The Menstruality Podcast - 86. How Inner Spring helps you to Tend to your Uniqueness (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

How do you experience the pre-ovulation phase of your cycle - your inner spring? Is it a time of ease and flow,  or perhaps anxiety and insecurity? Maybe  a mixture of both?  Whatever your experience, we hope that today's episode will shed some light on the powers of inner spring for you. It's our first Q+A episode where Red School founders Alexandra and Sjanie will answer your questions about how to work with your cycle in the pre-ovulation phase. We explore questions like: - What to do if your experience of inner spring is different to many people, due to health challenges, and how to handle the shame that can arise?- How to hold yourself when emotional vulnerabilities and wounds come up in inner spring.- How to emerge tenderly from your bleed in a world that often doesn’t support that, and how to meet the rising energy of spring in a generative way, especially when it appears as anxiety and insecurity. ---Join our free online course, Love Your Cycle: discover the power of menstrual cycle awareness to revolutionise your life - www.redschool/net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, 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. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for being part of this community. It's our second Inner Spring episode today and we're doing something new and we're definitely

going to do much more of it because it was so eye-opening and revealing and fascinating and interesting. Alexander and Sharni answer your questions so I want to thank everyone who wrote in with your Inner Spring insights and queries and explorations. Alexander and Sharni loved responding to them questions like what to do if your experience of Inner Spring is different to many people perhaps due to health challenges around menstruation and how to handle the shame that can arise because of that. How to hold yourself when emotional vulnerabilities and wounds come up in inner spring, how to practice emerging tenderly from your bleed in a world that doesn't often support you to do that and how to meet the rising energy of pre-ovulation of

inner spring in a generative way especially when it likes to appear as anxiety and insecurity which often does for me. So if inner spring can feel challenging for you I invite you to cozy up with us. We actually began this conversation imagining that we were all together in person back at Hawkwood where we used to run our in-person programs so let's settle in there Alexandra's gonna walk us in okay so I'm sitting around the fireside and we're just we're in this lovely circle and we've got cups of tea. We're in Hawkwood. Yeah, I am picturing Hawkwood actually.

And I'm passing around the snacks and the chocolates. And people are just negotiating their seating. There's a bit of faffing and fussing and plumping up of cushions and just kind of getting it right and making sure someone behind you is okay. And can I just lean up against you? You know all that. It's just all getting cosy. And then someone's just come in a bit late and we just wait for them and they get their spot.

And, yeah, there's a lovely little burble and chatter. Someone just kicked over a cup of tea. Someone just kicked over a cup of tea and we all laugh and try to grab tissues to absorb it. And finally we go, okay, everyone, and we're all ready to go. Let's just open the space now. With our ritual of a cycle chicken. Let's go around the room.

Well, I am on moon day six and both Shani and I happen to be on the same day as in she's on her cycle day six. We've never, ever, ever experienced this before. And I am feeling well, I just did the wonderful medical medium liver cleanse. And it's so amazing that cleanse nine days and i did it over coming to the dark moon and new moon and i feel really quite reborn i feel well but there is this quality of emergence going on i'm just taking my time coming out of it. And I can feel my boundaries. I feel self-contained. I don't feel like pushing myself.

And it's not even trying to receive. I feel held in something. It's quite nice. And if I start to edge out of those boundaries, I can feel overwhelmed. There I go, oh, that's right, I'm not quite ready yet. I'm not quite formed enough yet. So there's a sort of tenderness and sweetness and just a lovely feeling of wellness in me

and a containedness. That's me. You're in your inner autumn, aren you Sophie yeah 24 so I'm in I'm in such a good place because I've come through the bumpy beginning of autumn where usually whatever the kind of the theme of my autumn has revealed itself and I've done some negotiating with it and it's churned in me and it now feels more like a cauldron that's bubbling like on the back of my witchy stove and I'm with it but it's not uh hot in me and I'm yeah rooted connected yeah I always say I know who I am and what I'm for and that's what that's the feeling

I've got I'm so moved because we didn't even try and do this, but we are now talking about inner spring while you two are just making this emergence from winter to spring. The sweet perfection of that. I know. Although Sharni's just nodding. Does it feel perfect for you? It feels like a cosmic joke really let me tell you my day six dream Sophie because it is so in many ways archetypal of something of this place in kind of early nascent spring and of course it's deeply personal for me as well so I dreamt that I was at home with a couple of my friends and we were having this great chat and

one of them mentioned that there was this new game out a new card game that was really fun and everyone's got it. It would be great to play. And I was like, yeah, let's go and get a pack. Let's go out and get a pack of this new card game. So with my two friends, one of whom in the dream is pregnant and the other one who's physically disabled, we decide we're going to go out and get this game and we step outside and

I close the door behind me and it's dark outside not just like ordinary dark pitch black and although at first I kind of try to look around me I realize that's pointless because there is no definition there's no orientation there's sort of no up or down there's no depth of field or perspective and I sort of start to feel oh like I've I've got no, I've got no, I can't even orientate myself. I feel very disorientated. I've got no sort of spatial awareness. And the senses and faculties that I normally use to go anywhere have been decommissioned because it's pitch black. And I don't quite know what senses to draw on. I feel really like out of my depth.

And I'm trying to get to where this card game is. And also I've got the responsibility of these two friends. And I even can't put one foot in front of the other because I've got no sense of where the ground is. And while I'm having that dream, there's this parallel dream going on. I don't know how this works, but I'm having a parallel dream at the same time of me being in the deepest sleep I've ever been in, so far down under, like heavy, heavy unconscious. and I'm aware that I'm in this kind of deep sleep and that there is almost no way of returning to consciousness from where I am wow we're going to have some interesting responses today to your questions yeah the goddess of the underworld will bring some wisdom wow it's such a profound dream i want to hear

later from you what's yeah what's come forth from this dream exactly yeah i'll i'll continue the story in a bit because that obviously isn't where it ends. As a listener, Shani is hooded again, as she often is for these podcasts. She is half still in this dark underworld. And quite honestly, I'd like to just keep my eyes closed forever. You know, that feels like a really powerful place, actually, to speak to the first question because this first question is about shame which so often lives in the darkness in us and in our world doesn't it so this is from Catherine and she says inner spring is often very tricky for me I have endometriosis and so often have heavy painful periods despite tending to lots of areas to support this like rest, diet, introspection.

So spring is physically challenging due to tiredness, but there's something else at play. There's something about shame. shame that I'm not like everyone else and hopping about like a spring lamb and a deeper shame which comes from my own experience of spring as life as a teenage girl who was constantly gaslighted for her period pain there's also a flavor of something deeper like shame of becoming a sexual being and all that brought with it which in my case was a lot of sexual harassment at school being an early developer so I guess my question is around how to tend to all my needs both physical emotional and spiritual in the real world when often spring is busy as I've had to break from work during winter and I and I need to start getting on with it. Thank you, Catherine. I'd like to begin by responding to this. There's a sort of personal angle for me that I remember. I just, I suppose, want to in your case, endometriosis.

It's very, very debilitating, and that's what I had. And, you know, menstruation is a time for us to nourish ourselves and to build up our chi so that we can emerge from spring with some energy in the tank but if all our energy is occupied with dealing with extreme symptoms menstruation becomes a huge drain so i just really want to acknowledge that if you are suffering with extreme symptoms like this, endometriosis, that feeling fatigue in the spring, yeah, is normal. You've been so worked over by the pain, there isn't much left. And I personally remember that myself, the challenge of that first few, you know, that first part of the cycle, and didn't feel like I was back until I got to the summer of the cycle. I'm really just sharing this to say,

to just really acknowledge your experience, Catherine. And then it leads into, and I remember this too, not being like everybody else. And that's such a big thing to negotiate when for myself, because I don't have simple solutions. There aren't any. It is the challenge of this, which is I chose to see my condition as meaningful, as leading me somewhere. And I also saw that I suffered because of the condition of the world as well, the condition of how we live, the stress, the quality of our food, the pollutants in our air. And I realized that healing my body was actually a radical act. Activism was activism. I saw healing myself as a form of activism. And because everyone is suffering with these things,

it's just showing up in me very extremely in this endometriosis pain, whatever it is. So this helped me to dignify my experience. And that it empowered me, actually. I thought, yeah, this is where I want to say, fuck it. Fuck it. Damn it. You know, I'm going to claim my place in the world and not see myself as some kind of drag. So it's a bit like saying, you know, I'm the canary in the mine shaft. And I think that's true for anyone with extreme conditions.

That empowered me. That, you know, filled me with something. And I found that helped me to deal with the fact that I wasn't normal because I judged myself too, and I felt a lot of shame too. I hope those personal comments of mine help you, little Catherine. I think about symptoms really, when you suffer with something, it really drags you back into yourself and in a way asks you to come home to yourself, asks you to sort of claim yourself. Yeah.

And to sort of fight back at the normal, so to speak. Anyway, Shani, over to you. Do you have anything to say here? I'm only partly responding. I'm responding to the shame piece, but there's a whole lot of things built into that question. You've said a lot, Alexandra, and it's all very dignifying. And I was just, as I was listening to Catherine's um share

and what you were saying I was struck by the fact that there's a built-in order and intelligence in the cycle we all know this like one season follows the other and each season needs the one that's come before this is true on all levels of our being and in your particular case um Catherine you know menstruation gifts us with the sort of buffering it we through the rest we can get at menstruation and the renewal that we can get our tanks are filled up we're kind of resourced with renewed energy we've let go of a lot of stress so we've come into a place of more soothing and more stability in ourselves and that is what then prepares us to sort of metaphorically and literally go out in the world in our inner spring to sort of come into ourselves and who we are and begin to be seen in the world in the way that the inner spring

asks of us so it gives us a kind of buffer or protection or resilience and in your case, with endometriosis and experiencing pain, you are coming out of menstruation tired and exhausted. And that makes me realize that the incredible challenge you have because you don't have that buffer. So I'm imagining you feel so much more exposed when you come into the spring. You don't have that natural sense of protection. And when we feel overexposed, it's so easy for shame to creep in. It's so easy for our own inner critics to jump in and judge us and make us wrong. And I really love what you said, Alexandra, because in a way you're saying, let the tiredness pull you into yourself rather than kind of fighting the tiredness. Let it pull you into yourself because that is the place where you will find this home in yourself. And with that, this feeling of protection and holding in you. And that's such a remedy for that kind of overexposing shame that you speak of

yeah following on from that shani if if one isn't resourced by menstruation we're then as you said so exposed to the critic or whatever sort of emotional wounds that we may hold, but particularly those from our younger years, from childhood and teenage years. And we're just acknowledging, Catherine, your comment about becoming a sexual being and how that was skewed by the kind of harassment you had as an early developer. And awareness is a wonderful thing.

To have this awareness of yourself is so precious because awareness in and of itself is a kind of medicine. I really want to emphasize that so you have a sensibility now and a sensitivity to what's there in yourself and as you um bring that hold that awareness when you're moving through that spring it's almost like um and this depends of, on how stressed you are, what your commitments, demands are. But if you're able, when you're going about the daily business that you have to attend to, if you can just keep half of, not half, but just a little part of yourself,

quietly pacing the vulnerability of this challenge and the negotiation of that young self into her sexual self um there's something about that holding that attention with yourself each menstrual month and even setting an intention at your menstruation. I used to love doing that, you know, for something I really wanted to kind of shift or change or careful. Just setting it up. And I would do some pretty damn big, bold intentions, let me tell you, at menstruation. And then sort of quietly holding it in the background of one's mind as one is going about, you know, as you're going about your daily life. There's something about that intimacy with that awareness of yourself that I think can quietly shift something. yeah and and so often just recognizing what it is we're needing whether we can actually meet that need or not in the moment brings relief it's so powerful as acknowledging oh this is what

i'm needing because i i i'm i'm also just sort of thinking back of this developmental process that we go through in our teens and on one hand we're becoming more independent yes we're developing our sexuality is starting to unfurl. Our brain development is kind of taking us into a new level of awareness and individuality. And often we really want to be singular and different and so on and so forth. And we are still children. We're still young, youngins who need an enormous amount of holding and protection, witnessing and presence. And many of us didn a kind of developmental gap there of not feeling the kind of protection and closeness that we were really longing for even as we were fighting against it you know we needed to fight

against it but we needed it there to fight against yes and so this is part of the reparation for all of us is recognizing that need for protection recognizing that need for um affirmation that you are okay you might be different but you are your difference matters your difference is precious um recognizing that the need you have for that is going to release a lot of pressure a lot of stress in your system and so regardless of what you do or don't have to get on with in your life i'm imagining you and all of us will feel a lot more compassion for ourselves when we kind of name and acknowledge these things and the absence of them from our young lives oh that's so beautifully said Shani so this this work to tend to our own uniqueness in inner spring you could say that this is helping to it's serving to fill that developmental gap that happened yeah yeah yeah that's true reflection

and I know we all as human beings have a tendency and possibly even a preference to blame other people or, you know, the situation we find ourselves in. I never do that. No, no, no, me either. what's really gorgeous to know is that part of maturation is taking responsibility for meeting all these places in ourselves and and tending our own needs and not waiting for and wanting anyone else to come along and do that for us and And whilst it is so much more challenging, if you've not experienced that as a young person, it is by no means impossible to recover it. And I mean, of course, there are all kinds of therapies and healing modalities to support us with this and menstrual cycle awareness this act of pacing and being aware of these parts of ourselves especially in this very tender time of the end of spring

is we would say the foundational remedy i mean really it is in essence to keep this energy or atmosphere of encouragement and kindness with ourselves. To really be sweet with ourselves, you know, time enough for toughness, because it's important. That's important, too, to call ourselves to account. And we all know when that happens. But for us to be able to do that tougher work, calling ourselves to account, oh, we need this nourishment of our tenderness and kindness and encouragement of ourselves and belief in ourselves, really. Taking our own side.

I really feel like this is the season for giving ourselves a lot of leeway and permission to get it wrong and to be sort of, I want to say, I want to say inadequate, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, to be fallible and experimental and truly human i mean this is the season for it the inner spring yeah can i say it's always the season it's always the season for kindness well for fallibility in my book passion for the fallibility yeah always the season and yes this is this is the time to really allow yourself to mess around yeah yeah that

offers so much relief i just feel such an exhale in my being till you say that and lots of other people wrote in with questions that have a similar theme which really is that in in a spring emotional wounds and vulnerabilities come up so this one is from Caitlin and she says since doing the leadership program I've become so much more aware of the shadow side of spring and it's really really revealed itself to me. I notice that a lot of emotional wounds and vulnerabilities come up for me here. I feel like my attachment wounds can be more intense in this season and it feels like my inner child takes the reins if I'm not careful. I think little Caitlin and all the more vulnerable and protective parts of me can often show themselves here. Not the same protective parts that show

themselves in autumn. That's a different ballgame altogether, like you were just saying, Alexandra. I've learned that when I'm lax on showing up for myself, tending to my needs and meeting them from a loving parental adult Caitlin and my more compassionate wise parts it can become a rogue roller coaster of a ride that's very wow so perceptive Caitlin of yourself gosh I know I've lost the thing that you said that was um you were talking about the emotional wounds what was the initial bit that she said how she's become more aware of the shadow side of spring and has noticed the emotional wounds and vulnerabilities that come up and the attachment wounds that attachment yeah i thought

that was particularly insightful in a way um what we've just been talking about with Catherine also really applies here Caitlin and um you're I just want to really celebrate the attention and care you're bringing to yourself and don't underestimate the power of that in starting to shift things yes and I particularly loved your comment about you know if i don't have a part of myself that's grown up holding the scene here that uh you know the ship could hit the fan those are my words um yes and that that vulnerable grown-up part is your um awareness process it's your capacity to just hold this kind of inner awareness of you know the sudden sense of overwhelm you feel or smallness or

loss or loneliness or grief whatever's happening within those emotional wounds, that's the grown-up part, the mindfulness. And when that awareness is in place, then you've got a little bit of choice. But you know this all rests on you being able to have the time to pace yourself. And I just really want to acknowledge for everyone who's listening, especially Catherine brought this point up, you know, we take time at menstruation to stop. And frankly, you've just got to get out of the starting, you know, out of the stalls as fast as possible because everything is piled up.

We completely get that because our daily lives are sometimes demanding and oftentimes demanding. And so this whole thing of pacing does require going a little slower, and that is the challenge i just really want to name that because i don't want anybody giving themselves a hard time because they can't do it and really i think the i really would i want to bring um uh you know our one percent rule in here to do to just one percent more than before of just mindfulness of this just doing your best within the context of the situation you're in um because it doesn't serve you to give yourself a hard time for not being able to do it on the contrary yes and you mentioned the shadow side of the inner spring i'm not sure exactly what you are referring to when you say that caitlin but it did remind me

that part of what we're courting in the inner spring is the skill of allowing our vulnerability, allowing it to have residence in us as we make our way through the inner spring. In other words, bringing that part of ourselves along with us in our lives and in the world and part of the shadow of the inner spring is the defensiveness we often retract into because we don't feel safe enough in our difference in our um in our vulnerability in our humanity that we retract into this kind of defensiveness which could look like um just trying to be something you're not or uh pushing yourself beyond your own capacity or it could look like attacking yourself in other words your own inner critic shaming you and shutting you down and sort of disabling that part of you so what you said Alexandra about slown, and slowness is more like an act of attention than it's being slowed down with yourself and in yourself enough that you can kind of safely hold yourself with tenderness through this inner season so that all of you can arrive in the inner summer

and that's what we mean when we talk about tending to your own uniqueness it is to do with all your strengths you know and your brilliances but your uniqueness is made whole through the vulnerabilities and fallibilities that you allow and that you kind of accompany yourself in. If Inner Spring can be challenging for you and you'd like some support and inspiration, we invite you to register for our love your cycle free online course it's short and sweet and it also gives you access to our red school circle community you can find it online at redschool.net forward slash love and i want to drop a little note in for you if you're a menstruality leadership program graduate listening today we're opening our new

graduate community the hive this week and it's going to be such a fertile space to explore the kinds of questions that we've been looking at today to share your experiences of the challenges of your cycle of the joys of your cycle and to continue this process of understanding how each of your inner seasons can invite a deepening of your leadership. So I can't wait to be in there with you. And if you've been thinking about joining the MLP in the future, know that this community is awaiting you. All right, let's get back into this rich conversation about Inner Spring. bring and this is such a radical act in a world in a culture which is not good at honoring difference and that supporting people to tend to their uniqueness as in

people are marginalized people are put on the margins yeah the way you're speaking about this work as it's just it's a radical act to do this work to turn towards ourselves and tend to our uniqueness and it's contributing to a momentum where people who are pushed to the margins because of the structural inequalities it's it's opening up space yeah for real diversity and belonging in our differences yeah because I you know I this is what I've experienced for myself with that Sophie is the more that I can accept who I am the more I can accept who other people are really yeah the more capacity I have for my own oddities and unusualnesses and the more compassion I have for others yeah and what I'm noticing is the more desire I have to take action to dismantle the systems that aren't serving so many yeah it's good we're feeding something really important here

on so many levels the next or maybe the next way that the shadow side of spring came up for someone else that wrote in was is around anxiety and insecurity which I really relate to that's how that's the shadow of my inner spring at the moment and this is from Mia and she says inner spring is my least favorite phase because as my energy rises I start to feel anxious and insecure to a point where it's constant and hard to handle it feels as if the anxiety is coming out of nowhere and it seems to point to some kind of hormonal imbalance. I need to work on this on different levels but in the context of the menstruality podcast I'd like

to hear about how to engage consciously and bravely with that surge of energy and how to direct it in a creative and healthy way. Great question. I actually want to put it to you, Sophie, what you're doing. I'd be really interested. You have shared some really good stories with us over the last couple of months. I mean, the words conscious and brave feel really meaningful there that Mia shared. Because I guess what I'm doing is noticing it. And it takes a lot to notice it because I'm so used to it. It's my, it is the atmosphere of much of my life and perhaps the atmosphere of

much of my young life, you know, since we're seeing the parallels between early life and spring. So like I can feel it now. I have the kind of charge I have in my system doing a podcast is similar to the charge I feel all the time in spring it's it could look like nervous system dysregulation but I know right now it's excitement we're having this really powerful conversation so it's tracking okay my breathing is high in my chest. My thoughts are moving really fast. I can't really feel my feet. And making that move home to deeper belly breathing, feeling my feet, smelling something,

looking at the sky, engaging my senses is the main thing that I'm doing in spring. And then that helps my nervous system to regulate, helps me to feel grounded. And then I can feel the charge moving through me but without it's like I'm riding the horse rather than yes the horse is riding me yeah yeah I've never seen a horse around a person I'm glad I asked you um I want to actually come back to menstruation. There's kind of a number of ways of responding to this. But I was really feeling how menstruation is just really, really important.

But Shani spoke about it earlier because it's very strongly about how we get nourished here we get restored to something very deep in ourselves now there's a whole panoply is that the word panoply of is a subtle events that go on at menstruation that allow for all sorts of particular psychological and spiritual things to occur. But for us to be able to deeply fulfill menstruation, because I can't help feeling a lot of the anxiety and vulnerability and so on of spring is because we have just never really experienced um what menstruation isn't really about what and the fullness of what it can give and we don't experience it a because we're not supported in it we don't understand it our society does not recognize it. And but my I feel so strongly about this.

The more one is able to really have space at menstruation to allow each of these different subtle changes to happen and and what they can open up to it's it there's something very orderly about what's going on at menstruation um menstruation can deeply restore us to something so so alive and so real, so real. It's like drinking from this incredible well of love. Love, of course. It's love. This incredible source of love. And to feel that, to have even just this moment, mind you, all the other moments that happened before

lead up to this happening, to be able to actually feel the vitality of that force moving through your being and to actually let yourself receive it. And even that is an edge for us because the moment we feel some spark of life come back at menstruation, we're off and out. But to actually be able to lean back in and feel that love coming into us and into the cells of our being, to luxuriate in it, and to just let it have its way with us and to you know to sort of unfold itself and then to feel the subsequent stages of menstruation and how menstruation gently can

birth us back into the world when what happens is our schedule drags us back into the world you know all that we have to do drags us back and so part of that anxiety and vulnerability is deeply connected to the fact that we can't fulfill uh the fullness of menstruation and i just want to really for all of you who are listening to just deeply take this in, not to give yourself a hard time because you can't give yourself this time at menstruation, but to just really recognize and that menstruation is powerful and to be dignified, to be fully recognized and dignified and for you to start doing that and you're being 1% more, more, more. And then to bring that attention to your bleed, even as you may have to do stuff, to really hold that there is something very powerful and significant going on in here.

And gradually, you know, I absolutely put my money on it, that you will start to be able to taste more, give yourself more time. And one of the things that we recommend, and I would recommend this to, is it Mia? One thing I would really recommend to you, Mia, is to plan for a big lead. And we write about what that is in Well wild power but essentially it is planning to give yourself time away for a bleed and you might might take you two or three or four months to organize you know it might take longer but to set an intention to have a big bleed so you can just have one really huge delicious experience of of what could be possible and how that might shift things so that is one response or another response mia to how you may really um start to meet this rising chi of

spring and not have it sort of overwhelm you it's almost as though your system your energetic system quite can't quite handle the charge yeah it does it feels like too much electric current running through a cable that can't withstand it yes my system yeah and of course menstruation is a way of strengthening that cable but also it is what you're doing, Sophie, this process of mindfulness. And, you know, I'm going to use that word pacing again. I think that is the word du jour. There's something really beautiful in what you shared too that was almost erotic. It feels important to draw this out because it's like you were speaking about menstruation as a lover.

Yeah. And I really feel people are doing doing great work around this that we need to reclaim the the word erotic because it isn't always sexual it's about our sensual or sensate selves relating to the world in a way that's deeply deeply pleasurable and the way that you were speaking about turning towards ourselves and receiving ourselves and like making love to ourselves I'm not even talking about in a sexual way although it might be but making love to ourselves in this time uh it gives me a new flavor to why I would make the choices I might make in on day one and two and three it's like how would I treat a lover right now wow you know I was um I was very struck by what you said earlier Sophie about how this feeling of anxiety is so familiar and a kind

of normal it's like a set point for your system which makes it that much harder to catch it and work with it. And then listening to what you've said about menstruation, Alexandra, and also Sophie, how you're talking about this kind of relating to yourself with this incredible love and intimacy, it really makes me realize how the uniqueness that's possible for all of us really comes from this seed administration of us being reset or kind of restored to our innocence and that's both a psychological or emotional or energetic experience as much as it's a sort of nervous system experience it's like we can find a new set point, sort of come. It's not even new.

I really do feel it's a restoration back to that innocence and purity and grace of who we are. That then gives us, yeah, kind of a reference point i want to say so as we traverse our way into the inner spring we've got a new reference that's so exciting i'm smiling because i'm thinking of the term factory reset when you like set your reboot reboot well it feels like what you're saying it's like to the to a preconditioned place like like before we encountered the world, particularly as we were becoming sexual and becoming ourselves more in the world, to reset back to a point, which also speaks to why doing a menarche ceremony and healing is so profound. Because, yeah, that's when we're transitioning from, I feel, maybe that set point to the way the world can condition us yeah potent yes exactly and you know this is the other piece and this really speaks to part of the skill required in the inner spring so we can find home at menstruation we can return to this ground of love and lover with ourselves this erotic aliveness and then how do we stay at home in ourselves as we transition into the world. Like with Mia, the anxiety comes out of nowhere.

And, you know, that speaks to me of like, oh, we've left home, you know, we've left home with that anxiety hits, we're not home anymore. So let me tell you about the rest of my day six Sophie because this kind of answers this okay so I woke up and in a sort of reaction to that dream which was one of toughness about myself becoming really hard because I had to get my kids up and get them to school and I'm not great in the morning hadn't had much sleep had a very late night my youngest daughter's very emotional at the moment there's a lot of holding required in my house right now so I woke up in defense and and irritable um and um and then this is part of the practice of menstrual cycle awareness. So I was of course, tracking and noticing the place I was in.

It was only when I finally came to sit down to prepare for this podcast that I had the time and space. Well, I spoke to Alexandra about the place I was in and had the time and space to really slow down enough to reconnect with Alexandra's beautiful prompting, that if I didn't go with the thoughts, if I actually went with the impulse of how I was feeling, which was this really heavy darkness that I just wanted to give, it just was being pulled into.

But the reactivity was in the fact that I have to work, have to go and buy the cards, got to find my way to get the cards, got to go somewhere, got to do something. That's where the kind of reactivity or, you know, for some people it might be anxiety came in. But when I started to follow the actual impulse of my being in the moment and really let my forehead hit the table and go into the complete darkness what I found there was this whole slowing down of my system like I could now just rest in the darkness and then I could start to sense the aliveness of the air around me.

And bit by bit, the inner lights started to come on and I had this beautiful feeling of being at home in myself. And Alexandra made a joke and said you look like a turtle I said that's exactly what I'm experiencing like I've left home home you know I closed the door behind me I've left menstruation but I've I'm bringing my home with me and my home is really my me being in connection with myself you do look you still look a bit like a turtle yeah i feel a bit like a turtle it's pretty funny really all of it the cosmic joke of it all the whole being human malarkey yeah to close i'd love us to hear from priscilla and nat who both mentioned the symbol of a dandelion slowly emerging through concrete as a really potent symbol for spring so i'll start with priscilla she says the urge to emerge from inner winter is surging where the strong desire

to accomplish all the things I put on pause with a new fresh perspective is like one of those flowers who burst through the cement. Resilient, strong, courageous and still quite delicate. I'm so so grateful for the wise teachings of the Red School that remind me to come out of the cave with caution. Through many moons of practicing this, I've found and established more harmonious rhythms, ways of being that have paced cyclical sensibility for me and everyone I interact with. I've never felt good at slowing down. So giving myself permission to do this feels like one of the kindest acts of self-love I've ever gifted. It's just perfection. Really, thank you so much for sharing that, Priscilla.

It does feel like a miracle to me how life returns. And here am I, you know, well into my post-menopause life. And I feel it myself I go I do have low energy around dark moon I go I lose my kind of mojo a bit yeah I just feel I have to be very move very slowly and internally and yeah there doesn't seem like there's much chi and then suddenly i wake up one morning and there's like this yes in my being there's something that's there that wants to get going it is just so singular and i miracle of cyclical living, that we are resourced by something if we could only honor it and honor its different faces and stages. for that to be reborn for that dandelion to come back to life such beautiful vibrancy and then there's nat shilton who is an mrp grad from last year i think that's right, yeah. Yeah, and she wrote in and shared this lovely Instagram reel about the spring medicine of dandelion.

So I'm going to drop that in. I'm going to play that now for us. The dandelion doesn't struggle or fight. It grows through the cracks in concrete by the order of its innate intelligence inside. It roots deep in darkness until the light returns and then it suddenly rises as the seasons turn. This plant is potent medicine, its planet ruler Jupiter, the masculine to the feminine. we see it in abundance all around so many uses so many teachings to be found so let's take inspiration from the dandelion this spring and trust the wisdom within we too

can rise from the concrete while deeply anchoring i love the way net says how the dandelion doesn't struggle or fight. And I'm paraphrasing here, but something about how it's just guided by its own innate intelligence. And that's what we have profound access to in our inner spring is this very unfettered untainted pure intelligence of us you know that hopefully we've tasted at menstruation that wholeness and that's what's guiding us if we stay in connection if we don't struggle or fight or push ourselves beyond where we are we get we are held by that that intelligence that that wild power in us thank you so much for listening today and thank you to everyone who sent in your inner spring insights and questions. We're

definitely going to be doing much more of this from now on so I really look forward to our next episode. Again if you haven't registered already our free Love Your Cycle online course is there for you as a way to plug into the power and magic of your menstrual cycle. If you're currently in menopause we have our menopause mini course that's available for you as well you can find them both on our website at redschool.net and if you are an MLP graduate you're you should be receiving an email this week with an invitation to join the Hive. So we've been dreaming into this as a community for a couple of years now. And the Hive has developed from all of the different inquiries and explorations that we've had together as a community.

There will be peer pods that can be themed according to the themes that you're wanting to explore in your life. There will be learning sessions. Our first couple are booked with the amazing Jane Hardwick-Collings and Lisa Dejong, who's going to be talking about the menstrual cycle and trauma. There will be hive socials where we can get together. You'll have an opportunity to promote your work through Red School. There's going to be a lively online community on Circle and there'll be mentoring sessions with Penny, JD, Jane and Abby, the Red School Leadership Mentors. I really cannot wait to get started. Ruby and I are going

to be hosting two sessions actually today to introduce you to the hive so if you haven't received an email about it write to us at info at redschool.net and we'll send you all the information can you hear frodo snortling in the background he's my podcast buddy thanks again for listening thank you for helping to make this podcast such a vibrant and alive community conversation we've now had over 100,000 downloads and it's wonderful to feel the community that's gathering. And so that's it for this week. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.