The Menstruality Podcast - 92. The Power and Wisdom Within Your Pelvic Bowl (Tami Lynn Kent)

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

When I first dreamed into the Menstruality Podcast, my guest today was one of the first people I knew I wanted to interview, and it’s taken a while, but boy, is it worth the wait!Tami Lynn Kent is the author of Wild Feminine and the creator of Holistic Pelvic Care, and I’ve been lucky to study with her several times over the past decade - the results have been transformative for me. Today's far-reaching conversation explores the power and medicine we hold in our pelvic bowls and how we can resource ourselves as we 'work on the frontlines of the feminine'.We explore:What could become possible if we continued the ancient indigenous practice of listening to the menstrual dreamers in our communities, as guides. Why Tami came to be known as the Vagina Whisperer, and the shame that shifts when we are deeply honoured in this part of our bodies. The funny, and deeply beautiful thing that happened when Tami taught her sons about the power of menstruation. ---Receive our free video training: 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.hardyTami Lynn Kent: @tamilynnkent - https://www.instagram.com/tamilynnkent

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders Alexandra and Sharni as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. You know,

when I first dreamed into this podcast, my guest today was one of the first people I knew I wanted to interview. And it's taken a while, but it's worth the wait. Tammy Lynn Kent is the author of Wild Feminine and the creator of Holistic Pelvic Care and here we are at last exploring the power and the medicine we hold in our pelvic bowls and in the root of our bodies. Tammy and I talk about our wombs as a place of dreams and creativity, Tammy's TED talk The Vagina Whisperer and how we can each access the power that lives in the root of our bodies. And we hit the ground running here. We dived straight into a conversation with a discussion around what she's currently holding in her center, particularly as a mother in these times.

How are things with you? You know, you're good in in many ways but this part of mothering is the hardest part of mothering I would say the young adult phase and um it's like full-on you know elder mother's voices need to be heard more but they get more quiet because it's just like the mothering changes and we don't have the tribe you you know? So it's like, you feel pieces of that all the way along, but all I can say is the elder mothers know a lot and they say less. So I will be one that speaks, but I have to speak carefully because the stories aren't really mine to share, but I can share my experience of trying to raise children in a fractured world and what that looks like. Like how do they make careers?

How do they make partnerships? And a lot of the young people are really bitter towards the older people. And that's just kind of foreign to me because I don't think I ever, like, I certainly didn't blame elders for things and maybe it's accountability maybe part of its accountability but part of it's kind of this like really cynical uh energy not i wouldn't say my sons are carrying this but i'm seeing this in the young people i'm helping tend for my elder uh in-laws a bit here and there and so witnessing their fragility and their vulnerability and then i'm listening to people younger than me talk about boomers and kind of labeling and there's like definitely no respect let alone care and I'm like who will care for these people we're caring for them but like this generation is not

necessarily going to feel any responsibility or care and so it's sort of bearing witness to it and just I don't know it's part of the up-close pain of uh working on the front lines of the feminine yes I mean I really wish we could have a whole hour conversation about that I mean I think in England you guys maybe have a little more support like I just have gotten a sense that like there is a little bit more like college here is outrageously expensive and then the housing costs for the health care. Like, yeah, we've still got the NHS just, you know, it's just holding on. And yeah, I think it's about a quarter of the price to go to college here, to go to university. And there is, yeah, there's more of a culture of care.

It's fading, but there is. We're so lucky to have the NHS. I think about it all the time. Yeah, I mean mean like kids can't afford apartments we have to um sign on to like the like there used to be cheap housing and stuff even just you know but everything's been bought up and it's like all like when my husband and i went to graduate school we lived in a couple hundred dollar little place you know that place is torn down there's these really fancy apartment buildings that like we're having to co-sign on every loan.

I mean, every like apartment because they can't qualify. There's no way they can qualify in the rent. They're so high they can't pay it. So we're having to pay our life expenses and theirs and try to get them up to speed because we need to like save for our retirement because there is nothing holding us. It's daunting, you know, and so all the pressure points, you know, and being one who sees all like, I just, you know, I just keep putting in the medicine, but why it's fractured, and just bearing witness to it is really painful on the regular, and I'm more up close with that that because my kids are in various points of that contact you know um yeah just entering into the world from the nest that you've built for them yeah yeah and there's some there's some hard stuff with it like it just they really can't

afford their lives and so they can't really be fully independent and then the costs are so high so I just I don't know where any of us are going. I'm just like, what do we care for the young people? Do we care for the elders? The answer is a big no. But like, what's that going to look like? And what's the ramifications of that, you know, so kind of somber. I hear you. Yeah. I mean, I have that question on the daily, where are we going? Are we going? And I love the, I love the term on the daily where are we going are we going and I love the I love the term on the front lines of the feminine because all I know to do is to work on the front lines of the feminine and yeah and that's always given me hope like every time I work with a woman's body and I'm sit with her and I teach and all that that's where all the hope lies for me but witnessing

my children go into sort of the barrenness of it and not yet know their contact points yet and not really be able to help them and not even my help, not even being really applicable to them, especially as males, um, nor wanted, um, it's difficult, you know, that I think always witnessing your child's pain is one of the hardest things as a mother. And, um And there's a lot of it out there. So for the young people, so the elders or the middle adults that are like caring for the kids either kind of focus on just their kids or they turn away. And so if you stay present with it, it's exquisitely painful, you know, so. Yeah. it's exquisitely painful, you know? So, yeah. I'm hoping that our conversation today can be a,

we can speak about this medicine that lives inside us and how we can work with it to transmute and to be with and to cultivate resilience. Cause that's, you know, I, I see you as a teacher Tammy like truly and I've learned so much from you and reflecting on your work in preparation for this conversation I was feeling my pelvic bowl is my home and it's what makes me resilient and it's what calls me forth and you know that sentence outside of the context that we understand sounds really weird and strange but I would like to really like together in the conversation unpack what it means to be at home in ourselves and to really cultivate the well you know in your TED talk you talk about from shame to honor in the pelvic bowl like that's yeah that's what I'd love to get into well let me just say this first then I think part of being at home in the

bowl is you have to be comfortable with discomfort because the bowl isn't I mean it can be a shelter and it can be a container to support you but it also is working on the edge of the medicine. So I think part of the reason you are with me as a teacher is because I never stop thinking I know, like I don't get to a point and go, oh, now I understand everything. It's always been for me a curiosity, like, why aren't we in our bodies? Why aren't we using this medicine? Why am I not here? Why am I not living from this place? And so, you know, made all the work and all the life from that question. And my TED talk too is like, if this is our beginning place,

why aren't we honoring it? Why aren't we honoring the bowl where we come in from? And what are the ramifications of not honoring that? And what if we were to honor that? How would that change everything? And those are the questions, right? And, but the thing is each one of us has to answer that. And there's a lot of

holes in that picture. So, you know, there's sort of getting that center point from the center, and then there's coming out to the world that still doesn't live from that place. And I'm more in the world than I am just in my center, because my boys are no longer in my home. They are out in the world. So I think my bowl has changed over time for me. And when I sit with it, part of it is first having the connection with it, right? So that's what I do for women is I bring them back to their bowls because that's the medicine. And why aren't we there? Well, that's patriarchy, right?

It's a powerful place. And on some level, the patriarchy was dismantling that and saying powers over here and knowledge is over here. It's not within you. And we've built so many structures on that banking structures and healthcare structures and governmental structures on these patriarchal patterns for the medical medical structures, which I was part of as a physical therapist, the knowledge is out here. And I said, Oh, no, the knowledge is within here. And I said, Oh no, the knowledge is within and started to really speak the body's language and be there. And I bring them back to there, but then we have children and they go out in the world or I have sons and they don't have pelvic bowl like I do. And they may partner if they're depending on who they partner with,

but let's, I think my mind identify is probably partnering with women. You could partner with a man and it could be a feminine man or somebody usually holds the feminine space, but those women may or may not be in their centers. So their locus might still be out in the fractured world, you know, and how do we call people back to the center? That's probably the biggest question I have still that I haven't arrived at the answer. You know, if the money-making and all of that is out here and we have to live on money, how do we, how do we hold both the fractured world that still is based on patriarchal structures and come home to ourselves? And how do we build that structure,

the bridge in between, you know, and I've built my bridge, but I can't build the bridge for my children. I can hope they build a bridge and they don't lose sight of both places, but I can't build the bridge for my children. I can hope they build a bridge and they don't lose sight of both places, but I can't build the bridge for them, you know? And maybe that's the fundamental question as women is when we're working in the feminine and we come home to ourselves, that's the first part of the medicine. That's the main part of the medicine we have control over. And then maybe we build structures from there. So like I built a family from that place of value and hopefully taught sons that value, which is what I shared in my Ted talk. That's why I talked to them about menstruation and things in a loving way, taught them to honor the female body. I built a medical practice from that place where I don't pretend to be the

authority. I bring women back to their own centers and I say, your medicine is here, but it's a, it's like a massive construction project, right? It's just like every day there's some little piece, like one of my sons can go to the doctor and have a sore throat or something. And the doctor will say, you need to take this, this, this. And I might have a conversation with them and say, okay, so let's say the doctor prescribed antibiotics for some reason, I might encourage them to ask questions or ask about the dosage or ask if there are options for five days versus 10 days because of what it does to your body. And my son might say, well, the doctor knows. And I'll say, well, no, actually you need to know because it's your body. And that's part of feminine knowledge is taking

the knowledge back to your own center. It doesn't mean you can't use wisdom points like a doctor, but you don't want to hand them your authority. That's the patriarchy. You said so much there. But that piece around, if our locus is out in the fractured world, then we're creating fractured lives and fractured selves. And the work of Red School to, you know, the work of this podcast, my work as I see it, is if we're with our cyclical nature every day as it shifts and changes, we are slowly taking that walk back from the fractured world into the bowl back from the fractured world into the bowl. So yeah, I guess that's become a big part of my path now is, and I see two of them together, the two together, you know, my, my home and my bowl and the place I come back to the place I meditate with, and my cycle as the thing that keeps pulling me back, because my cycle meets the world in all its fractured, and it cycle as the thing that keeps pulling me back because my cycle meets the world in all

it's fractured and it shows me the fracture and then it and then I if I'm with my cyclicity I can bring it back to me yes well and it's why so when I sat down I know you were curious about the TED talk and why vagina whisper and all that so let me answer some of those for you because when I sat down to do so I had a dream that I was doing a TED talk before I ever did a TED talk. I had a dream. And this is what Don Aligio talks about is the womb is our place of dreams and our place of creating the world. And this is like a feminine matriarchal understanding that everything arises from the womb. The womb is a creative place where we enter. It's also where knowledge comes through. And so we almost have to relearn that, right? When I heard Donna Ligio talk about the village listening to the

dreams of the menstruating women as the source of knowledge, it blew my mind because I come from a Western culture where I didn't even know that was a possibility. Certainly my menstrual cycle was just more of a thing. Maybe I might start to learn about it as a rhythm, but I didn't understand my womb as a portal, as a source point, right? So he was speaking to something that activated in me that was alive in some place in some parts of the world, but it certainly not been alive in my world. I could never imagine the leaders sitting down of the government or any business thing or anything and saying, you menstruating women come forward and tell us what you know, you know, that's just extraordinary to think of that. And it's sad that that even seems strange because of course we all come from that place, right? So when I had that dream, I knew that I was being talked to from the spirit realm. You'll give a TED talk.

And then maybe, I don't know, it was like a year and a half later, some folks approached me from the Portland TED Talk team. Someone came in to visit me to see my practice and then said, by the way, I work for the TED Talk team and they would like you to do a TED Talk. And I'm like, oh, the moment has arrived. Okay. And so I didn't hesitate. I knew that I was meant to be on that stage, not for me, but for the female body.

And the biggest question I had was, what will I say? What will I share? Because to me, the female body is a place of medicine, a place of knowing, a place of beauty, but I know that's not how most of the audience sees it and not in the deepest sense of that word, right? And so I thought, how am I going to express this? So that was a lot of the pondering was what are the words to use to convey? And this is an audience you have to understand that doesn't necessarily even speak holistic medicine. And when I sat down with the team and wrote the first talk, the it's mostly males on that team because they are mostly Nike ex Nike execs here in Portland. So they have a very sporty thought of like the body as a sports vehicle. And they said to me, we don't know what a pelvic bowl is. So you're going to have to take

it way down to our level so we can understand. And, and they said a beautiful thing. They said, we don't want the men to go to sleep and think this is a talk for women. I can just tune out for the next whatever, 15 minutes. So that was the premise of it. And so in the talk we opened with vagina whisper. And my son recently had a girlfriend see my talk on something and say, or she didn't actually see the talk. She just saw a reference to it and said, what, what does vagina whisper mean? And he gave her an answer that was about, she works with trauma and postpartum, which was okay, but it made me realize like, I need to actually revisit even with my

sons, what that means. What is that? Cause I think he thought it was just a catchy phrase. And the reason the talk was called the vagina whisperer. And I opened my talk with that, which if you know, whoever's listening, maybe just watch the talk and then you'll really get a sense of what, how much went into there to actually honor the female body. The vagina whisperer was a term that people would come and named me because I think if you think about baby whisperer, horse whisperer, it's speaking a language that isn't in words, but is present. There's something there being communicated

through babies, communicate animals, communicate, but they don't necessarily use words. So you have to spend time listening in order to hear and hear on a different level. And so I would laugh, you know, women would come in and say, I heard you, the vagina whisper, you know, or just the terms that they would use for me. And, but then I started to realize they were actually speaking that their bodies felt honored, their bodies felt heard. And that was why they were calling me that. And it's rare for the female body to feel listened to respected and heard. And the fundamental shift that is imperative to restore the feminine is to move from shame to honor. Shame and honor can't stay in the same room. Shame is a deep tool of the patriarchy. And of course it goes with our

menstruation and our bodies. And there's many layers of shame and trauma. And I go into that a little bit, but the shift is moving into honor. When we honor something, it shifts everything. And all of a sudden we can stand in the presence and stand in the power. And if you feel shame in your body, or you feel shame about something, you want to move away from it. If you feel honor, you can inhabit it. And so it really is a deep shift to make, which is why the work you're doing, you know, with menstruation is so powerful because you're starting to honor the cycle and it starts there. So that talk was to talk about that movement from shame to honor. It was to give credence to Don Aligio's words about how the honoring of his village started with the portal of women. So women were held in a different way. The knowledge was held in a different way. That

is the cultural shift I wish for us. That would be a different world to live in. And then I shared why I talked to my boys about menstruation, because we think about maybe talking to girls, but I wanted my boys to be honoring of the women in their lives that were menstruating, to be caring, to be mindful, to understand the beauty and the power in that so I told a funny story about it and kind of share why you know how my boys did communicate in a way that showed that they knew that it was an important thing and maybe that wasn't a common thing among other boys well let's let's hear that story because it is a really good one and but before we do can you explain who Don Aligio is for people who don't know you and your work yes so i love to

track elder wisdom and i think we don't always know it in western culture because we don't honor the elders so donna leah was a phenomenal elder in belize who is a maya healer he was a belizean shaman he knew over 5 000 plants and their medicinal uses in his memory. And he worked in the traditional Maya way, which is with spiritual healing, with physical healing, and with plant medicine. And he taught Rosita Arvigo quite a bit of his knowledge because none of the young people wanted to study with him. Typically, there was a way in which a shaman would hand it as an apprenticeship off to someone else, and no one wanted to study because of the patriarchal Western ways coming in. And he just, he had a lot of knowledge on the potency of our wombs and the knowledge that came through.

So I wanted to share that story, which he had told to Rosita Arvigo, who has birthed a whole body of work of, you know, Arvigo, Arvigo Maya abdominal massage, and that has its roots in that place. And so I wanted to share his wisdom because it helps us remember the truth that was lost and recover it, you know, so so I shared his words and that's who he is he died at age 103 I believe in the 90s so there's some books about him Sastun my apprenticeship with a Maya healer is Rosie Tarvigo wrote this beautiful story and it helps us just remember you know the fragments that aren't quite totally lost but are pretty fractured i had an amazing conversation tammy with a maori woman called hinawai waitoa and she was speaking about how they're piecing together the the like threads

of womb wisdom that have come from their maori elders and the the communities that she's working in and building and growing together it was so wonderful to feel that lineage being continued now. Now she's sharing it with her son and her daughter. It was fantastic to feel that. Yeah. There's some threads of earth medicine that go hand in hand that, you know, just throughout the world. But I think those of us in the Western world, it's so fractured. We have to kind of stitch it back together and listen to the native wisdom keepers that, you know, are still can tell us what, what, what, what was once true and known. It's kind of like finding your way in the dark, you know, it's like, oh, right. Okay. And for me, I am sure I had a past life working in the women's bodies because when I, I wasn't raised,

of course, in the Western world with any kind of knowledge like this. And, but when I started putting my hands on people's bodies, when I started working in women's health, I could feel all this power. So there was something in my hands that knew, but didn't quite, it took me a while to translate it and kind of understand what I, you know, a lot of taking notes and listening to the body to learn. Similar to Chinese medicine where the body, when you really studied the body, the body has wisdom. And it took me a while to speak the body's language. I had to practice to

really learn it. Now I speak it fluently and it's, it speaks in pictures and images. But, you know, it's kind of like when we talk about horse whisper or something, there's all this ways in which horses communicate or animals communicate that aren't necessarily through words, but there's so much rich communication. And I will say the female body is continues to be a place of great medicine. And I wish for every person to know that medicine within. And my hope is that I've taught my sons all to honor that medicine. We'll see. I'm still in process working on that. It's a, it's a process when you have

kids entering fractured worlds that don't understand the female body as a portal. It's hard to keep that intact. And maybe that's our greatest challenge is to live in the world and keep that, you know, that's why I wrote wild creative. Actually, that was the first book I, even though it's the last book I wrote, it was actually the first book where I couldn't get Wild Feminine published because the mainstream publishers, the women, had a lot of reaction to Wild Feminine content. Particularly the sacred pelvis was triggering. And I think they embodied the fracture of it can be how to massage or it can be woo woo, but they can't be together. And that's the fracture, you know, we are the spirit door. We have to think about how much that got pulled, you know, religion and everything got pulled outside of us. So let's think back to the

entry point, you know, as the portal that we all enter in and what that means. So when I went, I ended up going to the river and really going into deep meditation and prayer and getting a whole download. And it was wild creative, which is how do you make a life from the center in a fractured world. And there's a lot of tools in there for anyone that is questioning or struggling or not sure how to build a bridge. That book was a download and it really has a lot of tools for kind of stitching together a bridge from your center to your life, to your center, to your relationships, your center, to your work. So that, you know, we can continue to repair the world.

If you think of it, that we come in from the portal, you know, we come in from the center, really all the world structure should reflect that. And that's the repair job that we are all in we are so grateful for all the ways intimate and subtle or loud and public that you are personally doing this repair work to weave together our fractured world. This is what drives everything we do at Red School, this longing to call each of us back to our centre, back to our cyclical womb wisdom. And if this conversation is stirring you and you're feeling called to go deeper in this work, we invite you to be part of the menstruality revolution and there are many ways to do that here at red school you can read our books wild power and wise power you can join our

free love your cycle course and you can explore our menstruality leadership program at menstruality leadership.com okay back to this conversation with the amazing Tammy Lindkent I really feel like that's the repair job that I've been in since I found Wild Feminine which was probably um 12 years ago I remember seeing it on a bookshelf in East West Books in Seattle where I was living at the time oh yes it just sang to me like I got shivers head to toe and I was like oh that that what's happening here and then I got the book and I read it and I feel like none of it went in on the first reading I don't think any of it could quite come in but then I kept coming back to it and coming back to it and I've kept coming back to it and I feel like I could read it if I'm blessed to like become be 80 years old I could read it when I'm

80 and there'd still be more coming in because like you said it's it's information from other times that's landing here and it's it's a language that yeah my body knows how to speak but in terms of yeah the fractures like I feel that living cyclically and menstrual cycle awareness and this wild feminine work is what has helped me just very slowly weave together the fractures in me that came from early abusive sexual experiences and it's like as the fracture in me as those fractures have healed my voice has risen up my my power is here I know who I am it's like I couldn't be doing what I'm doing without having I'm thinking of Kintsugi right now you know the Japanese art of putting the gold in the cracks. Like that's, that feels like what's happened in my pelvis.

Yeah. I think that's the secret. What you're saying is, so sometimes people come to me and they're like, feel like they're broken and they have to be whole in order to receive the medicine. And I'm like, oh, the repair is the way you make the medicine. And no one is whole. I don't know a single person who's whole who's in this time, maybe in some of the tribal places where the medicine is intact,

but we're all fractured. And so it's not being, that doesn't mean we're unworthy. We are inherently worthy. We are inherently deserving of our birthright and our energy and to be honored and the portal medicine. And it is in coming to the fractures with the medicine and working with them and stitching it. As you say, it's like you're putting back kind of that art of the fractured bowl with the gold. Then you're weaving not only a beautiful structure for yourself, but for whatever, however you're showing up in the world, you know, that, that is what it looks like. And I think sometimes, you know, when I work with someone, especially in the world, you know, that is what it looks like. And I think sometimes, you know, when I work with someone, especially in the case of abuse, which is so common, women come feeling broken. And I always say that your medicine is intact.

It might've fractured your connection, but your medicine is right here. So it's just a matter of reaching through the, the, the trauma or whatever the imprint was, the imprint of like sexual trauma that, that really is the energy of someone else in the way of your own medicine. So as you clear that away and you just get to the medicine, then it feels really good. And it's not as hard or as far away as we think. And sometimes women will say that like, this is more gentle than I thought it would be. That's the medicine. That's the power of this medicine, the bowl. It's very powerful.

Yes. I think that was one of the core messages that made me see that this work is for me was you saying that although you feel broken you aren't broken your medicine is intact yes that's exactly it and it was it and for me that was a huge leap from shame to honor because that brokenness gets then shrouded in shame which means that the healing of it is hard because you've got to get through this fog of shame to get to it but to hear you're intact that was a that was a big honoring moment and a big opening moment for me and I think that's the leap is going to the honor even though you might not feel whole if we start

honoring by listening by caretaking by blessing the body then you start it's almost like a backwards move you think I'll be whole and then I can honor it it's like actually start honoring right now yeah that's a key message and I think we do have to realize the patriarchy and the patriarchy isn't a person it's kind of an energy pattern the patriarchy would be happy if we got stuck in shame you know so it's a direct act even when you feel shame when you feel that sticky shame about something about abuse or your body or your gender or whatever way you have to really recognize that's the tools of the patriarchy and so by virtue of just starting to honor yourself wherever you're sitting in that

that's a powerful move of a reclamation I really want to come back to the story with your boys, because it's such a good one. And so can you tell it? So how you told your boys about menstruation? Yeah, and I, you know, I told this with their permission, because I feel it's important to ask children's permission. So just, you know, we grew up in a house where I'm the only female, and I wish they had a sister, but they just have me. And when they were I, you know, we grew up in a house where I'm the only female and I wish they had a sister, but they just have me. And when they were little, of course, you know, we practice a lot of like co-sleeping and cuddling and nursing and whatnot. So they were very comfortable, you know, they come in and out of the bathroom and they always want to be right there with you.

So they saw things like pads and menstrual things. And I never, you know, it was open, right. And when they were little, they used to like use the. And I never, you know, it was open, right. And when they were little, they used to like use the pads as armor and, you know, use their voice. So they fighting using them. So they had a comfort there, but at some point, usually around eight or nine, if they happen to see my blood, each one of them had a point where they kind of went, Ooh, what's that? You know? And that's the beginning of shame. It's just so subtle. But I said, Oh, it's not. Ooh, it's, this is a powerful lining that is in the womb. That is our food. It's our first food. And I wanted them to know like right there in that subtle way I'm honoring and teaching, you know?

And so they said, Oh, okay. And they just knew that I was on my bleeding time. That's how I would say it. And then, so we have old Portland house and the toilet thing would sometimes stop working, you know, would it come unhooked and not work in the night. And I had gone to the bathroom and bled into the toilet and it wasn't able to flush it. And then one of my sons was having a sleepover. He was probably eight or nine. And I just all of a sudden heard this scream come from the bathroom. And it was the other boy that was sleeping over. And I heard this dialogue happen where he screamed and then my son came running in

what's going on. And he said, someone died in here because it was blood in the toilet, bright red. And my son looked at him and looked in the toilet and said, oh, that's just my mom's bleeding time. And I just thought it's that simple. And, you know, it was just a, it's just a simple statement, but it's kind of honoring and just like, that's what it is. And I realized then too, though, that this child, this other boy had no idea that his mom had a bleeding time because probably, you know, there was a lot of privacy around that. And that, that then becomes a subtle layer of shame. You know, we can't talk about it. We don't look at it. We don't see it. And, you know, I just always want them to be caring when they're

older with a woman who's bleeding. And I would just say, you know, it ended up later with body conversations like, you know, caretake the women when they're on their bleeding time, because sometimes it's a lot of work to do that. And they might have cramps and they can be tired and you know just be loving so it ended into dialogues like that so that was what I shared as a good part of the TED talk to illustrate how profound a simple shift is and how it kind of turns everything it's like a boat if you turn it a few degrees it ends up in a whole different place and that's how I think of it you You know, it's like, if we want to honor the female body, here's an example of what it looks like. It's not just looking at a sexy woman in a magazine and being really excited about her body, you know, that that's objectification. Honoring is, is much more on the ground. And, you know,

I think giving that illustration was helpful for people to actually understand it. And the other part of that is when we were doing the TED talk, there's so many subtle things in that talk, but we, I hired an artist to make it really visually beautiful because I wanted to convey beauty around the female body. And there were many subtle things in the way I was honoring, I was using really beautiful graphics with an artist and things like that. But when they were talking about the slides I was using, someone said, well, let's make a caricature of your sons. And I said, no, I want a photo, a real photo of my sons that shows their beauty and their strength. So they really get a picture of what it looks like when you talk in this way to boys.

And there's a brightness in them partially too, because when we honor the female body, it honors their origin point, right? So there's a way they can show up differently when they also are not ashamed of their earliest origin. Now, keeping that intact is my current objective. And that's challenging. I still am in process with that but that's the work that's what it looks like you know it's many small little layers and dialogues over time I'm really moved by the way you're speaking about this with your

sons like keeping it intact with them and I guess I want to come back to this but I guess I feel like there's some ground that would be good to cover for our listeners around the actual practice of how do we honor our pelvic bowls how do we work with them and hold them as spaces that can transmute shame and trauma can you can you walk us into that for those who haven't read wild feminine which I recommend for everyone I'll put a link in the show notes well I think I think the first part is just looking at where you're present and where you're absent I like to keep it really simple because we get into these vast spaces right like it's you know it's mystical and also can be overwhelming, like trauma points and meditation, noticing curiosity,

embodiment, that's the starting place. You know, wild feminine is really, that took about close to 10 years to write maybe eight to 10 years. And it was, you know, I, I was over time working with thousands of women and taking notes and really noticing and learning from the body. So that is a distillation of a big jigsaw puzzle. So it kind of jumps you ahead and there's exercises designed to, for embodiment and understanding the medicine of the bowl. And, you know, I love books too. And I love the wild phone and jumped out at you because for me, bookstores were magical places and I would look for, you know, the spirit medicine through them. So, but when I went, when I was first feeling the power in the body and I went looking for books, they were very

general, like root chakra, you know, there was nothing that could answer what I was feeling. So I had to work with the body and translate her medicine. And that is what wild feminine is. That book is alive. It's kind of like an Oracle. And it's why you were saying, yeah, you can come back and, you know, it touches you because there's so much portal medicine in that, but it really is a guide to re-inhabiting your body. So when you're like, I don't know how to do that. There's a lot of practices in there about connecting with the left ovary, connecting with the right ovary, connecting with the womb, understanding menstruation, but understanding the womb as a portal, understanding how lineage is written in your bowl, you know, and lots of ways to interact with it. And so that book is a good place to kind of, you know, listen and read. I did it as an audio book, so you can actually get the resonance of

my voice going through the exercises. So sometimes it's nice to have the physical copy, but then sometimes listening is another way. But really just being curious about this medicine that you carry around with you and then starting to learn it like you learn anything else. The practice that I come back to again and again, it's usually when I'm walking the dog through the woods and I feel a grounding cord from my root down into the earth which already is a move is a power move for me because then I remember oh yeah I am I am the earth this is all me yes I'm connected and then I've these days I've started to imagine there's like spring water trickling down through my body and it washes around my pelvic bowl and it's washing away anything like the language you often use is anything that's not mine to hold in this hub in my body.

Let it wash away, let it wash down into the earth. And then I just imagine blessing my bowl. So sometimes sort of imagining sort of rose water or petals and that it changes everything in my being that to then feel soft and clean and clear in that part of my body that part of my body that for so long felt dirty and broken and hurting I know and see how simple that is but it's. And that is the medicine of the bowl. That's what I mean. I think sometimes our minds make things really complicated and women will even say to me, as we all sit with them and we'll do a dialogue around the body,

because, you know, I do a lot of work physically and also energetically on reconnecting women to their bodies, but they'll say, it's so simple. It just says rest, or it just says, I say, yeah, welcome to, or take a walk, you know, and yes, smell the flowers. It's like, it's so simple. It just says rest, or it just says, I say, yeah, welcome to, or take a walk, you know, and yeah, smell the flowers. It's like, that's body medicine. It is actually kind of simple. It's just whether or not we are doing it. And we do make things from our heads a lot in our thinking patterns, because most of us in the Western world are in pretty mental cultures. So the beauty of the bowl is simplicity and it is joy. And that what you're talking about is there's an exercise. If you look at the back of the book under exercises,

there's an exercise called pelvic bowl sings. And it's a resonance practice where basically, yes, you're clearing the bowl because we tend to accumulate and we need to be clearing. And then you're pulling up the beauty and it's that simple. It's a singing bowl when we work with it. And I think we talk about grounding without actually even knowing what that is. So there's practices in the book that kind of walk you through that. Yes, there's an earth chi point at your perineum, and it is meant to be connected to the earth. And we, our health is much better when we have that connection point and doing the meditations intentionally syncing yourself up with the earth is very healing, rejuvenating, supportive. You know, it's, it's a wonderful practice.

When you say we accumulate, can you speak into that more? What's that, what's that process of accumulating in our pelvic balls yeah i think you know women women are the bowl and basket makers right are like our body we were the village holders we tended and so we tend to hold our bodies are feminine and hold we have more of a container whereas males in general there's you know many shades of gender and people embody differently so you may also resonate in different ways, depending on how you identify, but physically or physiologically, there's a container in our bodies and we hold the blood and then we release the blood. What happens is because we're not really taught grounding and we are more congested, we tend to sit or be inside or not live rhythmically.

It creates congestion. Also, we're just not taught that we need to clear our bowls. So that was one of the first things I learned from the body. She was saying, everybody's congested, please teach them how to clear their bowls. And that's physically working on self-massage to kind of clear the muscles that is energetically syncing up with the earth and actually clearing it. Like you were just saying, we're very elemental. So using an imagery like water or air sweeping or fire for transmuting is wonderful, but we need to clear and then make space for new chi. And that is just such 101 pelvic energy, physical medicine. And yet how many of us are taught that you know so most women come in congested and a lot of menstrual issues and pain and other things are from congestion so the

clearing is a big part and it's not hard it's just we aren't taught that as part of our pelvic wellness or women's wellness wonder what this looks like now well what tell me what you're seeing after the pandemic where so many particularly women had extra layers that they were holding and that I have a piece of text here that you wrote on Instagram around like the wild feminine book was channeled from sitting with the sacred portal of the female body it was birthed in the post-trauma of 9-11 and writing it taught me about the magic and power of our female bodies to transform trauma like what are you seeing in your practice now in women in the wake of the pandemic oh gosh it's so many things on one level we were moving slower and more towards the home. So oddly, in some ways, women felt more aligned with the home. And some of the women who had babies during that time felt more supported.

So there's that. What I think happened with the pandemic is it just highlighted a little bit more like in the educational system and the healthcare system and really the government system, how much we're not in sync with the feminine. And so I think that was many things for some people, it was a call to action for some people, it was overwhelming. I think we're still in process of unpacking the layers. I know, depending on what, what was going on, a lot of people change the way they were doing things like people who were in office buildings, that has never been healthy for the body. And a lot of, you know, there was a call to change. The way I teach is I teach, I taught in person and I would try to give all this

information in the classes and it forced me to go online and do some education via online, which I recorded. And then now I teach with that recording and the body work. So it's a little bit less on everybody, less pressure. So in some ways it invited some good change, but I think it's sort of like a remodel where we're in process and we haven't made it all the way through. So if you've ever been through a remodel in a house or something, it's awkward, it's messy, it's annoying and things don't flow. And actually remodels are very hard on the female body because home holds our energy. And so when we aren't feeling like we went through a remodel when I had young children, we like didn't have a kitchen for,

you know, two months and we were all, you know, kind of everything was awkward. I feel like we're in a massive remodel. So everybody comes in right now because I work on the pelvic bowl. I feel like I do get to sit around the fire and hear what's happening in the portal. It's kind of like, this is a high level time. There's a lot of work to do. Everybody's feeling the load and you have to find your resting places in it because I don't know when we're going to be like, it might be a long remodel, you know? So that's the memo I've gotten from the body and people are coming in, packing off some trauma, unpacking some trauma layers from that because people died and we went through a pandemic and people have cellular

death in their family lines from the flu epidemic, even that went around the world. And so there's, um, there, there are many pieces that are still getting medicine. You know, one is the fear and the anxiety that it brought up for me as a mother of young adults, those young adults were supposed to be moving out and they end up getting pulled back. So we had a lot of delayed development. So I have, you know, mothers are at different stages trying to help their kids catch up developmentally. And, and I think we're just in the process of still integrating and not finished with the remodel. So it's a lot of work and people are tired. So, you know, the bowl medicine is still,

is continuing to be very helpful for each woman that comes in, but I kind of, after each woman, I'm kind of like, wow, they're going through a lot. Wow. And that just seems to be the theme. So finding the resting places in the work and not trying to race to the finish line, it's very, again, patriarchal to think we've got to get to the finish line. The feminine is more like work and rest, work and play, work and pleasure and pleasure you know and how do we find that rhythm spiraling that's what I watch in my life I just I keep spiraling around to very similar things and each time I'm touching them differently and I'm learning different things yeah which can feel frustrating when I align with the like linear productivity map that's laid out for us by patriarchy yeah

there's a sense of deep inner value for most people in the progress more than the process yes that's still you know unlearning those patterns like it's it's a deep and on some level it's the survival pattern too so unhook from those, you know, and being able to accept the process. I think of Luis Erdrich, who wrote the painted drum. And this one part stands out to me where there was this man who his whole job was tending this sacred forest of felled trees that were going to be made into drums so he had he was supposed to watch over the wood and it was not even going to be made into drums in his lifetime you know that that's a feminine perspective and it's like maybe that's what we're doing is tending the wood and we're trying to you can't really get somewhere because this is we're already doing what we're meant to be doing but you know unhooking your own thought process and your own energy from that is a whole nother piece i spent some time at findhorn which is a

conscious community up in scotland and they have a practice there of whenever they're doing anything they give equal attention to three things the task the relationships between the people doing the task and the earth and the process like how is it all unfolding and for me that's really pointing to what you're saying it's this deep feminine knowing that there is more than can we get it done it's how do we get it done and what happens between us as we get it done that's so powerful and that is what is missing with the young people so that is really fascinating yeah how we how we teach that without a contained structure of elders that's an interesting puzzle and question well I appreciate you sharing that

yeah you're welcome what's holding you as you take this journey that you're in with your sons right now and as you're with all these questions uh my husband and I are the elders. So with them, um, one of the things we're doing is a weekly phone call. And, um, last night, the phone call disintegrated a bit because people weren't really showing up and it was uncomfortable, you know, not with energy, not with time. Um, I think mostly what's holding me is being willing to stay with the discomfort and understand that this is more than a phone call. You know, this is the best I can do in this moment without, there's no church, there's no community, there's no neighborhood, there's no collection of elders, you see. And I think one of my pain pieces is I know what should be there so I can see what's missing and other people might not even notice and maybe they'd be spared some pain, but we're doing this weekly phone call with two boys that live far away. And so there's five of us and four of them are male.

So women tend to be the dot connectors. So, you know, there's one female really rallying and pulling in, but I'm also asking for accountability from each person to show up. And when they're not showing up, we're talking about it. And so I guess it's similar to what you're talking about. It's not just a phone call, but it's a relational building, building communication, building presence, building accountability of how you show up matters, you know, and spirit will just send messages and I will do my best to try

to follow, but I don't know exactly where it's going. We speak a lot about menopause at Red School too. And I'm speaking a lot to people who are going through like the years of cycles changing, coming up to menopause and all of that uncertainty uncertainty and then the big initiation transition of menopause. And why did I say that, menopause? Because, yes, one thing I find myself talking about is, okay, how do we hold ourselves when we're in the death part of the death and rebirth? Or how do we hold ourselves when we don't,

we're putting one foot in front of the other, but we don't necessarily're putting one foot in front of the other but we don't necessarily know where we're going in those moments of as alexandra and sharni say in their book wise power betrayal there's a so i'm curious how how you're holding the discomfort yeah um i mean i think how i hold how i hold it as a healer and a woman and an elder versus my children would be probably different, right? But I hold it with being present with my feeling states and also with grieving what I feel is missing. It's painful to hold space without enough of a container. And I just kind of know what's missing for the young adults. And that is painful. And it could, it could, if I wasn't

being present and sort of processing the grief as I'm going, I do that with spirit. So I have my own prayer practice where I have a little spot, you know, a little place on the earth here in, in urban Portland, a little medicine wheel where I go and pray when, you know, a little place on the earth here in, in urban Portland, a little medicine wheel where I go and pray when it gets really heavy and spirit comes and I can really feel it lift and move and digest and guide and all those things. So it's like kind of on the invisible realm that I'm being held. But if I didn't allow myself to feel, I might just turn away and give up, which is tempting, you know, at times in the human part. But I know the long game is really important. And I know I won't always be here. So that's what it looks like in a very human way for me is to say, okay, we're going to show up for each other. And sometimes it's

really great and everyone's present. And sometimes it's really awkward or people don't show up on time or, you know, it's sitting in that discomfort. And I think building connection and community really is an uncomfortable process. So it means, you know, staying with it. And I do think what I'll say about menopause, because I went through menopause during the pandemic. I didn't realize that. Wow. I would love to have a whole conversation with you about that. Fully menopausal, still in the woods on that. But it was hard time to go through menopause

because I was living with four males at home and there were so many pressures and I was reading all about the pandemic because I'm such a health geek and I was reading all these things, probably putting a lot of pressure on myself to understand a lot, but you know, it's hard to sort out what is what, but it is, it is a time in that book, wise power, which they asked me to review. And I looked at it. I, I thought it was really powerful when they said kind of, you do go through this initiation, you want to burn everything down. And I think, and they're like, but don't, I think that's really important because when you get to menopause, it's supposed to be a second spring where there's like a new energy, but most women in Western culture, it's massive burnout and it's bitterness and it's frustration. And in a body-based culture

where elders aren't respected, you feel kind of thrown away. So working on your own wellbeing is really key and staying in contact with something deeper. For me, it's the great mother and the earth medicine, and then continuing to receive sustenance from that to carry forward. But it is a time that feels kind of barren for sure. You don't have the softness of estrogen sort of carrying you through. You don't have the milky tenderness of children. You're in that in-between zone. And, you know, finding the watery places that kind of juice you up to carry you through is really important. I've just one final question, which is really for me, but it's also for everyone, especially for anyone who's wanting to work with the menstrual cycle as a, as a way of their living their

calling or bringing their leadership, leadership into the world. So for those who feel like they're at, you know, we were talking earlier being at the forefront of the feminine or what was it? What was the line that you said on the front lines of the feminine, the front lines of the feminine? Yes. What would you say to us? What are your words as someone who's an elder here? What would you say to us who who want to do this work and who are feeling called to this? How can we serve what what's needed? Sure. i would say it starts with you and your center and so like the womb cycle when it's still happening um the bleeding time tends to be the dream time so that's a good time to have your journal ready and be really downloading and have a relationship with your own center don't

look outside of yourself look within and start to develop a language and a knowing and a presence. And it might start with silence, you know, just like a relationship, really get relational with your womb and journal, not, you know, kind of allow, it has to be more of like, not a force thing. That's the patriarchy. We have to watch out for these patriarchal patterns that are in all of us, not pressure, but more like flow, you know, let the journal like write about it. And it might not be about a piece of work, it might be about a personal thing that is important for you, color or texture, some beauty or some art thing, or, you know, just channel whatever you and take notes, then when you're in your ovulation time is a good time to take action on those notes. And if

you start to kind of do that each month, you'll start to see themes of things that you're working on. And I think of it like creative projects, some that last a few months, some that are years long, and you start to get in tune with your own flow of what's guiding you. And then the best answer to kind of what is your work and piece in the world is really wild creative. I would answer that better than I can do in a short piece, but I just believe that each one of us is a mystery of star energy in body. And we all are part of the repair project and the beauty of what we're creating and wild creative. There's a Henry David throw. I quote him and I quote a lot of writers in there because I love books too, but he says dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life is meant to flow. And I love that quote, you know, like we're taught to go away from our flow. And what if we go nearer and nearer to the channel and it's meant to flow. And that to me is the river of the womb

energy, finding that uncovering that and wild creative has a lot of tools for, I know the world has taught us otherwise, most of us, if we went to university or mental or, you know, the mind culture, coming back to the body and integrating that and hearing one's own center, one's own wild creative, which every one of us is inherently creative she's the matrix you know she is the matriarch she is the center the great mother we all have one so we can tune into that and begin weaving the beauty personally and also in the world thank you Tammy I'm gonna need to listen back to this 10 times too and I can't wait to do it thank you so much thank you for your time and everything you've shared so good to talk with you Sophie Jane I honor all the work and the way that you're weaving this in and calling women back to the beauty of their centers so may it serve you well ah thank you so much for listening and for joining us today. And I have a request, an invitation for support. If this podcast means something to you,

it would be so, so helpful to us if you would follow the podcast if you don't already, subscribe to the podcast on wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, that's the most supportive thing you can do to help spread the reach of this work. Thank you so much again for being with us.

I really look forward to gathering with you next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.