The Menstruality Podcast - 78. How Cycle Awareness Evolves us into Visionary Leaders (with Special Guests)

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

What does it really take to be a visionary leader? And how can menstrual cycle awareness support us to face the challenges and stretch that leadership always brings?In today's episode we share excerpts from our Menstruality Leadership Lab - a free, four-day online leadership training exploring how the hidden powers of the menstrual cycle and menopause can help us lead sustainably, with heart, integrity and wisdom.Red School co-founder Alexandra shares her biggest leadership challenge and how cycle awareness has helped her to cultivate one of many menstruality leadership skills to meet it: the art of pacing.We also hear clips from Alexandra and Sjanie's conversations with our special guests, four women who have boldly stepped forward to live their Calling; medicine woman Asha Frost, author and activist Amisha Ghadiali, folk singer and period preacher Lucy Peach and School of Movement Medicine co-founder Susannah Darling Khan, including;- How Asha handled critical feedback when her work went viral. - How Amisha faces the faces the challenge of making a steady living as a visionary.- What made Lucy become a period preacher- How Susannah handled the most embarrassing moment of her leadership journey.---Register for the Menstruality Leadership lab for free at: www.redschool.net/lab---Registration is now open for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can take your seat here: 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.schoolAsha Frost: https://www.instagram.com/asha.frostAmisha Ghadiali: https://www.instagram.com/amishaghadiali/Lucy Peach: https://www.instagram.com/lucyspeaches/Susannah Darling Khan: https://www.instagram.com/susannahdarlingkhan/

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, welcome back to the podcast. Today we have something new. We have a gathering of amazing voices here to support you with the challenges you might be facing as you live your calling, as you take a stand for what you love, as you bring new things into the

world and lead, whether that's in your family or your community or with your work or your creative expression. I know personally as someone who deeply wants to contribute to the world, I often wish that I could be a fly on the wall of conversations with people I really respect who have done great things to hear how they've overcome the challenges that they faced and that's what we've been doing all week with the menstruality leadership lab we've been hearing teachings from Alexander and Shani about how they've overcome their challenges as well as our four special guests, an artist, an activist, a medicine woman and a founder. The conversations are all available until March the 22nd.

And if you want to listen to them all, you can go to redschool.net forward slash lab. And in today's podcast, I thought that we could share clips from the Leadership Lab, some of the golden nuggets from these conversations, each of which adds a thread to the story of how we can support ourselves, hold ourselves, nourish ourselves as we're stepping forward to lead. And the Lab and this podcast will also give you a taste of Alexandra and Sharni's approach on our menstruality leadership program, which is now open for the final round of applications this year. We're starting on March the 31st we'd love to have you with us so if you're feeling called listen to this podcast come and tune into the lab and let's explore together how the menstrual cycle

and menopause can be our allies as we take our next steps into whatever your unique way of leading in the world is. So our first clip is from day one where Alexandra shares her experience of how menstrual cycle awareness has taught her the menstruality leadership skill or dark art of pacing and how it's helped her to live into the big visions that she has held for her work especially as a highly sensitive person? Well, it is the ability to move at the pace of your own nature and your own being. I mean, it's at the pace that your nervous system can cope with and the kind of energy that you have instead of imposing an agenda of you know these are the things I've got to do today and you know you need a degree of that of course but you've actually got to pace your own capacity so it's you know, your feelings, your nervous system, your energy levels.

It's quite an act of trust, actually, pacing. I think of it as learning to move at the pace of one's body, learning to live in sync with one's own timing, one's own rhythm, to really trust technical wisdom. It's just to stay in a place of ease as best you can within the context of the pressure and demands of what leadership requires. So Alexandra, you are a visionary leader.

You are somebody who has held a very powerful and huge vision within you for decades. Yes, Shani. I have felt organized by some kind of vision, I would say, most of my life. And of course, obviously, when I was younger, it was quite, it was inchoate. There were no words for it. And it was really in my 30s that I could begin to feel something start to build, and that's, of course, when I was really starting to care for menstruation, because, of course, I had hideous

menstrual problems, menstrual pain, and the more I stopped at menstruation, the more I could feel something big coming through, and, of course, that just unfolded over the years. And gradually, of course, I could give words to it. But it was huge how I envisioned things. And I was dealing with a body that was not that resilient. I had big health challenges, you know, a lot of fatigue, a lot of allergies, and I didn't sleep. It's not a great combination of forces. And it was really challenging to keep faith with my own life when I was feeling so unwell. And really, in a way, it was the art of pacing that saved the day. And of course, you know, the cycle actually,

cycle awareness helps you to build that art of pacing. But in those early days, I wasn't really conscious of that. I was sort of doing it unconsciously through cycle awareness. I had to pay attention to my cycle so that I could take time to stop when I bled. So I was really paying attention to things and honoring my cycle. I was honoring my cycle. And that act of doing that was actually sort of exercising me in this muscle of pacing. But I actually also think it's a bit of a talent of mine I think it's

sort of built into me that one and it is this capacity to really um to move at a pace that I could manage but it really required a very daring act of trust on my part to lean into myself, to dare to believe that this vision would manifest if I could trust me and my own timing with things. Now, in the early days, I didn't have that as a conscious thought. It was sort of more something that was implicitly growing in me. And believe you me, I had moments of huge rage and frustration at my body. You know, I didn't want to pace things.

I wanted to drive ahead because I'm very willful and I'm very ambitious. But I would just crash. But, you know, I have kept faith with pacing Shani and there's one other element that I have learned with pacing which is that there is a right time to do things and so it's not and it was about I was trusting my own timing to come to things but I came to realize through many little examples of how there is a right timing like this there's the timing of life you know it's the right moment for something so that I feel is very important you've got to have a trust in yourself and in a way you've got

to have a trust in something bigger than you that yeah and this is where I want to join in with you Alexandra because you you know you mentioned that timing in a way is a talent of yours which is definitely true it's one of your great skills and this is one of the beauties of visionary leadership, is that our vision, whilst big and sort of seemingly out of reach or impossible, our vision actually connects us with the sense of rightness and meaning. And our vision actually builds trust. So the thing you're talking about, Alexandra, this trust came out of the fact that you felt held by something. You felt held by your vision. And because of that holding, you were able to practice restraints, you know, those moments of frustration where you wanted to push through, you were able to practice restraint and lean back and remember that you were being guided and held

by something greater than you. And that's one of the beauties of this kind of leadership is that when we're connected to meaning and purpose, when we feel the contribution that we have, we feel held by it. And that helps some of that urgency to fall away. It helps some of that urgency to fall away, yeah. And as you're speaking, what's coming to me, Shani, in the art of pacing, I was discovering how I was being paced, i.e. grown into what it was that I was here to serve. Say more about that. That's really interesting, Alexandra.

Well, you know, when I had the huge vision I was a complete innocent Charlie you're this monster vision you know go save the world and I'm just little old human me I didn't know how to work the world I felt permanently overwhelmed by life permanently overwhelmed and in pacing myself it was like I was growing into something and learning to meet the challenges of my illness became a kind of creative rub you know like the grit in the oyster shell yeah that um helped me build psychological muscle it helped me to build the muscle of self-care and um healing is a real discipline you know and i have developed discipline of care and with that a discipline of awareness and um all sorts of you know psychological strength really yeah and capacity has grown through pacing

yeah so what I'm hearing which is very powerful Alexandra is that the art of pacing your vulnerability which in this case was your physical health. So for anyone listening to this, your vulnerability might be something else, but it's about pacing our nervous system, pacing our limits, pacing our capacity. So for you, the pacing of your health challenges actually matured you, ripened you, prepared you to actually fulfill the vision. So rather than your health challenges being an obstacle, what you're saying is your health challenges provided

the creative tension for you to grow and mature into the one who is here now fulfilling your vision and doing what it is you came here to do that is very powerful and beautiful i just want to come back to this thing of um how we learn pacing through menstruality alexandra you mentioned that our menstrual cycle is helping us to learn pacing um can we just unpack that a little bit more because that's really helpful um does yeah how does menstrual cycle awareness teach us the skill of pacing well i mean meant menstrual cycle awareness is in a sense the art of pacing definitely it's the art of pacing the cycle you have and then and letting that unfold its wisdom and guidance for you. you need when you're moving from this sort of the expanded consciousness of menstruation back into mundane life again so from your inner winter into your inner spring and you know I used to have a high old time in menstruation it was amazing and um coming out of

menstruation was always a come down for me. And it was because that high old time, what you're talking about there is when you really get plugged into your vision and you really get charged up with this meaning and this possibility and this feeling of goodness and rightness in yourself. And then you've got to come from that lovely cocoon, that sanctuary of menstruation and return to the world it's like stepping into the real light of day after you've had a spiritual experience it is it's precisely

that and um of course i you know no one was guiding me in this and i would crash and burn and that was a fatigue moment for me and um but i started to get smart about it and i realized that you know if i really uh paced how i came out of my bleed i could cross that threshold into the spring in a more held way in a more organic way and in a sense um hold on to the thread from the vision because you know really i used to crash and almost forget the vision yeah and go back to normal life and go and then get to ovulation and go what was that all about you know just yeah and then i'd come back to my bleed again and go, oh, yeah, yeah. I'd be reminded again.

So what you're saying, Alexandra, is that pacing the emergence from the inner winter to the inner spring, in other words, moving slowly enough, allows us to stay connected to our vision and therefore to feel the holding of our vision to feel held by our vision so in other words our leadership our lives our calling feels held we feel held yes as i say that alexandra i'm just noticing what a relief that is for me, you know, to know that, to remember that, to feel no matter how big the vision is we've come with, no matter how capable we do or don't feel to fulfill that vision, that we can feel held by something. Pacing allows us to keep the thread to ourselves. It really does.

It's just gold. In our next clip, Alexander and Sharni speak with our first special guest of the Leadership Lab, Asha Frost, who is an indigenous healer and a medicine woman, about the challenges she's faced, especially as a sensitive leader. And in this clip, she shares what helped her through the terror of publishing her book, and she used that word terror her book you are the medicine and how she coped when her letter dear white woman who wants to be like me went viral and how she works with

the inevitable critical feedback that we all receive when we dare to step out and lead I because part of the compassion also comes back to not being the loudest voice in the room, not being the loudest voice on social media, and just trusting, trusting the clarity or trusting the potency of maybe the smaller words or the more concise message that it will reach in, it'll ripple. I also trust in the invisible. If I don't have a million followers, I trust that the ripples that I'm making energetically are reaching where I need to reach. So I almost say it like water, you know, when you throw a stone and it just sort of ripples. I'm also a homeopath. So I think I think about energy and water a lot, but that really,

that has really helped me to trust in the potency of the invisible and the unseen um because I don't I can compare myself a lot right how come that person's like rose up to fame so fast I don't have a hundred thousand followers like I'm human like that so I think that that that has really helped me as a sensitive leader to trust as a sensitive leader you're so um in tune in the intricacies of energy and the energy fields and the energy world. So trust that you're making an impact beyond what your eyes can see. I think that's so important to remember. Yes, Sasha, I have ripples running through me as you're saying that. Because what I'm hearing, well, firstly, yes to all of that, and what I'm hearing when you say this as well is we all need to do leadership in our own unique way, in a way that suits our nature

and trust that there isn't just one way of doing things, there isn't just one means by which we can reach and create impact and have effect, that there are many ways and some of them are less valorized in our world. But that does not mean they're less powerful or less potent or less effective. And you're really pointing to the power of the more subtle, invisible ways. And it's our experience that that is hugely, hugely potent, that there's a magic at work, that if we can kind of trust that, life's really on our side in a way that can be really quite surprising and full of wonder and wondrousness i'd um i'd love to ask you about the process of stepping out with your message in the world

through the process of writing a book because writing a book is a big deal. I mean, just writing it is a big deal, full stop. We can attest to that one. But it isn't just about the writing of the book. It's the book. It's about the book being read by others. It's about being really seen, but in a much bigger, more public way and um i'm curious i know shani and i you know have had to go through negotiations uh when we're putting our original ideas out there or you know our way of doing things and i'm really interested asha in in that process for you and um and what helped you I suppose with that what did you draw on to be able to to do that oh goodness I feel like I'm constantly going through that evolution of the increased visibility piece as a sensitive person leader it feels like it's constantly stretching me that's why I put my hand to my heart because I could feel that like, Ooh, you know, just

making more capacity for that. I'm just going through a new, another launch tomorrow. And so I'm feeling it really, really, it's really present with me right now about like my words, my medicine, my energy being held. It's like held in people's hands and you sort of envision that it'll be held with tenderness or the way that you intended, but that doesn't always happen. Of course. Right. Like we have no control of how our words are going to land. And I was terrified before my book came out. I was terrified and it wasn't until I wasn't. So my book came out last March. It's almost been a year.

It wasn't until maybe two or three months ago that I finally felt a little bit more present in my body to really receive or have the capacity to receive all of the beautiful things people were saying. I think I heard them, but they didn't really land. It was like, I think I was in a bit of a freeze. So nervous system work has been huge for me. Even with that, it was still such a big, it was such a big push for me and such a big, like, lesson and wisdom that really, really spoke. This felt like this book was bigger than me. It felt like ancestral guidance and teachings and people were speaking through me. Plus, it has so much history and education in it that many people didn't know

so when I was writing two chapters in particular I was going I was doing fine you know my kids were both homeless in the pandemic and I'm writing away in my little cave and um I got to this chapter on residential schools here in Canada and I could not I could not get through it and I was so confused because I hadn't had writers block up to this point point. And I was just like, what's going on? So I had some energy healing done. And she said, I see there are hands around your throat. There are voices who don't want to get these words out there into the world. And I took that really seriously because it was really real for me. I thought, I don't know why I'm so stuck and I can't write these words. So energy healing has been huge for me, just having people to support my growth.

And then doing some of that nervous system work, because it's a lot, you never know when you're kind of opening a DM or an email, what the feedback is going to be that's coming your way. And not everybody's going to love it. So I think that I'm constantly just building capacity and rest is such a big part of that for me. Rest builds my capacity. And if I don't get outside in the forest every day, if I don't go to sleep early at night during these times, then I'm really going to feel it. I'm going to be way more vulnerable to any critique or anything that comes my way that isn't feeling great yes that word asha terror

that's a strong word and uh i know many people experience that feeling of terror when they expose or share something that's very kind of unique that's come from them or come through them and I don't want to make assumptions but I'm kind of guessing that what's behind the terror is uh to do with the feedback you might get is that right yeah so in my book um there was like this letter that went viral um years before in the book. And that was really where that's that energy started of the terror, because I wasn't expecting the viral reach of that letter. It was for me. So I think I still had that energetic hook of like, oh, my goodness, you weren't ready. Like my system wasn't ready for getting all that feedback and people were so angry at me.

So I had to work through that. It was really hard. Wow. And so I was in a freeze for two years where I could there, this is really intense. I couldn't go into my emails by myself because I didn't know what was, what was on the other end. Um, because people were really, it just shook, it just shook up, um, a collective energy, right? That needed shaking. And my intention was very much like an invitation. But of course, that doesn't land for everyone. I was like, I'm inviting you into reciprocity and a relationship. And that's not how it landed for everyone's everyone's trauma just gets activated. So I learned so much, but I, but I can see how long it can take. If you're not, if you just don't have the tools, I didn't have the tools at the time for a viral

letter. And we have no idea what our work is going to evoke when it reaches people. As you said, it is such a great unknown that we're stepping into when we put something out into the world and your thing of I wasn't ready and not feeling ready is really important because then you went on to it sounds like you went on a big learning curve with that and when it came to the publication of your book you had discovered and realized that your nervous system needed stabilizing and you mentioned two things which I just want to come back to because they were really really good Asha you said I realized I need a lot of rest in order that I can have the capacity to meet the feedback and I needed time in nature. And so all that speaks to me of you building more and more sort of resource and capacity to be able to handle more and more visibility and therefore more

and more feedback and criticism. Yeah. It's so true that resource plays. I mean mean I don't think we're any of us are truly there all the time um but I it's something that I definitely just I've learned that I need it's like that is a non-negotiable for me like I just know that this is this is going to keep me well this is going to keep my emotional state well so it's so important. Asha goes on in the conversation to share how she has built her capacity to meet the world's demand of her it's so practical and so inspiring and you can hear the full conversation when you register for the leadership lab for free at redschool.net forward slash lab. Okay, on to day two now, where Alexandra and Sharni spoke about rested leadership, the menstruality skill of restedness,

the art of being connected to ourselves and trusting our own enoughness. And their special guest was Amisha Gadiyali, who is the creator of the internationally acclaimed All That We Are podcast, as well as beautiful leadership mentoring. And in this clip, Amisha speaks about how her calling has evolved, how she's listened to the whispers along the way as she moved from the world of politics to sustainable fashion, now to writing and leadership coaching, and how she faces the challenge of making a steady living by being a visionary. I wrote a book a couple of years ago about intuition and it, and it was just like contemplating it. It was just like, wow, you know, it's not, it's not like an, a little thing. We've been severed very, very violently through witch hunts, through colonization,

through the education system into not having access to this part of ourselves and into thinking it's weird and it's woo-woo and it's strange and it's not real and and it breaks my heart that we are living in a way that is so disconnected from the intelligence that we all have and and so really that for me is is my calling it's to to to to reconnect us um to to be able to live in a way that isn't just repeating trauma patterns repeating conditioning trying to be something that we're not to fit into something you know I definitely struggled with that in um in all of the actual jobs that I've ever had um and and therefore to find to find that thing that we've got that we can contribute to this to this beautiful future that that's somehow

possible in and amongst all of the darkness and the chaos and the violence and the fear and that there are sparks within that and and that that um that you know that we have to do what we can and of course as you know there's a line between martyrdom and burnout and all of these kinds of things but but but you know it is that if not us then who and and and really like living in a way where we're good ancestors for for the future so and I apologize a little bit for my voice I've been going through a little um a little virus and it's still there a little bit virus you've been traveling through your voice is fine don't worry wow it's such a powerful beautiful message that you hold this idea of us all holding

this intelligence and how to reconnect with that it's very beautifully articulated by you can I just say I agree with your friends you have lived already a number of lives yeah including the near death and rebirths the actual ones you know even this virus I'm sure is like a death rebirth I feel like when I finally land out of it my the tone of my voice is going to be different you know we're joking about the many lives you've had but no doubt you've been through some huge challenges in order to come to this place yeah yeah it's been messy for sure well tell us about that if you will love to hear you know what maybe there's a particular challenge or stretch that you'd like to share with us because we'd love to

hear about something of what you've had to negotiate and also how you've you know what you've drawn on what skills you have what you've had to learn in order to kind of come through those places of being taken outside of your comfort zone and stretched I mean there are various challenges and as you know they come in thick and fast yeah but I feel like there's two two kind of main ones that I feel have been recurrent and one of those is around the way that the world has evolved and the social media and having to keep putting out like little shallow things into the world in order to create space for the depth. And I find that really challenging because it's not how I want to spend my time, but because of the capitalist model

and having to try and find a way through these systems to offer something that people don't know that they need because it's not been something that they necessarily have come across before. I found that challenging because a lot of the things that I've done have been, you know, they've been really before. I found that challenging because a lot of the things I've done have been, you know, they've been really difficult. And they've been, another friend says, I'm always just five years ahead of what people are doing. And that's really

challenging because I see people make money from something that I really found difficult to make money from like five years later, when I've already got burnt out from it and been listening in okay what's the next thing and it's it's not that conscious it's more just the information is coming to me like this is what needs to be offered and often I think a lot of the work that I've done is paved the way for something and so that's that's really challenging because it's hard to always make a steady living when you're being the visionary. And so that's definitely something. when one is working for themselves and the the actual offering of the work you know doing a talk or making a podcast or hosting a retreat or the mentoring work I do is incredible but you have to do so much to to get to the privilege of being able to offer that and again this is kind of

connected because a lot of that is like you know you don't get paid for that time kind of that that it takes to lead up to that thing so you have to kind of work quite hard to have to be able to do your work like I suppose it's a way of a way of thinking about it and I've had a lot of health challenges in my 30s and at the moment my mother's very unwell and I'm caring for her and when there are these kind of extra things it's quite difficult because you're constantly having to sell something somehow you're constantly having to like put yourself out there and I find that that can be really really challenging and I just you know sometimes I'm like whoa what would it be like to just to have a salary coming in and to have money coming in to know that all I have to do is show up and do what

I'm supposed to do that day and not that every day is like a a new mystery so kind of to find my way through and to work out how best to use my resources and and then of course like when I am unwell or something there isn't anyone else to to carry that forward so that definitely like I'd say those things have been really really challenging in terms of how to actually live this life that I've created myself. We're going to move on to our next clip now which is from the brilliant powerful and absolutely hilarious Lucy Peach who is a period preacher, an author, a theatre performer and a folk singer. She's also a graduate of our menstruality leadership program and Lucy's conversation is actually live today along with Alexandra and Sharni's teaching about working with the dark art of holding the tension as we face the criticism that goes hand in hand with stepping out for something in the world

and in this clip with Lucy that we're sharing now she explores the nuanced spiraling twisting winding journey to find her calling in a really fun way you know I feel like it's such a testament to that idea of not often knowing why you're doing what you're doing but following your nose and doing things that feel good and then one day they just magically seem to culminate and You can pull on all these different parts and follow this

Thread and you kind of have what you need and yeah I mean I've thought about this question it's I've thought about your was 27 and I was kind of in that real work of learning myself you know I had a new baby he was nearly two years old I had a new job I was working in sexual health education which I loved but you know for the first year I just blushed, like, all the time. Everything was new. And I was also being a singer, which was something, it was like all of these new things were happening. And really I'm so grateful that I had the space at that age

and at that time to be working in sexual health and just exposed to so many empowering people and ideas and books and information. And, yeah, that's when I really kind of learnt that there was this other way of understanding myself and the first way that I used it was to not be an arsehole to myself when I was premenstrual but then to use that to write music you know to channel it and it just struck me as like horrific that for 15 years I'd been getting around being an asshole to myself when I could have used that energy to make stuff you know and

now I feel like even just talking about it makes my heart like be fast like it's just obviously once you know you you can't unknow that and when you feel what it's like to be communing with yourself and using what you have um yeah I talked about it a lot and that was sort of 2007 and it wasn't cool no one really wanted to talk about my period or my creative process as it related to my menstrual cycle and I never forget this one guy saying to me not in a nasty way but he said Lucy you talk about your period like all the time. And I was like, Davy, it's happening to me all the time. You know, what would you rather I talk about my shit? And he really took that question seriously and he said, yeah,

no offence, but I think I probably would be more comfortable with that. And I just remember thinking, wow, okay, that's a pretty major temperature check of, you know, the world that I'm in. So, you know, I kind of used it for myself for a long time. And then, yeah, Richard, my partner and I were making a music video it was the weekend of my 36th birthday we were up north in the wildflower season and there was a guy there who was helping us and I was getting ready in this little fishing shanty shack thing and I remember saying oh what head scarf shall I wear and what lipstick shall I wear and oh fuck it I'm in my post-ovulatory phase I'm gonna wear hot pink or and he was like what are you talking about what is this what is this phases that you're talking about and so I gave him a little synopsis and he was this guy who used to be a clown in the Cirque du Soleil

and he said you need to make a show about this you need to like do what you do but do it there and obviously in my post ovulatory give phase I was like yes I do I will and and then I said I'll think about it and if I'm premenstrual and I still want to do it then I'm gonna do it and then I passed the test exactly and then I really didn't expect I don't know what I expected but um that was back in um 2017 that I first did it in January and I was just blown away by how much people really wanted to engage with it and they really wanted to talk about it. And after the show there was, you know, 100 strangers

in the auditorium all talking to each other about their period and I was just really I mean yeah like it was like you know lifted the lid on something and just gone wow there's so much cool stuff in there I want to jump in gosh story there there are things about it I want to just catch because I felt so moved I'm particularly moved by this the piece you shared about the guy who had the idea you know the Cirque du Soleil clown and the reason that moved me so much is because you started off by saying you know how did my calling start and you well, I was just following what I loved and, you know, just following these different strands and going step by step. And none of it really made sense.

And that I really get that because I can hear how there was a sort of mystery at work. And you knew something without knowing what it was you knew. This is such a hallmark of following one's calling. It's just like you're just staying on the scent of something. And then I heard how all these kind of elements of your life that sort of seem possibly a bit random, but are they all kind of came together to make you and grow you and educate you and expose you to be able to kind of go deeper into something or to sort of wake up into something bigger. And then comes along this guy, well, those two guys, you know, I love men. They are just our best creative allies, aren't they? Sort of innocently sometimes as the guy who

preferred you to speak about your shit was that's so that was so illuminating and then the next guy comes along and this is where I get so excited about our callings Lucy because here you are innocently like following the thread but you were staying true to something. You were staying true to you and what you knew and your experience of yourself and your cycle. And life just came along and delivered you this perfect invitation, this idea, you know, that came to you and you said yes. And it just exploded into this whole creative wonder that is your work now. Lucy actually went on in this conversation to share a really moving story about her most humbling moment in her leadership so far her biggest challenge and how she negotiated it

and our next special guest was really generous in sharing hers too so this brings us to day four of the leadership lab evolutionary leadership where alexander and sharni explore how to work with the menstruality dark art of interoception as we face the evolutionary stretch that leadership activates and awakens within us and their special guest is Susanna Darling-Kard who you might remember from our Wise Power Retreat series. She's the co-founder of the School of Movement Medicine and in this clip she shares her most embarrassing moment that she's faced in living her calling and what helped her to rise through it. When I was looking through your questions, your wonderful questions in preparation for this, and you asked in big capital letters, the big one, like big big challenges I was like well actually there is the biggest

challenge for us was that after I speak for me for me it's after 18 years with Gabrielle Ross and that was an amazing apprenticeship with an extraordinary teacher it was clear to all of us her and us that it was time for us to to leave the nest and found our own work and make our own integration however what that meant to her and to us was two different things and so when we did that um we became persona non grata um and there were some really quite nasty things said about us and that experience of exile we were leaving anyway but excommunication and being seen as the baddies and talked about by people that we held and had held in very high esteem to people that were also our students as these um the villains was incredibly earth-shattering that was that was a huge letting

go which we chose but we didn't kind of know it was going to be like that. But it was also hugely growthful because, and I'm leading up to the embarrassing moment here, but it took a while for that embarrassing self-consciousness to hit. But the beginning bit was just of having to, with a lot of support, decide what to do. And we decided not to engage in the, no, we didn't. Yes, we did. No, that, but just to, to be quiet and to do our work and let our actions speak for themselves and to go on. Honouring Gabrielle as our teacher, which,

which we did, but now I think I can do on a whole other level because this was a huge actually huge gift she gave us of kind of demanding our growing up really um I think there was a level on which it was absolutely masterful she was like and I don't know how conscious that was in her but but anyway bless her she she was like if you want to grow up i'll grow up then sit down on your own feet and um and what that meant was to really inquire and look in the mirror and ask ourselves deeply deeply question you know are we at home in our integrity with this and we needed to make one or two adjustments and then we were like yeah yeah we are and we don't know if anyone is going to want to work with us ever again with all that being kind of

those words flying around in the stratosphere but to actually keep the face of our own path our own track and keep walking and and people obviously people have continued to work with us. And there were some people who courageously also came to work with us and to stay in the other realm because we really didn't want to create a split where people felt they had to choose. And, yeah, it was like to kind of stared into the abyss of abyss of the kind of fractures where we were in a fracture we were in a there wasn't there was a fracture but then how do we not add to that how do we maintain a space where it's safe for people to be really involved in that

work and in our work and we're not going to demand on them loyalty but we are going to be clear about what the parameters of this work are and then the embarrassing bit was quite a few years later we realized that within Gabrielle's when we were at those 18 years in her circulation, we had got quite attached to being special ones and being close to her and being, we realised that we'd kind of preened ourselves a bit in that position, in that role and being, oh yes, oh we went for dinner with gabrielle kind of thing like got got attached and because we got attached we there were things we hadn't challenged there were things that we hadn't um dealt with there was things like under the carpet um so we hadn't been as true to our own integrity because we'd got attached to the power, money,

and kind of, what do you call it, razzmatazz, you know, the kind of, it's got a word, glamour of that role, of that position. We'd actually lost more integrity than we realized in not challenging things and it's it's not that we didn't challenge things we did but we we were more lightweight than we we should have been in retrospect and and that experience of what it's like to be in a group of people who really feel that we're doing the most incandescent work on earth. Like this is it. How dangerous that is. You create a kind of feeling that if you leave here, you're going to be out in the barren wastelands.

Actually, the barren wastelands are full of life. You know, that's actually on the way to being what we call kind of cult-like, having cult-like aspects. And it was very important to leave that, to experience the kind of sense of being made wrong and discover what that feels like and and then to keep trucking and to use everything we learned there in our creation of movement medicine and what we're doing here which is you know the shadow lessons from that are are very strong and at the same time we've kept just

like the airplane that arrives on track but has actually been off course 99 of the time because it's doing that we've kept you know we let go a bit too much we got we got so open to feedback because we were determined not to do that thing that we actually nearly annihilated ourselves and you were there Sharni the famous the infamous dog barn incident when we just didn't realize that we also as leaders need safety and to feel to feel safe as well as everyone in the group needs to feel safe and I think leadership is is very misunderstood at this moment in time there's so much um antagonism towards any perceived authority and mistrust for good reason any perceived authority that actually to hold authority responsibly is is actually very difficult

um I mean it's very difficult anyway because power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely and like to keep to keep you know supervision is an absolute must personal work is absolute must kind of to keep finding those embarrassing things almost hunting them hooray i got another one victory yeah that's it and you've answered our final question there once you beautifully kind of wrapped up because we were going to ask what's advice or suggestion you'd offer someone and that combination of the need for support but the importance of our body and being in our authenticity and finding that congruence which means kind of really including all of who we are as being such a such a crucial thing yeah that's really lovely

thank you so much Susanna welcome you know and if you've got that as your banner congruence there's nowhere to go you can't skip out you can't hide from yourself because if you do you're you're displacing your congruence you're you're putting things inside it's like that actually that feels like the wrap the real wrap-up that that just calls us to what is what we need to pay attention to. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. I really hope you've enjoyed these clips. If you haven't already, come and listen to the rest. There's so much more.

Alexandra and Sharni share their personal stories of their biggest challenges. They teach so much about how menstrual cycle awareness and menopause can guide us, the dark arts that they cultivate in us. Asha shares how she has continued to live her calling through chronic illness. Lucy shares what she did when a troll made a critical video about her and Susanna shares her biggest leadership lessons so far it's all so good you can tune in at redschool.net forward slash lab and a reminder that if you are interested in our menstruality leadership program applications are open again for the last time this year and you can explore the program at menstrualityleadership.com and the idea of the menstruality leadership lab is to give you a taste of the program so that's

possibly your next best step if you're interested in joining us okay thanks for listening please follow like subscribe and especially leave us a review on apple podcast that really helps the podcast to reach more people. So I'll see you next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.