The Menstruality Podcast - 222. Menstrual Cycle Awareness and Trauma Healing (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

When you practice menstrual cycle awareness, you start to feel more connected to yourself. This process of remembering and embodying more of who you truly are means that you may come into contact with parts of yourself that have been disowned, or that you’ve been shamed out of claiming.Our conversation today is especially designed to support you if you’ve been encountering or unearthing memories or experiences related to trauma as you track your emotional, physical and spiritual ebb and flow throughout the cycle month. Whether you’ve experienced acute trauma, developmental trauma, ancestral trauma or collective trauma caused by sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism and other forms of othering, discrimination or prejudice, Alexandra and Sjanie explore how cycle awareness can create a grounding of presence and self care to support trauma healing, through the lens of Sjanie’s trauma healing journey, as well as stories from the Red School community, We explore:How the dismissal, suppression and denial of the menstrual cycle, and our cyclical nature is a form of subtle gaslighting that in itself is a form of trauma. Why certain phases of the cycle, such as the premenstrual phase, as well as perimenopause and menopause, open you to your shadow side and your trauma.Some practical steps to get started with working with your cycle to support trauma healing. ---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, Alexander and Sharney, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers, and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world.

Hey, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being with us today. If you've been practicing menstrual cycle awareness for a while, you'll probably know that as you practice, you start to feel more connected to yourself. This process of remembering and embodying more of who you truly are means that you naturally come into contact with parts of yourself that might have been disowned or exiled or that you've been shamed out of claiming in your life. And our conversation today is especially designed to support you if in your menstrual cycle awareness practice you've been encountering or unearthing memories or experiences related to trauma in this journey of tracking your emotional, physical, spiritual ebb and flow throughout the cycle month. And whether you've

experienced acute trauma, developmental trauma, ancestral trauma, or perhaps collective trauma caused by sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, or other forms of othering and discrimination prejudice, Alexandra and Sharnie are exploring today how cycle awareness can create a grounding of presence, self-care, resourcing to support trauma healing. And they explore it through the lens of Sharnie's recent trauma healing journey, as well as some beautiful stories from the Red School community. Hey, Alexandra, hey Sharnie. Let's do our cycle check-in.

Where am I? I am day 19 in autumn for me. What I was noticing this morning was how I was caring more about not what I was doing, but how it was making me feel. I feel very much more drawn to form over function. I'm really into quite. quality today, not quantity. So the way my morning unfolded was really following that sense of what will I do to make myself feel nourished, to feel good, to feel, you know, to feel warmth in my

body, to feel ease in my body. I've had a very nurturing morning and because of that I was able to notice actually how much my energy levels have dropped compared to say a week ago where certain things I was doing, I was hardly breaking a sweat, yeah, realizing, oh, I'm not built for that kind of efforting today at all. Yeah, I can feel the invitation into my inner life. And it feels like a very warm welcome. I kind of want to just be swallowed up by menstruation. I can't wait.

I feel like I'm on the river now, you know, heading home. And I'm like, take me. You can't come sooner now. I need the break. I need the pause. And sometimes you do bleed on like day 23 or 24, don't you? Yeah, my cycle is about 25 days. So yeah, it's not long now, not long now, counting down the days. And it's so nice to hear you speak this way because for a few months back there,

you were, you know, thinking of our topic that we're talking about today, you were really immersed in quite a lot of trauma inner work. And most of your cycle check-ins had that flavor. Yeah, hugely so. I mean, the thing I appreciate about cycle awareness and certainly in this life phase, you know, in the autumn of my menstruating years, is I can actually feel how the trauma that surfaces and the process that I've been through with that has been cyclical and it comes in waves. Like I'm by no means out of the woods. Yeah. I'm on a shore of respite right now in this moment on this day. But this year particularly has just had many, many waves of that, you know, trauma surfacing and having to and grow my capacity to meet that level of intensity.

I'm feeling pretty smug today. Like, you know, I've survived that. I love that for you. I love the respite for you. yeah it's interesting i'm on so i'm on day 18 so only one day behind you but having a very different cycle experience so it's just such good evidence that you know we all just have to follow our own direct experience because i'm still very much in the inner summer not quite sure on ovulated i don't ever have ovulated i don't know what's going on so i'm just up here in the

inner summer feeling very outward focused not particularly connected to or interested in my inner life, which is really, really nice because as I've talked about so many times on the podcast, my inner spring is tough. And I was so anxious for a week. And we're going to talk a bit about this, but, or maybe we're not actually today because there's so much to talk about when it comes to trauma. But yeah, kind of developmental trauma from my younger life showing itself in my inner spring. So there's a lot to tend to. It's, you know, I'm a parent with a full-time job. and then I feel like I have another full-time job in inner spring, just managing myself. So, yeah, it's very nice to be up here in the summer.

How about you, Alexandra? So it's day 29. It's dark moon. I think new moon is tomorrow. So it's really dark, dark moon. It's a place of real stillness and silence and innerness and slow. I have no defences or anything or everything has fallen away. It's quite exposed, but I'm not exposed because I'm in this innerness.

It's kind of like ground zero, and it's quite raw. It requires a lot of presence to be with that and be in the world doing things and having a kind of normal mind on the job. Yeah, when there's something quite wordless and empty. And it's just the earth. It's just silent. Wow. It's amazing.

Hearing you, it's very soothing to hear you speak of that place. And I just, what it's making me think of is that that's the work of the elder. Yeah, maybe. Well, from me and my inner summer, zingy place, it just feels like, oh, slowing me down, and bringing me into touch with the reality, with the depth of things. Thank you. We're having this conversation about mental cycle awareness and trauma today, and it's a long time coming. It's a really big conversation.

It's, as you were saying, Shania earlier, it's probably the beginning of a ongoing conversation that we'll have on the podcast. And to walk us into why we're having a conversation about this, I'm going to share a story from one of the graduates of our menstruality leadership program, Shillies, about her experience. She says, mental cycle awareness has been bringing up past trauma I didn't even realize I was carrying. At first, I was annoyed, like, why now? Why all of this surfacing after all this time? Some of these memories I haven't thought about in years, but deep down, I trust there's a reason. My body and mind have been holding on to these things, waiting for the right moment to let me face them. Waiting for the right moment to let me face them. and I find it so interesting they come up as I'm finally working to heal my cycle and my relationship

with myself. I don't think it's a coincidence. What's blown me away the most is realizing that so much of the healing I've been searching for has been within me all along. Yeah, and that's why we're having this conversation because when we practice cycle awareness, it's, you know, we've said this many times, it connects us to ourselves in the deepest way. And that process of reconnection and remembering and really embodying who we are means that we come into contacts with all the parts of ourselves that we have been disconnected from or we've disowned or, yeah, lost respect for even or been shamed out of claiming. So, yeah, it's really important that we talk about this because if you are practicing

cycle awareness, you will be noticing things you haven't noticed before about yourself and you'll be coming into contact with yourself in a way that you might not have before. So we wanted to give that context and really help you to work with that in a way that is going to be healing. Yeah. And we're talking about the menstruality leadership program a lot at the moment because it's starting in February. So the doors are open and the group is forming? And is it fair to say, and this was my experience of the mentality leadership program, Is it fair to say that one experience that surprises people

is that there's the level of healing that happens on that program and including healing of trauma? Oh, absolutely. It's actually probably one of the strongest things. It's almost the starting place, actually. People discover how much they are in a sense disconnected from themselves. And as they start to connect in, so things are revealed. And that really needs to happen, that some level of healing and repair needs to happen to be able to start to relish the fullness of what's possible with the menstrual cycle, with really understanding the full power of it.

So yes, when you open the door to it and step in, this is the first level. of the world, the healing and well-being layer. And it's establishing as you, because you're deepening your connection to yourself through menstrual cycle awareness. And as you start to form this connection, this deeper, sturdier connection, you're opening the ground for more of you to come through, for you to, in a sense, metabolize, if you like, make sense of. And then this starts to create the container of safety to be able to really inhabit

what your genius is, what your leadership is, you know. It's a leadership program and it's sourced and resourced from this foundational layer of healing. I want to say what's really funny, but some people might not find it that funny, is they come to the menstruality leadership program because they, They want to learn about this work because they have daughters or because they want to integrate it into their career as a herbalist or because they, you know, feel really turned on by this work and want this to be their career. And what they discover is that the way into this leadership and calling is through themselves. But having said that, this is what's really beautiful about cycle awareness is nothing.

that arises, arises until you're ready. I mean, just as Shalise said there, you know, it's so custom for you. There's no one forcing anything or making you go anywhere you don't want to go or address anything you don't want to address. Things arise when you feel safe enough and ready enough and able enough to meet them and digest them and integrate them. So it's a very, I want to say, gentle part. of healing, very gentle, very iterative, very step-by-step, and actually very soothed.

I mean, you'll know this, Sophie, with everything to do with cycle awareness, it's all about pacing your nervous system, and that is the foundation. So people find that this way of healing is actually quite beautiful. Yeah. As you're speaking, I'm thinking about Sophie. But the thing is, it's what you're doing is through cycle awareness, you're building a level of presence in your being to be able to hold the disturbances that show themselves.

So yes, there will be kind of holes in your cycle that you fall through into the shadow side and we'll all have our Achilles heel moments and yours of course is the inner spring particularly but you have a kind of wherewithal and a kindness is how I understand it within your system within your being now that is brings a level of presence to yourself that would have not existed before well yeah and also I just think I was crazy because I know about the cyclical pattern because I've been tracking it for a long time I know I'm going to I'm likely to feel this way and I know how to hold myself when I do yes I mean I was just saying yeah because it is so beautiful ultimately big picture beautiful it's just in the moment it can be fairly

uncomfortable but yes ultimately it's very beautiful but I think you've started to like name some of the ways that menstrual cycle awareness can be so beneficial for trauma healing and I feel like it's good to, before we go further with that, to like walk us into what trauma is. There's a lot of talk about trauma in the world. You two both have long therapist backgrounds, you know, that you've been working with people and their trauma before Red School and, you know, all the way through Red School. And so it would be helpful for us to hear, I think, me and the listeners, to hear, yeah, how you understand trauma.

can you walk us into that? Yeah, I've been reflecting on this very deeply over the last few days just in preparation for this conversation. And one of the things that struck me is that trauma is an intrinsic part of the human experience. To a greater or less a degree, we all experience trauma. this puncturing of the fundamental safety within us that leaves us feeling powerless, overwhelmed or just beyond our capacity. For those of you who know me, you'll know I'm rather obsessed with the menstrual cycle.

And I understand many things through the lens of cyclical understanding. And the same is true with trauma. I really understand it as part of the cyclical process, which at its heart, the cyclical process is this process of building up and breaking down. And in the same way that birth and death are part of the life cycle and wellness and disease, are part of the well-being cycle, safety and trauma are part of the cycle of the cycle of our development, our maturation, our evolution as human beings. And it struck me that our experience of trauma shapes and colors and affects our physical

experience, you know, I experience of our health, but it's also so fundamental to our creative experience and then of course also to the spiritual path that we walk and that unfolds in our lives. Maybe it's worth just mentioning that, you know, I've said it's an intrinsic part of our human experience, but there are different kinds of trauma and we do all experience it to, you know, as I said, a great or a lesser degree. But there's the sort of acute shock trauma, which could be a one-off event or experience, or it could be something we, you know,

experience again and again over time. There is also developmental trauma where, you know, our normal, healthy development was unable to happen in some way or was interrupted or unsupported or un-reliable. because we didn't have sufficient holding. We didn't have the presence that we needed when that disruption occurred. Or there was some kind of breach of attachment.

We didn't have the level of connection we needed at a certain point in our development. And then, of course, there is ancestral trauma, what we've been handed down through possibly many. generations through our family line and then of course the collective trauma which um you know things like discrimination prejudice what we are all affected by because of the systems we live in the culture we live in and so on yeah and that's uh thomas huble's work he talks about this generational trauma and collective trauma, which, yeah, is in many ways the water we're all swimming in that we really find hard to see.

Thank you, shiny. And I'm aware as you're talking that us three here will have our experiences of trauma and that because of the identities we hold, it's likely to be different. So we're white women, we're cisgendered, we're heterosexual, we're able-bodied, We have certain levels of education and privilege and, yeah, there's different levels of trauma as you're calling out there with the collective trauma, you know, for people who have identities that are marginalized in this culture that is patriarchal and heteronormative and just very white-centered or white supremacists, you could say, yeah, queer folks, folks of color, different levels of trauma happening, people with disabilities, yeah. yeah very very much so another level of trauma that is i want to say subtle but enormously impactful that we carry for those of us with menstrual cycles which is what we call menstrual trauma in the denial of the menstrual cycle and um it's like uh we've got this message that it's you know

it's irrelevant it has no meaning beyond the fact of creating life and you know you can just ignore it that it has no relevance otherwise um and so our cyclical experiences have been i want to say sort of we've been gaslighted around yeah yeah it's a subtle forming of gaslighting yeah because our experience has been you know constantly denied constantly we've had to override this and it kind of causes a, yeah, a numbing or a wearing it out. Exactly. I want to say kind of inner concreting going on. Yeah, just when there's something that's going on that's so part of our lives,

you know, it's like brushing our teeth or washing our hair, you know, bleed. We have to use tampons or moon cups or whatever or pads, but it's not, no one's talking about it. It's so weird. I just get so baffled by it. Yeah, it's so shrouded in shame and it's been so disbanded. dismissed and hidden away. And it's just a very normal, healthy part of life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very vivid example of collective trauma. Yeah. Yes. I'm sitting with this piece, Shani, about, you know, this rhythm of safety and trauma.

And, I mean, we're using the word trauma to refer to such a broad range of experience, really, really extreme experiences that people are having to live through, which are, I want, want to say horrific, awful. Yeah. And then there's that level of disturbance that's, I want to say more manageable. There's a kind of spectrum of experience. And the crucialness here, actually, is that there needs to be enough safety initially to be able to manage disturbance or trauma and a degree of stability within our systems.

to then handle trouble. And I'm thinking of people who are, you know, at a young age, violated, where that level of sort of intrinsic safety doesn't really develop. And they are sort of overloaded then with the trauma. They are in very extreme states. And that requires, I mean, the whole field of trauma that's grown today, all the different modalities of trauma healing. This is really saving the day, I want to say,

all these different modalities coming in. But we also need to look at building this innate sense of goodness within ourselves, this innate greater safety. And this is where the menstrual cycle awareness work comes in because it's working at this more organic level. Yeah. Alexandra, when you describe that, it sort of also speaks to, you know, the other cycle I was talking about of health and disease. You know, our bodies are designed.

I mean, disease is a part of life. And actually, when we get ill, if our immune systems are strong enough and we can fight the illness, it actually grows our vitality overall. It builds our immunity. But if we don't have that fundamental sense or fundamental wellness in our bodies, when disease comes, it can in a way over topple us, overwhelm us, take us out. So that's a very, I think, helpful analogy when we think about trauma and the importance of tending to our, you know, immune system here, tending to our sense of connection to ourselves and safety and resourcing, really, really important.

well let's as you start at the beginning and have been doing all the way through but let's keep teasing out how menstrual cycle awareness supports trauma healing then so you've spoken about safety so the practice the daily practice of checking in with ourselves what day are we on how are we feeling emotionally physically spiritually it's doing this subtle potent work of establishing more safety in us? Yes. It's a practice of connection. Yeah.

Because trauma separates you. You're lost to any kind of holding or presence of the other. And what you're doing with menstrual cycle awareness is slowly beginning to weave a connection to yourself. Now, the other thing is, of course, that trauma impacts our bodies. And often to survive trauma, we come out of our bodies. We disconnect. We disconnect from our feelings.

And mental cycle awareness is the act of re-familiarizing yourself with your own being, with yourself, but as a pace that you can manage. I'm thinking of a story of someone in our community who has suffered very extreme trauma in her life. And before she came to menstrual cycle awareness, she had done about seven years, I think, maybe of trauma work, and then discovered menstrual cycle awareness.

And at first, it was like there was nothing there was you know she just did she went as i understand it she just went through the motions almost it seems and because her life felt like hell and so cycle what she was noticing in the cycle was just hell she described it as hell um but she had it's interesting she had some sort of knowing to persevere to keep going just with this simple act of checking in with herself very light touch, I imagine, but she stayed with it. And this is the line when she wrote to me about it. This was the line I love.

She said, I discovered, she said, I know this is going to sound bleak, but I discovered there were nuances in the hell. And this was progress for her. It was extraordinary. And then, and she used the term defrosting. You know, she was just pacing herself. And she actually came and did our menstruality leadership program. And she did it very, very, very, very slowly.

She could not attend anything live at all. And she just moved at her pace. And then gradually it started to shift for her. And then she writes about this magical moment where she actually experienced renewal at menstruation, whereas before it was just hell. It is such a beautiful story because it really illustrates how the daily, you know, the daily practice of cycle awareness and people

I think often overlook this, then when you do this check in with yourself, you are developing your inter reception, you know, your capacity for your own sensory experience, which is something that you lose when you experience severe trauma. So you're repairing this connection to your body and you're increasing your awareness of your body. body, which is the bedrock for healing. So that's, you know, what happened there for Sally is she reestablished her relationship with her body and did that gradually bit by bit and was able to increase her, you know, sensate awareness. It actually, I want to say, grew her body's metric of safety. It was like she had a new metric for safety, which is what allowed her to then

have that experience at menstruation. She says MCA started as one of my jigsaw pieces and has become the scaffolding of my month, which then allows me to play with my other jigsaw pieces. It's given me structure and routine in what felt like chaos. It's helped me make sense of things and giving me a deep dive into my own story that I'd been cut off from.

It's enabled me to listen deeply to myself and take myself seriously. It's shown me my purpose, giving me a vantage point to see the bigger picture and it's given me the foundations of a spiritual practice which I love expanding on. Thanks, Sally.

Okay, I'm going to pause this conversation just for a few moments to share an invitation like I often do in the middle of the podcast and this time it's for the menstruality leadership program. We've spoken quite a bit about this in the episode today It's the world's first leadership training grounded in the wisdom of the menstrual cycle. There are hundreds of graduates now across the world when you join your becoming part of a vibrant cycle-aware community.

There's an early bird price that's available until December the 8th. So a few more days to go on that. And you can find out all about it at menstrualityleadership.com. I'm going to share a story from one of the graduates called Soraya about her experience of the program and then we'll get back to the conversation with Alexandra and Sharnie about the menstrual cycle and trauma. Hi there, my name is Soraya and I'm a transformational leader based in Bali. All I can say is that out of all the training programs I've done in the last 20 years, of all the self-help programs, of all the energy work.

I would say that the menstruality leadership program is by far one of the most life-changing and transformative programs I've ever done. Because our menstrual cycle is unique to us, even though the teachings that Shani and Alexandra pass on might be the same, how I interpret it is very different to how another person interprets it. So the reason I absolutely recommend the mensuality leadership program is it is tailored specifically for you and you will get so much out of it. You will grow so much as a person, as a soul, as a being.

And in the words of Alexandra and Shani, menstrual cycle awareness will restore a woman's authority and leadership in the world. and I wholeheartedly concur with that statement. I mean, I really think of menstrual cycle awareness as a form of somatic self-therapy, you know, the way it's the slow-paced, embodied approach to integrating and processing, you know, our life experiences, what we've lived through and also what we're encountering, you know, in our everyday lives as well.

Yes, well, I just want to add here, you know, from Sally's story that how it was building, she was building safety and trust in her body. And then she was getting these insights coming through about, well, about her goodness, you know, what she's made for. But also, as I understand it, you know, insights about her trauma, like, And a bit like Chalise, you know, information started coming through that needed to be metabolized, I suppose, I want to say, you know, undigested, released in some way. So the cycle both, menstrual cycle awareness will help to, will start to help to build this level of safety within yourself. and through connection to yourself

and then it will allow more information to come through that needs to be tended to. I mean, it's a bit like what you described with your developmental disturbance, Sophie, in the spring, you know, your cycle shows it to you and you get to tend to that more and more deeply. And it adds up. Yeah, it really adds up.

The word that's coming up for me is reclaiming. I'm thinking of how my cycle awareness journey started with rage in the premenstruum, which really was a direct response to the violations I'd experienced in my life and that I had somehow kind of uprooted me from my pelvic bowl area, from my womb and ovaries and vagina and vulva and, you know, these parts of my body, like an uprooting and then so slowly so slowly like you said shine it's so paced it's like every day oh okay my my womb and ovaries are doing something my hormonal system is doing something I'm on this day to day how's this feeling it's like a slow walk home a slow reclamation of

this space as my space not someone else's that can be taken it makes me emotional I think that's something that can happen for lots of us with cycle awareness, because most of us have experienced some kind of violation or some kind of touch that we didn't want or, you know, something like that. As women, especially, it's a homecoming. It's a reclaiming. That's a beautiful word, Sophie, yes. Which is the establishing of safety, isn't it?

Okay, so there's the establishing of safety. There's this building of connection with our body. Yeah, the other piece I want to bring in is that there is, and innate healing intelligence in our bodies. Stephen Hoskinson, his approach to trauma healing is called organic intelligence because it's all about really leaning into this innate organic intelligence in our bodies in order to heal.

And this is very much what menstrual cycle awareness is about. It's about us leaning into this, intelligence that is in our menstrual cycle. And the more we become aware of that intelligence and how it's guiding us and more we learn to understand it, the more we can work with it to heal trauma. In some ways, that's really what the practice is about is learning to trust it and work with it in order for healing to happen. because, yeah, when we're doing this check-in every day,

when we're consciously attuning ourselves to our cycle, we are in touch with this enormous power. It's quite extraordinary. A bit like you were saying earlier, Sophie, you said, yeah, if I didn't know about cycle awareness, I would think I was going mad. that has been so true for me over, you know, this last period of time where a trauma has surfaced very strongly and unbidden and, you know, it's felt like it's come out of nowhere

for me. But because I'm working with my cycle, I'm, I have been able to, most of the time, trust the process that I'm in. And, yeah, that's a very different experience to encountering past trauma where you don't feel like it's part of a healing process. It's part of a meaningful process. Yeah, it's a very, very different experience. There's a whole thing there, which actually I want to say is really key to trauma healing, is this thing of bringing presence or holding to the past experience.

And Alexandra, you pointed to that earlier. And Sophie, you agree that's what is different for you, is that you have a presence and an awareness of what's happening. And that is in many ways what allows for the integration of those difficult feelings to happen, you know. and you're in your 40s you're in the autumn of your menstruating years in the thick of it and I'm thinking of those in our community who are also in that place and it feels important to name or let me know if I'm getting it right the autumn of the menstruating years and menopause are a time

especially when old traumas can arise unbidden for processing and perhaps some of what we're seeing much of what we're seeing in the field collectively around menopause is that that we're not clocking. I don't want this to be a kind of trite thing to say, but there is trauma rising around menopause, and maybe we need to look at that more, lean into that more. You are getting it right, Sophie. The close you get to menopause,

the more your buffering is falling away, your defences are falling away. So it really does open you to the shadow side of yourself in a way almost nothing else. can actually. I mean, the pre-menstruent is doing that, but to some extent, but then at menopause, that's greatly intensified. So when you're in the autumn of your menstruate years, especially towards the end of your 40s, it's like the sort of walls that you've had, you know, that have, because you've, you've had a certain level of chi in your body, you know, an energy that

sort of manages to manage everything and sort of keep everything under wraps. But as that chi diminishes, as your capacity, your resilience, just general life resilience is not what it used to be when you're in your 20s and 30s, then you are more exposed to the deeper things that they start to come up, the shadow side trauma. Yes. And I actually feel that so much of the distress. the emotional distress that women and people are going through in menopause is because we don't understand about this greater exposure to our shadow, to trauma.

And equally, we could say a lot of the distress that people experience in the pre-menstruem is for the same reason, because that is the time in the cycle where the veil between the conscious and unconscious things, and we are much more confronted by what we've been able to suppress or repress or ignore. So, yes, this is why this conversation is so important. And, I mean, we should also just say, just to give a bit of a broader context here, we're talking about the pre-menström. We also talk about the autumn of your menstruating years is the time.

when trauma shows up in the cycle, but actually in any transitional moments in the cycle, we're going to be more vulnerable to trauma. So we did a whole podcast episode on the crossover days where we spoke, we pointed to this. We've also done an episode about the menstrual cycle and mental health, where we spoke about the liminal places in the cycle, the places in the cycle where we're more vulnerable and more exposed and have less kind of buffer and so that's also really worth listening to but trauma can show up anywhere in the cycle and we've also mentioned how trauma can show up in relation to our development you know in each inner season of the cycle in fact trauma can show up anywhere

and wherever it shows up it's revealing something very particular to you so I think that's helpful to know as well. I'll put links to those conversations in the show notes at redscore.net forward slash podcast. Yeah. Can you speak to? We're going to speak about like how to get started if you're feeling, if you, if trauma healing is a focus for you.

If trauma is coming up for you like where to get started with menstrual cycle awareness as a practice to support you, we're going to get there. Before we go there, could Sean, you did this great download on what's up to me and I loved listening to it as I was making my scrambled eggs this morning about like the two halves of the cycle and trauma and that it feels like I mean there are like 18,000 things we could talk about today but that if that feels like one of the ones that's really important to like for the context of how the cycle can how mental cycle awareness can help trauma healing but can I just come in here before you. response, because there was something I was sitting with. I just wanted to summarise, really, what we've been saying, which is, firstly, we've been talking about how menstrual cycle awareness is building this safety element. And so it's resourcing us.

Yes, it's resourcing us. But then menstrual cycle awareness is a sort of stress testing process in the sense that it has these moments where you're challenged. And really, Shani, that's where you come in here with the first half of the cycle and the second half of the cycle. I mean, it's amazing, really. It's a very complete system.

It basically builds you up and then rips the carpet up from underneath you. I mean, that's very... Yeah. They say cackling with gleevee. In gleege, she says. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

You're being tempted. Yeah. So to walk. us into this, I think actually I want to just speak a little bit about trauma healing in general because I know that in some schools of psychotherapy, the approach to trauma healing has been very focused on talking about the experience. And there is absolutely benefit in that and many people do benefit from having the experience they've had witnessed and held and understood.

And for many people talking about the experience simply overwhelms them and in a way retramatizes them. And I know in more somatic approaches to trauma, there's a real emphasis on bringing awareness to the difficult sensations and feelings as a way to, you know, allow them to, in a way, complete themselves in your system, allow them to really unfold, because often trauma is the interruption or stuckness of an experience in our system. So again, that can be really powerful.

But for many, overwhelming, they don't necessarily have the resilience to be able to feel that level of intensity. So when it comes to trauma healing, we do need resilience. You know, our capacity to be with intense feelings is what allows us to hold that experience and allow it, allow it, allow it. to really be with it. And building up that kind of resilience takes time. We can grow that resilience through gradual, iterative, as you said, Alexandra, you know, in our cycle, we get stress tested when we're faced with those things. So over time, we are building this resiliency, this capacity for,

embodied presence with intensity. But the other thing that really helps with our resilience is our, the level of resourcedness we feel within us. I mean, we all know this. I was on a very simple level. When you haven't been resourced by a good night's sleep, the threshold you have for being with difficult feelings is radically diminishing. so resourcing is really key when it comes to the stress testing and our capacity to meet

greater and greater levels of intensity. So this is where the wonderful magic of the two halves of the cycle come in because the first half of the cycle is, as we've said, this building up. and it helps to build ego strength. It really helps to, well, it fills us with energy, which is already incredibly resource building. But, and particularly if we've rested at menstruation, the first half of the cycle really depends on rest administration,

which is a profound source of resource. really extraordinary in terms of the levels of goodness we can feel about ourselves, the levels of okayness we can feel, the sense of safety we can experience in our own being. Monstration grows that in us. It gifts us with that. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that incredible? That medicine, that medicine, that resourcing.

medicine that happens at menstruation. It's just extraordinary. And so if we have been able to rest at menstruation, we are then kind of filled with this, I want to just call it ego strength. And that builds a buffer, like a, yeah, a capacity to then meet greater and greater intensities. it's like a great big yes to our being it is like a great big yes to our being exactly it's this it's this affirmation and so when we meet the no when we meet the shadow when we meet the intensity in the premenström we've got something you know in us we've got you know what it is we've got a stable ground and we've got an inner presence an inner stability and that means you can meet the disturbance from this stable inner ground.

And that is what allows the trauma to be integrated in a more kind of organic and gentle way. Yeah, and I should say this isn't something that happens, you know, in one menstrual month. I'm talking about a process over time. month after month of practicing cycle awareness, we grow and increase our level of inner resource, the degree to which we're aware of our own strengths and capacities, the inner metric of safety that we feel over time we gradually increase this, and over time we build our resilience to meet more and more intensity.

So yes, it's a very gradual and iterative process. And in some ways, it matters that you are thinking of your cycle as something that can and does resource you and really allowing yourself to receive that resourcing. And just to give you another example of that, when you're practicing cycle awareness and you're tuning into yourself each day, there'll be days where you notice just how uncomfortable and out of sorts and unsafe you feel. And there will be days where you notice how in yourself you feel. And you'll really feel the strengths you have.

You'll feel your ability, your capacity, your gifts, your talents. And ordinarily, I mean, if you weren't practicing cycle awareness, you might not notice those days. You might not notice those things about yourself. So cycle awareness day by day is building your awareness of that, that level of resource, you know. And I think making note of that really grows something over time. I would love to just come in here and add something there because as you're practicing cycle awareness, you'll discover your own particular sort of favorite times of the cycle or really vulnerable times.

and it's actually telling you something about your own nature. You get to know more and more about your own nature. And that, learning about that is very affirming because I always used to feel so at home in the second half of the cycle. He completely knew who I was. I always had a big, pretty good attack and stuff at the end of it, but I always used to feel really good in myself. And I loved menstruation when I no longer had the trauma of the pain.

And it's, you know, it's, you're getting reminders. I was, I was learning about, oh, this is my nature. I'm so this kind of person. And so I was resourcing myself with that knowledge, that experience, that pleasure, that ease. Just the way Sharnie's been talking about it. And then I was always a bit like you, Sophia. I was more vulnerable in the first half of the cycle. I felt completely, whoa, squamous.

completely see-through. Yes, it's so interesting. And it was affected too by my constitution, my fatigue levels. And what's so interesting about knowing this about your nature is that you learn to care for your unique nature. And this is other piece of resourcing that happens through cycle awareness. On any given day, you notice like, oh, I feel hugely exposed.

And the next question we invite you all to ask yourself is what am I needing today? And then that self-care is a way of both honoring your cycle, but it's also a way of resourcing you in those places where you feel less resourced. It's a way of caring for yourself in a way that gives you, again, I want to say a deeper sense of safety. Okay, so in summary, how some ways to work

with menstrual cycle awareness to support trauma healing, to build resource and inner safety so that you can be present with the intensity of trauma as and when it arises. One is commit to your daily cycle check-in as your way of coming home to yourself, being with yourself. Number two, notice what you need on that cycle day, self-care, this cyclical.

self-care, tailor-made for you, resources you, builds your resilience. And then the third piece that's come up a lot today is find your way to get rest at menstruation 1% at a time, 1% more as you can in your life, rest at menstruation, the ultimate resourcing. Yeah. Is there anything else you would add to that list? Yes, the magic word pacing. Just really, because you're you're getting familiar with yourself and you're getting familiar with the state of your nervous system and it's being able to pace your actual energy, the actual condition of your nervous system as best you can, 1% more than before, you know, but just holding that magic word pacing

and finding small ways to actually move at the pace that you are, the condition, of your actual being rather than what your head is telling you you have to do because that just traumatises our system more and more because it's the head is governed by the speed of the world and the speed of the world is far too fast actually for all of us for our nervous systems so it's pacing your nervous system thanks you too yeah this has been a beautiful conversation and the beginning of a conversation I think that we'll carry on over time around the menstrual cycle and trauma. Let's close with another story from the community from Maddie. And she says, I've experienced quite a bit of large tea trauma

throughout my lifetime. And I find it so profound that each part of my cycle offers me the opportunity to digest and heal these experiences. I feel like MCA is a game changer in being able to address the various imprints that have impacted me over the years few for the first time I feel empowered in an embodied state of being oh thank you maddie that's a goodie yes thank you thank you so much you too see you next time bye bye thanks for joining us today for the beginning of this trauma conversation I'd love to hear your questions anything it stirs in you, anything that you'd love to hear Alexander and Shani speak about when it comes to cycle awareness and trauma, you can always get in touch with me at sophy at redschool.net.

And that's it for this week. I'll be with you again in a couple of weeks. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.