The Menstruality Podcast - 234. REPLAY: The Connection between Your Menstrual Cycle and Your Mental & Emotional Health (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Today we’re sharing a replay of one of our most listened to podcasts ever - and it’s all about how getting to know your cycle can be a vital foundation for mental and emotional health.Alexandra and Sjanie, the co-founders of Red School are both retired therapists, and today they share their learnings from their own personal cycle awareness practice (as well as working with thousands of students over several decades) about how mental and emotional health rests on us knowing ourselves, feeling our value and worth, and understanding the nature of cyclicity. All of which are skills we learn from connecting to our cycles. We also explore how the root of much of our collective menstrual and emotional turmoil as women and people who have, or have had cycles is the cultural denial, shutting down, ignoring, belittling, and suppression of our cyclical nature.We explore:Alexandra’s personal journey with dissolving the shame of her early years and claiming her worth through cycle awareness and menopause, so that now she is emotionally resilient to the extent that she is immune to toxic shame.The two stable poles of the menstrual cycle, and the two transitional phases and how to work with them all to understand ourselves better and create emotional and psychological wellbeing.How following the call to stop and rest at menstruation is medicinal for us emotionally and psychologically. ---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 Sharnie, 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. Hey, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. We're sharing a replay of one of our most listened to ever podcasts,

and it's all about how getting to know your menstrual cycle can be a vital foundation for mental and emotional health. So as you may or may not know, Alexandra and Sharney are both. retired therapists. And today they share their learnings from their own personal cycloinus practice, as well as working with thousands of students over several decades, about how mental and emotional health rests on us knowing ourselves, feeling our value and worth, and understanding the nature of cyclicity, all of which are skills we learn in bucket loads from connecting to our cycles. We also chat about how the root of much of our collective mental and emotional turmoil as women and folks who have or have had menstrual cycles is the cultural denial shutting down, ignoring, belittling and suppression of our cyclical nature. It's a great conversation.

I hope you enjoy it. Let's get started with the connection between your menstrual cycle and your mental and emotional. emotional health with Alexandra and Shani. Well, let's start with a cycle check-in. Let's do it through the lens of our mental and emotional health and how the cycle day that we're on is impacting that. I can kick us off. Yes, don't you?

Okay, so I'm on day four of my mental cycle, and my bleed is actually really short these days. It's just like two days and two nights. So there's no more blood, but I'm still definitely very much in inner winter mode. And I can tell because I'm feeling every. feeling everything. I'm way more permeable and way more vulnerable. And I guess my definition of menstrual, mental and emotional health really is my capacity to be with what I'm feeling and be relating to it and to be with what I'm thinking like the delightful thoughts and the

shitty challenging thoughts and to be to be with them. And something that I notice at this phase of my cycle is my capacity to stay sort of regulated in a nervous system way with the big feelings, with the thoughts, is I have to work harder with it because I'm just so wide open really. So I was wide open to Artie's rebellion when putting on his shoes, I'm putting on his clothes, I'm leaving the door, I'm getting to nursery this morning. So that took a lot to stay sort of with myself and regulated. and yeah I'm just I'm you know more wide open to the things that are happening in the world and they're breaking my heart today and I just know I need to kind of wrap a metaphorical blanket

around myself today and be very gentle with myself. Sophie I really love your description of how you describe mental and emotional health and I have to 100% second that. in a way that's how I do my mental and emotional health. And there's this deep work of valuing going on in there. So interestingly, I am day 10 today. And I felt the shift from the sort of dark moon, new moon phase. I felt that shift being really out of the world, you know,

in a lovely little sort of poetic bubble and mystical bubble. And I felt shift into kind of the real world in inverted commas, you know, a few days back. It was very distinct. But in this moment, I am feeling very open, very permeable. And it's very hard to define the quality of feeling in me, except that it is deep feeling. and there is because I'm so permeable, I'm present to everything, a bit like you, you know, the high and the low, the complexity of the world. And I have to move in a way that's very deliberate, and I often say this actually,

so that I am not battered and can be present, a kind of holy witness in a way, to all that is moving in me. And especially not to lose my own goodness, not to lose my own value. I think that's quite a, I think that's quite a high art, can I just say as an aside. Kudos.

And is this permeability that you often speak about? Is it like a quality of your postmenopause life? Like, is it always there now? Yes, it is. It is. Because it's, I think it's the nature of, the place you come to in cyclical consciousness, postmenopause, just that increasing permeability.

But I also connect it in a very practical way to, you know, not having the same kind of physical chi, and you have to find another kind of chi. Because physical chi just gives you buffering full stop, you know. Yes. And how's day 11 feeling for you, Sean Bonan? Day 11. Well, there's two one-one.

next to each other look a little like a runway in my mind right now. Yeah. So I'm in my inner summer because I usually ovulate around day 12. So there's a very expanding, peaking energy in my system. And my life is really fast right now. there is so much going on and it's all moving really, really quickly. You know, parenting life is fast and full. Work life is fast and full.

My inner life is fast and full. So there's a huge amount of speed. And actually, on some level, I'm really with that and enjoying it. Like I feel this sort of sportswoman kind of energy in me. really, that like sportswoman quality, which is like, right, eye on the game, let's do this. It has a bit of a rah-rah, motivational, like, stay positive, stay focused, like, let's go, let's go kind of energy about it. Remember what we're doing, why are we doing this? It's a very rah-rah.

And if I only stay with that aspect of my experience, I realize that it has an emptiness to it because there's much more complexity actually as well going on in my system. And this is what I so appreciate about cycle awareness and a cycle check-in, which I did with myself this morning. So I can feel that sportswoman rah-rah energy. But also if I really stay with myself and pay attention,

I notice there are these sort of contradictions happening where I'm aware of tiredness. I'm also aware of a lot of tenderness and depth. Yeah. So there's so. there's something about like noticing the complexity of my experience, which is something I'm very with in the season of my life, you know, 48, I'm in the autumn of my menstruating years. There is more complexity and contradiction in my experience just overall.

And if I don't expand to include those parts of myself, I'm not really here. So, yeah, in terms of mental and emotional health, you know what you were both saying about what that means to you, for me it's about, as I agree with everything you said, and this thing I'm noticing today is the more aware I can be of the diversity of experience in myself, then the more capacity I have to meet my multifaceted needs. And therefore, the more I can kind of relax into the place I'm in and feel held, you know, feel that it's okay and I'm okay. So, you know, I really appreciate the increased self-awareness that cycle awareness gives me. Before I knew that I was 28 different women every month, I thought I was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And I had that reflected to me in the world.

You know, the cycle has been dismissed, belittled, you're just premenstrual, she's PMSing. It's like there's so many stories we have about the cycle. And it's been demonized. It's been shut down. We don't embrace our cyclical nature. And actually, maybe the best way to get into this, Alexandra, is for you to share your story about what you know about. how your cyclical nature being shut down and suppressed, what that did to you in terms of your mental and emotional health

earlier in your life, and then what discovering cycle awareness did for you? I'd love to, Sophie. Yeah. As you were asking me that question, I was interestingly reflecting on the fact that I never had a problem with the menstrual psyche. you know, in the sense of my monarchy experience was very beautiful.

And I just feel that anointed me for my life. And so I felt very kind of cool about, you know, what cool is the wrong word. But, you know, just, yeah, I've never felt ashamed of talking about my menstrual cycle. However, I did not understand about valuing the rhythm and energy of it. And in my 20s, and yeah, so in my 20s, I was, you know, I had some energy. I was, I am by nature very kind of proactive and, if not a little pushy, you know, you know, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, just I didn't show up as someone with mental health problems, but also because I had learned to behave in inverted commas, you know. I went to a good school and, you know, it's very interesting.

So that kind of conditioning that I lived with, that kind of middle class English. But there was a certain, you know, joie de vivre in me and an engagement with life. But I was not, you know, acknowledging the fact I did not know about my shadow, but also I did, and of course I didn't understand about my cyclical nature. And so the shit hits the fan at 31 when I get. outrageous menstrual pain. But what also becomes increasingly obvious, and this is the kind of doorway into my inner life,

and the shame that I carried in me, is my health that, you know, was revealing itself to me as not great over time or coming to terms with the fact that I actually did have health problems, which were evident in my 20s. But the fatigue, the profound fatigue that kicked in through my 30s and in my 40s and in my 40s, I mean, so profound that I would just lie there and think, this is, you know,

I might as well be dead, you know. I mean, I was not someone who would ever have thoughts of killing myself, but taking my life. But, you know, it just felt so bleak and the despair that came up. And it just made me very vulnerable. and it's exposed me more and more to my shadow side and the awareness of shame in me and my self-consciousness, by the way, that self-consciousness had been there from, I became so aware of it at the age of 13,

I could barely walk out of the school hall. I didn't know how, in front of everybody. I didn't know how to put one foot in front of the other. But, and because I didn't have any, energy to go out and doing stuff in the world. And because, I mean, I did some things, because, you know, I was able to work a little bit. I was not able to, you know, identity, I think initially comes from the things you do, you know, like, I'm a this, I'm a that.

And that gives you a sense of something. And I didn't have that, but I had ambition, you see. And that was deeply distressing not to be able to say, oh, well, I'm a somebody. You know, I'm a something. I mean, yes, I became a psychotherapy. and all that. And I did have some identities, but the truth was I could not, I was not getting that kind of affirmation. And of course, the kind of affirmation of just knowing my own goodness just wasn't there, you know, what was there was shame. And this is where menstrual cycle awareness

comes to the rescue. I don't know how I would have found myself without this. So my menstrual pain, I think people probably know the story that I chose to, it was shattering, and I chose to turn towards it and say, you're talking to me and I'm going to listen. And I chose to give myself space at menstruation so there could be space for the pain. You know, it sounds very simple and it took place over a number of years, this healing journey. But what happened was I did start to heal the pain. And what happened then was I started to get the goal. of menstruation. It was like the pain was teaching me to stop and then menstruation could

deliver the goodies to me. So what happened at menstruation was I would feel these incredible spiritual feelings, this affirmation of my being, this profound sense of meaning to my life and love and ecstasy and ideas. And I felt then that being in the space of my own goodness was being filled up by menstruation. It wasn't coming from anywhere else. I mean, I could almost weep now telling you the story because I just want everyone to have this experience. Because if you're not getting it, you know, coming from the world,

it's about what you do, you know? And judgment from my beloved mother, you know, it was, you know, you had to be a somebody, otherwise you were a nobody. I bless my mother. But I, you know, was getting it from menstruation. So, yeah, I would come out of menstruation

and be back in the world and go, what was that all about? Was I making that up? Because I would go back to kind of the old story. But month after month, I'd come back. And it was like menstruation was talking to me and guiding me. Truly, truly, truly, truly, truly. And I began the menstrual work.

And of course, then I had a something as well. You know, I wasn't, you know, I was becoming a psych. I was a psychotherapist, but now there was a sort of, you know, something. That's a great cosmic joke. You had to become a nothing to... Yes, to find the something. Define the something.

And, you know, because, you know, I want to be a something as well. You know. Well, you have a big calling that has been pushing through you. Yes, exactly. It's been coming through. But it sounds dramatic to say it, but I want to say that, you know, menstruation saved my life because it became. the antidote to shame.

And I would be lying if I said, you know, that I don't feel shame anymore. Because shame is everywhere. It's in the field. And I'm a highly sensitive person. So whether it's my shame or someone else's shame, you know, I can feel it. But what I have now, and, you know, this is the ultimate gift that menopause gave me is a line I cannot cross back into. the dark side, you know, the toxic kind of shame, you know, that toxic energy that shame is, I can observe it, I can feel it washed through me, and I can stabilize myself and remember.

And, you know, yeah, so I feel, you know, challenged at times. I can feel that critical energy in me, you know, it's alive and well and strong. but honestly, honestly, honestly, my mental sanity, my emotional resilience has grown out of a dedicated care of my menstrual cycle. It brought me back to health. It brought me to myself. And it's given me a language and a framing for meeting life's challenges, for meeting the provocations that come to me. I have the wherewithal within me. Yeah. To meet her. It sounds like what you're saying is at the root of much of our mental and emotional turmoil is this shame and that your experience, your spiritual, sacred experience of menstruation has become like a tonic or a balm that has restored your sense of

goodness and worth to meet that shame and maybe to dissolve that shame to to give you a different way to be with it or yeah and that menopause then work did its great big work with you so that now you're in a place mentally and emotionally where there is a lot of health and that is so beautiful to hear it's so beautiful to hear yes absolutely sophia jane and it's a story that we've heard in different ways from different members of our community when Sharnie posted a message in the circle hub saying we're doing this podcast about mental and emotional health do you have any stories to share and one of the ones that came in is

from Katya and she says I feel that bringing this work to therapists is fundamentally important I used to struggle so much with self-doubt and often felt out of place and deeply distressed during my inner autumn and winter I worked with a therapist for several years and later trained as a Gestaltz therapist, which was valuable in many ways, but no one in those circles ever pointed me towards my cyclical nature. It wasn't until a somatic therapist friend mentioned coming across your work, the Red School work, that something clicked. Although therapy is always about change, it was only when I began practicing menstrual cycle awareness that I could truly embody change on a deep level. recovering a sense of belonging in this world, feeling that I'm normal in my changing moods,

in my need to leave it all behind sometimes and rest, has been fundamental. It felt as though I was finally granted the big permission to simply be myself, and that in itself has been deeply healing on every level. Yeah, it's everything. It's just the foundation. Podcast over. And then she closes it by saying, becoming part of a community of cyclical beings,

women who honour and cherish their nature, is profoundly healing too. That's been 100% my experience too, Kachar. I needed to be around others who also had had this experience of, there's nothing wrong with me because I'm changing throughout my cycle month. It's natural.

I am cyclical. I feel like we can't. say this enough. Yeah and Shani, it was something you were talking about when we were chatting before this conversation that the fact that the menstrual cycle has been demonized really is connected to the mental and emotional challenges that many of us face. Yeah, actually when you bring that back to me, Sophie, I'm remembering that in the demonising of the cycle, we've demonized cyclical life and we've created a culture where the norm is to be the same. And as you've both been talking, you know, through this conversation, I've really been with this thing of how

there is an assumption actually that mental and emotional health is to do with kind of feeling good and being okay. Yeah. And what you've both named and what the cycle really brings us back to in an very embodied way is that actually staying the same and being the same is not health. Rhythm is life. Movement is life and life is health giving. So if we're all trying to kind of hold ourselves in one way of being in order to be acceptable, in order to be valued and have that outer affirmation, yeah, we are going to find ourselves being corroded at a very, very deep level.

So there is definitely the shame piece that comes from denying the cycle which corrods our sense of innate value and worth. And then there's the loss of connection to ourself that comes from denying the cycle. And really mental and emotional health, as you so beautifully said, right at the start, Sophie, has everything to do with being connected to yourself and being. being aware of yourself. Because when you're connected to yourself, you recognize what you need. And when you recognize what you need, you can take care of yourself. And when you take care of yourself, you're going to feel better.

It's very, very, very generative. So, yeah, I think the things we've named here of connection to yourself and connection to value and worth are really, really bedrocks. for mental and emotional health. Yeah, thank you, Shani. We just can't underestimate the importance of knowing ourselves as cyclical beings when it comes to feeling emotionally and mentally healthy. And also for anyone who is supporting others with their mental and emotional health,

cycle awareness is so vital. There were other therapists who came in as well as Katya in the community and shared their experience, including Jenny. And she said, I'm a clinical scientist. psychologist and had zero training. So zero is in capital letters. Zelch, nada, none. Zero training in the cyclical nature of emotions and human life more generally. Now I've discovered menstrual cycle awareness through Red School. It's transformed my work with my clients so positively. I now can't believe any mental health training doesn't involve this teaching. It's just incomplete in a massive way

without it. So I'm also passionate about therapists knowing about menstrual cycle awareness and integrating it into their work. Gosh, yes. We are so passionate as well, Jenny. This is something that Alexandra and I are really holding that this work is integrated into therapeutic training. We are both retired therapists and I can see how inherently valuable having this knowledge is both for you as a therapist, if you're a cycling therapist, to be able to have that layer of connection with yourself and your own cyclical experience, what that means for you as a therapist, but also then to bring this education and information to those your work. working with. And there are, you know, one of the reasons we created our cycle awareness course is

really for therapists because it's the one place where we teach this foundational layer of the work, which we, where we talk about the cycle as a means of healing and creating health and wellness. So, yeah, I'd love therapists who are interested to come and dive in and start working. working with it. We've got people on our programs, actually. I'm thinking of MC Decker, who's currently doing our postgraduate program, and she's a psychologist working in the Canadian healthcare system, and she's researching, working with cycle awareness in therapy, and really researching this area. So there are people in our community who are spearheading this and taking it forward. And I think it's just a matter of time before, yeah, it becomes a movement.

Yeah. And back to another thing that Katja said, the other great thing about being on the cycle power course is that you are surrounded by others who are embracing their cyclical nature and working with it for their mental and emotional health. So you're in a community of others who get it, you know, part in the online community. You can be connecting, sharing your cycle check-ins, how you're feeling emotionally and mentally. And it's, you know, you'll receive a cyclical kind of support. It's making me think back to, you know, I was privileged to be able to have a year. of psychotherapy when I was in my biggest mental and emotional health crisis of my life, which was in the last year of my infertility, four years of infatility. And although my therapist was amazing and helped me and helped me so much, if she'd had that cycle awareness lens of death and rebirth, really, you know, and that I was going through a profound, a profound process of death, really. And cycle awareness, you all helped me. Thank you. thank you. I laughed now, but it was terrible at the time.

But yeah, yeah. Okay, so more therapists with cycle awareness, please. Yes, that's the quest. And I think it's important to recognize that in a world where our cyclical nature is denied, belittled, suppressed, being with the emotional changes is not easy. You know, I have a wonderful husband. talk about all the time on the podcast and he would love me to be an inner summer all month long.

He loves it. It's, I'm so easy to get on with. I don't criticize. I've got endless energy. I can parent until the cows come home and I'm not tired and all good things. And then suddenly day 21 comes around. He sees it in the diary and he goes, oh shit. And then he knows that life's going change and and everything gets harder in our family but it also gets more rich and beautiful and I can be with the challenges of life and all the gorgeous gifts that come with the via negative at the second half of the cycle so that's all to say like there are times in the cycle where we feel more stable and there are times in the cycle that are more emotionally and mentally turbulent and can you can you walk us into your teachings around that around the two stable poles and

of the two transitional phases. Yes, Sophie. So the cycle is a process of sort of being and becoming. There are these two poles to the cycle. Menstruation is one. I used to talk about them as the north and south pole of the cycle. And the other pole is ovulation. And at these two poles, something happens.

you know, menstruation, you've leased, and ovulation, you've released an egg. And they, and then in between that, you are moving, you know, you are in movement between one or other poles. So your body is either building up to ovulation and then, you know, something happens. So there's a place of arrival. That's the ovulatory pole.

And then if there hasn't been a, conception, you know, if an egg hasn't met a sperm and got together, then the second half of the cycle is a journey to menstruation. And there's a different kind of energetic quality to that. So you're in the, you know, the inner spring of yourself, the of your cycle, the pre-ovulatory time. You're in a sort of expand, in a becoming. becoming up to, you know, ovulation. And then in the inner autumn or premenstrual, you are in a movement of, you know,

coming to an event called menstruation. So at menstruation, we say that at menstruation and ovulation, you are your most kind of stable. There's just something that happens. There's a kind of let go in the system. So you arrive at a place. at a place. And then you have to leave the place, you see, and you have to travel.

And that is that traveling time is the sort of becoming. So if I leave ovulation, then I'm in a becoming phase, becoming into the beingness of menstruation. And so, and of course, you know, our pre-ovalatory phase and pre-menstrual phase, the transitional times, Transitional times just by their nature have more disturbance in them. I don't mean that in a negative way, but they are less solid or less stable.

And they can, so understanding that just helps you to sort of understand your nature. They also have their own very distinct worlds within them. They're not just passing through territories. When I say they're transition, you're definitely not just passing through something and it's not very interesting on the contrary. There's a something, of course, that happens there, psychologically speaking, that it's a real world, there's a real experience going on there.

But it is less stable. And I think that just understanding that helps, us to understand ourselves. Mainly, I think it's with the pre-menstrom because the energy is decreasing in the second half of the cycle. So in the first half of the cycle, you do have this expansion of energy, this filling out. And that has a certain kind of buffering to it that gives you a substance. But of course, some people do struggle with that. It can be one of the hardest times in the cycle for some, especially when you start to become more sensitive and aware of your cycle, you will become aware of how, yeah, of a sort of tenderness there. But the second half

of the cycle generally, of course, is the one that's noted for its problematic and inverted commas, because it's not really, it's not at all. Well, it's a problem for others because we're just more outspoken and antsy and won't take shit and have opinions. And, you know, And we've dropped our nice socialised self. But in the premenstruem, when the energy retreating, it's more exposing. And it kind of reveals the underbelly of ourselves. So there's quite a lot of shadow that can come up that can make that challenging. I'm going to pause us just for a moment to share a couple of invitations.

Firstly, if you'd like to work with your cycle to support your mental, and emotional health, then the free Red School cycle tracking chart could help you. You can receive it for free at Redschool.net forward slash chart. And as Sean and Alexandra mentioned earlier, their cycle power course can support you to get to know how you ebb and flow through the inner seasons of your cycle and what can best support you to create emotional and mental health as you go through that journey. You can find out more about this course at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. And here's a story from M.C. Decker, who's a therapist who Shani actually spoke about earlier in the conversation, about her experience with the cycle power course.

So she says, as is always the case when I listen to Alexander and Shani speak, there were new learnings and takeaways. I really enjoyed how each season was broken down into the sections of limits and powers and what it really takes to access the power. It really clicked for me in a deep way. The information felt so transferable to real life. I feel like I heard the call to rest at menstruation more deeply in this course. If you're searching for a way to deepen self-care practices

and for something that could give you full permission to be yourself, this course will set the foundation for that. We have a story actually from Grace about her experience of her pre-menstruem of her inner autumn. I think I'll bring that in now and we can look through the lens of that, the instability of this time. So this is actually from Grace's bio on our website because Grace is a mentor on the cycle power course. Yeah.

Grace's journey into menstrual cycle awareness started at home when she was growing up. She witnessed her mom going through turbulent emotions every few weeks. Irritability would turn into anger, rising to peak rage, release followed by tears and an apology. Sorry, I'm premenstrual, her mom would say. Grace found this scary and intimidating being on the receiving end of hormonal rage and wondered, is this going to happen to me? And in short, yes, it did. It was an emotional roller coaster cycling through feelings of anger, rage, suicidal ideation and guilt through much of her 20s and early 30s. It was draining and confusing to be overtaken by this vitriolic force every month. And although her love of partying

certainly didn't help, I relate to that phenomenon, she noticed that this wasn't a shared experience among her peers. Around the age of 28, Grace reached a tipping point. Her partner at the time paid for a private consultation with a hormone specialist. She received a diagnosis of PCOS, as well as useful information on the negative impacts that sugar and an overproduction of insulin has on PCOS, start by cutting down alcohol and get plenty of sleep. So that was the beginning of the end of her partying days. But the physical diagnosis wasn't enough. There was a complex emotional layer to Grace's experience that wasn't being addressed.

And that's when she found the magical work of Red School in its community. She started to feel understood. I think this is a journey that so many in our community can relate to. It was exactly the same for me, or my own version of that. And it's the, yeah, the physical diagnoses aren't enough, are they? We need to tend to this complex emotional layer in us. So much of the kind of mental and emotional distress shows up, as Alexandra said, in the pre-menstruem or actually in any of the transitional times in the cycle.

So which is why it's so important to have cyclical understanding. So I feel like I want to give another layer of context to this because what's going on psychologically is really helpful to understand. You know, in the first half of the cycle, you've got this sort of ocean of expansion happening and in the second half, this ocean of contraction. And these stable poles that Alexandra described, are the places where these two oceans meet.

And at these times of stability, it's like the weave in our consciousness is much tighter. And because of that, we are able to function really well in the world. but when we move between the poles, this weave in our consciousness begins to thin. And you can hear in that thinning, the cracks start to show. And what happens is stress that's in the system starts to surface. And we know that stress creates reactivity and yeah, like disturbance in how we feel and how we think it affects our brain function and so in our

capacity to communicate and so many things. Stress surfaces but also trauma that hasn't been integrated surfaces. So this could be developmental trauma, social trauma, situational trauma. any trauma that you've experienced in your life now is being errated. It's like the dirty laundry of your life gets like pulled out into public view. And this sounds really not good at all, except this is the health-giving, healing capacity of the cycle. Because in this erration, in this revealing of what, is unconscious, what is undigested in us, we have this incredible opportunity to forge more connection with ourselves, become more aware of ourselves, forge more connection with

ourselves and actually integrate these parts of ourselves and these parts of our experience. and healing is really ultimately about becoming a whole and about connection with ourselves and all aspects of ourselves. And that, I think, in turn, allows us to have this capacity to connect with life more fully, you know, connect with humanity, connect with the spiritual facets of life more deeply. So when I hear stories like graces, I, on some level, grieve because in a way, the huge outrage that's happening there premenstrually is a kind of PTSD, you know. It's what happens when we don't understand what is going on. and so we're in the reactivity of it.

We don't feel held in the experience. There's like a whole loss of ground, loss of safety, a loss of context and dignity. I mean, you know, you just feel like you're going, like you're going mad,

like there's something wrong with you, like you're out of control, as opposed to, you know, what if you knew that actually this is a time of healing, and you can get the right support, the right holding, the right resources, you can learn the right skills to be able to meet the experience that's happening so that the cycle can do what the cycle does so beautifully, which is heal. It's a healing cycle. The menstrual cycle is a process of healing. But when we aren't practicing cycle awareness and we don't understand cyclicity, the cycle actually

is destructive and symptomatic, you know, symptomatic. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with symptoms, but if we can come into relationship with them, that really changes the process that we're in into one that is generative and healing. That is just so good. And I just kind of want to capture now, the kind of headline statements,

all they were just doing it there. So this is where my liminal mind is going to have fun trying to be focused. You can do it. I can do it. I can do it. So the first thing is just understanding cyclicity. We're naming that, that I'm a cyclical being, and understanding that the dynamic that's at work within that,

that there are times of kind of firmness where the weave is tight. I love that image, Shani. And there are times where the weave then gets more open, it's more open weave and things can come through. And so the cycle is, it's like, it's almost like this kind of... It's exercising us. Yes, that's the word. We like to use it.

It's exercising us. You know, it gives you this moment of kind of stability. Then it sort of tests your resilience by opening the weave up. more. And so what helps you to meet that process of being exercised? The key thing here is you've got to learn how to ride the bicycle, folks. Learn how to ride the cycle menstrual cycle awareness. So firstly, just this simple act of knowing where you are in each day of your cycle and knowing the context of that day, knowing that it's your inner spring or, you know, your inner autumn or whatever it is, and the fact that the weave is more open there and things will come up, just knowing that makes a difference.

But also, I mean, on our cycle power, of course, we go into a lot of detail on all the kind of elements that really support each of those inner seasons. Yeah. Because actually, Alexandra, the cycle is very precise. in terms of what it's asking of us. And it's actually, you know, turning towards that and honoring the precision of what our needs are that puts us in this healing cycle. That's the cyclical self-care.

You know, the cycle is asking us to care for ourselves in very particular ways. And we can only connect with that if we're practicing cycle awareness. And we can only really find ways to be, bring that into our experience each day if we're paying attention to where we are and how we are. There's such a good point you're elucidating there, Shani. And the thing I just really want to catch here is this is just something we've noticed. It's not like a scientific fact, you know,

that has been researched. But what we have noticed is the very act of doing menstrual cycle awareness just every day in a very low key way and just learning to contextualize and just knowing about the precision of the self-care that's required builds inner kindness. It's just magic. It's like watering the earth and then the earth magically starts to give you, you know, the seeds germinate. Something starts to show itself. It's extraordinary, this inner kindness.

And that inner kindness is like the forerunner of growing confidence. Yeah. I think we need to read Alexis's story because she speaks to exactly this, Alexandra. Yeah, so Alexis says, The practice of mental cycle awareness has helped me to be kinder to myself and make more space in my psyche to embrace all the many and various facets of being a cycling human. I felt a lot of pressure to present myself to the world as an infinite summer lady, which led to massive burnout. And it does. I'm now learning to really inhabit the more autumnal and wintry expressions of my innate energy without pushing myself as hard. In a spring presents an ongoing emotional challenge as I get socially anxious and my critic tends to pop up. It's a work in progress, but bottom line, I am more able to stay close to myself and on my own side more of the time.

Yeah. When I responded to Alexis to that comment, I said it sounds like you're more liberated to be your full self. And that's the confidence, Alexandra, that you're talking about. It kind of creates this liberation to live into the different facets of ourselves. And there comes that theme of wholeness again and that theme of the necessity of change and being different each day and really allowing for that. It's such deep permission, isn't it? And the awareness she's holding now of herself that she wasn't aware of before.

Yeah. Since around her inner spring. There is just, there's one other element I want to add into this healing brew that we're describing of, you know, the menstrual cycle is a healing process. And there's just one other magic element, which has already been named, but at the beginning in my story, which I want to put in here, which is the medicine of menstruation itself. So when we're practicing cycle awareness and learning to honour the quality and character and tone of our inner seasons and, you know, feeling how each inner season asks something different of us and a different kind of. And a different

kind of pace and so on. And if we're able to follow the call of menstruation, which is, of course, to retreat and to stop, menstruation gifts us with this love, this affirmation of ourselves, this possibility of belonging. I mean, it's such real medicine. It's extraordinary. And, I mean, without that, I'd have been stuffed, basically, you know. And so I just want to add that as another name that, as another piece in our healing potion we're building here, describing the cycle. And there's a real, you mentioned trauma, Shania,

a real trauma integration piece that's happening at menstruation, too. At least that's what I noticed for myself is something being, rewoven into me back to that weave. And I'm just to give a practical example of this, the weave being open and the trauma presenting itself more. I'm thinking about when I'm in my premenstrual phase and I'm parenting Artie and he is expressing his emotions very loudly in a way that I wasn't able to do because generally the parenting of the time when I was growing up was shut up, be quiet, shush, go and play somewhere else. You know, that was the kind of parenting vibe.

Sometimes I wish that was still a parenting vibe. That's going to say, it sounds fantastic. It's very attractive, isn't it? We all just used to run, you know, go off and play together. A parenting approach that suits the parents. But it did create a certain kind of subtle developmental trauma in me. And now, when I'm pre-menstrual and I'm with Artie, and he is being very, very, vocal and I'm doing my parenting work off the times, which is does feel right to me, which is

listening to his feelings, supporting him to regulate. I feel the inner four-year-old in me, who didn't get to express, and she is very loud. And when I'm pre-menstrual, she wants to shout and scream. So I'm learning, thanks to cycle awareness and my recognition of what's going on, on this open weave of the premenstruem, I'm learning to practice regulating my nervous system in a way that I never would have known about if I'd not been cycle aware, you know, and that's the main practice.

So like for those, for you listening now, whatever sort of traumas that you notice come up in the premenstruem, it's like how can you be more aware of the weave and what's opening up and how you can tend to that? What's being, what's needed? Yeah, listening to your story, Sophie, makes me really hear how what's happening in liminal times is that our wounding, our wounded parts are much more on the surface, which means we get triggered more easily, we get hurt more easily, we tend to feel things more deeply.

and even just knowing that is really, really helpful because the self-awareness means that you are holding yourself in the experience rather than acting out of the experience. So you can be feeling and having all that going on and you can create more presence with yourself. And that is what starts to help this process. of integration to happen is presencing yourself with that reactivity, with that pain, with that part of yourself that, you know, never got heard. And connecting with that part of yourself and hearing that part of yourself.

So you can hear there's really so much potential for integration that can happen when we have cyclical awareness and then of course when we're practicing cyclical self-care because that's really important in terms of meeting our needs so we can create inner safety so that we can reduce stress regulate our nervous system and so on and so forth yeah that's vital and you use the word liminal times there and we won't be able to get into this fully in this conversation maybe we need to have a part two, but we always feel like we need to have a part two and three and four of all of our topics in this series. They're so big. But there are liminal times, longer liminal times throughout the menstruality life arc where there is more mental and emotional instability. Could you name

those times? Because especially people who are in them right now, it might help to make sense of why there's a lot of turbulence going on. Yeah. It's very helpful to take this map. of understanding of the menstrual cycle and see how it plays out over the arc of our menstruating life. So very briefly, just to give this context, coming into your menstruating life, so that's adolescence and your first bleed. That is, of course, a huge transitional time, as is coming towards and coming into menopause and making that transition from your menstruating years into your post menopause life. So those are two key places where the weave thins really in a big way. Also because it's not happening over a day or two, it's happening over a number of years.

So there's a much deeper negotiation going on. And, you know, my daughter's in this place right now, age 14, and I see in her and I see in all her friends, the amplification of feeling, the heightened sensitivity, the unknownness, the instability, really, they're neither one thing nor the other. and in terms of like psychological health, not feeling a sense of one's identity is hugely destabilizing. And that's where I want to come to community again, where we need others holding that stability for us so that we can go through all that flux and change.

And, you know, with Menarchi, it's the parents' role. And I think with menopause, it's the role of, I think, the elders in our world. Well, the menstruality aware elders in our world. And then the other transitional time that I want to name in this arc is, of course, the transitional initiation into motherhood, which again also happens over a number of years. but is stepping out of the holding of your menstruating years and your body goes through such a huge flux and change. Your entire life gets overhauled.

It's immense in terms of transition and identity shift and change. And all of that is then delivering you into a whole new season of your life where you are a mother and then living in that new consciousness, new life, new you. You can hear with all these places, these are the times when we are most vulnerable to mental and emotional health challenges. We see it with adolescence. There's so much suffering that goes on because they aren't being held in the right of passages and acknowledge motherhood. You know, postnatal depression is rife, rife, rife, rife, rife. And I think, If we understood cyclicity and all the teachings we give on menstruality,

that whole experience would have a context and a holding that is very, very absent now. And then the same is true with menopause. There's such a fallout of distress and suffering and mental health things going on for all the same reasons. So those hotspots, which mostly in a. our culture now are times of great distress and suffering. I feel like I want to end what I've said with the new story, which is that actually these hotspots, these powerfully transitional times are power hotspots actually.

And when menstruality is restored, and when menstrual cycle awareness is a way of life is commonplace, and we are all, you know, holding this understanding, these transitional times will become times of big power, of awakening, of evolution, because that's what they actually are. Yeah, their initiatory. Each is an initiatory.

And they're awakening us to a new level of consciousness. and when you are inducted into cyclical consciousness, when you are practicing cycle awareness, you discover how your body prepares you for that initiation. So you get a mini round each month at menstruation where you die to your identity and then you refind yourself again and head off into a new cycle and you get a little, you know, two to five days of initiation.

And it's like you're being titrated into something. You're being titrated so that you have a degree of readiness in your being, a knowingness. It's just like a knowingness that you are building. So, I mean, I remember feeling that so strongly with menopause. that I felt a dignifying process at work, even as I met all this shadow stuff, et cetera, et cetera.

There was a template in me that was holding and guiding me. Yeah, because, I mean, there's no avoiding meeting the shadow. And that's not, like you said back at the beginning of the conversation, mental and emotional health isn't about feeling great all the time. Yes. Like, I remember having. a health assessment from the health visitor when I was, when I was a few weeks old, and she said, well, look, you've got all the markers of post-napal depression, but you seem fine, so we'll leave it for now.

Really? That's what you said to me. But I think I had a context for it because of cycle awareness. So although I was suffering and it was hard, there was an okayness. And like you said, Alexandra, in your menopause, yes, you had to negotiate the shadow, but you had the holding and the context. and that's what we're restoring here. And interestingly, I mean, I did have an understanding in my head or something, but it wasn't actually about my head. There was a sort of, it was in my beingness. It's so interesting, actually, because in many ways, the head was the problem.

You know, the head sets the wheels spinning, you know, whatever, I want to be, you got, you know. But there was this, I was building this knowingness within me, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I often think that understanding menstruality helps duplicate the mind, but practicing menstrual cycle awareness is what creates the embodied trust and the capacity to care for ourselves through these places. So yeah, it's not enough to know, really. It's the practice that brings it home and puts us inside the healing power of transitions. Yes. Always.

comes back to the practice. And I'm going to work my muscles that I don't really have much contact with right now because I'm on day four and I could literally just carry on talking for all day about this. But it's time for us to wrap up. Do you two have any final pieces to share maybe to someone who is in a period of real emotional and mental turmoil for how cycloinus can support them? I think I want to, in a way, do a little. summary, which is to say that I think underlying mental and emotional health challenges

is stress, which can lead, of course, to burn out and exhaustion, which I think is really important to name as an underlying factor and trauma. And menstrual cycle awareness, the practice of cycle awareness really helps with both of those things in a very meticulous and gentle, accessible way. So anybody who's in a place of great distress now to really turn towards your cycle and practice your daily cycle check-in, I know it can feel small in the face of huge distress, but it's the, it's the mustard seed that is going to become something great in time. And yes, of course, get professional support therapy. All the,

having support and help is really, really important. But empowering yourself, with this, creating this connection to yourself through cycle awareness and growing this inner kindness and permission is, yeah, feels like the long game that's really worth playing. Yeah. And to add to that community, joining a cycle aware community, and we have a free community here at Red School that you can join so that you are held with others

and you hear others' stories and experiences of the cycle and you discover that you are not alone. There's something about belonging that can really start to... It's like a balm. It can be a balm. It can be... It's a really important medicine. Yes, connection, having connection, not going it alone. It's everything.

Beautifully said. Thank you so much you too. See you next time. Bye-bye. Thanks for being with us today. We always love hearing from you. If you'd like to share anything in response to this podcast, please email sophy at redschool.net. And if you're curious about joining Red School's live cycle power course, it's actually starting tomorrow on April the 17th but no worries if you're listening to this later you can also join the self-paced version later in the year you can find out more about both at red school dot net forward slash cycle power so i hope you enjoyed this episode we'll be with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm