sharing it with others and inviting others into it. And there's so much magic that you've shared. I feel really inspired. How can listeners connect with you and your work? Yeah, thank you for the invitation. I have a couple of freebie guides that people can log into on my Instagram link. So I'm just Lou Perram on Instagram. And I have a women's circle in Winchester every month, closest to the full moon. And I offer bodywork and shamanic journeys

and MMCs and stuff from my home in between sort of down south where I am. So that's kind of the work that I'm doing at the moment is a mixture of in-person things because I also work full-time. So it's an interesting one to channel when you're completely lit up and devoted and also need to pay the bills. So yeah, we do both over here. Amazing. Thank you, Lou. I'm feeling really inspired. I'm really grateful. Yeah, just

to see all the different possibilities. And also, like you said, like I am resting so much in my life more than I realised. So we can, we don't have to make it another thing on the to-do list. I must rest better. Exactly. Another thing we can beat ourselves up about, right? Another thing our inner critic can come in and tell us that we're doing shit. You're not. We just need to realise what we're already doing for ourselves and celebrate that and acknowledge that and feel grateful for that. Thank you so much, love.

Thank you for the invitation and thank you for the honor of being here. Lots of love, bye. Lots of love, bye. Thank you for tuning in today. Thank you for being with us. I really hope this conversation has inspired you to find your ways of getting more rest. To remind you again we're going to be changing up the rhythm of the podcast from now on.

From next week it's going to be bi-weekly. Red School's got some new cool things happening and I'm going to be focusing more on my writing and my cyclical ethical business coaching. Thank you so much for tuning in for these past three years if you have been, whether you listen every week or you tune in occasionally, I've absolutely loved being in this conversation with you. And as always let me know at sophie at red school dotnet if there's anyone you'd love us to interview or a topic you'd love us to cover. And remember on the weeks that we aren't going to be releasing a new episode there's now an

archive of over 200 conversations that you can go back and listen to. Alright then that's it for this week I'll be with you again in two weeks now so on July the 10th and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.