The Menstruality Podcast - 66. How I Fell in Love with My Premenstruum (Natalie K Martin)

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Today we’re continuing our inner autumn, premenstrual theme and sharing the last in a three-part series exploring the powers of the premenstruum, how to awaken these powers, and now a conversation about what this looks like in real life.(And we’re excited to be trying something new today - weaving in comments and insights from the community of podcast listeners about your premenstrual experience.)Our guest Natalie K Martin is a Menstrual Cycle and Feminine Embodiment Coach and author who made a powerful transition from corporate career in London to a career in yoga and now menstruality. Natalie graduated from our Menstruality Leadership Programme this year and is now contributing to the global menstruality movement with her FemmePowered podcast which she hosts alongside Guilietta Durante.We explore:How Natalie, and you - the community of listeners - experience the challenges and powers of the premenstruum. We normalise the ‘losing it’, messy moments and celebrate the truth-telling awakenings.The premenstrual self care practices that Natalie uses to harness the powers of her inner autumn. What the Menstruality Leadership Programme taught Natalie about her limits, slowing down, and lightning her load as well as how it inspired a huge, premenstrual awakening one bleak, foggy day 22 morning…Booking for our Menstruality Leadership Programme will open on Thursday 8th December. You can explore programme and apply here https://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.schoolNatalie K Martin: @nataliekmartin - https://www.instagram.com/natalie.kmartin

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, 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 there, welcome back to the podcast. Well, autumn is just beginning to turn into winter here,

so we are going to wrap up our unofficial inner autumn premenstrual theme that we've been rocking here on the podcast over the past couple of weeks. We've spoken about the powers of the premenstruum. We've spoken about how to awaken these powers. And today we're having a conversation about what all of this looks like in real life with the amazing Natalie K Martin who I'll tell you about in a moment and we're also trying something new today which I'm so excited about I'm going to be weaving in your comments and insights about your premenstrual experiences and I really want to do more of this this work this menstruality work emerges through our togetherness through our conversation and our relationality. So we can expect much more of this.

You can expect much more of this in 2023. So our guest, Natalie K. Martin. So our guest, Natalie K. Martin, is a menstrual cycle and feminine embodiment coach. She's an author. She's been on the podcast before. She's made a powerful transition from a corporate career in London to a new career in yoga and now menstruality. She graduated from our menstruality leadership program this year and she's now making a really beautiful and meaningful contribution to this global menstruality movement with her Femme Powered podcast which she hosts alongside Julieta Durante.

We explore how Nat and how you, the community around this podcast, experience the challenges and the powers of the premenstruum. We normalize the losing it, the messy, untidy premenstrual moments, and we celebrate the truth-telling awakenings that can happen in this phase of the cycle. Nat shares the self-care practices that she uses to harness the powers of her premenstruum. And she what the menstruality leadership program taught her about her limits about slowing down about lightening her load which I really relate to and how it inspired a huge premenstrual awakening one bleak foggy day 22 morning so hey Nat it's so good to be chatting with you again you know we had our conversation back in

January of this year for our wild power retreat where you shared about the how you adapt movement to suit your cycle and then you and I chatted for your podcast earlier on this year so I'm just loving that we get to continue this conversation and take it to the inner critic and the premenstruum. So thank you for being here. It's great to see you. Thank you for having me again. I feel really, really honoured and really excited to be back. Yeah, like chatting about what we love to chat about most. So, yeah, thank you for having me it's great to have you because what I'd love to do is just have a really honest and open conversation about inner autumn the pre-menstruum

the inner critic because you speak about it so so well and you do it publicly which is hard to do in our world you know there's not many people talking about this so yeah we'll get into your story let's start how we always do though with a cycle check-in and you've got a special check-in today yeah I am on day 48 today so I am tomorrow I'll be seven weeks pregnant which is incredibly exciting and strange and beautiful and unexpected but very very welcome yeah and I feel I've been feeling today like I'm in my winter wanting to not really interact and go outside but at the same time feeling very suspended in midair I hadn't expected the feeling of not having a cycle anymore and yeah it's very interesting to come from that place of always knowing where you are in your cycle and having an expectation around how you normally feel to then knowing that like in a day or a

couple days or whatever you're going to shift into the next season and phase and so I'm feeling good but it's like suddenly being in a in a very empty kind of terrain yes yeah very unexpected I had never heard anyone talk about that so so anyone who's listening like just maybe expect that. Yeah, I remember having exactly the same feeling when I was pregnant and I'd had an interesting ride to it. Everyone's got a different ride to get into the moment that you're in right now. And we'd been wanting it for so long and going through IVF. So I'd been all through an interesting roller coaster. But I remember that feeling of it felt very wintry. And I actually had a podcast conversation with JD Mountjoy, who's one of the mentors on our

menstruality leadership program about what the seasons can feel like in pregnancy. And it was really interesting for me to hear her perspective on it. And she was very good at kind of coaching me to understand what my inner experience felt like so in many ways I feel like it enhanced my understanding of my inner seasons even though I wasn't going through them each month during the pregnancy I'll drop a link to the show notes and that for anyone who sort of is pregnant or would like to get pregnant and would like to hear about that process yeah yeah it's an it's an interesting shift. Well, thank you for sharing it with us.

We're treasuring it with you. I'm on day three over here and I did manage to have a good couple of hours of just lying in a hot bath on day one, which did drop me into a good menstrual space. And then yesterday was a rocky day with a lot to do and ended up at the end of the day just crying in a heap on aid because it was just too much for my little I'm not gonna say little for my big beautiful sensitive system you know so wide

open and to have a house full of builders and a really big to-do list and a toddler was like oh I can't handle it today and luckily he was able to hold me which was wonderful and then I got sleep and then I bounced back and I'm starting to feel a little bit of the renewal bubbling up just a bit yeah yeah some good ground actually to talk about your inner critic and pre-menstruum journey let's let's start with that like I I know because I've been following your work for a while that you've got a real fascination with inner autumn and the pre-menstruum and the the inner critic especially and I'd love to hear what birthed that fascination like can you share your story with us around that? So my fascination with the inner critic just comes

from a general fascination with with how we work I've always been very intrigued and curious about how people interact with each other and themselves and so for me the the inner critic my fascination with it really comes from it being a self-developmental tool and the fact that it's a part of us that that knows us so very well and can do incredible good but can also be challenging to put it in a very light way. And with my premenstruum, I, so I came off the pill when I was 33, I was on it for 17 years. And when I came off the pill, I never really experienced EMS. I definitely realized that I had more, I had different moods,

let's say, but I would never, you know, it was never that like I would have this really rough week or two weeks or 10 days or whatever and then I would notice when my period comes that it went away my awareness of my premenstruum really came with the menstrual cycle awareness work and and the the wild woman archetype because I always kind of felt like I just don't resonate with that there's something there's something about it that I just don't feel I don't vibe with I don't like that it's called the wild woman I don't like the instagrammy style stuff that we see around it. And for me, I felt like the wild woman was this completely foreign, out of reach being. She was someone who was extremely sexual, who was extremely primal, very big and seductive and alluring and magnetic and very wild and so for me that I remember um when I was doing my training with Claire Baker and I remember speaking to one of the other

students and just being like I just it doesn't vibe for me I need to find my own version of it and I played around with different aspects of the premenstruum but what I found was that for me one of the reasons why I came into menstrual cycle awareness was my libido and I was just feeling like I should be living a more vibrant inner life which for me when I put that into the menstrual cycle awareness work like that for me fits with pre-menstruum the wild woman I don't know if you've seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona but Penelope Cruz's character that for me as always like when I think about that wild woman kind of energy that's always what I had in mind which film say the film again Vickyicky Cristina Barcelona, the one with Javier Badem, Penelope Cruz, and I think it's Scarlett Johansson.

Great. I'll put a link in the show notes. I would be the Scarlett Johansson sensible character. And, you know, Penelope Cruz is this wild woman artist really fiery just as I'm thinking about it that's that's what brought me into my pre-menstruum in a way where it actually became my favorite season to be in it was the time where I started to feel most clear where I could do most things where I could get the like hormonal estrogeny stuff out of the way always felt for me around about day 19 like oh yeah I'm here I've arrived you know yes um and I realized that that was not the journey that most people had it's not the

experience that a lot of people had and it made me feel quite sad to hear that because of course there were like hormonal things that are happening and to some people you know that it's not just a matter of of you know like aligning to their cycle and all of that kind of stuff but I feel like it's such a misunderstood part of the cycle and that the inner critic is a very much misunderstood aspect of that and for me the pre-menstruum is really where it's it's about our vibrancy and our inner world and our creative expression our self-expression our sexuality all of that and so it's not the part of the cycle that I ever thought I would be really focusing on in my work or in my where I would feel my stutthoven. But it's come to me through my journey of learning how to be with myself, how to treat myself, how to speak to myself.

And then also like the sexual and sensual pleasure part as well wow I love that wild mystery tour you just took us on because you pulled on so many fascinating threads but what I'm really hearing rising out above all of them is that you had a longing and it sounded like it was a quiet longing but it was also very loud inside you know quiet as in you perhaps weren't sharing it with many people but it was really driving you which was to have a more vibrant life I think so many of us feel that I know I've heard myself say it to myself over this past year especially I just thought life was going to feel big more bigger and more beautiful than this yeah it's a real premenstrual voice for me and I know

I know the voice now and I'm you know I just feel like it's such an ongoing journey with the premenstrual but I'm learning to relate to that voice and and hit and ask okay what shall we do then you know what what edge am I not walking that will allow me to feel bigger and more beautiful you know I can feel that this inner critic pre-menstrual voice is always nudging me in that direction so you had this desire I want it to be more vibrant and then just the beautiful mystery of cycle awareness and of intuition then you were taken into well maybe a pathway to this is sensuality and sexuality and it sounds like the phase of your cycle where you feel most plugged into that is you came to see is your inner autumn yeah yeah absolutely yeah

I mean I'm in a previous life slash not so previous um I also have written five romance novels women's fiction novels and you know you kind of need to have a little bit of fairy tale in there and and so I'm like writing these very vivid worlds and and emotions and people and it's not to say that I wasn't experiencing that myself but you know I would look at some people or I would I would speak to some people and and observe them and think gosh they are so alive you know and I wanted to find out am I am I that alive really I've it's always been I mean I went on the pill when I was 16. So it's very difficult for me to know who, there's always a part of me that questions, who am I really? Who would I be if I had not gone on

the pill quite so young, or if I'd only stayed on it, you know, for a few years, but from 16 to 33, I, you know, I don't know what my libido was like before. I don't know if I would be someone who had more intense waves going through the menstrual cycle. And, you know, am I really just, I'm a Taurus, I'm super grounded generally, I'm really like safe and sensible. Like, is that just who I am? Or is, you know, more to me that has been suppressed either through like culture and society and experience or hormones and menstrual cycle that's actually one of the main reasons why I came off the pill was that feeling of am I going to feel more vibrant and more alive if I come off of the pill yeah it's a big question multi-layered question that is still being unraveled

same in me too in me too i'm with you and all of those questions and as you're speaking i'm reflecting on one of the core qualities i think i see in people who really do embrace menstrual cycle awareness as a path and a personal development path and a spiritual path is that aliveness an aliveness in the whole spectrum of feeling it's definitely something that i notice in me yeah that my aliveness keeps growing the more that i connect to this cyclical nature yeah absolutely yeah and the bigger the emotions become yes yeah absolutely yeah and the bigger the emotions become yes I think our community here at Red School feel similar to how we're talking because I did a little survey on our Instagram stories before we were going to have this conversation and I asked

how do you feel about your pre-Mum and 18 said they loved it 33 said that it was hard and 57 said a bit of both so I think what we're seeing is that the premenstruum contains all of these questions and all of these possibilities and all of these nuances and all of these paradoxes and it's possibly why it's so interesting to all of us you know to untangle and unravel yeah it's a rich place in the cycle let's get into the richness yeah I'd like to break our conversation into two halves to look at the challenges and the powers of the premenstruum. And to start with the challenges, I want to name and normalize some of the challenges that people experience. And in another story, I asked, you know,

what are your core challenges in your premenstruum? And the kinds of things I heard back were from Vanessa, intrusive thoughts, from Lauren, feeling suffocated by destructive thoughts Valerie said it's like an emotional wrecking ball Ida said I feel sad and experience a collapse of energy there's an overexposure with nowhere to run and hide I totally relate to all of these so far and Rosanna said my inner critic beats me up and beats up everyone else and I have a lack of control of my temper and there were just general threads around fluctuating between highly strong and anxious and then depressed crying losing a sense of meaning which I will all of these things I've experienced but I'm curious to hear what what have been your

core challenging experiences in your pre-menstruum and how have they changed and shifted particularly over this year while you've been on the menstruality leadership program yeah so I'd say already at the beginning of this year I'd'd, I'd found myself, you know, just being in a place of, of actually really loving my premenstruum and, and looking forward to being there and, um, and wishing it could be longer. My ovulations were really tricky for a long time. It was always really, you know, just exhausting and fatigued and feeling like crap um and so it always felt like oh thank god like you know once my pre once my premenstrual is there it's like that horrible ovulation stuff's gone um but what I would say is that actually there is a flip side

to that you know like we when we find somewhere that we feel at home in in the cycle that can be where we tend to load things because we know that we've got capacity so for me my pre-menstrual was somewhere where I could sit and focus for a long time where I felt very clear where I had a lot of um a lot of insights I wouldn't necessarily say ideas but a lot of insights and would just find myself being able to get into that I guess what they would call like flow state and so I started to kind of push a lot of things over into that phase of my cycle because I know like I'm going to be able to deal with it much better then and at the same time I'd been kind of playing with my inner spring and my inner summer to to find that lightness and that vibrancy and and um so at the time it kind of felt pretty good that like

okay I'm lightening my load around the first part of my cycle and then the second part of my cycle I know that I can like put all this stuff in there but of course that leads to you know like pressure and and knowing that you've only got a finite amount of time to get this stuff done and um and so I'm not going to say it led to perfectionism that would probably be a bit too much but it led to me kind of, I guess, being out of balance in certain ways. And this year, this year was an absolutely, I've really, I've learned my limits this year in terms of what I can do. So the MLP was going from like May, wasn't it? Until we actually just had the final home group recording meeting last night.

So it was and it's big this wow I hadn't expected it to be quite such a journey um and alongside that I had my feminine embodiment training which is nine months um and so in total I would be you know in zoom trainings for about seven hours a week plus all all the things that, you know, that come alongside that. And then, you know, a very, very, very busy summer with a job that was extremely hectic. world was getting smaller and smaller um from both a capacity point of view to uh a point of view within my cycle because I was relying so much on my premenstruum to kind of like carry me through um and that all culminated in September after a beautiful two-week holiday in Croatia and coming back to southern Germany where I live and where I live it's a little valley and so our autumns are pretty foggy

and quite bleak and I was walking my dog in this in the field around the corner from my house and it was so it was beautiful fog really but it just was so bleak I think I was on day 22 and I was sending a voice message to Julietta and I was just I started speaking and I just I just cried I just remember looking at this was standing at a crossroads in the middle of this field and just feeling like what the hell is this and it was a real because I've never my premenstrual has never really felt dark but it really felt dark and I by now through the process of of menstrual cycle awareness know that when I'm in that when I'm experiencing something like that like there's a there's an inquiry process that has to happen and over the course of that day I

was really just like okay what do I actually need and what I needed was space I just then I had a coaching session with my lovely coach and I was just like, I just need space. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to show up on social media right now. I don't want to have the pressure of writing a blog post or an email. I want to have what I've just had for the last two weeks. And that was a real revelation to me because I have been skipping around how can I lighten my load how can I do less or do more efficiently the one of the things that kept coming up in the MLP for me was like time and needing to have space it's the same thing that was coming up in my feminine embodiment training and I just it was one of those moments of clarity where I was

just like okay like it's now autumn it's gonna become winter if this was my cycle I would be slowing down to not be doing anything over winter and I made a decision to just let go of everything so apart from the coaching clients that I had I was taking myself off schedule I was not posting on a schedule anymore I'm not blogging on a schedule anymore I'm not doing anything that I don't want to do and I had my second menstrual medicine cycle with my home group mentor which was also about space and it just felt like that you know what had been a very very bleak experience on that day that had I not known about menstrual cycle awareness and how to unpack all of that could have been really you know there could have been

a really big story that came out of that that could have led to me having a very dramatic experience but because I knew how to work with it actually led to something really special I don't see that I can really skip away from now like it was such a deep experience and the revelation of what I needed was so clear that I, for me right now, I cannot imagine forgetting that. What has been just a very like, oh, it's my favorite place. And let me put all my stuff there and then get really overloaded. You know, like that has all, that's like a year, probably even more of a culmination of overloading overloading taking on taking on so many new things and yet let me add that let me add that to a point where it's just like if I don't stop then I'm gonna have some serious mental or emotional health issues

yes yes I really hear you I've had exactly those moments myself and when I received the email that you wrote about this story and you shared a line from your I think it was you shared a line from your period diary you know your cycle journal and it was all I want is to stand under the shower and be pounded by jets of hot water I could have stayed there all morning, but I can't because there's a climate crisis and not enough water and the world is going to shit. And we have to save our gas because of the lunatic that is Putin. I feel wide open and I don't want to be. And I smiled when I received that because the amount of times I've had that day 22, day 23 moment of I just need this and xyz means that I can't yeah and I feel like this story that you've shared just so powerfully illustrates how

the challenge of the premenstruum works us and tenderizes us and brings us to this place of vulnerability sometimes brings us to our knees so that we can know what we need and then have the like the metal and the muscle inside us to go and get what we need yes and in your case this bold move of I need space and time so I'm actually going to take away a whole lot of stuff so that I can have space and time and like who knows how this all weaves into the greater wisdom of your deep being because now look where you are in this autumn so it's so beautiful to hear you know to receive this story about how you were able to hear your premenstrual wisdom and hold yourself through it so that you could create the space that you're in now in your life yeah yeah and I

I remember you know that like I feel so cracked open I don't want to be an IRA and there's a few times where I've thought this of gosh life was just so much easier when I didn't know all of this you know like and I remember on that day just feeling like I don't want to have this open vulnerable tender spot where I care about a climate crisis you know it might sound really incredibly selfish to say that but honestly on that day I was, I don't want to know. I don't want to care that there's not enough water. I don't want to care that we have to think about, you know, where our gas comes from. I don't want to care about this. I just want to be able to do what I need to do to look after myself. it always makes me think about you and your story with Tree Sisters and you know like how menstrual cycle awareness can like actually really help with the world and sustainability

and everything because you do you become aware of worlds outside of your own and cycles and how things flow with one another and I definitely on that day was just like, I wish I didn't know about any of this. I really get you because it, yeah, there's a responsibility that comes with that tenderness and that softness and that permeability and that openness that is hard to deal with inside of the softness and the permeability and the openness. I felt exactly the same thing. And I feel like that's why as people who are being consciously cyclical beings in a very linear world, why we need each other. Because the amount of times I've reached out to a cycle of our friend and gone, oh, in exactly the same kind of spot you were in. And then they helped me to remember, you know, it's exactly this tenderness, which is what the world needs right now there's so much polarity there's so much separation there's so much conflict and if we can awaken more of this tender-hearted way of being but you know unfortunately we just have to be at the forefront breaking the ground here feeling everything in our free menstruation it's why we need each other isn't it absolutely yeah absolutely yeah

we really do need to be in community as we practice swimming upstream here and choosing to live cyclically in a linear world. And that's why I'm pausing our conversation with Nat right now to share about the core way that we gather groups of cycle passionate people together each year, which is through our menstruality leadership program where we take a deep dive into the wisdom of the menstrual cycle and menopause and we're really excited because later on today we're going to be opening bookings for our 2023 menstruality leadership program so if you know you're interested we'd like to invite you to join us for a free introductory webinar that we're hosting this evening, UK time. I'll add a link to register in the show notes, which you'll be able to find by visiting redschool.net forward slash podcast. That's redschool.net forward slash podcast and

look for today's episode. The webinar is called How to Channel the Powers of Your Menstrual Cycle to Step into Leadership. It's happening at 1pm New York time, 6pm London time and we'll send you a recording if you can't be there live. In the webinar we're going to debunk three myths that we hear all the time from people in our community about leadership, this grand word leadership and menstruality. Alexandra and Sharni will share all about our method for supporting you to channel the powers of your cycle and that's including the pre-menstrual powers of your cycle as you step into your unique form of leadership whatever that looks like for you in your life it's a method that's been developed

through over 10 000 hours of research over the past four decades with thousands of people and it's the foundation of the MLP curriculum and And lastly, Alexandra and Sharni will also guide you through a live process to get a taste of how these powers can support you and your leadership starting today. So we hope you'll join us and for now let's get back to this beautiful conversation with Nat and that does walk us quite beautifully into the next part of this conversation around the powers because without that skinlessness vulnerability tenderness we can't access the, well, we can't access the kind of thing that you accessed on day two of this story, where the, this is a quote from your email, you received this day two wisdom of, I want to enjoy my life, I want spaciousness and time and

pleasure and fun, I want to thrive, I want to help women thrive, and feel pleasure, and fun, and spaciousness. I want to feel powerful, and feminine, and filled up, and held, and provide that in turn. And when I read that, I feel a woman inside her calling. So that tenderness and that openness is what allows, I believe, what allows us to feel the fullness of the calling coming through and then to take the steps to make that calling happen in the world, which you are doing so amazingly right now with your new program around sexuality and pleasure. Yeah. So it's great to feel both sides of the spectrum there and the power that it awakened in you. It's so interesting to have that written, read back because I don't read my old emails, you know, I'm kind of like once it's done and it's channeled,

it's kind of like gone. And that experience of the premenstrual day 23, and then the following day two and all of that was directly following the end of the live MLP sessions. And actually one of the really pivotal sessions and moments was I don't want to like spoil it for people who haven't been on it but um there is a session that you do which is about understanding what your calling is and almost stepping into that and there there was a week when we were in Croatia where we had that lesson where there was a lot of spaciousness on the holiday, where it coincided with some practices from my embodiment training as well, where it all just kind of came together.

And honestly, I think if I'd have had that day 23 experience a month before, I don't think I would have necessarily got to the same conclusion. I don't think that I would have been broken open in quite the same way. I think it was that kind of perfect storm of all the work that I've been doing myself this year. Plus, you know, this very specific, very special class in the MLP. And then, you know, that it's autumn autumn that I was in my autumn in autumn and it was all of that kind of stuff meshed together but it is it is a kind of like realization of what is it that I actually want what is it that I feel like I want to do what do I feel is necessary for myself what's important for me now this is one of the powers of the premenstrual phase as you say is that like it can

highlight those things for you it doesn't do it at the time like that was day two wisdom that was not day 24 the next day like you know um but it's just it is this gentle unraveling and i think that i think that is the biggest power of the premenstrual phase is that it's, you know, know get to go and like run to mom or grandma or sister or neighbor or whoever and you know I've had a really rough time and now I need to like digest what it means and that is the power of the premenstrual phase and I think it's just a case of learning to separate yourself from what is happening that it's not like you and your life is wrong and all of the stuff that it might sound like um and knowing like okay how can I like how do I get to figure out what the wisdom of this is so yeah it's a pretty pretty big power I

think yeah it's immense it's immense you always know there's big power in something if the patriarchy has squashed it and shaped it oh yeah like women's sexuality and premenstrual rage and anger which is throughout history has been called hysteria you know and you know that there must be something big in there if it's being shamed and cast aside the whole of the menstrual cycle has been shamed until now we're bringing it back there were some great responses from the community when I asked what do you love about your pre-menstrual phase so Rachel said I feel really dialed in and i have a spurt of motivation to clean things up in my life slowing down the inward connection the boundaries and the inner

knowing lauren said the clarity of the wisdom that i receive the righteousness of anger and the relief of truth ida says the, the contact with the depth within. Rosanna, going inward, slowing down. Ashley, the richness and sharpness of my mind and that I get shit done. So good. Do you relate? I relate to all of those as well. Oh, yeah. That sharp mind. For some people, it obviously isn't like that. For some people, they'll experience brain fog. But yeah, the sharp mind in particular was, yeah, that was a real, like, that's how I knew. It was like, okay, I'm here now. um what would you could you share and reflect on some of the things that help you access the powers of your premenstruum and like their their practices or things that you do that support you to to be in touch with these powers yeah for sure there's there's always been the movement. It's always been something that I come back to. It's not necessarily something I do or cycle along anymore. My pre-menstrual is a time when I'm more likely to feel like I need to move my body in a very unruly kind of way so it's not the time when I tend to go for the yoga it's the time when I'll like you know I've got a playlist for each season and it's a time usually where I will put on the music that

usually helps me to kind of get into those spaces of myself um so movement and dance in particular it provides space for me of course there's like all the physical benefits as well but it provides space for me just to kind of yeah like see actually what's happening in my inner world so that's always been really huge showers they're not the most friendly way to like look after the planet but for me it feels like that's one of the really integral parts of my self-care routine I have to have I have to have a shower a day I have to if I'm working with people after I've you know had a session or had a bulk of sessions I have to have a shower because it just feels um and especially in my pre-menstruum it feels it's it's like stepping into a little booth where you are contained yeah in a way um

so yeah some maybe sounds strange to some people but I think a lot of people understand that feeling of oh yeah I'm sure so many people will relate yeah I feel the same about baths I need to immerse myself in hot water and I know that when I bleed if I do that it totally transforms my experience oh yeah absolutely two hours in a hot bath just floating around I was like a selkie like a mermaid in the sea you know in my menstrual dreaming and my hair was like kelp in the water and it just allowed me to drop into that mythical dreamlike place where I could actually access the medicine of my bleed step out of the day-to-day and it's just through hot water water is a very special thing it's a very very special way of of like transmuting and cleansing energy and yeah I was speaking to a woman called Asha

Frost I don't know if you've come across her she's an indigenous teacher who lives in Canada and she works deeply with one-to-one with people and she said she always has to have a salt bath at the end of the day and it's the cleansing of the water and the salt allows her to release anything that's moved through and then move on you know get back to her family and back on with her life yeah I remember my one of my teacher trainings or my teacher said like you know when you have emotions that you don't know how to deal with like give it to the water in the best case salty water in the best case flowing water and and from that moment and and from that trip where I've really felt the call to go into the sea every day which was not not something that I'm not you know before then was not really like a watery person um so yeah water is a really big

deal for me um journaling I tend to do the bulk of my journaling when I'm in my autumn and my winter I don't even like you know I don't really as much as I try I'm not just not really there with it at times um and so that kind of freehand journaling is something that really helps with my autumn as well just to cut through the noise and almost empty myself and then there's a few practical things like making lists I feel like that's a time when I tend to you know want to get organized and make lists of what I need to do or lists of the things that are bugging me and the things that are kind of like going around um and around in my head and what my inner critic is saying and things like that um and I I definitely noticed in my pre-menstrual that like I just my my need for self-care increases

quite dramatically my need yes to have real boundaries with my phone with my social media um you know like just going to bed a little bit before I'm tired so I can you know just sit and read a bit or like things that I wouldn't necessarily care about um in other parts of my cycle it's it's something that I feel in the beginning with menstrual cycle awareness I kind of had to learn um but now happen automatically and it's and sometimes it's a sign for me that like okay I'm I'm actually I know that I'm in my pre-menstrual now because like I need to sleep it's harder for me to wake up in the morning so I really want to get in bed like early um whereas before I would just you know stay up until midnight or whatever and yeah so it's a combination of the

kind of like energetic things and then um and walking my dog as well he's not here with us at the moment we're away and I'm like I'm not used to this um but walking my dog especially in my premenstrual phase I tend to go with with like nothing no phone no podcast no music no anything um and I'll tend to go for longer walks with them and and just enjoy like just being yeah yeah that's also I find it's a good way to cutting through noise and listening to like what's happening. Yes, I find that I absolutely have to slow down because there's so much bubbling up that's kind of coming up to be processed from the month. That if I don't quieten everything down around me and slow it all down that bubbling just turned into overwhelm really really quickly but if i give it some space for all these thoughts and ideas and

loops to be closed from the month then i can keep a tab on my explosion moments in the pre-medium really helps slowing down is such a radical act in this world it is it really is a weirdly radical act nat would you be willing to share your playlist with us absolutely yeah amazing i'll drop it in the show notes your pre-menstrual playlist that i know i will love to listen to that and i know other people will as well what would you say were your core learnings from the menstruality leadership program what would you say were the biggest takeaways or the biggest learnings for you my biggest learnings um actually came from my inner spring which I had not expected

why why weren't you expecting it I think because I expected it to come from my premenstruum okay it was a place that like I love being from my premenstruum okay it was a place that like I love being in my premenstruum I'm really good with my inner critic so I expected that like the the wisdom would come from that place and and I remember there's a couple of sessions where you know they were like listen out for the know, like where you're being pulled to go to. And it might not be where you expect. And I still remember thinking it's going to be the premenstrual. It's going to be my inner water. And it never was. So, you know, like and these are the sessions that kind of like wrap up section one and section two.

And in both, it was the spring and the most vivid journeys I had was all to do with my inner spring and it was really variations was a kind of a session around what the next steps were going to be and and there was this this vision of just extreme green you know like a really deep green lake and lots of plants and lots of trees and just that kind of like hateful, hazy summer green. Um, and it just felt like an extremely serene place to be. And, and there wasn't really anything to do. It was just, just like enjoying being in this um and my spring was also always associated with water and in the um in the MLP and and you know just that receiving the a lot of the times I was receiving images of water and being in water and just kind of floating on my back and you know like

when you're on holiday and you're in the sea and you're just lolling around and there isn't anything and this was a real um this was the complete opposite to what my life was like at the time um over the summer it was just it was incredibly busy and hectic probably the most busiest I've ever experienced and the most amount of emotional and mental stress I've had and so I kept receiving this this wisdom all the time of like stepping back time I had a lot of visions of the never-ending story and and bits from that and you know just kind of like okay I can feel that it's like telling me to you know so I don't how can I do this how can I and I spent a long time avoiding it and and you know having these wonderful journeys and these these very deep experiences but then coming out of it and going back to my everyday life and then being

like okay maybe I can like just change the way I do this and it would work out to like a one percent change and so I feel like the when I look back now the biggest thing that I've taken from it is just to chill out like just to slow down and and enjoy the times of doing nothing and to actually create space to do nothing because it's not doing nothing yes oh it's so beautiful what you're saying that's i think that's the biggest takeaway that i've had it's like it's even in the times where you're not doing anything like you are yes and it's all there in that vision that you shared of that deep green lake and all the life and all the plants yeah that in a world that at that pushes for endless productivity emptiness can feel like a deadness yeah but the truth of the emptiness is it's absolutely teeming with bright green vivid life if we let it happen wow

yeah not what I expected the cycle is so tricksy oh yes oh yeah I thought I would have some kind of like big revelations about my work and then it would have that premenstrual like power behind it and actually yeah it was the opposite it was the the take the foot off the pedal and not do so much so interesting I hear this all the time and it was my experience too of the MLP that I had surprising revelations and I think that one of the reasons why is that everything we do on the mental charity leadership program plugs us into body wisdom and body wisdom is a lot lower and slower and quieter than the world wants it to be you know it's not sparkly and jingly and jangly it's usually really wise really calm and really low to the ground and easy to

miss because of that it feels like you really found found wisdom and reaped the harvest of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say so. I would say so. So actually, the relationship to those parts of my cycle changed quite dramatically in the short time of having a cycle since receiving that information. It'll be really interesting to see how you're able to take that into the springtime of your motherhood yeah yeah I am I am really intrigued I am really intrigued because um I think you know as you say like there is this body wisdom and I think you know without having learned how much I needed to have space and how much I needed to slow down like I could

not imagine like what it could be like to actually be a mother living the life that I was living a few months ago it would just been incredibly stressful and overwhelming without having the awareness of like okay it's actually really important now to just slow down. So yeah, it's very, it's always really interesting, like with the benefit of hindsight to look back and see like the steps of the journey. You know, it's kind of like, would I necessarily be here in this situation? Had I not have had those experiences, like who knows? But it all feels extremely supportive as to for where I am now and and going forwards with the things I want to do with my business and like how I want to live

my life in general and yeah yeah really special thanks Nat thank you for sharing so much of yourself and your journey and it's been really fulfilling for me and fascinating to track these inner processes with you and I'd love to hear about your work and your business and can you share what's happening next and how people can connect with you if they'd like to and connect with your work yeah well I'm hoping to slow down a bit next year even more I might have to I might not be able to have much choice in that. But yeah, so I'm still doing my menstrual cycle awareness coaching. And this is like the kind of bedrock of everything that I do.

And at the moment, right now, I've just started a 10 week program with a group of eight women who are on a journey to uncover the pleasure in their lives and feel reconnection to their sexual energy. This is something that i will also be offering in a one-on-one space as well because it's um i find the the relationship to pleasure and and sensuality and sexuality is very very very closely bound to the menstrual cycle um clearly because it's the menstrual cycle and it's, you know, it is like sexual energy that's like governing it. And this is something that for me has been quite a long and at times really

quite disappointing and, and lonely journey. And so this is kind of the next step the next the next step for me is to bring this kind of menstrual cycle awareness work into the realms of sexuality and um and pleasure and wonderful yeah blending them together so those are my my main focuses for next year I think and hopefully if I can finally get around to it um a little weekend retreat here in Germany in early spring oh something I've been I've been planning it for a while and now with this news I thought okay if I'm gonna do it it should probably be this summer. Yeah, soon. Springtime.

Well, okay. So for our German listeners, I'll drop the link to sign up to your newsletter list because I imagine that's the way that people would find out about that. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not, at the moment, I'm not as active on social media.

My email is somewhere where, you know, as you've shared with us in this episode it's somewhere where I I tend to be a bit more um not that I'm not open and honest on Instagram but there's just more space there's more scope on email and um so for anyone who's just you know curious about me and what I do then that's a good place um to go and then all the offers and everything will you know they'll always be available via email it's a good place um to go and then all the offers and everything will you know they'll always be available via email it's a great email i always read it and i don't read many emails but i just always know that i'm going to get some fresh honest cycle wisdom from that so i really

recommend signing up oh thank you thank you thank you for joining us today and for sharing your story and yeah good luck with with what unfolds over the next few months for you oh thank you so much thank you thank you for joining me today in this important conversation about the powers of the premenstruum with nat and i've just really especially enjoyed having the conversation with the community in this one and bringing in everyone's voices so that we can all cross-pollinate and lay breadcrumb trails of inspiration for each other and also just normalize all of the wide range of different experiences we have as people with menstrual cycles living

in this world that can be oh so linear when we are oh so cyclical and I'm really looking forward to having more of a conversation in the podcast in this coming year so if there are conversations you would love us to be having if there there are topics, you know, particular points in your cycle that you find tricky or challenges that you're having in bringing your menstrual cycle awareness into your life, your work, your relationships, please drop me a note at sophieatbredschool.net. I'd love to hear from you. And I'll be sharing invitations in this coming year for you to bring your voice, your thoughts, your insights, your wisdom into this podcast so that we can have a genuine conversation about the power of the cycle, about the power of menopause. And I want to

reiterate our invitation especially if you've been thinking about the menstruality leadership program and wondering if it's for you or if this is the time that you might want to join and also if you're just curious about the connection between your menstrual cycle or your menopause process and your calling, your purpose, your power then do join us for the webinar today, how to channel the powers of your menstrual cycle to step into your leadership. It's at 1 p.m. New York time, that's 6 p.m. London time. And no worries if you can't make it live because we'll be able to send you a recording.

Okay, that's all from me for this week. I look forward to being together with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.