The Menstruality Podcast - 81. Freedom, Focus and Fulfillment in Post Menopause Life (Lynne McTaggart)

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Alexandra is your host today as this is the next in our Wise Power Retreat series,  where she is having conversations with thought leaders, teachers and change-makers about what menopause revealed and awakened in them.  Her guest is Lynne McTaggart - who is regularly voted in the top 100 of spiritual teachers for her work around the power of intention.The arrival of Lynne's children birthed the first great work of her life, her magazine, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, and menopause heralded the birth of the work she is devoting the rest of her life to - exploring the human energy field and why spiritual healing works.We explore:New ways to approach aging, and the truth that menopause isn't about losing faculties - more faculties are actually coming on line.How menopause kicked Lynne’s ‘disruptor gene’ into gear, and how it helped her to awaken to who she truly is. Lynne's post menopausal zest, and how we can all embrace our third acts, move beyond the roles we have previously held, and instead ask  -'what else do I want to do with my life?'.---You can now order our new book! Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.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.schoolLynne McTaggart: @lynnemctaggartofficial - https://www.instagram.com/p/CqVaw_RMDbx

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 there, welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

If you're coming back, thank you for continuing to come back and a warm welcome to you if this is your first episode. It's a special one today. Alexandra is your host again and it's our next Wise Power Retreat series conversation. So this is a continuation of the beautiful series of intimate encounters that Alexandra recorded when we launched our latest book, Wise Power. And Alexandra's guest is Lynn McTaggart, who is regularly voted in the top hundred of spiritual teachers for her work around the power of intention. And they are exploring what menopause and post-menopause life has revealed and is revealing and awakening in her. Okay, so over to Lynn and Alexandra for freedom, focus and fulfillment in post-menopause life. Welcome to the Wise Power Retreat, where I'm having a series of intimate conversations with

people about their menopause experience and what it has revealed and liberated in them. This series of conversations is about the power, authority and purpose that menopause awakens in us and what's possible individually and collectively when this rite of passage is supported and dignified. And today I am delighted to be speaking with Lynne McTaggart. Lynne is an award-winning journalist and the author of seven books, including the worldwide international bestsellers, The Power of Eight, The Field, The Intention Experiment and The Bond bond and they're all considered seminal books of the new science and are translated into some 30 language which is just amazing and she is consistently voted one of the world's top 100 spiritual leaders for her groundbreaking work with consciousness and the power of intention and she is the co-founder and editor of the world's

number one health magazine what doctors don't tell you now published in 15 languages worldwide and um lynn i just have to tell you i believe i am your longest serving subscriber. I'm convinced. I picked up your magazine. Well, it was in 1983, I went to Australia. And then I realized, oh, I want this. I've been reading this magazine already. I got it in bookshops maybe a year before or something. And I thought, I want this magazine. And so I subscribed subscribed and I have continued subscribing I still get it every month Lynn and I love getting it and I find it I have gotten so much out of that magazine so I've been busting to tell you this I must be your longest serving reader oh thank you so much well we have readers who go back to 1990 when we first picked it off as and back then it was a newsletter not a magazine that's right yes until uh 2012 2012

we turned it into an international magazine and uh never looked back. But yeah, there always seems to be more the doctors aren't telling us or don't know and more about alternative and holistic medicine that is now largely suppressed. So we never run out of content. No, you never run out of content. Every month, I just love getting the magazine and learning new things. So yes, you know, you have been on a very powerful path for many years, even before you got to menopause. But what I'm interested in, Lynn, is discovering

what happened for you through your menopause journey and what that awoke in you and what that gave you. So I'd love you to just dive in there and let's just unfold. I'd love to hear. Okay. Well, my sort of, my path has two interesting bookends. And the first one is, well, I should say, I started out life in my 20s as an investigative reporter. And the first big story I did was busting international baby selling rings. And that became my book, The Baby Brokers. And I posed as an unwed mother. I was in my early 20s then. And then as a potential adoptive parent to start this whole ball rolling. So that was my background. very inspired by a guy called Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, who was a well-respected doctor,

like your kindly Jewish grandfather. Honestly, he was so gorgeous. And yet he was savaging medicine as being dangerous and unproven. And he was a great mentor. So here's the first bookend when i got pregnant and i had my kids very late in life the first one i was 38 and the second one well into my 40s um with the first bookend we started what doctors don't tell you i was pregnant with our first child when we launched it at a health expo. And the first issue, I called one of the stories a late arrival because both my daughter was a month late and the magazine was a couple of months late as a result of it. So I started it, we started it so that I could work at home, but also there kept being questions in my mind about what to do with my daughter. For instance, the very first story was about the MMR vaccine. Should she be vaccinated with this or anything else?

So a lot of those questions drove our editorial. And it was also to be at home, to work at at home to be able to work at home and always be around our children in a way and so for the first couple of years the magazine was done when the newsletter was done upstairs and then when we moved finally we needed some team we moved across the street so I always felt I wanted to be home-based and being able to bridge both worlds. So here's the second bookend. So we started that and that went on, et cetera. And when I was probably perimenopausal, a few years before that, I got interested in why spiritual healing works and whether we have such a thing as human energy fields. And I decided to investigate this as a book. And so I began speaking to a number of scientists

who'd been doing a lot of serious work, prestigious scientists at various universities like Princeton and Penn State, et cetera, and many universities in Europe who were investigating consciousness. And what I discovered was each of them had a tiny piece of a new puzzle that together compiled a completely new view of the world, a completely new science. So that became the field and that was published around my 50th birthday. So I was just coming up to menopause, which hit me at 52. So I like to think of my children as heralding the birth of what doctors don't tell you and my menopause is heralding the birth of me and the subject I was probably born to do wow that's amazing I actually bought that book I remember that book well I read it from cover to cover it was really good thank you yes so what i'd love to hear then is um how you experienced menopause and and and how it's gone on to you know what who you have become if you like because of that and how that has supported you because you take a very bold stand in the world you you know you are very prominent you hold and

I can imagine you for want of a better phrase copping flack from the from from people for the positions you hold the positions you take and um it takes something and I'm really interested to know how you meet all that and what what what did you notice about yourself going through menopause? OK, well, first of all, I didn't really let it define me because by then we had been doing what doctors don't tell you for a number of years. So I was set on how I was going to deal with it. And I certainly was not going to take HRT. I think I took the pill for a year in my early twenties, and it so didn't agree with me that I stopped. And I also, once we started doing What Docs and even earlier started looking at the dangers of hormones. And as we were researching with What Doctors Don't Tell You,

it became very clear to me, particularly with the Women's Health Initiative study, which studied hundreds of thousands of women and had to be stopped because there was such an excess of cancer in the women taking hormones. Now, they've tried to massage that data and wheel it away and say it didn't count and it was wrong and this and that and the other thing. But it was pretty definitive. And other studies are pretty definitive that these hormones are harmful in women. And I

just thought there are so many other holistic practices that can help me through the menopause. Now, because I've been watching my diet and, you know, eating very, very little sugar and having a very holistic and organic whole foods diet. And I've always, I've tried always as much as possible to cook from scratch with me, with my children, my family and husband. So my menopause was just some hot flushes. That was it. I really didn't experience the terrible things. I didn't put on a lot of weight.

I didn't experience a lot of what some women have experienced. I'm sure my waist is not what it was, but I was, you know, but I generally fit into the same clothes with some exceptions. But I did have the hot flushes, not debilitatingly so, but just would get heat and get a bit of hot at night so what I did for it was twofold both acupuncture and homeopathy completely sorted it and some of them were and I remember my mother telling me because I asked her once about how she dealt with it. And she said, well, I get a hot flush and I'd go, oh, there's a hot flush. And then she'd move on. And I tried to do the same to just kind of deal with it as a hot flush. But, you know, I was lucky enough to not have a lot of

the major, major symptoms. You know, your body changes slightly, you have to, you know, be a bit more mindful, et cetera, about your sex life. But pretty much that was it. And it was, I was just determined to deal with whatever symptoms I had holistically. I could not even take herbal phytoestrogens. They gave me terrible headaches. So I realized my body was not meant to have extra hormones of any variety. And I'm going to go with it. And so, as I say, homeopathy was brilliant for me. Just stop the hot flushes, just like that. And I find now, many years later, if I eat something

I'm allergic to, I will suddenly get a little bit of a flush. But otherwise, it's, you know, life has really calmed down. And that was only a short period of a few years. And what I really enjoyed is, as one of my friends put it, the steadiness. There's no more of a cyclical element to your body. It's steady. It's always the same. It's interesting to hear your experience of menopause, because you, it's almost like you're describing my experience of menopause in terms of symptoms and so on. And it's because I had access

to good alternative health information. Of course, what doctors don't tell you was one of my sources, along with, you know, practitioners that I went to and so on and there are alternatives and also what I'm hearing is that you were sort of prepared going in as well that you were already taking care of your health before you went into menopause so you were in a good place coming into it yeah so, so symptom-wise that it was, yeah, there's kind of adjustments that go on, as you say, the hot flush. I didn't get any of those until towards the end, interestingly. And I'm curious how you experienced your inner life,

your priorities, what was important for you, what kind of emotional process you went through? Okay, so as I say, my body was changing, but not hugely. And so I didn't mind it. And I do think that your type of menopause mirrors your diet and your lifestyle, very much so. And as I say, there are so many alternative sources to help you sail through the menopause. Internally, well, it was the awakening of the subject that has dominated my life, which is science and spirituality. That was a new path for me that started, that I started, I started researching. I started thinking about that in 1993 and 94. Even, I think I, I, I was, I first pitched that to my agent before our, even before our second child came along. But then I published the book in 2001, 2002 and 2001. And after that, that got me onto that new path. So as I say, I was 50 when that happened. And that became just this huge, huge awakening for me in terms of, aha, this is the

subject I was born to write about. And so that opened that up for me. Now, I did a fair amount of juggling because my children were still small. One of them was only about seven or eight, seven, I think she was. And so I still had little kids to deal with, but they were school age. And so there was always time to do some of this. So I was very much a juggler, but I had this, you know, it's very easy to lose yourself into the job of being a parent, which is you're not the picture, you're the frame. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that job. And I have two daughters who are gorgeous and grown up now, and they both live in our town. And we see they actually both work for us too. We see them both

and our granddaughter. So I love that part of my life, but I've always had a very strong desire to not only have a writing career, but also be an activist of some sort, be a changemaker of some sort. The disruptor lives and breathes in me. I love the disruptor in you, Liz. You're a serious disruptor. It's amazing. And menopause, I mean, I think, yes, you were all, you've had the gene of disruptor from the beginning, but I would say that menopause really kicked that into gear fully. It totally kicked it into gear because you suddenly also say, okay, and this really happened to me then was the seed, but it happened as time was going on. Okay, this is time for me. This is time for me to really awaken to who I actually am. And my husband likes to say that, you know, before that, and before we were really going strong with what docs, we were knitting, he likes to say we were knitting,

and then suddenly we, you know, we made a sweater, I guess you really took off you really took off yeah and so a menopause awoke this gene in you this disruptor gene and you really stepped into the work that you were born to do and this is the work around the new science and I'd love to hear more about your experience as a post-menopause woman because I mean you are immensely productive and active and creating it seems all the time and I have to say I feel that for myself too so I seem to get I seem to be doing more than I have ever done before in my life yes yeah I'd love to hear more because you know there's this awful classic image of somehow we fall off the radar and that's it at menopause and nothing nothing could be further from the truth

I mean as far as I'm concerned it's the beginning of something sorry yes you were going to come in no absolutely what comes to mind is that phrase Margaret Mead coined post-menopausal zest the post-menopausal zest of women where they've moved beyond just being homemakers and carers and parents and mothers to looking inside and saying, okay, what else do I want to do with my life? With the courses I give, I give many, many courses with the power of intention, the new science, the power of intention. And I get many, many women on these courses who are looking for a third act and saying, OK, now what? And so for me, I think the really key element here is to not be apologetic about your age, not be apologetic about how you look.

That's easier said than done. I have numerous friends in America who have undergone surgery, facelifts, one of whom still has pain two years later. Another one is completely numb two years later. The extent to which people feel and women feel forced to remain young is, I think, sad because I'm really enjoying this time probably more than any other time in my life. My husband says the same. We are, you know, we have enjoyed the process of watching our two daughters grow into two fabulous human beings and the arrival of a little granddaughter in the last year. We've seen the fruits of career start happening, et cetera, and solidify. And now we can say, okay, now what? What are we going to do now? What's our legacy? What else can we do? And you can only do that, I think, if you maintain your health, number one. So you've really got to look

after yourself physically, but also maintain your interests. Everybody I know who is retired without some sort of noble pursuit, as we like to say, as Aristotle, I think, called it, gets old, gets old. I listened to friends of mine who are 10 years younger, talking about how good it is that they've got a house where they have bedrooms downstairs, in case they need it, because they can't climb up the stairs. Now, they're still climbing up the stairs now, but they're already thinking, I won't be able to. And I think all of those kinds of thoughts are really dangerous. Yes, there's so much research coming out now, Lynn, about the power of the mind to affect our aging process. And I mean, the two things you name here are just that,

but also taking care of our health. That is, I'm absolutely ruthless about that. And not being apologetic about ourselves and who we are now. And then having this noble pursuit. So is i am fueled by something i'm fueled by a creative force and i can see you are fueled by a creative force that's that keeps on giving keeps on giving in fact i often joke that i've got enough creative ideas for my next lifetime. You bet.

Yeah, you bet. When you finally say goodbye to this mortal coil, you'll be bringing them to heaven and carrying them out. I'll be continuing on, yeah. Now, the thought that caught me, actually, was when you spoke about your intention experiment programs and these older women turning up and kind of asking what next and I'm interested this is a particular thought I have myself as a post-menopause woman is that I notice as I get older one of the powers that's coming to the fore for me is the power of intention that working with

energetics it feels like as my physical strength isn't quite what it was before or my physical chi is not quite as you know powerful as it was before there's another kind of chi that's coming on board for me which is what i call the power of the imaginal the power of my imagination the power of intention and the power of caring for the energetic realm and it seems to me that is absolutely what you are doing i'm not surprised to hear that you have older women coming to your programs they seem absolutely perfectly suited to um that yeah we do by the way have younger women and younger men and looking for a you know we also have men looking for well what's my third act too maybe they've retired and they're saying, well,

I want more. I still have, I'm still energetic. I still want to do more. Now what? And actually, it's now there's time to do what I really want to do. I have untold number of people on my courses who write that book they were always going to write, you know, yeah, who do something or start that business that we're always going to start, or whatever. But I think it is, yeah, it's about recognizing you still have loads to give. I mean, I love the line Leonard Cohen said, once about 70s. He said, Well, you're in the foothills of old age but only in the foothills and of course he started a tour worldwide tour where he was touring every he was singing every other night with his band and backup singers um in his mid-70s and he was you know just bopping around and really having a gay old time of it and And he said, yeah, I started this when I was just a young kid of 68 with a dream, you know, and he just he just laughed about it, but was productive really up until just about his dying day. So that's the kind of thing I want to think about doing.

Most people who I hear retire, retire from something they didn't like. They retire from a job that was a job and they never found their real passion. I think if you find your real passion, you don't retire. You know, you carry on in some Louise Hay. Yes. She found passion when she was in her 60s, she launched Hay House. I know. And then turned 90s. So, and worked till the end in some capacity. at red school we want to create a world where everyone going through menopause has dignity

respect and the support they need and that's why alexandra and sharni have written their new book wise power discover the liberating power of menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging. You can order your copy today at wisepowerbook.com. That's wisepowerbook.com. I love hearing stories like this. I hold on to these role models and I think um I think of um what I'm doing is my my art my creative art and um and I get I always think of David Hockney the artist who's just churning out paintings in his 80s late 80s I think now but he's just painting and painting and painting and um and I totally get it yeah I'll be doing that at 80 something this is my you know the work that I do is my version of painting yeah it it is fuel

creativity becomes the engine the fuel when I say creativity I mean you know your passion your calling whatever it is that's lighting you up, basically. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And I think there's something really essential, and this is something pretty central to my work now. There's something really important about getting off of yourself. And I think that's one of the problems with aging that occurs with people that is really dangerous.

One, I think it's one quarter of all people over 65 in the U.S. have no contact with anybody. They are, I mean, nothing on Zoom, physically nothing. They have no contact with anybody, just them and their TV set. That's a scary statistic. And I think one of the things that happens a lot of times with them up, I get a litany of information about their bodies and what is decaying in them. And I always feel like saying, you know, I really would love for you to go out and do some volunteer work and just get off of yourself for a while. Because one of the key pieces, I mean, and I do a lot of this because I've been working a lot with groups of, small groups of people doing intention for each other. They call them power of eight groups.

Doesn't have to be eight. It can be five or 12. But it's a small group doing intention for each other or people outside the group. And there have been, you know, magical, magical things that happen. I've seen thousands of healings, two people getting up out of their wheelchair, one who was paralyzed from the neck down and everything else, cancer reversed and genetic diseases reversed, all kinds of amazing things. But one of the things that I think is the key piece, one of the key pieces to why these groups are so miraculous is the fact that most of the time you're intending for someone else

in the group. If you share out and everybody does an intention for one of the members each time, well, you get your intentions one eighth of the time if there are eight people in your group. So most of the time you're doing in loving intention for other people. And when I started studying why these power of eight groups are so powerful and I started looking at the science of it, the science of altruism is, again, it's like a bulletproof vest. People who do things for other people live longer, happier, healthier lives. People who are ill with something, who help other people with the same illness, are more likely to get better. And so it goes. Altruism is really powerful. And so one of the things that

is a really important piece, I think, to getting older and finding your power is making sure that that work of yours is in some way a noble pursuit. And by noble pursuit, I think it is something that is of help to the world. Even if that's a little bit of volunteer work, it's so essential, not only for the world, but for you. of menopause is this, for me, it feels, and I sort of see it in women and people going through menop process, this sense of stepping out to do something in service of the world. And to hear you speak now of altruism like that, that's good news for me. I think that's so true. It is so true. That's what I hear over and over again. I want to serve. How can I serve? Even if they've had a career of some sort, maybe it wasn't of service. They want something more, something better, something gratifying, you know, and that has to be then they always identify it as helping the world, serving the world. So I agree with you. I think there is this

impulse because, you know, in a woman's life, particularly women who have children, but our job is first serving our families. And so we serve our families and then we have this muscle that is built up to serve. And now we feel, okay, how can we bring this to a bigger scale? And, yeah, I think that is really behind that impulse. I want to circle back to I was talking about the intention work and how I feel like now one of the powers I have very strongly post-menopause is the imaginal capacity the potency of imagination and intention and I'm wondering how you experience that because of course this is the work you're doing now post-menopause how do you have that sense of feeling I'd love you to speak about your experiences of your how you experience this intentionality in your being and the potency of it for you.

OK, I've always felt really cold to writing, and I think it is something that I have I have a facility for. And that hasn't gone away. I've found now there's more understanding of the writing process, improvement on the writing process. I feel no lessening of any of that power. I feel it's still there. What I feel, though, is a quickening of any of that power. I feel it's still there. What I feel though is a quickening of, okay, what do I really want to get done? What's on the whole bucket list of in every sense,

what do I want to achieve? What do I want to, where do I want to travel? How do I want to live my life in an uncompromising fashion? I think I find it very interesting watching my husband, who as, is being able to say, this is actually who I am. And I need to express myself. I don't mean being rude, but telling the truth. So I think there is, you know, a quickening of, well, I need to get these things done. You know, there is a certain finite limit to time. Yes. Not a finite limit, I don't think, to abilities. I think is the key piece to take on board is that just because you are a few decades into your menopause or whatever, or just starting out, it doesn't mean suddenly you're losing faculties.

What you're gaining is focus, what you're gaining is freedom, what you're gaining is permission to do all of this. And this is your time. This is your time. You're gaining focus. You're gaining freedom. You're gaining permission. You're not losing faculties. You're gaining things.

That's such a powerful statement, Lynne, that it's so important for us to hear that kind of thing well what's popped into my head is my appreciation of the fact that i work with people that are a lot younger than me because what i find really fascinating is the kind of mindset that's in the field consciousness around aging and how it sneaks up on me and I go what the where did that thought come from piss off you know where I get yeah I get those classic thoughts around getting older and then I go whoa whoa whoa wait a minute and I have to catch myself and I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that I am mixing with people that are, who just assume I can do everything that they're doing.

Because, I mean, we have, you know, jobs we're doing all the time. Of course. I know. I like to, I had some, a few years ago, I had some a health issue and it got sorted. And for a while there, I couldn't go to exercise classes. And as soon as it got sorted, I was right back in there on hit classes. And everybody in the class is like in their 30s. And there I am. And the and the instructor would come over to me and give me an elbow bump all the time.

Like, wow, look at the old lady who's doing this too. And I loved that. I thought, great, great. I'm getting acknowledged for just keeping up. But that's it. There's so many poisonous thoughts because aging isn't allowed even, much less recognized or revered in this culture in the UK, in America in particular, my American friends, and of course, I'm American. My American friends are, you know, really, really apologetic or in total denial about getting older and doing whatever they can, including, you know, nasty surgery to deny that aging process because aging is a terrible, it's a mortal sin in America. So I think we all are imbued with this. the me too movement came out and it's very good that all of that overt you know sexism and worse in hollywood and work environments is coming out and being exposed

but i want to say hey what about us too us too you know about older women being essentially stigmatized by a forcing to look younger or be younger or, you know, and it has its, it has its very sad demonstration in somebody like Madonna, who's what in her early sixties and feels compelled to do everything she's doing when she was a very beautiful woman and would be very beautiful as an aging woman too. So I feel very sad that that is constantly in a mindset that makes us essentially apologize about how we look or what we do and forces us to very extreme measures i'm you know one of the things i'm really taking away from this conversation today lynn is that phrase not apologetic not apologizing yeah i mean i wish we had more of the mentality of, say, France, where all the women are revered. Everybody looks as good as they can, but you don't see to reclaim youth. They look beautiful as they are. They make themselves look as beautiful as they can be, but they allow themselves to be older

and have a certain status then. And I think that is so much better than we have here in the UK or even particularly in the US where essentially older women disappear. Well, you're not disappearing, Lynne. And I'm not disappearing. There's quite a few of us out there who are not disappearing and are turning up as persistent disruptors you bet you bet you know if you had uh you know some key things that you would want to say like a key message you would want to give to someone uh you know coming into menopause now

or sort of in menopause i wonder what would you want to say to them maybe they're struggling and yeah sure yeah well i think you have to let go of menopause signals a gear shift. You have to let go of your concept of yourself as, you know, a young ingenue. Oh, yes. I mean, we have that up until our 40s now, really. And you have to change the view of who you are. But that doesn't make you less beautiful, doesn't make you less desirable. With today's health programs and good exercise, it is possible to look vibrant and lovely into well into post-menopause. So it shouldn't be a goodbye. It should be just a gear shift and also an understanding that it doesn't have to be an illness. It isn't an illness and it doesn't have to be an illness. It's going to reflect the state of your menopause is going to reflect the state of your health and the state of your diet.

So if you have a lot of sugar and a pretty rubbishy diet, you're going to have a tough menopause. You will experience some really bad symptoms and you will probably rush to your doctor and he'll try to prescribe HRT. But it is more than possible to go through the menopause just using some alternative practices that are completely side effect free and that will help you sail through this transition. And think of it as shutting one door and opening a great big new door.

Yes, I absolutely second that. You're opening a massive new door. And it has that word freedom written on it, doesn't it, Len? Yeah. It does. It does. freedom written on it doesn't it then yeah it does it does and as I say opportunity maybe for me because I still had you know relatively young children when I was going through that but opportunity it suddenly I just recognized oh this is what I'm meant to be doing and I found a real outlet for my writing

ability in this subject and so for me it was massive open door I love that that is absolutely it menopause that awakening of oh this is what I'm meant to be doing it's the sweetest revelation and Lynn I just really want to acknowledge um your your writing is so readable you make the new science so accessible so readable it's just such valuable work I just just really appreciate it. Thank you. And your magazine, because it's so, the beauty of it is it's all so well-researched. You know, everything that you're talking about is all well-researched.

So it's an incredible gift. Thank you. So I'm going to tell you about my final, so one of those things on my bucket list is I'm looking at the state of the world right now top seem to know anything about what they're doing. They don't seem to have any good solutions to all of the crises we now face. So I started thinking about, boy, we need a little army of changemakers. And then I started to realize that I actually have a dormant army of changemakers in all of our Power of Eight groups, because in the work I've been doing with intention, we've been doing this for years,

there are tens of thousands of these little groups there doing healing stuff for each other. But what if they started doing healing for their communities and also adopt new practices that are bringing us much closer to who we're supposed to be, which is cooperative and loving and not competitive individualists. And so I'm starting a little thing called the eight revolution. So this is my disruptor genes coming to the fore. So I'm launching that. This is so great. I love it. I'll be signing up for it.

Wonderful. It's giving all of these groups a free toolkit of what to do to, that toolkit is called Tools for a New World. And it is starting small with ground up stuff that they can do in their community that can be transformational. And one of my favorite movies at the moment is a movie called The Bank of Dave. It's on Netflix and it is about this guy called Dave, I've forgotten his surname, who lives in the north of England. You probably heard this, the most successful van business in the country. During the economic collapse of 2008, there were a number of people in his little town of Burnley who needed loans and couldn't get them. And so he loaned them the money and all of them paid back in good time. So he got this great idea to start a bank, the Bank of Dave.

And he went up against all kinds of the establishment, all the establishment and all kinds of difficulties who tried to shut him down. But he prevailed. He ended up creating a savings and loan organization in Burnley that is, I think it's loaned 20, 30 million dollars or pounds. So it's doing something differently to bring the community together so that people aren't against each other and competing against each other, but are working together. So these are many of the things that I want to do with these tools. And it was something I wrote about in The Bond, in my book, The Bond, which was, we were never meant to compete. It was a book looking at whether Darwin was right or not. And the answer was, you know, we were never meant to be survival of the fittest. We were always meant to be cooperative, to give, to belong, to share, to take turns, all of that. The science is really clear about it.

So it's hopefully some of these tools will be a bit of this in action. That is so good hearing that, Lynn, what you're articulating there. And the eight revolution, I think it's a brilliant idea. It's wonderful. I'm thrilled. Yeah. Great. I think it's a brilliant idea it's wonderful I'm thrilled yeah um great Lynn if people want to learn more about you they just go to lynnmctaggart.com and we that's correct isn't it yeah that's it absolutely and we can put some links in the show notes too I am so happy to have had this conversation with you thank you so so much. Thank you. And I should say too, if you're, if people are struggling with their menopause, with menopausal symptoms,

they can go to WDDTY.com, which is what doctors don't tell you. Or we've got a searchable database that goes back for years with all the kinds of alternative things that can help with the menopause that's a brilliant resource thank you so much lynn it's been my pleasure thank you thank you for tuning in today and listening to this amazing conversation with Lynn and Alexandra. I feel so inspired and fired up and looking forward to my post-menopause life after listening to it. If you are in menopause, approaching menopause and really needing support right now, then we recommend getting a copy of Alexander and Sharni's new book

Wise Power which you can find at wisepowerbook.com. Okay that's it for this week we'll be back next time I really look forward to being with you and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.