The Menstruality Podcast - 64. How to Awaken Your Premenstrual Power (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

Have you ever “lost it” in the days running up to your bleed? Of course you have! We all have. Today we break down Sophie’s latest premenstrual losing it episode to find the gold inside it - the power that the premenstruum is awakening within us.We explore:What’s going on in the irritability of the premenstruum? Why do we often feel so much more permeable at this time? The sacred role of premenstrual vulnerability in the process of stepping into our power.The biggest key when it comes to holding ourselves through premenstruum, and the self discipline we need to take responsibility for our own power. ---Registration will open soon for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can find out more www.menstrualityleadership.com---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.school

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you for being here. This one is especially for you if you've ever lost it in the days running up

to your period. And haven't we all, all let's face it we explore why this kind of losing it premenstrually is actually a really potentially powerful moment we're looking at the sacred role of premenstrual vulnerability in helping us to actually step into our power. It's a really exciting time here in the Red School year because we've just recently completed this year's menstruality leadership program with 129 amazing new graduates who are out working their own unique forms of feminine leadership, menstrual magic in the world, some quietly, intimately, some out there in the public sphere. And we're now actually getting ready to open registration for 2023. So today we wanted to talk about something, a topic that's really key to the programme. It's also the most popular topic on the podcast so far, which is the power of the

premenstruum. I think it's so popular because so many of us find this part of the cycle challenging, but we get that there's something big at work. And we're actually going to look at it today through the lens of my latest premenstrual losing it moment, which involved me yanking the phone out of my husband aide's hands and delivering some day 25 truth bombs to the person on the other end of the phone. So thank you for joining me as I air my dirty laundry in public. I'd love to hear what you think. Let's get started with how to awaken your premenstrual power. Good morning you two. Are you ready to get premenstrual? Yeah I think I may be. A couple of us are already quite premenstrual right now let's do a cycle check-in

but let's do a different slightly different one let's do a three-word check-in so three words to describe how we each are um I'll start because and I and I have to have a tiny preamble it's my three words because of course i'm post-menopause but i am in an interesting place because it's coming to the end of the year and it's just a very gray day here it's very gray and there's the the phase of the moon that I always feel the most, obviously full moon I experience very strongly, but what I call the void of the moon, which is what we're in now, because this new moon is on Wednesday, I think. So I'm in the real void of the moon, the dark moon.

And I feel this one, and i feel today the emptiness and you know it's very interesting it's a very creative space to work sorry i'm not giving you three words today i can't do precision at the moment. There's a seriousness and a kind of deep presence, and it requires a lot of me. Four and a bit words, I think. Well, it wouldn't be you if it wasn't rebellious. Thank you. How about you, Sharni? I feel like you might be trying to tether wild horses i don't

know if i can do the same three words either yeah because i'm i'm cycle day 14 but i'm feeling very strong um resonances with what alexandra is sharing i'm feeling the place we are in the year, the season outside, this darkness of the moon. And being with both of you who are in this void place, it's just I feel like I'm falling into synchrony with you both. I have this combination of I'm feeling expansive but also in a kind of unknown empty blank place but there's a good amount of other life force in my system I can feel I have energy and you Sophie well I've been really in the thick of all we're going to talk about in

this episode pre-menstrually for the past week and I'm now on day 28 and I'm waiting for my blood to come which I'm expecting today or tomorrow maybe and I it was so beautiful because I fell through the bottom of myself and all the anger and the churning emotion that was coming up for me into this place of bliss and softness and real tenderness and I can I feel skinless right now I feel very very permeable I have to be so careful about what's entering my field right now and and i do feel very blissful nice beautiful i feel us in the intro in an interesting soft and tender place together as we embark upon this conversation which feels like a good atmosphere to have a fierce and big conversation about the premenstruum and how the premenstrual phase of

the cycle can help us to step into our power, which I just feel is so core to everything you two are about in the world. This is so core to who you both are. I wanted to kick us off with a quote from Wild Power. I think it's a quote from from wild power you dropped it into the document here i'm assuming it's from wild power actually it's a quote from something that we talked about on the wild power immersion i don't think it's an actual book yeah okay so we're getting some behind the scenes info and you said with awareness the autumn so you're talking about the inner autumn, the pre-Monstrum, the autumn alchemizes powerlessness, victimhood, unconsciousness into responsibility, self-awareness, self-discipline, and the ability to really stand in your authority and be wise with your power and how you use it. Oh, can I just say, that's a bloody good quote there now that I hear it. What are you loving about it?

Well, it's very real for me in this moment, actually, because I mean, I'm at the end of the moon cycle, but I am in this very stripped back place. So there's a lot of complexity of feeling in me because I have slept badly last night and not to put that out into the world, but to pull it in to me. So there's complexity in me because I'm at the, you know, I'm coming out of writing the book which has held me for the last three years or so and gosh the discipline of holding the empty space and letting all these feelings come up and when you're feeling a bit rough as well it's kind of a master class in being responsible that's what i'm experiencing

the thing that i appreciate about that statement is the naming of attention as being this alchemical capacity and the recognition that it's our presence within the disturbance and the powerlessness and the disruption and hurt and pain that is what transforms it into power it's an incredible thing to know it's so counter our conditioning it's so counter our training in some ways it's so counter our our sort of instincts as humans we avoid pain we dissociate or separate or disconnect from strong feelings so there's that layer of I want to call innocent impulse but then there's this other layer of maturity and self-awareness and holding that brings us into an entirely different relationship with these troubles in inverted commas. I've actually got a story from my premenstruum this month that might be fun to share and we could use it as a bit of a lens for the conversation because it's so relevant

to this statement. So we're in the middle of a house renovation with my family at the moment and we're having to live in the house while it's being renovated because of COVID, because of Brexit, because of lots of things. The prices have gone up and we have to be here. So I'm living inside the literal ripping apart of my home and it really hit me this premenstruum.

There's this line from Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins. He's very tired. And he says, I feel like too little butter spread over too much bread. And that's how I felt this week. I can't take any more lying from the builders., just consistently saying they'll come and they don't. My whole ground floor is covered in plaster and I've got a toddler I'm trying to look after. And then he got sick and he was literally throwing up on me, like mountains of clothes and sheets getting covered in sick and our washing machine isn't plumbed in. So I have no way of washing the clothes for this beautiful little sick baby. And the builders keep saying they're going to show up and they don't.

And I just reached this point on day 26 where I was inside powerlessness and victimhood. And there was a lot of unconsciousness going on. I felt blown about by the weather of all these other people who are in control of very important things in my life and because I practice menstrual cycle awareness I knew that this was a potentially dangerous but also potentially powerful moment and I was given an opportunity by life because Aid, my husband, was on the phone to the builder. And I decided with all this premenstrual rage, fury and power coursing through me to take the phone off Aid and start talking to the builder myself. And what came out, it was probably more polite and kind than I'm remembering because my critic tends

to remember things quite fiercely, but I feel like I shouted and cried and said, we have a toddler in the middle of a building site. He's being sick. I cannot manage this. You have to prioritize us. You have to stop lying and you have to prioritize us and he was shocked I could hear him on the phone okay okay I hear you yes yes yes sure we can and I sort of put gave the phone back to aid and I went off shaking and I went and took the dog for a walk to kind of let the all the energy come out of my system I'm really proud of myself in that moment because I knew what was happening in me. I knew the amount of emotional energy and therefore power that was in my system. And I contained myself, held myself because of menstrual cycle awareness. And I feel like I was able to transmute some of

this victimhood into a powerful act. And I was able to hold it so much that it didn't just become a torrent of insult and rage and abuse and therefore destroy the relationship with our builders that we actually do really need so we can get this house finished and I feel like everything you say in that sentence is inside this story you know I was able to stand in my authority shakily half crying a little bit shouting but I did it messily imperfectly what a brilliant story I'm sure we've all experienced some version of that and I'm sure we've all experienced the other version where it doesn't quite work according to plan you know where we get taken over and we are unable to hold ourselves and take responsibility and we land up really acting out and putting it on the other and destroying something That's the risk here is the destruction of something,

someone or ourselves as the case may be. And what I love in your story as well, Sophie, is the things that the premenstruum really gifts us. I can hear in your story, it's this, you really took your own side. That's what I'm hearing. You really took your own side. This is the situation that I'm in. This is what I'm struggling with. And this is what I need. And with that, you really laid out the boundaries. Like I can't take X, Y, and Z. This is not okay with me. and you asked for what you needed and you were so

fiercely truthful you just called it like you're lying and it's not okay that quality of truth speaking along with all the boundary setting and the self-responsibility and the caring for your needs it's powerful whoosh what do you think Alexandra well I'm echoing you Shani it's an amazing example so essentially that day 26 or day just the end of the cycle is our most vulnerable point where all our defenses start dropping so it is the moment where we can lose it and in a sense you lost it and and shani uh sort of separated something out here by saying you um you didn't act out you you didn't lose it in the sense of becoming destructive and abusive or whatever either to yourself or to the people around you you lost it in the sense that you dropped all kind of self-censoring and all sort of politenesses all that kind of social yeah yeah the censoring and the filters that we normally have

yeah censoring and the filters fall away at this point so you have your kind of truest voice that comes out at this point in the pre-menstruum but if you're not awake to the process of the pre-menstruum then your true voice just comes out as a torrent of destruction and this is this is the power of the premenstrual way this is how the premenstrual brings us educates us into our power the premenstrual sort of releases our power yeah i just want to really acknowledge the disciplined work you've done over many many cycles sophie to build this self-awareness but it's this alignment so you have an alignment with yourself which is forever growing and getting you know it's it's it's a keep evolving feast process that one

but there was this alignment that happened and this is what i love about this power that comes out in this point you could speak in a way you spoke in a very strong way you were very critical but when you're aligned with this power people hear you that's what i think i remember from my premenstruum when you're aligned actually even though it's shocking and they go oh you know and they're because they're being attacked essentially it's a waking up for them and they don't kind of come back with shit or abuse or go well i'm out of here i I'm going. They can hear it. That's what's so amazing about that power. That's the sort of punchline I wanted to throw in. Yeah, that is what's amazing.

There is this, in a way, the lancing of a boil. So for the builder and for you, there's been this buildup over time, you know, of his unconsciousness and lack of care etc and for you of tolerating of tolerating of tolerating of tolerance sort of build up of something and then this truth-speaking voice this unfiltered straight up authority lances that boil and what happens is as alexandra said it tends to be well received or it tends to actually shift the ground between you and in the situation and bring the situation or your relationship into a new level of something it's in other words it's evolutionary this catalytic power evolves things so the question I have for you um Sophie is what

happened after this conversation like how's it going with the builder since then it's good so he's stepped up he gets the situation that we're in and he is showing up more so now we know exactly when the plaster is coming and he's being honest I said so will the plaster be finished be finished by Friday and he wrote back if I'm being honest I don't know I thought yes he's finally being honest and there's some vulnerability in that for him it's not easy for a bloke to say I don't know yeah in his position so yeah he's being honest and that's what I need actually I don't need a fake promise of something exactly ending I need to know what is happening so I know how to take care of my family around what's happening. So it has catalyzed a new level of relationship with us. Do you know what I find so touching about this?

And it even brings tears to me, Sophie, is I think of what you freed up for him. Exactly. In other words, he's had to like bullshit and, you know, like put himself under pressure and sort of almost be faking and masking things. What you've done is you said to him, be real with me, be straight with me. How incredibly freeing is that? This is what I love about this premenstrual power. It liberates us all. It's so beautiful. Like you said about the boil, it's getting all of the dross and crap out. All of the lack of honesty, all of the unspoken tension.

Just clear them all away. Let's be human to human. I have a problem. I need your help. Help me. And we're in dialogue, clear dialogue dialogue i just want to capture that it's evolutionary that power that losing it power has the potential when you're aligned to be evolutionary that's really well articulated shirley and there's a bit of an moving through the eye of the needle piece here in that

it's and we're going to break this down in the podcast but it's it's challenging to hold ourselves and to create that alignment so that the power can stream through cleanly and it's also challenging to do it in a world which doesn't yet recognize at all the power that we're talking about here and in fact the pre-munch drum has been shamed mocked called hysteria um subsumed inside the patriarchal culture that we live in so this is phd level in a work that we're talking about here, isn't it? And it looks different for each of us. Yes, absolutely. What we're talking about here isn't easy. I just want to acknowledge that.

There is so much. It takes so much. It demands so much of us. But this is what cycle awareness does, is it really tutors us in all the skill and awareness required to be able to transform the premenstruum uh from this powerlessness into power um yeah and round after round month after month of cycle awareness this is this is alexandra and i often talk about the premenstruum as being big school you know it's really this is really grown-up stuff and if I may bring in a building analogy as I want to do at the moment

I feel like menstrual cycle awareness is the scaffolding that allows us to climb on into our process and feel held and secure and what we're going to share today is a couple of the tools that within that scaffolding we can use to craft our way into this path of alignment and power and to walk us into one of those, Alexandra you mentioned the vulnerability that is pretty much always present, it always is for me in my experience of the premenstruum and as we know from our our good friend Brene Brown she you know vulnerability is at the heart of she's shown through her research that vulnerability is at the heart of all the good things in life of love of relationship of courage of meaning of leadership so can you to help us to to break

down the role that vulnerability is playing here in the premenstruum helping us to step into our power yeah I noticed that to be able to speak about the vulnerability of the premenstruum and how it can step us into our power, I realize I have to preface it by talking about the importance of receiving the affirmation and nourishment and the strengthening powers, the sort of affirming powers of the cycle particularly of menstruation i think if you have i'll say more about that moment so the pre-menstruum makes us more vulnerable but if we're all very already pretty vulnerable and you know we're not feeling so great about ourselves and uh very under supported in who we are in the world for whatever reason then that vulnerability in the premenstruum is not great can feel what would be the word shani too much really yeah overwhelmed

it's overwhelmed it's too much and you are lost to it yeah it's all all consuming all consuming so i want to just briefly put the context so that we can talk about the premenstruum, the vulnerability that allows us to really find our power and grow into it, which is that the first part of that, well, menstruation itself, if we're able to really drop at menstruation and have spaciousness for ourselves, and this is key, we can get this extraordinary experience of love and affirmation of ourselves, a sense of, oh i remember it every month it was so freaking sweet to be restored to this to feel oh yeah i felt like i was plugged into the universe

so i had this kind of goodness reminder every month because i carried a lot of shame and then the first half of the cycle that the building up of the energy that just having chi in your system just having energy in your system feels great is kind of affirming it builds something in us so you know and by the time we get to the summer of the cycle there's a certain ideally you know one should have a taste of a little bit of invincibility you're like yeah i am good i am great i could conquer the world i'd love us all to have you know a little percentage of that going on so can you hear how now i've got something in the system so now i come to the premenstruum which is big school and the premenstruum is a sort of slowly sort of it's an undoing process it's like yeah it's like you're being more exposed

to the elements of who you are and to the elements of what's happening in the world and it's that exposure that gives you the what's the wording shiny I could fill in the blank but I want to just trace back slightly because there's one other piece that I'm holding which I think really fits and sort of answers where you're going which is part of this affirmation that happens in the first half of the cycle is also this in a way autopilot we go into of our kind of of our habits some some good some not so good but we can free wheel a bit where there's a lovely autopilot which in a way holds us in a bubble we don't have to kind of be as choiceful or mindful we're in a way carried we're in the flow of something and part of what happens, which is where you're leading, Alexandra, is this habituation suddenly gets interrupted.

And when we kind of come out of like autopilot, we start to see things because we haven't been paying so much attention. Suddenly we see things and part of that seeing things is we're exposed to detail and feeling and situations that had been outside of our awareness so there's this waking up that happens, like we suddenly become more aware. And with that more awareness, we're opening up well to ourselves and our lives, but we're also opening up to the world.

So it's like that protection that we were in is suddenly stripped away and we're much more awake and and with that comes a feeling of vulnerability because there's much there's much more that we're dealing with yes and I often think when there's more going on, it requires more presence. It requires more attention. Yeah. And which is often why, you know, we feel very irritable in the premenstruum is because there is suddenly so much more going on for us, so much more to hold, so much more to

be with. And that irritation is like a reaction because we're needing space yeah we need more space to have more capacity for all that's coming in to our awareness it's so honoring what you're saying because the world might say well you're being a bitch right now or you're being over hypersensitive right now and what you're doing is actually I feel so honored by it in my the week I've just had you're naming everything that's going on inside emotionally psychologically spiritually you're illustrating the truth of what's happening inside us which which the world doesn't see so grateful to you

for sharing it because I can track it back in my experience of this month I was invincible in summer it was really loud but I was still managing to get arty up and out and out on our adventures come back and set up his high chair in some random place of the house and cook him a meal using a toaster and a microwave like on my on my bed and and it was just flowing I just did it and I was tolerating and tolerating and tolerating as you named earlier and then suddenly the premenstruum arrives and it's all too much it's too loud it's too big it's too confusing it's too overwhelming and then the the response well the vulnerability in me pulled out this response to the builders, which changed things.

And I love your reminder, Alexandra, of the goodness reminder that we get at menstruation if we're able about this earlier how the vulnerability of the pre menstruum it opens us up we're feeling more where things are being revealed to us and the this vulnerability then triggers our defenses yeah and the inner critic appears as our first line of defense yeah that is a sure sign of defenses kicking in yeah and our critic kicks it yeah it's so interesting Alexandra and I were talking about this last week and I'd never seen it quite so clearly but the but the vulnerability that we feel is such an uncomfortable place to be. But of course, our defenses kick in when we start to feel vulnerable and we start to want to defend ourselves against the world. But also we can kind of turn that in on ourselves. And the inner critic is, of course, such a prolific feature of the premenstruum. It's definitely got a seat at this table.

And we were just kind of marveling at how necessary that is as a way to meet the vulnerability. As Shani just mentioned, and as I'm sure you know, the critic plays such a huge role in our lives, which is why we teach so much about the inner critic and about the pre-menstruum on this podcast and it's a really key component of the menstruality leadership program which we've been chatting about today. It's the immersive leadership training that Sharni and Alessandra have been creating and evolving over 13 or 14 years now. Each year we invite what always turns out to be a wise, diverse, passionate group of people to commit to illuminating the power of

their own unique menstrual cycle awareness process. If you're intrigued to hear more about the program we're actually offering a free webinar on december the 8th your menstrual cycle your path to purpose-filled life i'll add the link to it in the show notes you can also find it on instagram and if you're not on our newsletter list you can go to our website at redschool.net and join it today as we're going to send out a link to join the webinar later on today. So I hope you'll join us. And for now, let's get back to how to awaken your premenstrual power. Yeah, I'm just very conscious in myself often.

I mean, there's criticism that's important to be spoken you know that your system is an intelligent force in you but I'm also noticing how this criticism comes up in me almost as a kind of Pavlovian reaction and when I pause i realize it's because i'm vulnerable and it's a line of defense you know and instead of being with the vulnerability um i am being critical yeah something of others or whatever or equally i could be of myself and the radical act is to be able to feel the vulnerability and to be able to stay with that to position myself within that and gosh it requires quite a lot sometimes to do that. But can you hear how this is part of the, well,

the awareness building that we named at the beginning of the pre-menstrual room? But the self-discipline is required. There are some days I can do it and there are some days I'm not so good at doing it. But I can do it and there's some days I'm not so good at doing it but I can do it afterwards it's partly what the critic is doing when it shows up in defense of us like that is it's helping us take responsibility for what's really going on with us because often when we criticize others we are abdicating responsibility we're putting responsibility on the plate of the other um you know it's your fault you're not doing it right etc and if we can catch those moments and really come back to ourselves and and be curious about

what it is we're feeling vulnerable about um that really opens up the way to us being able to take responsibility for ourselves. And I think this is just the most brilliant thing to know, because for me, anyway, it helps me feel so much more compassionate towards other people who are being critical of me because I appreciate that there is vulnerability that they're experiencing that they're struggling to hold and that's really helps me to be compassionate it helps me then to actually hear the criticism yeah actually you know when i'm receiving criticism i know there's something you know they're saying because they're an intelligent unless i think they're a total idiot you know but they're not i am you know i'm engaging with interesting intelligent people but if i'm getting criticism it's meaningful there's something really meaningful in there. But so if I can remember what Shani has just articulated, I feel this compassionate and compassion and I can somehow relax in my being and let myself hear it and be able to decide to hear what's actually being said and to be able to kind of digest and go, OK, what is relevant?

Is this a valid criticism? You know, is there something I can learn here? And when I can learn to be with my own vulnerability more, it actually allows me then to come back rather than just react because I can react with the best of them rather than just react to come back with something that feels reasoned or digested or you know thought through and and is more effective I think one of the great things about cycle awareness is that it cultivates this capacity to catch yourself when you're going down familiar grooves and instead choose a different path. For example, I'm feeling vulnerable right now and I'm going to guard that vulnerability instead of just going into this reaction so I'm thinking of myself with the builders again there was a ton of blame coming through me to towards aid towards them and towards myself so there was a critical conversation going on inside around why did aid choose this as a passion project for our family

because it essentially was his his like deep desire to renovate this house um but instead of just going that idiot which I did a little bit in my head but thankfully didn't do out loud I could come back to remembering well you know he's vulnerable in this too and connect to his humanity and then with the builders you know so much judgment they're all idiots they're lying they I can't trust them all built all builders suck you know that this would these are the stories and then again I'd be able to come back and go okay you're feeling vulnerable well they've they've taken on too many jobs because they're just trying to make a living and all of those different all of that sort of tempering that was happening is part of what enabled me to to be to hold myself a bit in that moment of losing it well great story that's a

great example sophie yeah because it's all happening in all of us most most of the time in the pre-mention isn't it the judgments there the blames there the critics there and thanks to menstrual cycle awareness a capacity to be to be awake to the processes and then make different choices and to hold the tension yeah which is the core tool that we're talking about here yeah it's the turnkey because when I think of you know that question how does the pre-menstruum step us into our power? For me, the answer always comes back down to presence. To access power, we need to be present. That's what it always comes back down to. is another way of saying staying with what is actually happening it's another way of saying absorb yourself in the moment and in the experience that's happening and that then becomes the gateway to this power to this kind of new um access to oneself but the incredible thing

is and this is you know what happens for all of us over and over again is rather than um experiencing an evolution through the premenstruum we actually just dig ourselves into a deeper old story. And we just hold ourselves in the past, essentially. We just kind of stay, you know, with our ball and chain around our ankle, tethered to the story. And what shifts us from the past into presence is this capacity to really be with what's happening in the moment and that then becomes this portal this gateway to this fresh energy to this kind of new awareness to this this this new possibility it's really it opens the way to something new and that's what holding the

tension does i really just want to slow that down and pull that apart a bit because that was that was so huge what you just said that and I know so many people will relate that what a lot of us do is continue to carve the old paths in the premenstruum and again no one no surprise here because there isn't a lot out there in the world encouraging us to do what you two are talking about right now so we've got to be really easy on ourselves and really gentle with ourselves and instead of i love this instead of choosing the past we can choose presence and the presence is the gateway to the to the power and by power is the gateway to the evolutionary choices that allow us to express more of who we actually are rather than the old

versions of ourselves that we've been that we don't want to be anymore that old clothes that we want to take off and leave behind yeah it requires spaciousness and slowness to be able to do this. And of course, that's what the premenstruum is wanting to do with us. You know, as you said, you were invincible in the summer. You were doing everything. And then suddenly, boom, your energy changed and you dropped and you could feel yourself pulling in. And suddenly you couldn't do all that. And that's the almost like the safety valve built into the cycle. You can't you're you're going into a more vulnerable territory now. If you go in there and this vulnerable space is going to open you to your

power in a way you've never done before if you go in there with that summer that ovulatory consciousness that inner summer energy it's going to be a shit show of reactivity yeah right yeah yeah so this this is this is the thing to know for anyone who's listening and who's practicing cycle awareness. And this is something we teach about on the Menstruality Leadership Program. There are these different layers at work in our cycle process. And for us to be able to tap into this layer of power that we're talking about, this evolutionary power, which is, you know, our leadership, for us to be able to tap into that, we need to be able to be worked at these different layers of our cycle. So for example, and we really get into this in the menstruality leadership

program, the foundational layer for the pre-menstruum is self-care and that's what alexandra was pointing to it's like what are my needs how can i care for myself how can i tend my nervous system how can i create a foundation of holding in my in my body in my being because without that can I just say you're fucked there is no way you can hold the tension it's just no way yeah there's just no way so really there are these different layers at work and we need to know you know how to let ourselves be worked at these different layers so we can get the foundations in place so that we can really start to bring in um this level of working with our cycle this much deeper level of alchemical transformation that's possible i think this is why listening partnerships can be so profound

so good because inside the listening partnership we get to speak uh menstrual ish yes we get to unfold within ourselves how these different layers are at work through the particular challenges and triggers and invitations of that cycle month yeah because we need space to allow this to unfold and find expression because it's a new language we're speaking yeah the listening partnership is this amazing it's like you push the world back and you give yourself and a lot of you and your partner an allotted time and this is time just for you no one can can intervene no one can comment whatever that is 20 minutes half an hour you know even 10 minutes

it's so radical just having even 10 minutes let's say you've got half an hour to speak and to drop it's a spaciousness is that the thing about holding the tension creates inner spaciousness but it's really challenging to do and if you can set up listening partnerships if you can have a listening partnership there is a moment where you take time space that allows you to drop into yourself and feel what's happening and you talk in a sort of emergent we talk about talking in an emergent way you know listening in and the miracle of what happens in a listening partnership is you find your own wisdom you find your own you get your own insights i mean that is more interesting than you know shani or i you know, it means this, that.

That's just pouring in the air. Revelation of yourself, you know. Yeah. It's not that pouring, but I hear what you're saying. I mean, the reason people on the Men's Strategy Leadership Programme love their listening partnerships, and people have, Sophie, people have had their listening partnerships now going on for years it's incredible it's like these have been lifelong connections for some people but it is that it's like everything we teach comes alive in your own experience when you have the time and space to reflect on it like that and uh you know we we for example we're

talking here about holding the tension which we haven't even begun to unpack in this conversation. But part of what we do on the Men's Stratity Leadership Program is really teach people how to do these things. You know, we get very practical. It's like, how do you hold the tension? What does that actually mean? And then in your listening partnership, you get to explore with your listening partner how that's going. Like, what you tried like what you try what work what didn't work and what that revealed so um the the kind of harvest of your experience

really has chance to be named and acknowledged people really get to see and celebrate actually the shifts that they're making which is another very powerful thing to really notice what's different in our experience. Yeah. Yeah. I feel a desire to harvest some of the things that we shared in this conversation about how to do this. Sharni, you've named that something like holding the tension. It's a bigger conversation. I imagine we need a whole podcast about holding the tension soon and you know and it's something that we unfold on the MLP but let's harvest what we have landed here in this conversation and I think the first piece is menstrual cycle awareness is core to allowing the premenstruum to help us to step into our power it's everything sophie it's knowing where you are in the cycle and knowing your own nature

and needs and so on so i'm actually going to give an example of myself because i don't have the menstrual cycle but i live with encyclical consciousness at so many different levels and um I I at the beginning spoke about you know where I am at and um the biggest thing for me right now is is I'm at the end of the cycle of the creative cycle of writing the book and this book has given me meaning and substance and drive and it has just filled me it's inspired me and you know it's been it's been so alive in, and there's nothing more intoxicating for me than being involved in a creation project. I just love creativity.

That's my leitmotif, you know. That's my thing. And it's done and dusted. I mean, you know, it's now I've got to care for it in the world, and we're running a menopause online course, and that's really interesting and great that's really uh good but i am mourning the loss you know i and i have held it's it's like a massive cycle that's come to an end because i've been holding um this huge body of work for years and this this is the final piece, the menopause.

You know, we'd articulated the first part in Wild Power. And so now it's like I'm a deflated balloon. I am completely deflated. And I'm at peace. You know, there's a peaceness in there because I feel so happy about this book. I feel so happy about what I've done. I just feel so satisfied. But I am deflated.

And, of course, it's raining. It's the end of autumn. It's coming into winter. It's getting darker and darker. Actually, I like the season of autumn. But season of autumn but she's the gray and i am so grateful for cycle awareness because i know about the void which is what i'm in and i'm actually i know the void is unbelievably creative it's it's where all my ideas come from

you know i love i'm so at home in the void but there's a place in the void that is just plain death and empty and when you're in that space you're subject to all the demons and all the everything's and all the you know you know it i mean you've just been in it just with your menstrual cycle void. Yeah. And I'm so grateful for cycle awareness. Shit. Because otherwise you can think your whole life has gone wrong.

You could. I could go, you know, what the fuck's it all about? Yeah. But, you see, I know I'm held in something as my little self spins around, you know, the big self is actually at home, quite happy, knows what's happening. It's so beautiful what you're saying, because you're saying that, yes, menstrual cycle awareness is the scaffolding that helps us understand those of us who have menstrual cycles, how the cycle month is unfolding. And it has so many other layers in that it can hold us through our creative processes it holds us through the bigger arcs of our life

it holds us through periods of void and challenge it's beautiful what you're saying so practice menstrual cycle awareness yeah it's number one ground for this you know there's a whole nother kind of school here which is what i want to call applied menstrual cycle awareness which is just how bloody practical all the learnings that we glean from cycle awareness are in all aspects of our life yeah this is what so many people who dive deep into cycle awareness come out saying it's like I thought I was learning about my menstrual cycle turns out I'm learning the art of living I'm kind of getting grounded in creativity and you know this relationship how to relate how to parent yeah how to lead exactly the applications and implications are so widespread. They're huge.

They're huge. They're huge. I'm really looking forward to, in our free event that we're going to do about the MLP soon, to sharing some of the stories of how this has been applied by the graduates. Because it's phenomenal. Yes. Such a wide variety. Teachers, psychotherapistsists founders of organizations yeah

yeah so good okay mca there's a cut there's two more sort of tools or practices that you named throughout this one being resting at menstruation because that is what enables us to have the well the resilience and the strength inside to be able to hold the tension and be with the vulnerability when, as you said earlier in the conversation, Shani, everything inside us really biologically is saying, move away, you know, stop this, shut this down, go eat some chocolate, go watch telly, like go and do something different so that you don't have to feel so horrible and and we need fuel in our tank to be able to be with the discomfort yeah and the other thing that i want to draw out that you pointed to which has been so key for me this month is the self-care layer that we have to take care of our nervous systems and do the work to understand what

that means individually for each of us and it's always an imperfect art isn't it you know it's been so hard for me to get out into the woods and have a dog work or to take five minutes to do some writing to kind of come home to myself but I've had to be really diligent about carving out those even small pockets like just just to have a baseline level of yeah okayness with the with the overwhelm yeah it's absolutely 101 nothing can happen without that level of care of yourself yeah yeah are there any final words you'd like to add in closing about how the premenstruum helps us to step into our power it's amazing how if you have a very if you're listening to this if you have a really difficult premenstruum

it's amazing how once you do cycle awareness and you learn to care for yourself in all that phases of the cycle, how quickly it's possible to shift the premenstruum, how you approach it, because often it's, you know, with dread. But there's a kind of a different energy that comes in it it actually can really transform the premenstrual and we have this a lot from people especially people who have done our menstrual leadership program you know they've said geez my pre-menstrual used to be my worst moment in the cycle now it's my best i love it and then And there are other parts of the cycle I'm discovering are tricky. It is amazing, the power of awareness and a power of self-care and understanding the whole cycle dynamic because it sits within a context. You've got to restore the premenstrual phase to

the context of the whole cycle, basically. And I want to point people to a resource there, actually, because in our power of the premenstrual phase episode we really named that so I'll link to that in the episode show notes yeah Shani I think I'd just like to offer something to do for anybody who's listening who's thinking how can I have a different experience of my premenstruum? And the thing I'd like to offer is for you to actually turn your attention towards menstruation and just be curious about if, or how you can carve out more time and space for yourself to be still or quiet or rest or just to yeah be held

because that is in a way the starting place to transform your experience of the premenstruum is that so if you're listening and you're kind of wanting something different start with menstruation and we'll go from there yeah and again we have a great episode about that so i'll link to that in the show notes how to access the power of menstruation oh thanks you too so rich thank you and i'm gonna going to go and slide off into oblivion now. This is my day 28 and I'll see you on the other side. Drift away, Sophie. Beautiful. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you. thank you for joining us and listening today if you're loving the podcast please subscribe to it

and also leave a review on apple podcasts it helps us to get this podcast to more people it's been great being with you today and i look forward to next time and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm