The Menstruality Podcast - 239. How to Manage Overwhelm, Intensity and Disconnection in Your Inner Summer (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Although the inner summer of the menstrual cycle has a reputation for being easy-breezy, for some of us, this can be a real hotspot in the cycle month. So, this episode is for you if the ovulatory cycle phase is intense or overwhelming, or you feel a sense of pressure to show up and ‘get shit done’ inside an already over-full life. It’s also for you if inner summer brings a sense of being all dressed up for the party, with nowhere to go if you have lots of creative, sexual or social energy but you don’t know where to direct it, or if ovulation brings disconnection and grief due to challenges with trying to conceive.Through our personal stories as well as generous shares from the Red School community, we explore the challenges of inner summer, and how to reframe them as meaningful limits that support us to access the power of the ovulatory phase. We also explore the cyclical self care practice which can support us to claim and show ourselves exactly as we are in inner summer. We explore:Sjanie’s ongoing journey with visibility in inner summerWhat Alexandra has discovered about the libratory power of limits, as a post-menopausal women.How to grow the emotional muscles of allowing more and more of yourself to exist and be seen in the world, as you truely are. ---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, welcome back to the menstruality podcast. Thank you for tuning in and being with us today. So although the inner summer of the menstrual cycle has a reputation for being easy, breezy, for some of us, this is a real hot spot in the

cycle month. This episode is for you. If the days before, during and after ovulation are especially intense or overwhelming, or if you feel a sense of pressure to show up and get everything done inside an already overfall life. It's also for you if inner summer can bring a sense of being all dressed up for the party but with nowhere to go, especially when you have lots of creative or social or sexual energy, but you don't know where to direct it. or if ovulation brings disconnection and grief due to challenges with trying to conceive. Today, through our personal stories as well as generous shares from the Red School community, we explore the challenges of Inner Summer and how to reframe them as meaningful limits

that support us to access the power of the ovulatory phase. We also explore the cyclical self-care practice which can help us to claim and show ourselves exactly as we are in Inner Summer. I especially loved hearing about Sharnie's ongoing journey with visibility in Inner Summer and what Alexandra has discovered about the liberatory power of limits as a post-menopausal woman.

Hey, you too, right, let's talk about the Inner Summer. I'm very autumnal to be talking about the inner summer. Let's do it. It is summer in the Northern Hemisphere right now, so we are at least, well, you know, It's an English summer, so it has its limits. Yeah, in my kind of quickening place that I'm in in my mid-40s now, and I was opening the blinds this morning when I'd just woken up,

it was raining and cold, and I was like, what season are we in? I couldn't remember. It really didn't look like summer. So I'm, yeah, and it's day 23 for me, which I always just feel interested when I land on day 23 again because it was my painful day for so many years, and it really isn't now. So if I just tune in to how I actually am today,

I feel very anchored and grounded in my body. I can really feel my feet, you know, and the bum on the chair. And I feel solid in myself. I'm very focused, really devoted to being here and what we're doing. I feel my heart very strongly. I feel confident. Yeah, it's a good feeling. It's a good day.

Yeah. I love those words. and devoted. Yes. Yeah, for so many years I felt so far away from myself on this day. I was just so angry, scared and yeah, wonderful to feel where I am now. Oh, so good. And I've talked like this before to the extent that on the Tree Sisters team,

they called me Grumpy Gertrude on day 23. We had to make a joke out of it because I was almost impossible to work with on this day. You have to come up with a new name. name now. I was thinking, yeah, devotional Sophia. Sophia. Yes. I'll take that. Doesn't quite have the same ring. Hey, I need an alliteration to make that stick. And it needs a bit of grit in there, you know, because she's, you know, it's just focused. Yeah. You know, it's grounded. And it's like, I think don't mess with me, you know, don't cross my path. Well, there's something a bit more quite like a, like a jaguar roaming through a rainforest about it.

You know, like I'm poised, but I'm strong and, yeah, that's, that's, oh, no, are we going to play if you can be an animal? What would you mean? Well, if we played it being an animal, I think I might make the mad hatter at the tea party. That goes clunk on the table. Although I am perking up a bit now. Shawnee has promised to kick me under the table if it happens. From the other side of the country, mind you. Yes. I'm actually day three of the moon, and I love those days around the moon, you know, three days before.

It's just everything is so intimate and tender and alive. And I just feel in the deep river of, you know, life. It's so beautiful. And I sort of feel like I've been kicked out as the nest of that. But not, it doesn't feel bad. I actually feel quite sort of peace. peaceful and quality of you, Sophie, when you, I've got that devotional kind of presence, but that's just a feature of my life stage. It feels like that's, that's the thing that I hold on to now. That's, yeah, that's like the core energy that I mustn't abandon. So that's there at the heart of it. And, and that's,

That actually, you know, when I'm feeling, because I feel spent, you know, as the madhouse, I feel a bit spent because we've climbed a few mountains and, you know, you get to the top of the mountain and go, oh, that looks like there's another one over there. And what I really need is a good lie down and time to, because it's a nice feeling that spent feeling. You know, you've worked hard and so on and satisfaction. and I just need to recover a little before I do play another rat. Yeah. Yeah.

So day seven for me. And it's interesting listening to both of you because I'm in quite a different place. I, oh, Jesus, I've got this raucous sexual energy. kicking off in my system. I feel like in every interview I've done for the last few months, I've been talking about, you know, how horny I'm feeling and this kind of rising sexual energy and this rampant desire. It feels like it's been a perpetual theme this year, which right in this moment now is

making me blush. but it's been you know it's a very very interesting piece of cycle education that I'm having because it's such a powerful force in my body and I was feeling it this morning it's such a charge it's such a rise and I can feel I can feel my the strength of my body and the amount of energy I have at my disposal. And it's a real discipline to like rest in it to really drop in and let myself be carried by it. Like this morning I was like away, who's the rider, who's the horse here, you know, am I in the saddle? And at times it just feels like this wild horse that's run away with me and I'm really learning how to sit in the saddle of this energy and hold the reins and

yeah and ride it which is it's proving to be quite a challenge so yeah here here I am amazing it feels like life's charge or you could call it like life's erotic flow is really moving and unleashed, untamed in you. And like so many of us are on a quest to have that energy moving through and then to actually be able to ride that energy next level challenge. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's exciting to feel this because this is the most connected I've ever felt to my sexual energy.

And this is in some ways the strongest my libido has ever been. and I'm 49, turning 50 in a few months' time. And I was, you know, I've been really curious about that. And I feel like a lot of what happens in the autumn of the menstruating years, you know, in your 40s. And this has certainly been the case for me. So much of the gritty in a work that goes down. And I've had a lot of grit, a lot of challenge, has cleared the way for this. freer flow.

Yeah, it's very, very beautiful. I'm really appreciating, really appreciating the gift of this. It's very health-giving, life-giving, joy-filling. And to see a woman embodying that reality is very life-giving for all of us, I think, and it's exciting to hear that possibility is there. It makes me think of a friend that I had when I lived in Seattle

who was in her 60s, and she was having the best, sorry, 70s, having the best sex of her life with multiple lovers. I was like, yes, that is how I want to be 70. So you're giving me like, yes, that's how I want to feel when I'm 49, shiny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think menstruality holds a good, a serious key to that, actually. This is what I'm really appreciating. Menstrual cycle awareness.

Woof. I don't know if we listed it in our 100 benefits of cycle awareness, but it's way up there. Epic horniness. Yeah. Epic horniness. I mean, it's wild power, right? It is wild power. Yeah.

Well, it's topical too because we're talking about the inner summer today. So this is the second in our four-part series about the challenges, the common challenges that people experience in the different cycle phases and the limits of the cycle phase. So we're going to get into the limits and the limits and a little bit of the cycle phase. So we're going to get into the limits in a little bit, but we're going to start by talking about the challenges of the inner summer. And it's interesting because for many people, they might be listening and thinking, well, I don't find inner summer difficult. Like it's got a reputation for being the easy or just the easy, breezy part of the cycle.

But there will also be people listening for whom it's the hardest phase. And we have a couple of stories to share from the community as well. And to name up top, and Sharnie, you noted this. when you were noodling on this episode that the challenges of the inner summer often go unrecognised and unnamed and maybe even unnoticed in us because the world loves the challenges in a way like one of the big problems or challenges within the summer is we override ourselves and our needs and we just go into like people pleasing mode and no one's worried about that like no one everyone's happy when we're overriding ourselves and doing everything for everyone else so it might be that there are challenges

that are necessarily being being clocked. So let's talk about them. Let's share some of the challenges that people experience in the inner summer. Yeah, it's a good one, actually. I think a lot of people who get into menstrual cycle awareness don't recognize actually the edges they come up against in themselves in the inner summer. And it's only with time and attention that they do discuss.

the challenges. So, yeah, what are some of the common challenges people feel? The first thing that comes to my mind, actually, is a feeling of flatness arriving in this season, which is, quote, unquote, supposed to be a time where you are full of energy and actually finding that you feel really flat and in some cases burned out, exhausted. I think a lot of people feel the collapse that happens here in this inner summer place. You know, I'm thinking to, and we've heard this so much over the years, because on our courses, for example, in our cycle power course where we focus on each of inner seasons in turn. When we spend time focusing on inner summer, we guide people in a process

to look behind the scenes of their everyday experience of that season and to get insight into what's really going on and see a little more deeply into what's actually happening for them. And it tends to reveal a lot. And one of the common things we've heard over the years are people sharing images of their inner summer which follow this kind of imagery or theme where they find themselves in a barren landscape like a desert where there is no protection, no shade and just the harshness of the beating sun. And they feel unquenched, they feel thirsty, they feel thirsty, they feel lost and there's a sense of it kind of there being no end to this desert that it's just

going to go on and on and on forever and there's in a way no way out of it like a kind of relentlessness. And it's amazing how many people tap into that kind of imagery when they look into their inner summer. And that kind of speaks to this theme of burnt outness. but yeah, relentlessness, a relentlessness, I would say. Yeah, I often feel like that now that I'm in my 40s, when I start to enter the inner summer, I'm like, everything is just too bright. Like it's too much,

and which points to another challenge which people can have, which is just overwhelm. Maybe there is a lot of energy, a lot of drive, a lot of desire, and on top of an already full life and an already full plate, It's just this sense of too many things, too much going on, can't cope with all the things all the time. Yeah. I think people feel a lot of pressure in the summer, particularly because, you know, archetypally, it's painted as the time, you know, where you've got energy and you could or, I'm going to quote unquote again, should get shit done. People feel a lot of pressure to do stuff.

And as you say, on top of a life that is already so full of doing where our lives are so heavily weighted in the doing of things. And now suddenly you've got like seven days where you're supposed to do stuff. I mean, yeah, it can be hugely overwhelming. And that really kind of speaks to the monoculture that we have, you know, both in terms of how we really valorize this first half of the cycle, the spring, summer, which is all about doing. And we've lost reverence and appreciation for the second half of the cycle, which is much more restorative, much more about receiving, much more about being and the value of that.

So, yeah, because we live in a culture that is so heavily weighted in that way, then when we get to the summer, it's like, what? More productivity, more doing, like come the hell on. Yeah, a feeling of disconnect from ourselves. Like, who am I? What's going on? Just a feeling of being uprooted somehow for some people. I mean, that really speaks to the tiredness that people are carrying

and what you're speaking about there. One of the other thoughts I'm holding is, I had this phrase going off in my head, all dressed for the party but nowhere to go. And I think this possibly when you're young, you might have this, where there is energy in your being, but it's directionless. You don't quite know how to use it or where to put it. I think that's something that can happen in the summer for some people.

It certainly a little bit echoed my experience. Yeah. Yes, you've suddenly kind of, you've got all these possibilities, but and there's a bit of overwhelm with that actually it's like yeah what do I do where do I go what do I focus my energy on that lostness yes and and I'm also thinking that's connected or similar can play out similarly for people who maybe aren't in relationship and you know they're feeling a lot of this rising sexual energy and this yearning to connect and to have that kind of contact with someone and there's no one there, you know, they're on their own. And the like

bereftness or lostness of that, like what to do with that kind of drive to connect and that longing for sensuality and touch and so on. Yeah. Oh, yes. I can sort of feel the grief there actually. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people speak about that and a sort of low. loneliness that you can feel in the inner summer. Again, it's interesting because archetypally, the summer is a place where we are at our most sociable. And yet, so many people can feel isolated here because, well, for all sorts of reasons. But I think a big part of it is that this season is really asking us to be.

be ourselves. And if we are really struggling to be ourselves in the world and bring ourselves into relationship with each other, we can just be left feeling really alone, you know, really, really isolated. So, and it can look like everyone else is at the party and everyone else is having fun and everyone else has got a lover or a friend and, you know, you're, you're the only one. Yeah, that feeling of being left out, I think, is quite common. And there's another very potent left out feeling that can come, because obviously inner summer is around ovulation. And for anyone who is trying to conceive or has previously tried to conceive and hasn't been able to, ovulation can become so triggering. And this was my reality for four years was.

Or ovulation was stressful, very stressful. Yeah. Pressure. There was so much pressure, I mentioned. Yeah, the least sexy thing in the world. It's like I must have sex now when I don't want to. Yeah. Oh, for both parties.

Yeah. Oh, I feel the ache in my heart when I think back to it, you know. And I was really grateful to Zoe who responded in circle to your question, you know, asking for different experiences of inner summer challenge. And she said when I was in my 30s and going through the trauma of infertility and trying to conceive through IVF, my ovulatory phase was incredibly triggering. I'd feel so much rage and distress at this time. And now, age 49, I still feel echoes of that rage at times. You know, so to really honour that that goes on. It's not something that ends necessarily when the capacity to conceive ends.

It carries on and it runs really deep and looks different for all of us. Yeah, and I'm really grateful to Zoe for sharing that because I think many people experience versions of that in the process of trying to conceive and some to greater degrees than others. It's also reminding me of how gagged one can feel in the inner summer, you know, where the depth of feeling that we're holding because of circumstances in our life like that, dealing with infertility or because of trauma that we're holding in our bodies.

The summer is archetypally the place where we come into an expression of something. And wow, if you're holding a lot of feeling, a lot of rage, a lot of grief, a lot of anger, and you don't know how to or don't have the means to or the safe environment in which you can allow that expression to come through you, that feeling of, you know, feeling gagged or having to kind of keep the lid on something to stay socially acceptable or, because you don't think you'll be understood. That, God, that is, you know, that feeling in summer, I think a lot of people can relate to that I can feel it in my throat right now.

Something just can't come through. And it's such a crippling feeling not to feel the flowering of that emotion that you might be with in the summer. Yeah, not have a place to express that, whether that's verbally or even creatively. You know, often a lot of people find that they can use their creativity as a channel for that expression. And the inner summer really, like, supports us with that. But if we don't have that channel in some way, yeah, we can, we can be left feeling. Actually, I want to say quite tense, quite shut down, quite hardened because we aren't able to express what we're feeling. Or bereft is the word I'm thinking of.

Yeah. Yeah, there was another story in the community that spoke to, yeah, a kind of bereftness or a melancholy along with a lot of other intense feelings. and it was from Lorna and she said, intense energies rise inside me and they're often impossible to control. One is sexual with everything feeling at its most potent. One is an all-consuming melancholy for lives I didn't get to live. And one is a rage that wants to burn everything down.

So there's fullness. And then she says, I have no answers yet, just a bucket full of rage, melancholic nostalgia and horniness and a hankering for destruction. That's quite a line-up, Lorna. Intense. Yeah, really, really intense. And I hope in this conversation, when we come to talking about more about the archetypal pattern of the cycle, it will help to make sense of why some of those challenges are happening.

But the thing I want to name here, also because I happen to know your age, Lorda, but this is true for anyone listening, is that the life stage or phase you're in is going to really color your experience of the inner summer. And so you being in the autumn of your menstruating years in the quickening, where there is a lot of undoing that's happening, and you get taken just overall in this life phase into a reflective place where you are looking back at and kind of taking stock of what has been. There's something very healthy and right that the grief that you feel about the things unfulfilled and unrealized,

get recognized, get seen, get named. and yeah, it's, I just want to say it's good, even as it's a really challenging thing to face in oneself. It's part of the clear out that's happening in the lead up to menopause is really acknowledging your unfulfilled lives, you know, and we all have them because when we're younger, we have big dreams. multifaceted, multi-passionate, multi-dimensional dreams. And we are but mere humans who will only ever live one life in this life. And it's often like when you get to mid-40scent, you're like, okay, so I'm really not going to become an astronaut.

Yeah. It's really not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. My side is not 2020 anymore. That ship has sailed. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. Yes, I've had a few of those conversations. with myself. I know you really wanted to be an astronaut. You would have made a great astronaut. No, I know my other one is, well, you know, my path is a war correspondent. At least I crack myself up about that one, actually.

Wow. Yeah. You would have not very sensitive. It just makes me laugh this one because, you know, a war correspondent has to have a bag packed and has to go out the door instantly, you know, when something happens. And I will go, just give me just give me. just give me about three days or so. I just have to, you know, it's like, I can't just want to.

That's what it's like now. It's really, it's so funny. I love that. But you know what it's also reminding me of? And this is actually really coming back to this conversation about the inner summer is the reason you want to war correspondent, Alexandra, if you need to know, is because it actually doesn't suit your nature, even as we had aspirations.

And this is, you know, we're joking about it now, but part of what getting to know our inner summer and in fact all the seasons of our cycle does is help us to come to know our own nature. And that's where the kind of wild aspirations of who we think we ought to be, wanted to be, should have been meets the reality of who we are. It's like a making peace.

Yeah. A making a making peace, a making peace with it. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's a really beautiful thing to do. You go, oh, right. This is all about limits, which is what this conversation is about. You realize, Alexandra has realized, she's limited in terms of how quickly she can get out the door. And she's limited by her sensitivity in going into war zones.

Yes, but also it's the sensitivity. It takes about three days to sort of navigate, you know, because. Yeah, just stuff being in the world. I just want to go back to Laura's story before we just talk about the big archetypal panic, which is that, you know, it just speaks to the enormous life force that's at work in the summer. I mean, it's, you know, the lights are fully on here.

You know, everything, your inner lights are blazing. And that, the fact that this, you know, Lorna's story just illuminates how much change. hard there is. You know, that's life. That's raw life for you. I mean, that's freaking glorious. Not so glorious that it's exposing all this rage and grief.

But, you know, there's life there. It's extraordinary. It's wonderful. So the doors of Red School's menstruality leadership program are opening again next week. This is the world's first leadership training rooted in the power of the menstrual cycle. Alexander and Shani are hosting a free live event next week on June the 30th called How to Channel the Power of Menstruality to Step into Your Leadership. You can register for it at menstrualityleadership.com

And if you're curious about the menstruality leadership program, you can also read all about it on this page and hear some testimonials from people who have experienced it. And once the doors open on June the 30th, there's a super early bird offer where you can receive £500 off the course. until July the 29th. So you can find out all about it at menstrualityleadership.com. Now let's speak about the limits and why it's helpful for us to understand the limits of Inner Summer

and how it can help us to access the powers of Inner Summer. And we talked about this in the first of this series, but let's talk about it again because it's really important, like the archetypal patterning of the cycle. Can you walk us into that again? Yeah. I was thinking what might be good is to start off by just talking about limits in general and the necessity of them and the power of them just to kind of set the context here.

Alexandra and I were joking yesterday about what lovers of limits we have become. And if you stick around practicing menstrual cycle awareness long enough, you too will come to love limits. And it's a funny, it's a sort of funny counterintuitive counterculture thing to say that limits are powerful because, you know, we've all been inculturated to believe that more is more. And that limits are a problem, an obstacle, a boundary that thwart us. So Alexandra, I think I want to hand the mic to you here because being a post, post, post menopausal woman, like having earned the crown of eldership and it's a well-earned crown, because she has come to respect, honour and appreciate boundaries and limits. So, Miss Pope, Queen of Boundaries. Queen of boundaries.

Yeah. Wow. I suddenly feel sort of completely blank now in this invitation, which is something I live and breathe. But limits, I mean, okay, I'm going to begin by saying there's nothing more glorious than feet. feeling limitless. Can we just say, isn't it the most wonderful feeling when you feel there's no boundaries? And you know, you just feel on top of the world, which is, and you can have a taste of all that in the

inner summer, I think. Yes. Can I just, can I just catch you there? It is one of the most extraordinary feelings, one of the great steps of inner summer. You actually feel, you actually feel and believe that you are invincible, that you've gone forever and nothing can stop you. It's such a woman moment. It is. It's glorious. I always feel like the 13th fairy that's now going to come along and pop the bubble of your fantasy, which is what I'm going to do now.

But you see, actually, if we're really talking about power and effectiveness, you know, that limitless stuff is, I mean, it's fabulous, but it's going to end in tears. Can I just say that? It's going to wait and tears. And limits, this is where we must love limits and have them, because they actually, we do, it's a container. It's a container. And yes, you come up against that edge and you go,

you can't discover you, you know, you just don't have the energy to keep going and so on. And then a limit is an invitation then into, a different kind of experience of yourself. It actually wakes you up and it brings you back into yourself because that endless limitlessness actually ultimately creates a dulling and the deadening. And so limits are the container that hold us. And actually that's kind of good too in the safety sense.

But it holds us to what is truly us. And I think of limits as they potentize us. They call us into more depth. And, you know, for me, for instance, I don't have limitless energy, physical energy. I'm still the person with the same freaking ambitions and all the things I want to do and achieve. and but I don't have a physical chi in my body. And so I have to operate in a different way. I have to access a different kind of power and authority.

And I always say, you know, you step into a new kind of power post-menopause when you don't have that same capacity for do, do, do. Oh my God, do you get smarter. You get smarter, you get more effective, you get more discerning. And, well, you get maturity, basically. I like to think of maturing a little. She says. Yeah.

Years ago, I always remember hearing this environmentalist. talking about we have this whole romance of limitlessness and we need to develop a romance of limits and I wonder how am I doing am I creating a romance of limits? Oh yeah you're telling you are making it very very sexy. I hope it's sounding sexy. Or is everything just really sexy for Shawnee today? Yeah that's true. It's all very very sexy.

You're selling me too even on my day 23. Yeah. Well, as I'm listening to you, Alexandra, you're reminding me of how, you know, in the first half of the cycle, with the expansion of energy and this lovely kind of rise of, I want to say, ego strength, you know, inner confidence and just coming into a place where you feel full of yourself, that is only powerful and meaningful and effective. because that 13th fairy, which you are so beautifully embodying today, Alexandra, i.e. the limits of the cycle come along and pop that bubble. In other words, the inner summer only has the power it has because it ends and because there is this gear shift that happens when we come into the inner autumn. And as you so beautifully described, and this is the thing that I think a lot of our culture has forgotten and has kind of gone underground because

cyclical consciousness has been stamped on is that. Stampled. I'm going to say stampled. That's a new word on me. I like it. It's good. It's a combination of words. Trampled and stamped.

Yes. Stamped and stamped. Let's add it to the dictionary. Hang on. She's ready to keep. She's holding her thought. Keep going. Stampled on.

But actually, you see, I just invented a word, and that is exactly what limits do. It creates specific containment that allows for creativity to flourish. Or we could say meaning to be unearthed or something new to evolve in us and in the world. So, I mean, limits really are at the heart of what make the cycle so freaking powerful. because it is moving us constantly between this feeling of limitlessness and then this extraordinary potentizing that happens when we come into the limits and the limitations that come about in the second half of the cycle. So, Alexandra, do you want to like describe this energy dynamic now,

this archetypal patterning? I mean, we've been referencing and speaking to it. Yeah, let's just do it. Let's get into it. And I love the way you were describing it to me this morning. That really called my imagination. Yes, I was really in this image of, you know, surfing a wave. So, you know, I think, you know, menstruation, all is still, the energy is still.

And then as we come out of menstruation, you know, there's a stirring. There's like the first intimations now of some action, some wave starting to lift up your surfboard of you, you know. I mean, essentially, the art and practice of menstrual cycle awareness is the art and practice of being able to pace this energy current, how you relate to it, how you respond to it, how you can let yourself receive it and have it and trust it and yield to it, you know, rest in it. So here you are on your surfboard feeling the intimations of this movement. And in the first half of the cycle, you're on this rising wave. You're learning to ride this way that's getting bigger and bigger, this lovely energy current that is now expanding and taking you sort of higher up, if you like. It's taking you out more and more into the world. And, you know, when we come into the inner spring, there's a whole kind of cosmos.

that you inhabit there with this rising energy. Yeah, you're learning, you're learning to like find your sea legs and like stabilize on the surfboard. That's right. And move with this kind of momentum that's starting to happen. Yeah. It's like a lovely exploration that's going on, but it's not too dangerous. You're not right up there at the top of the wave yet.

Yeah, just in that becoming phase. And yes, and we've talked to all of that. of course, about the inner spring and that other podcast. And then the wave gets bigger and bigger, and you're getting now, you're coming up into the inner summer of your cycle. And here, you know, you're in that lovely stage of just, it's, there's energy there.

And hopefully now you, through the inner spring, you've learned to really settle into it and trust it as it brings you up into this wonderful, kind of momentous moment, this peak of child. Yes. And of course, you're sitting on a great big wave. And you've got to be attentive and awake and sensing a feeling. Gosh, I know there's, in our community, we have got a professional surfer and she's probably cringing at my description of surfing. Sorry, Eastie. Sorry, Eastie. You're listening in. You will do a far more sophisticated version of this. I'm suddenly self-conscious.

But anyway, I'm going to talk about energy. I'm actually loving it. I hope you're enjoying. Yeah, so we're now at a sort of real peak of energy. And, you know, that's an incredible, it's a glorious moment. Wow, all that force, power, you know, that we were alluding to earlier inside you. And you have to take responsibility for that. And, you know, you know,

you've got to ride that energy. You can't just take it for granted. You can't take yourself for granted. You're learning to handle this level of aliveness. Think of it as stages of increasing sort of aliveness of cheer you within your being or light. I often refer to it as the rising of the light. You know, we're now at midday or high noon or, you know, like midsummer. We're coming up to the solstice now.

And then summer, the summer solstice. in the Northern Hemisphere. And yes, so now we're at this peak of energy. And it's so interesting because, of course, you know what happens with waves? They peak and then there's this crash that starts to happen. And classically, of course, often at the end of the inner summer, we might feel a kind of jolt as we drop down into ourselves. And then, well, we'll come to the second half of the cycle

when we come to the inner autumn. So I think I'd probably said enough there. But the point I'm trying to make here is, well, one of the points I'm wanting to make is that each season of the cycle is like its own cosmos with its own powers that you've got to learn how to kind of ride or manage or channel. And each season comes with its own limits. And it's actually respecting the limits that allows you to actually channel those powers. experience those powers within your being. Yeah. Yeah.

And the limits of, say, the menstrual in a winter phase of the cycle are maybe a bit easier to connect with because usually, like, because our body is menstruating and is doing a lot already, we have less energy, maybe. Like, that's one of the limits or our mind or our consciousness is more amorphous. And so we have, like, less capacity for mental focus. Maybe it looks different for all of us. But how would you describe the summer limits?

I mean, yes, the summer, you know, limitless summer, what limits? You know, I was like whoopee, as we were saying earlier. But yeah, there are limits to the inner summer. Yeah, they are much less obvious and sort of harder to track. And I think in many ways they are very seductive and intoxicated. as well. So, you know, one of the limits of the inner summer that I'm certainly personally aware of is how much more, well, my mind is pretty bloody good in the inner summer, like, particularly rational and quite sort of organized and focused and logical, which is fantastic.

But there are, there's a sort of shadow side or a limit to that, which is that I don't have the same kind of lateral thinking ability that I have, for example, in my inner autumn or in my inner winter. I don't have the same sort of depth of thinking or intuitive thinking. and actually it's harder to be in touch with meaning. It's very easy to be highly functional and very effective and efficient, but to kind of lose the heart, the soul, the meaning of whatever it is you're doing. And that also plays out similarly with all this outward energy,

with all the, well, just energy you might have in general, because you're very out of focused and you can easily do a lot of things, you can very quickly get shit done. That doing mode, the limit of it is that you, it's much harder to stay present to really simply be and to trust the power of that presence, and to allow yourself to be carried, I want to say.

Yeah. So there is actually a carrying that is going on, you know, in Alexandra's description there, the wave is at its peak. You are being held by something. But that power can very quickly go to your head. And you can very easily think that, you know, It's you and you alone and it's all up to you and kind of go into a place of putting a lot of pressure on yourself and overdoing things. And forget that the yielding into what's carrying you is what really allows for this flow to be abundant, to be really generative and easy, you know, easy, easy, easy.

Yeah. I think just following on from what you have said there, Shani, about all that doingness and losing yourself, all that doingness can do is it actually builds up armouring. It's not very relational. You're in your left brain. And what I love about each season is it always has its wonderful strength. but it does have these shadows side to it.

And it's often hard to see the shadow side of the summer because the person we, you know, classically might become in the summer is so valorized in our counter, you know, this wonderful doing energy and looking so capable and getting everything done. But actually it's not, there's no vulnerability there. And if you haven't got vulnerability happening, you are, I think, a danger to the people around you, actually.

It's harder to have depth of connections. Yes, exactly. With the people you love. It's a lot about going into service and doing things for people, but you lose that relational depth of connection, yeah, which is really interesting. You spoke about this left brain stuff and your mind being very fast

and how that fast mind will just miss so much nuance. So the summer is just so much more black and white. There's no subtlety. You know, it can, well, I shouldn't say there's no subtlety, you know, but subtlety gets lost, I think. The nuanceing gets lost. Everything becomes much more literal. And of course, you use the word soullessness, Shani.

You know, as you described that sort of underlying energy dynamic and the archetypal patterning that lies beneath the powers of the summer, you pointed to the fact that this is a peak moment. And it's a place of arrival. So much like the inner winter, you know, where menstruation happens, it's a landing into something and ovulation, the moment when the egg is released is a kind of landing in that flowering. And of course, the other two seasons are the transitional seasons. So part of what that gives us within the summer is this feeling of stability. And actually a feeling of, you know, we've spoken about the invincibility that we can feel, but it comes from a sense of permanence.

Isn't it funny how, you know, in the inner summer, we're all like, this is going to go on forever, I'm going to go on forever, everything's going to stay the same. It really feels like nothing will ever change. And that's a wonderful power. But the limit to that kind of consciousness is a lack of awareness of the, unknown of the mystery of the inevitable changeability of of ourselves and of life and of everything.

So we do, yeah, we kind of meet that edge, I think. And a big part of the bubble being popped when we get to the end of the inner summer is the realization that that that, permanent was a fallacy, a con that we fell for again and again every month. We keep falling for it, as we should. I mean, this is the thing. There's nothing wrong with falling for it. Apart from when we put that inner summer invincible self in charge of our calendar for the next month, which I have done so many times. Why on earth did I think I could do this and this? Because I was in that invincibility of the inner summer and the permanent. of it. Yeah. Yeah, you do have to get smart. You've got to learn the tricks of the train.

It's like, yeah. So can you walk us into the cyclical self-care practice that you teach on cycle power? But can you walk us into it now that can help us to respect the limits so that we can access the power of in a summer? It's interesting. We've got a cyclical self-care practice, There's also something more that we need to have here as well. One of the things I'm very conscious of is this thing of one's own worth, feeling one's own worth. And, you know, at menstruation, we get this extraordinary kind of awakening to our own goodness and rightness if we're able to honour the process of the cycle.

Even to the smallest degree, we get to get little doses. So and then, you know, and what we're learning to do is to hold that as we come out of the cycle. And in our inner spring where, you know, we're navigating being able to hold this little nation sense of our own goodness out in the world. And the idea, you know, it's a personal development program, menstrual cycle awareness. And if you're honoring the cycle, you're quietly strengthening this sense of worth. And, and as you come in. into the inner summer, you know, you are more exposed now. It's that feeling of, you know, suddenly the lights are bright and you're being seen more. And if our sense of self-worth is wobbly,

then, this is overwhelming. It's just too much. And so the self-care practice we actually have here is about self-celebration. And I also want to say self-affirmation. Just, real importance of very deliberately saying, just claiming myself, it's a real act of agency, a choicefulness. And if you're practicing cycle awareness, it's almost like you sort of kind of conscious, you need to almost write it in your diary somehow to just remind yourself of just the power of just actually speaking it out loud, of just valuing yourself, just as a way of boosting your sense of your own okayness because that's going to give you the, I want, it's a bit of a crude image, but the hard wiring to be able to handle that charge.

And there are other things that are really important that we were actually really feeling into very strongly this morning. And Shani, do you want to pick up this? Well, I was just reflecting on how the cycle is, this process of rooting in to rise and how the promise of the inner summer is this promise to live in into our authentic liberated selves in the world to really truly deeply be who we are in the world and to let that be seen um So as I'm saying that, I'm imagining you can all hear what a profound and lifelong challenge that is, because we all have parts of ourselves that don't feel okay, that don't feel worthy, that we feel ashamed of,

that don't feel welcomed and accepted. And it is a very profound developmental journey into allowing, liberating more and more of ourselves in the world to be seen. So I just want to bring in this word permission as being very, very good medicine in the inner summer. Whatever it is that you are experiencing the good, the bad, the ugly, shameful, in your own way, whether this is even just quietly with your soul. or with someone you trust and love,

is just to give yourself permission to let that be seen. And to gradually grow into your ability to allow more and more of yourself to exist in the world. Because ultimately we all want to be known for who we are, like for who we really are. And the summer can easily, the inner summer can easily seduce us into our performing selves, into our socialized selves. You know, that is one of the shadows of the inner summers.

We can put masks on to be acceptable. And we can armor ourselves up in a way that makes it safe to be seen. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the kind of developmental process that we're in is one of de-armoring. more and more and allowing more and more of who we are to be seen and heard in the world. Something that can really help with this because I know I'm kind of laying out a, you know, it's quite a, it's quite a practice that one. Something practical that can really help with this in the inner summer and of course through

the whole cycle is this. is this practice of staying in your body, actually, doing this through in micro moments, feeling and sensing your own interior. This is the practice of interception, which is one of our menstruality, dark arts. Because in this act of noticing yourself, your body, your somatic experience, your felt sense, you are learning to anchor yourself in the truth of who you are

moment by moment. And that really helps with creating the inner safety that we need to be visible in our fullness, in our wholeness in the world more and more. A menstrual cycle awareness is building the skill in us, it's kind of training us day by day to check in, to feel our body, to presence ourselves in our body. And yeah, we're growing our capacity to stay present as we show up in the world and as we're being seen. I was musing at how over the kind of course of my life, I managed being visible by kind of performing. you know, that was what made it okay to be seen. And thanks or no thanks to menstrual cycle awareness,

I've been in this ongoing, like, de-arbering process, particularly now in these last few years. And one of my inner summer challenges right now, very, it's a very, um, um, edgy challenge. is to stay in this increasingly undefended place and to let myself be seen in that. And I mean to literally be looked at, you know, that's the edge for me, to actually have somebody looking at me in that naked place, in that increasingly naked place. I'm even blushing now.

So it's a workout. And I'm finding it very edgy. I can feel all this shyness that is coming to the fore. Yeah. And interception and just feeling my body has created these coordinates of safety in my being that is making it more and more possible to be looked at. Thank you for sharing that. And I love that sentence, coordinates of safety.

That's beautiful. There's so much empowering that. Isn't there? Isn't there? That word interception. Yeah. It's just fine art. It's fine, fine art of keeping this connection,

this embodiment within ourselves. I mean that's what cycle awareness is ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You know what it's making me think of it, of how natural it is actually for us to do that. And when you look out at the natural world

and you see animal life, for example, they're so fully inhabiting itself, like the way, like at the moment, all the ducks are mating and having babies down the river and they're fighting. So they'll get into these scuffles and then they'll shake it off. And then they'll carry on.

swimming and they're just so in their bodies and you know part of the quandary of being human is we're here in our animal bodies with all these thoughts and big ideas and big visions and we can just so lose track of our bodies but right here the coordinates of safety are like right here to be found and tracked and yeah rooted into thanks for sharing that shiny big work you're doing there especially when you're like a public figure you know it's not like an announcement naked public figure. Oh, God. Yeah, and it's really moving

because, like, that you're on that quest, because there are so many public figures who, well, all public figures, really, there's this, you can just tell there's this armouring and this performance going on, but maybe the kind of leadership that we need to move into is just more and more, like, the ancient way of showing up exactly as we are as leaders.

But boy, confronting, hey, yeah. Your face when you said that, Sophie. I mean, I feel a bit sick. It's mightily nerve-wracking. Being visible, being visible. Really, in our undefended state, my God, that is my spiritual practice. That is utterly my spiritual practice. And so delicious to really be encountered in that way

and to encounter others in that way. Isn't it? Okay, well. conversation to be continued as we as we get into the autumn here in the northern hemisphere we'll bring the the autumn episode out but that's been so illuminating today thanks you too it's been a very rewarding conversation actually I feel I feel sort of settled in myself actually and soothed almost yeah and we always love hearing from you you listening if you're You know, what's this stirred in you?

Or are you feeling landed in yourself? Or, yeah, what's this sparked for you? We love hearing from you. All right. Wow. Until next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Thanks so much for being with us today. If you know someone that would benefit from this episode and what we talked about, please do forward it to them. And we would also really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast, either on Apple Podcasts or spot. It helps those two platforms show the podcast to more new people, so to spread the reach of this work of this podcast. Okay, that's it for this week. I'll be with you again in a couple of weeks time. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.