The Menstruality Podcast - Five Archetypes to Guide Cyclical Life and Leadership (Dr Joanna Martin)

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Our menstrual cycles can be a profound ally in work and leadership. Today we do a deep dive on how to channel our cyclical wisdom as it shifts and changes throughout the cycle month, with someone who has an extraordinary amount of personal and professional experience in this realm. Dr Joanna Martin is a renowned visionary, coach and catalyst. As the founder of One of many, her organisation has supported over 60,000 grassroots women leaders to greater impact without burnout. The cycle is at the centre of her life and work, she’s overlaid the five archetypes over the phases of the cycle to harness their power and meet the challenges they present: The Lover, The Queen, The Warrioress, The Sorceress, The Mother.We explore:How our inner winter awakens our ‘Sorceress’ phase, and how to harness the magic of menstruation at work. Jo’s monthly ‘catastrophising day’ and how she manages it as the leader of a global organisation, by channelling her ‘Queen’ archetype. How to catch the shadow of over-giving in inner summer - ovulation - by being mindful of how our ‘Mother’ archetype is expressing itself. Join our free online course - Love Your Cycle: Discover the power of menstrual cycle awareness to revolutionise your life here: 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.schoolJoanna Martin: @drjoannamartin - https://www.instagram.com/drjoannamartinOne of Many: @oneofmanywomen https://www.instagram.com/oneofmanywomen

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. It's so good to have you listening today, to have you with me today in this conversation with Dr. Joanna Martin, who is funny and profound. She was on day two of her cycle and I could feel the magic of menstruation at work and everything that she brought.

We do a deep dive on how to bring cyclical wisdom as it changes throughout the cycle month, particularly to work and to leadership. Jo has founded an organization called One of Many, which supports grassroots women's leaders over 60,000 in the community, to have greater impact without burnout. And the menstrual cycle is at the heart of that work and also the heart of how she works in her consultancy and as a visionary and a coach and a catalyst. She's actually overlaid five archetypes over the phases of the cycle and it sheds so much light on how we can harness the power of the different phases and also meet the challenges of the different phases. Really potent, really funny, loads of good stories in here that made me laugh out loud a lot. So I hope you enjoy this one, Five Archetypes to Guide Cyclical Life and Leadership with Dr. Joanna Martin.

So welcome to our podcast, Jo. It's a delight personally to be in this conversation with you because your work at One of Many has had a massive impact on my life. And yeah, I'm just so excited to share you with our community because you're one of the few groundbreaking people who have said the menstrual cycle is important and you've put it at the heart of this community, this global community that is huge and this force of nature in the world now, one of many. So yes, thank you for being here. Thank you for joining us today. Oh, it is such a pleasure, Sophie. And I think that's the first time I've ever been called groundbreaking. So you keep saying things like that. I'll stick around for a really long time. Thank you very much. It's true. I've been to your events. It's true. I would like to start where we always start with this podcast, which is how is your menstrual cycle?

Oh, where are you at in your cycle and how is it affecting you today? Yeah, I am day two today. So I am heavily bleeding as we speak. So I'm in what I call my sorceress phase and I'm sure we'll get into all of that. So to be honest, I'm tired my little one was poorly last night as well so I feel like I've got a very foggy head and the one thing I've learned over the years is that I can still do things like this in the middle of this phase of my cycle provided I hand over the reins to source and let go of having to take it in any given direction or whatever. And oftentimes when I open up to what my superpowers are at this time, real wisdom kind of drops in. Now that I've said that, I feel like I've just put pressure on myself to be immensely wise. But yeah, so physically,

I feel pretty rubbish, yet emotionally open, I guess. I can feel a softness in you, actually. You actually you know I wondered I'm always very curious to see where people are at I'm in a similar phase ish stay seven so I've been in a very soft smushy place and yes I'm so with you if I just go do you know what I can't control any of this right now everything's got its momentum you know we're in the middle of a massive launch it's all just going to keep rolling and I just need to soften into what's happening and the good times will roll yeah yeah yeah trust faith right that's the that's the cornerstone I think of this phase of the cycle at any rate life in general but certainly this phase of the cycle yeah is there anything that you do uh other days one, two, three to take care of yourself physically?

Yeah, it for me, it starts actually like right before it arrives, because I can feel my my sorceress phase coming in two, three days before the bleeding starts. And that's when I really have to do my best to slow down. If I haven't, I have another little warning, which comes about seven days before my period arrives, when the first hormones plummet starts, that's my end of the world day, where everything is horrible. I have to divorce my husband, you know, take my kids out of school and close the whole business down or restaff completely, you know know like that sort of catastrophe and even though i know i'm doing it i know it i can't stop my mind from having these thoughts so that's my first warning sign that's the sign where i just go that day just

don't talk to anyone is the is the key thing then i've got a beautiful window of about four or five days where i know i need to make decisions and then delegate as much as I can because that's what gives me as much space as I possibly can on my bleeding days. My cycle is not really predictable. It's usually 27 days, but sometimes I speed up my life a little and it comes like every 21, 22, 23 days so i it's not predictable enough at the moment for me to know exactly when that's landing therefore manage my diary effectively to not um have a lot when i'm when i'm bleeding um but but that's what i endeavor to do so i kind of get into my delegation phase i look at my diary going okay i know when it is going to come.

Once I've had my day seven, I know when it's going to come. And then, yeah, I'll often go into my diary, redistribute, push things into my warrior S phase, like forward by two, even two, three days makes a massive difference for me. Today, I manifested that the dinner that we had booked with some school mummy daddy friends is cancelled because he's unwell. I would have cancelled it myself, but I cancelled the last one with them. And you know, you can't do it twice. I was like, tonight I was all ready to go be blissed out at dinner and whatever, but they cancelled. So I'm like, yes. So yeah, that's, I really try to

not do as much as possible, have lots of baths. And I, Greg, my husband is incredibly supportive and he will often, he knows now. And so when I'm, you know, he says, oh, have you got your period? I'm like, yeah. And he knows then he takes the reins on bedtimes just those tiny little five minute windows of extra grace make the world of difference you know it makes such a difference I think of it as like I'm threading beads of stillness together on a on a string yeah you know like day one two three I've had enough of those beads to keep me going yeah my life is so different to how it used to be five years ago, pre having a family. You know, I used to take a whole day or two off.

I had a regular cycle, which helped too. And no, that's not my life right now. And Shani and I talk about this all the time on the podcast, how, yes, sometimes if you've got a regular cycle, you can plan your schedule around it. And often, if you have an irregular cycle, maybe heading into perimenopause, maybe health challenges, whatever else is going on, you have to bring the energy of that cycle phase to whatever's happening, as you described beautifully at the start. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I feel that too, you know, before I had kids, I would take myself away on retreat at this phase, you know, I would go and do deep work for a couple of days all by myself in the woods. And it was brilliant.

Yeah, that becomes not on the cards anymore. But that's it. It's just taking that energy and whatever's in the diary, shift what you can in the moment. And I do tend to do that quite a bit. Um, especially it's especially at this moment it's it's this from sorceress into what I what I call warrior s phase doing that transition of a few days makes the world of difference um uh for me and I think but then otherwise just chilling into wherever you're up to yeah I imagine a world where women and people who menstruate can actually bring whatever they've got whether it's their you know the the harsh discernment of the end of the world day too or whether it's the the softness connected to everything bleed phase or whether it's the well

our world really welcomes the full on summertime energy. Yeah, totally. The world's fine with that. So, you know, you're dropping in these very juicy and exciting words, sorceress, warrioress. This is why I really wanted to have you on the podcast, because core to your one of many work are these five power types, which is the backbone for most of your programs isn't it yeah each phase of the cycle corresponds to a different power type and that's what I wanted to explore with you could you could

you walk us into these power types yeah for sure for sure yeah it's it's interesting I've been working with the power types now for you know decades I suppose um and it was interesting when I was creating the content for one of many I came together with two dear friends great trainers my content collaborators Susie Heath and Annie Stoker and as we were talking about it I said I really feel that central to this work we should be bringing this archetype conversation in because for me they were a great gift in depersonalizing my behaviors so what I mean by that is sometimes we do stuff and we get we don't like who we are we don't like how we are but then when we bring in and work with archetypes we can kind of say okay I'm just

I'm channeling an energy right now which doesn't feel appropriate or isn't the most useful but it's not I'm a bad person i'm just in right now or i it's not that i'm a bad person i'm just really ensconced in my victim archetype so there's the disempowering ones and um i in order to embrace femininity which was a real transition for me because i was a very highly masculinized woman um i was very much in what I call superwoman energy. And I didn't trust femininity, though, because for me, it was that caricature of, you know, blonde, you know, bright eyed, ditzy, kind of vacuous, you know, boys are the most important caricature that we see of femininity sometimes in the movies. And please, nothing against blonde people or people

who prioritize boys, you know, that's not it. But I did not want to be that. I was an intelligent, capable, resilient, and independent woman. And if you thought for a second that that was who I was, then bugger off. So I had a lot of feelings around femininity. When I discovered archetypes, I went, ah, now I get it. These are feminine archetypes. There's nothing weak about them. Do you know when we're thinking about sorceress and warrioress and queen and lover and mother, which are the five that I now work with. And they evolved out of working with Jung's four archetypes of the mature feminine, which are, you know, mother, lover, sorceress, wise woman, you know, some version of that and the queen. But that wasn't enough. As I looked at those four,

I thought that isn't enough to handle everything every opportunity or challenge that a mature woman has to deal with in this day and age and it used to bug me that his four archetypes of the mature masculine uh didn't include father but did include warrior and and for the female we mother, but we didn't get warrior S. And while at a spiritual level, yes, I appreciate this, that the bringing of life, the feminine is the bringing of life, the mother, the bringing of the life and the masculine is the warrior is the taking of life. Like there's a lovely architecture to that, which I understand. And as a woman in the day to day, I I need my warrior s and it was interesting so so I

started working with these five personally and uh not anything thinking about cycles at that time but um but just working with these kind of five power types and we now yeah we introduce them to our community as five ways of being five energy centers or kind of modes of operating which if we can access each of them deeply we have the resources to face every opportunity or every problem that we could need to face as adult women and by and large that that is so. So they then, like it started, they started as this one piece that we shared. But then as I started bringing in other tools and other, you know, insights that I had and read in other places and thought, oh, that's really interesting. I started to see how these five energy centers, these five different ways of being map across so much. So they then

became central to how I do my time management. And this was before, still before even cycles, you know, rather than batching telephone calls together was batching, you know, energy types together and so on. So it's become really uh really um i guess diverse applications of them and you know when you're on to something which is kind of a deep wisdom because it keeps revealing itself to you as you teach more and there's more layers and more layers and i i swear there's not a month goes by where i don't find another application or depth to these extraordinary you know these these power types and how we work with them it's it's extraordinary and I've been in the room with you when you've guided a group of I don't even know how many

hundreds of people at the one woman conference through these different archetypes and I can feel the truth of them because I can feel them in my body like when you guide through the music and the words into these different I recognize them as different natural ways that I express myself so how did you find the piece then how did you make the connection between the phases of the menstrual cycle and the power types? So that journey started with Miranda Gray's books, actually, because I don't know how I got recommended to them. But it was back in the day, I was wanting to understand my cycle a little more deeply. And I was reading the opt, I think was the optimized woman, or something along those lines. And I was reading through this and I'd know I'd

been very familiar with my cycle for some time. I knew that I had these phases and I was already, even before reading that, I was already recognizing, you know, when I was menstruating that I was pretty hopeless at a bunch of things and would do the delegation. And I had those pieces already, and I was working with my cycle as an entrepreneur and as a business owner already what what woke that up for you just practicality yeah it's real yeah so you so you were tuned into this I was just tuned into it I think because I've always had really bad periods always and I went on to the pill at the age of 16 for dysmenorrhea. Um, I was then on the pill until I was

35 maybe. And my periods got really, um, disrupted at a period of a lot of stress when we moved country and stuff. And so I went off at that time to, to try and figure out where I was at. And that's when, you know, the pain came back and the having to fall into getting to know myself. So, so at the, at about that age of 35, which was also around when Greg and I were starting to want to conceive um we i i was

really having to get present to what was going on in my physical body and my cycle was when it was front of mind it was front of mind i've never been someone who's just like oh gosh surprise there's my period do you know like i can feel i've always felt it in my body so yeah working with it working with my cycle at a practical level had had just been my modus operandi for some time and then when I read Miranda Gray's book I went oh hang on a second I'd never quite seen the gift I'd never looked at it through the lens of the gifts of these phases of the cycle. I just knew the downsides, like I'd experienced the downsides. So she gave me a kind of perspective on it. And, and I then started doing cycle tracking for myself and started seeing these distinctions for myself. And that was happening

simultaneously with me learning about archetypes more deeply, working with them in my system. And then once I nailed another little piece of kind of degree that I'm fascinated in, which is Wu Xing, the ancient Chinese philosophy of the seasons, right? And the Chinese philosophy feng shui and, you know, all of the Chinese healing works on five seasons, not four. And I had the five archetypes is looking at these five seasons. And I just got curious, I wonder, how would you overlay, you know, the five power types on the seasons. And once I overlaid them on the seasons, then I overlaid the seasons on the cycle. And then I started looking at the qualities of each of the power types and then thinking about,

you know, things that I discovered that had been inspired initially by Miranda Gray's work. I saw this, all my words, this is, like I say, it was one of those moments where, how can, I mean mean surely I'm not the first person to to see this right I haven't come across anybody else who talks about it in quite this way um uh since maybe I am the first maybe maybe it's been you know in in the DNA for hundreds of thousands of years who knows but um but yeah I I that's how I kind of came to it like just pulling you know you gather don't you and you learn things you then you reflect on it for yourself you develop your things and then geeked out one afternoon on seasons and then it it all

just went ticka ticka ticka ticka they're just like my favorite moments in life I call them vocational orgasms because like in many ways it's just better than sex you're just like oh my god this idea is so gorgeous yes yes yes yes I have those I have those with the power types all the time you know at our trainers certification we talk about we overlaid them on the chakras I'm like oh my god would you look at that and then finding ways that they then you can shift your energy as a trainer into finding them through that. Oh, this is so much fun. Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. The cycle. Yes. So when you say it's the five seasons, is that, is that like early summer and late summer? Yes. Yes. They divide out an early summer and a late

summer, which I, which I really kind of feel the truth of, do you know, energetically, especially if I kind of talk through how I see the phases of our menstrual cycle and those five and why late summer and early summer matters. I think our female cycle brings that out even more, I think. So we've been talking already about sorceress phase. So we may as well start there, right? That's for, that's the, so for us, we, we chose very clearly sorceress as the name, as opposed to wise woman or some of these other more demure words for this energy. I know it triggers and brings up, the word sorceress brings up a lot of stuff for people, you know, because we think about the evil sorceresses from the Disney,

you know, Disney stuff. But for us, it was really important to call it that because it's the part of us that connects with source and source feels like a good universal shorthand for God, goddess, mother nature, the universe, cosmos, my higher self, intuition, human spirit, you know, we all have a different name for it. But whatever that is, that that is the fuel of us, that is the source of our life energy, right? So when we're menstruating, we have these superpowers for our ability to connect with source. I think I used to often when I was first getting kind of cycle aware, think that I was just shattered and no you know, when I'm bleeding. In fact, I want to. And as I've tapped into what is that feeling of not wanting to sleep that makes itself present to me, it's wanting to commune. It's wanting to, I've kind of got this energy

and it's a very peaceful energy. There's not a lot of dynamism to it. It's a stillness, but there's a longing. That's what it is. There's not movement in it but there's just a an opening a longing uh superpowers for ability to connect with source do you know to see see the truth be present in and letting go and surrender do you know that ability of sorceress to literally let go and let God, that transition from the just before into sorceress phase for me is just like the, ah, that's it and nothing actually really matters anyway.

I'm just going to get my third chocolate mousse for the day and hop into bed. I've never been that. yeah it's a the state of consciousness that is available there is so exquisite and yeah I can see how it's so easy to to miss because of the push and the drive in our culture and because many people just don't have the resources to be able to let go for whatever reason yeah that we we are missing en masse this this epic source source of so many things of health of creativity of all so many things yeah yeah I'm I'm you know I grieve for the days when we used to go into the red tent do you know and we would have this is what we would have done right so sorceress phase for me

is that phase. And as I say, my sorceress phase starts a couple of days before my period arrives. It's not the onset, it's the energetic shift happens a couple of days before, you know, and I've talked to many in our community and everybody's slightly different, but it's around that time. And everyone has, I've noticed a different length of access to that, do you know? For me, it's around five or six days that I have really deep access to that. But from about day three of bleeding, first, my intellectual energy comes back. And then my physical energy is not not too far behind and that's when I know I'm then into what I call warrior s phase so warrior s is that part of

us that is brilliant at starting things she fights you know against injustice independent get shit done playful you know so when we're-esque phase, and certainly I find this for myself, this is where it's great for starting new projects, really great for planning and, you know, organizing my month. So I tend to do my monthly planning when I'm in my warrior-esque phase. Fantastic for late nights, partying, you know, you can do those longer days and then go out party with your friends all night and that energy and and a lot of a lot of fun the playfulness and physical activity and all of those one of the things i often say in our community is to be really careful to you will make decisions

in queen phase right when you get those bolts of discernment before your period arrives um about the fact that you need to you need to fucking get fit you know you I'm sick of myself I need to do x you discover it then but you shouldn't start it until after you've been through your menstruation because you'll just have a couple of sessions and then you go oh it doesn't really matter anyway surrender in and then it's when you start warrior s you've got it you want to start those new lifestyle transitions or those new um lifestyle kicks because you then have the whole warrior s phase your whole mother lover and mother phase and queen phase to get it in as a kind of habit

before you soften into your next sorceress phase and it gives you half a chance of being able to kind of keep up with something if you if you do it so um so practical it's just so practical yeah so clever well done life you just you just set it up so right is there a sort of shadow element to the warrior s like is there a place we can slip into by accident in in that phase that you notice oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a terrible time for heart to hearts it's it's not a good time to have like performance reviews with team members um because we are we're really independent make it happen more focused on mission and cause and that that sort of stuff than we are on human connection and interaction so it's great for what i you know for for play and fun but it's not great for deep and meaningfuls or for compassionate conversations with team members

and that sort of stuff we can really you know we can really get quite uh we can i personally i can't say we i had personally have messed things up in warrior s phase before now because my expectations of myself are so high normally and then in warrior warrior s phase i'm able to perform on them and more and then you look around you go what the fuck are you doing right and and and the filter disappears um because we're present to it i want to carry on with the phases but i just want to dig in a little bit here it's just so ecstatic to talk to talk with someone who has so much nuanced understanding of the cycle i was like like, let's just get in here. So if something big is happening and you know you're in your warrior-esque phase, have you cultivated a capacity to kind of change the disc

and bring in some of your lover or some of your mother into that, even though it's a warrior-esque day? Yeah, I think, as we said right at the top, the ability to do that is essential um especially with an unpredictable cycle you know we're not we don't have to be dictated to by our cycles but when we work with them we can harness the superpower right so recognize if i've got something going down with a team member or with my child or with my partner that needs attention. And I know that that's where I am just taking the moment.

And I guess, yeah, once you've done cycle tracking for a few months, it becomes built in, you know. I don't every day write down where I am, but I've got one of Samjana Moon's beautiful clocks in my bathroom and my whole family see it. My kids know about it. So, you know, I can see it. And that just serves as that visual reminder for me that if I'm in Warrior S and that's going on, just pull it back. And consciously for me, it would be coming into my mother energy for one of those conversations you know unconditional love openness and acceptance which is can be a very conscious shift i don't have to be dictated to by my hormones i can find my unconditional love even if i'm in that phase

you know we all can but catching ourselves knowing where we are having that beat before we act on anything to go hmm how might my hormones be informing my perception of what this is before we dive into action I think is always not a bad beat to take I find that cycle awareness has really enhanced my capacity to take that beat as well because it's that simple turning inwards each day how am I what's going on in my body what's going on in my emotions what's going on in my mind like Alexandra and Charlie often call it the mindfulness practice for women or for people who menstruate, because it's right here talking to us all the time. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. At Red School, as you probably know, we are passionate about creating a world where

the kind of menstrual cycle awareness that joe is talking about here is at the heart of every workplace every business every family every school every context and that's why we're committed to training the menstruality leaders of the future the people who will anchor the power of the menstrual cycle and menopause at the heart of our world, each in their own unique way. Registration is going to open up soon for our 2023 menstruality leadership program. If you're curious, you can register your interest at menstrualityleadership.com and you'll be the first to know when registration opens in November. And if you'd like to know more about how we work with the different phases of the cycle at Red School, we recommend joining our free Love Your Cycle online course, which you can find at

redschool.net forward slash love. That's redschool.net forward slash love so fun so warrior s yes and then we then we transit so yeah so warrior s is when like if we look at if we kind of overlay the hormones on since we're in full geek mode let's like get bring in all of the geekery so warrior s phase where we got this energy is because our estrogen is building you know progesterone is building, testosterone are building back up because in sorceress phase, the hormones of course are zero, right? We've got, well, not zero, but they're, they're at their lowest ebb. So all of them are coming back up, especially estrogen is, is in this first phase. And then we get to my favorite part of my cycle, which is lava phase and lava phase. And this and this is this is so warrior

s is spring energy we said we would also overlay the site the thing warrior s is our spring energy newness like i think of that you know shoot coming up from the earth the first little little um leaves coming out of the soil and then and then lover energy is when we're getting into early summer so it's it's this is kind of you know uh we're just past blossoms you know there's there's um it's it's beltane it's it's that first hot summer day in london i remember it from when i came here when i was 18 years old as an australian i arrived into london and I was in Hyde Park and it was the first hot day of the year and perfectly normal human beings wearing suits were in their underwear. Like I'm not joking. Women were sitting there in their mini dress, like they had their heels on

the bottom, their mini dress, and they were sitting there in their bras. And I saw them put their buttoned up things and their jackets back or their jackets back over the top and blokes I'm like what is this and at first my uh my English friends were like come on let's get to the pub we're going to have some pims I'm like no I can't you know I've got a bit of work I've got to finish off now I know if you miss those early days of summer in England they're gone for the season you missed the the Pim's moment is gone. Now I understand why you peel your clothes off at the first sign of the sun because you can't predict that it's always going to be there. But I also remember, again, I remember one of those

balmy nights, heading to a wine bar just near Embankment tube and there's just this feeling of love and lust in the air like everyone's staying out late looking for a mate you know you can feel that animalistic peace kind of coming in this is yeah it is it's literally that Beltane time where we've been jumping over the fires and fertility and you know the prayers for fertility and And what's happening at an inner cycle level at that early summer phase is we are getting ready to, well, we're ovulating and getting ready to make life, right? That's what's happening. And we get our luteinizing hormone peak, which kicks, and this is why I love it the most, the little testosterone hit that we get as women at that point that gets us into that very sexy kind of almost aggressively sexy part of ourselves.

I love it because I know I'm ovulating and I'm in my lover phase because I have sex dreams and the best sex dreams predictably. I love that. We won't go into the detail because that might be sharing a little too much. You asked me if there was anything we shouldn't talk about. Maybe it's the content of my sex. But that's, I feel is like a, that's a phase that I think from, for me, it's about three or four days. It's not a really long phase, but that where you get that peak of hormones and especially that little testosterone kick brings in this

lover energy where we have super power. We are radiant. Like at that moment, we are so radiant. It's where we're most full, I think, of life force energy and where it is, where we're really charismatic. I mean, it's incredible time for delivering presentations. It's an incredible time for networking and an incredible time for connections and deep and meaningful conversations and merging and, like, you know, all of that good stuff. Of course, romance and all of that, but that I feel goes without saying because it's clear what's happening cyclically. But there's lots of also great work stuff we can do in that uh in that phase as well when I can catch it and as I say because I'm unpredictable these days I can't always catch it but when I can catch it they're the days I love to do my filming they're the best days for doing this kind of thing you know um uh having conversations with people creating content you know, for spoken content,

not necessarily kind of thinking through content. So yeah, that's lover phase, which I really love. And then we shift into the late summer energy of mother. And the reason I love this distinction is because for both warrior essence and lover phase, there's movement. I feel like that's the tide coming in, if you like. And then mother phase is high tide. It's this stillness. And when we get to that late summer, it's a different energy than early summer. It's late summer, like the trees are dripping with fruit and you know it's those yeah though it's it's bar it's not that balmy nights but those still heavy summer days you know um and for for us at a cyclical level it's where we've got our

highest progesterone which is our chill out hormone you know um and that's why that is such a good time mother energy phase where it's very easy for us to slip into the part of us which is unconditionally loving unconditionally accepting um that is uh incredibly gracious and encouraging and kind because we're high on progesterone right so it's easy it's easy easy to find that part of us, which, if we then look at what we have superpowers for, it's a great time for meetings. But like, that's a good time to do performance reviews, because you can come from a place of acceptance and love of the person, while still generously providing the feedback that they might need,

and so on. Also good for networking and all of these other things that were similar in lover phase, but just in a more kind of still energy, a still kind of place. Yeah, so I love that distinction of the two parts of summer. I do too. And in fact, someone just emailed me the other day

and said, don't you feel really different before and after ovulating yeah and I do I do yeah before ovulation there's the the yeah the rising energy or it's the via positiva as we talk about it at red school and I can feel it rising and then I ovulate and then it is it's like um it's just the turn of the tide like you said that's a beautiful way to to see it and I'm still collaborative I'm still outward focus and I have to kind of be careful to hold on to myself because I can just focus on the world and lose myself at that point yes yes I'm still there but there's it's it's the beginning of the turning back towards myself that's how yeah that's yeah that's a beautiful way of putting it and and because I'm still there, but it's the beginning of the turning back towards myself. That's how I experience.

Yeah, that's a beautiful way of putting it. And because, you know, I call that part mother phase, one of the underbellies of mother energy is she will sacrifice. She will sacrifice for those that she deems to be what I would call at her hearth so for her her family problem that a lot of us have with our relationship with our mother energy is our mother power type is that we have a lot of people at our hearth you know we have our boss at our hearth we have um you know uh the neighbor at our hearth and we shouldn't we should only have a few and that's what you're talking there like when we're externally focused we can make choices to sacrifice when we're in that place to put other when I say sacrifice, I mean, put somebody else's needs ahead of our own, right. And in that phase, we can choose that. And so that's something I've learned over the years is when I'm in that generous phase of unconditional love, and being able to

take on a little more for others and is to only do short-term things because we can i have in the past chosen sacrifice in that expanded way of like well yeah why don't i take that off your plate forever you know as a part of your job description let that be with me and then literally a week later gone, what the fuck was I thinking? You know, this is not my wheelhouse. This is their job description. Why did I do it? Just because they were having a stressful day.

So I could have made the choice to say, why don't I take it off for now rather than, you know, why don't I support it with you right now in this moment? You know, we'll talk again next week about where it lands indefinitely. But I have to catch myself because like you, I tend to go into fierce, overexpressed mother, overly generous, sacrificing my needs in that phase. And you don't want to make long-term, you know, what lands on your plate style decisions from that place. That's so true.

I'm remembering back now to being at an event with you and you were talking about the mother and the hearth and I was trying to get pregnant and I had been for years and I was crying as I did for most of the months back then because it was so freaking hard to want something so much and not have it and I remembered you saying you know who's at your hearth and I think I was sort of drawing out you know everyone in my life was just right there in my womb I was taking care of everyone and everything clients you know work colleagues family friends and it was there was an insight moment for me of yeah actually I've got to take things out of my hearth and it was really an energetic move

I just stopped like gestating everyone and everything they didn't even ask me to like they didn't they didn't want ask me to become their mother and it was it was a good energetic move and you know and then a couple of I don't know what where it was at in the path but I was able to have my son eventually and I know that part of it was I needed that to hold that mother energy with more sanctity I guess with more, so that I chose what I was mothering in my life. I think it's so critical. Do you know, I think why we do it? I don't know, but this is my philosophy, my hypothesis, is that the mother power type is the only one of the five power types which we are allowed as women as a place of power. It's the only one that our culture celebrates as a part of our womanhood. Our culture has a very poor relationship

with the female warrior-esque energy, a poor relationship with lover energy in women, a poor relationship with queen and a poor relationship with sorceress. Like if you just, as I say them like that, I hope you've kind of gone, hmm. And you can see it, right? We, the lover energy is turned into kind of prostitute kind of vibe. The, you know, and the, all of the sex, kidney kind of stuff that the queen energy is turned into the bitch and the tyrant, the sorceress energy is turned into the evil sorceress of the Disney films. And, and mother is the only one that culturally,

the masculine paradigm or call it the patriarchy. If that feels more comfortable to you whatever kind of floats your boat but that says yes women can be that have that power center so we have a power type profiling tool at one of many and interestingly more the most common of all of the women and we've had over 10 000 women do it more than 50% of women, their primary power type is mother. And I think this is no coincidence. You would expect with all of these wonderful power types at our disposal that you would have women, if we were all fully self-expressed, that we would be spread across this amazing spectrum of behavioral kind of energetics. But 50% of us, more than 50%,

about 52% of us, the number one is mother. And I think it's because culturally we are allowed that. And so therefore, how do we express love in the world? The only way we know to express love is to pull people close to our heart and sacrifice our needs for them. That's what we, that is what the mothering style of love looks like it looks like sacrificing from my family my my nearest and my dearest the problem is we pile them in and the nearest and dearest become too many rather than you know starting to go actually maybe there's different ways I can express love and and the other five power types give us those those maps you know that's beautiful other ways to express love and for people who

aren't mothers either through choice or not we're not talking about children here we're talking about an energy of mothering and holding and caring yeah yeah absolutely in fact some of the most over-expressed mother power type women I have come across are women who are childless either by choice or not by choice right um uh and it's a big moment where they realize oh okay look look you know how i'm how i'm how i'm doing this and how i can pull back some more of myself if i'm aware of that it's more when yeah when we're talking about that's why i say those they deem to be at their half because you get to choose who those people are for most biological mothers they will have their kids at their half because you get to choose who those people are for most biological mothers they will have their kids at their half at least until adulthood it's hard not to

biologically we're wired to sacrifice for them but then even that isn't essential you know if i've had women in our community who realize that their kids cannot be at their hearth you know usually adult kids i want to be really clear about that um but uh you know if you've got a a kid with addictions or something like that and you continually sacrifice and put your needs ahead of their own that ends in catastrophe do you know um it's a it's a tough call but sometimes that shift of that child out of the hearth and into what we would call the realm or the domain of the queen energy makes a real a real difference um you know as i say we have people who realize that their their their boss is at their heart they're sacrificing their needs for their employer putting what their employer needs before their own

and it's it's it's too much it's. That isn't even probably an appropriate kind of nature of relationship. Not to say from time to time we might not sacrifice from warrior rest, but that's a different kind of sacrifice. That's a sacrifice to the mission, to the cause, and it's often very timely in nature, like it's for this moment and so on. But both of those will sacrifice so we have to be a little careful of both of those energies because that's part of their underbelly i think when we decide not to sacrifice in that way we don't feel like we have many options about what

else to do so we can slip into bitch and martyr like fuck off i am not gonna look after you right now or like oh i just have to look after everyone and it's so exhausting and what you offer I think is coming next if I'm tracking is queen yeah it's a different way of holding of loving of yeah yeah absolutely so our queen energy I mean she she's not the solution to everything but for an overexpressed mother, she is the solution to quite a bit of it. So queen energy is this part of us that is serene and graceful and in command, but what her superpowers are is the ability to see the long view, to hold a vision beyond the horizon of what we can, you know, what's immediately obvious,

and she can see that long view. And in holding that vision for her whole realm, she can see the truth of what is needed to move the realm toward closer to that vision. And it's not always the easy thing. And it's not always the acceptable thing. And it's not always the acceptable thing and it's not always the nice thing sometimes it's not even the kind thing but it's the required thing um and so i i think about the queen's love as a very committed love that comes out of commitment to this this vision and interestingly the queen holds as uh as sacred if you like her needs not because they're her needs but because she recognizes that she's put in this place by god source whatever and and so therefore her needs being taken care of is critical in the well-being of the realm because if she's not okay, she can't hold that vision. She can't see the truth. She can't make the decisions. She can't give the sanction. She can't, you know, because she's off if she's not

okay, which is why when we think about archetypal queens, they are so gracious and humble. You know, I'm not talking about overexpressed drama queens, you know, ice queens, ty tyrant queens it's not that a fully beautifully expressed queen receives so well because she recognizes that having her needs met is actually meeting the needs of the whole realm because it is her ability to to to hold that space um so yeah when we if we're a bit tangled up in our mother energy, queen is a really powerful the vision to to be able to say no set boundaries you know luckily our cycle comes around our cycle comes around and whether we like it or not queen energy comes in and goes fuck no yeah that Yeah, that's it, right? So for me, I enter my queen phase. It's usually a day before the seven day drama, massive drama day. So I can feel my discernment

starting to, like we're heading into autumn. So, you're right right now as we're recording this we're in this kind of queen phase here in the uk the wind is starting to pick up some of the leaves are starting to come off the trees you know the the branches are going to start falling soon we'll get out in the garden and we'll prune and and we're letting go that which isn't isn't serving you know in in autumn and so that is that, you know, in the Wu Xing philosophy, the element of autumn is metal, that incisive discernment, that ability to cut through the crap. And this is what the rest of the world calls PMT week, right? It's actually a freaking superpower for discernment of truth. Like the reason we get so shitty about things is because it's not been okay the whole month. And now your queen comes in and says, this is not okay for the realm. This is not okay for me and therefore the realm. She,

of course course doesn't express it in that way though she just gets very angry and blamey and can get quite tyrannical and we can get into drama queen if we're not conscious that the insight we're having is the right insight like i god i trust my insights except my dad my seven days days before, the way I try to solve them, I never trust that. I do go to catastrophizing drama queen on that day, but the insights are always right. Do you know that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm really tracking you. So it's trust the insight, don't trust the strategies that arise from that moment. Correct. That's correct. So good. The strategies that come closer to sorceress, those I trust because the bolt from the blue creativity source connection

of sorceress kind of, you know, none of them, it's like that we ebb and flow into each of these parts of the cycle. So later on, like I'll trust my day 25 26 27 strategies because they're coming in sort of from sorceress more the ins but I do not trust my day you know day 21 22 23 strategies they're generally catastrophic and destructive um and I often and this I just had a really full-on day seven recently with Greg. Well, not just with Greg, with everything. And we were in the middle of a conversation after, you know, we'd just been watching an episode of Peaky Blinders. And then we started chatting about something. And then I realized I was going into massive catastrophization and making it all about all of the things.

And I caught myself and I just went, we need to stop having this conversation. And he's like, why do we need to stop having the conversation? And I said, because I've just realized it's probably mostly hormones talking. And he went, okay, then. And we both just took a couple of deep breaths. And I said, if it's still an issue tomorrow, we'll pick it up. And he's like, okay. And we went to sleep that night and we didn't feel great with each other that night um and this is something you know I used to hear this with um a lot of great you know spiritual teachers say never go to bed on an argument sometimes go to bed on the fucking argument because you don't have the capacity to because otherwise you just won't go to bed because you'll stay up all night talking and arguing and this and that yes exactly yeah yeah I'm all for go to bed on the argument but I we always try to go with you know I'm angry

but I love you more than I'm angry and that that much is is a good piece to hold on to so we did and and guess what the next morning turns out the insight was right you know there was a real I was really present to a behavior that Greg does that has me feeling hurt you know and as I sit here right now and I've bled on it now and it is it is it is a behavior that hurts um do I think he has capacity to do much about it because of his, you know, programming and who he is? I'm not sure. So, you know, then finding some compassion for that and being able to go, is this a deal breaker? Well, actually, of course, it's not a deal breaker. That one's easy. Day seven, it was a deal breaker, but now, of course not. And not day seven seven day seven days before um i was tracking you yeah yeah we all were yeah um but yeah that's that the the insight like those queen queen week insights are usually golden

but the strategies or you gotta gotta just i think is is it um it Alexandra who says, go bleed on a decision? Do you know? Yeah. And I think that's really great advice, right? Really, really profound that you can have those insights and then let them settle in, come up with ideas, potentially strategies and so on. But again, like sit on them, rest on them. And then in the next next cycle around how do we activate on this I think it's a really good place to come from and one of the qualities that we have to cultivate to be able to receive the insight not act immediately and bleed on it is to hold the tension of the thing yes which is I love this queen uh archetype the way you describe it because that is a queenly thing to do to be able to feel because don't boy do we feel if we allow ourselves to feel the rage the outrage the anger the grief

the and then cultivating this capacity to go yes i am feeling these things yes yes yes the queen has superpowers for uh like we say she's the antidote to analysis paralysis, right? And the process by which the queen will make a decision is that she will know what she knows. She gets really present. What do I know in my heart about this? She then asks, have I got all the information I need to make a decision? One way or the other, it doesn't matter which way you look at it. Have I got all the information? What do I know in my heart about this? And she decides quickly. Now she might not choose to act for a week, a month, a year, but the decision is made and she knows it. So she's no longer wasting any energy, extra energy on the thing. And I think that's the piece that you speak to here about

being able to be with the tension. Sometimes when we trust that queen to go, do you know what, decision made, this is what we're going to do, then you don't have to speak that decision to anybody else and then at least bleed on it, if not give it some more fullness of time, but you're decided. I believe the ability to live into an internal decision begins to give you the feedback even if you haven't activated on it yet even if you haven't taken action on it and that's that queen queen can do that she can she can be with all of the feelings around things she can trust those feelings that they are informing her of what the right choice is.

And she can make a decision about how it will be, but she's really good at then once, once the decision is made or recognizing she hasn't got the information, she fully needs to make a decision and being able to sit with what it is until she gets that information. The ability to just kind of hold all of that because she sees the vision because she's connected to the vision for the realm. That's the power source for her is the vision for the realm.

Her ability to do all of this comes from there. Yes. I want to come to that. And we are coming to that really, aren't we? Because we're coming back to Sorceress and Winter. But I just noticed I went foggy in my head as you were talking, which is usually a sign of like, I really need to hear what this person is saying. So just in case anyone else is that happened. So you just, you just walked through some steps of what to do in this inner autumn queen phase. So

the first thing was you, what do I know? Yeah. What do I know? So you'll get these insights. What do I know in my heart? Because so many times people are like, you know, such and such is a pain in the ass or this isn't working and da, da, da, da, da, da. And what should I do? Is always the question, right? Like when you know that something's not okay, what am I going to do? What should I do, Jo? What should I do, Sophie? Tell me what I should do. And then the very first thing that I like to ask is, well, the assumption is queen already knows. You don't like necessarily what the answer is. You don't like what you know, which is why there's a lot of feeling around it, but you already know. So what does the queen know about this? What does she know in her heart is the truth of this in relation to the vision for the realm. If this

is the vision for the realm, what do you know in your heart about this? So that's one place of information for what should I do? What is the decision that needs to be made? How do I activate? The other place is, we've got to remember is the queen's ability to seek counsel. Queen doesn't have all the answers. She knows she doesn't have all the answers. And in fact, she doesn't need all the answers. She knows she doesn't have all the answers. And in fact, she doesn't need all the answers, but she does want to be as informed as possible before making choices for the good of the realm.

So if she doesn't know the answer, she will ask, she will go to her trusted advisors. And so, you know, maybe the decision is you're sitting there in the presence of a lot of feeling around your relationship and your queen's like in my heart, right? This feels like it's ending. Have I got all of the information to make this decision just yet? Well, actually, I don't know if I do because maybe I'm making up some story about this. Maybe I need to go speak to my partner and get some information from them about what was going on in this moment or maybe actually what i could really use is a sounding board to reflect back my feelings to me

so i'm going to get on the phone to my best friend and share what's going on here and seek counsel in a work context it might be right we've got to close down this division i can i can see it we've got to close down this division that's what I know in my heart feels true. Have I got all of the information? Well, no, I don't. What would happen to the revenue if we closed down this division? What would happen to the workforce? Would this be right from a reputational perspective? And so she then will go and get that. She can still be with her feelings or her knowingness or whatever, go gather the information. And then she brings both of those in to be able to synthesize for the good of the realm. Yeah. And that piece I think is the critical

and she can do that quickly. She doesn't have to there. She doesn't have to have all the answers to everything. She just keeps going until she's either she gets more information, which backs up what she feels and knows in her heart or she gets more information which overrides that and she goes actually no that is my knowingness but but for the good of the realm this is what we do for now and we stick with it and and and it becomes quite a quick process then because we're not looking for the perfect choice for the perfect strategy for the perfect one way the right way the only way provided that the good of the realm is the benchmark queen will make powerful decisions you just got to be careful because sometimes actually making a decision for the good of the realm isn't the decision that's good for you so

maybe a decision from lover energy or from mother energy or from warrior ass is going to be more appropriate. And that's where you get to choose because actually all of these, you know, they're like your own inner board of advisors and they will have differences of opinion. So you get to choose what version of life experience you want to have. So thrilling. So we need to wrap up but so let's bring ourselves full circle back to inner winter and to sorceress and you know this is the time

where i remember my vision if i've got lost in the hubbub of of the day-to-day it's like oh boom who am I what am I about what am I here for is that true for you too is that your time for this uh I'm quite lucky in that my vision is present for me most of the time um I've learned over the years that that's not true for everybody but visionary or ability to i'm going to say feel into my vision and i hear the um whatever that is you don't feel something visual but um but i i it's not something i see it's something i feel and it is something that is present for me and has been through most of my adult life, not necessarily in fierce detail, but as a this way, this way, this way, it's, it's rarely not there for me. Um, so when I'm coming

into sorceress phase, I'm, what I get more, what, what lands in more for me is just peace. It's just peace because I, my tendency is to fiercely move towards and, you know, like my warrior ass wants to get us there faster and, you know, queen. And for me, my sorceress phase is when actually i reconnect to yeah it is the truth of who i am but that's a very present tense thing for me like for me vision is a it's a future tense thing which is available all of the time it's something that i'm living into it's my navigational equipment but yeah for me what lands in for in that sorceress phase is, oh, this is who I am in this moment. A little bit, this is where I come from. You know, I've kind of just been working with this a lot lately,

this kind of feeling like I'm not from around here. I used to always want to fit in and now I'm kind of like, maybe I just never will and maybe that's okay. And connecting to whatever is, it's not a vision for the future. It's just the truth of who I am now. And that brings me peace. Because peace is not something I have a lot of lived experience with. Thank you, Jo. What a beautiful place to wrap up this gorgeous whirlwind of a conversation how if people are inspired by what you're sharing how can they connect with you oh well we would love to welcome you into the one of

many community we have tens of thousands of women from all over the world so if you wanted to go to oneofmany.co.uk it is a uk website but we're very much a global movement. And if you click on the getting started tab, you can join the community right there. There's a Facebook group and there's some resources to get started with to find out a little more about what we do. And by all means, follow me on all the socials. I'm Dr. Joanna Martin on most of them. And it's one of many women is the community ones. So come check us out and get plugged in because we love this stuff as much as you all do well i will drop links in on the podcast page to all of the things that you pointed to there thank you joe what what a delight it's been and i hope that

your day two continues with your spacious peace and yeah i look forward to connecting with you soon thank you so much for having me Sophie it's been beautiful thank you for joining Jo and I on this podcast today I left this podcast feeling so inspired about how to work with the different phases of my cycle. I love the lens that Jo brings of these archetypes and if the conversation helped you to remember or reignited your passion for bringing all of the different qualities of your cycle into the way that you live, into the way that you work and lead especially, then our menstruality leadership program could be a good next step for you

on your path to expressing your unique gifts and callings in the world. We're actually going to open the doors soon, within the next month. So if you'd like to explore the program and register your interest you'll be the first to know when the doors open and you can find out more at menstrualityleadership.com okay I'll see you next time and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm