The Menstruality Podcast - Ground Yourself in Body Wisdom through Cycle Awareness *Retreat Special* (Natalie K Martin)

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

Today’s episode of The Menstruality Podcast is session three of our free, online Wild Power retreat, where we’re exploring how to make 2022 your year of creativity, vitality and leadership, through the power of menstrual cycle awareness.Period and Menstrual Cycle Coach Natalie K Martin guides us through the four cycle phases, inner season by inner season, exploring how to track the wisdom of your body through cycle awareness, and how to move in a cycle-inspired way that honours the energy of your current phase. We explore:The power of non-doing, rest and restorative yoga in inner winter (menstruation), and why silence is so key to accessing the powers of your bleed. Strategies for winding down and creating space when you bleed, including longer toilet breaks, moving mindfully and adapting the way you work.How to use music to enhance your cycle awareness practice, connect to pleasure, unleash your wildness through intuitive movement and harness the powers of each cycle phase. ---Registration is open for our 2022 Wild Power Immersion is now open. You can join here: https://www.wildpower.online---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolNatalie K Martin: @natalie.kmartin - https://www.instagram.com/natalie.kmartin

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back. Thank you for joining us today. This is part three of our special Wild Power Retreat series designed to inspire you to enhance your vitality, creativity and leadership in 2022 through the power of menstrual cycle awareness. You can still

register to be part of the retreat. You go to redschool.net forward slash wild dash power dash retreat. Okay, let's get going with session three. Get grounded in your body wisdom through menstrual awareness. Welcome to day three of our Wild Power Retreat, where over 10 days we are exploring how you can enhance your vitality and creativity and leadership through the power and the magic of menstrual cycle awareness this year. Welcome Natalie K. Martin. Thank you so much for being with us today and for making the time to join us on the retreat. It's an absolute honor. Thank you. I'm super stoked to be here. Can't wait to get started. The conversation we're having today is all about how to track and honor the intelligence of your body through the menstrual cycle so it's such a rich topic and we'll also look at cycle inspired movement how we can be adapting our movement practice and the way we flow through the cycle month because we live in a non-cyclical world and which is constantly telling us to push

our bodies you know to push through to go faster to go. And working with the cycle can be such a powerful way to swim upstream against that momentum and come home to the intelligence that's here, which is actually the medicine that our world needs pretty much all the time. So Natalie is a period and menstrual cycle coach. She's an author. She made a really interesting transition. She writes about this on her website from a corporate career in London through to being a yoga teacher and now to supporting people with periods to find balance and the power in their cycles and especially we were just talking about your passion is the pre-menstruum which is where I am right now so really excited to have this conversation with you um we're going to start with a cycle check-in

so for the people that are listening just take a moment to track what cycle that day of the cycle you're on and see if you can find three words that distill the experience that you're having and if you're following along with your wild power journal then there's space to write in the journal and natalie i'd love to hear from you could you share your cycle day and three words that clarify how you're how you're doing with it yeah sure I'm on cycle day seven so in and playful I love it fresh multi-focused and playful um we are going to pull off some kind of miracle here because we have 30 minutes to get into this really rich topic so I'm going to move us along straight away because I could I would love to go into multi-focused with you in a spring. But, you know, this retreat is all about setting ourselves up for this year of cycle awareness.

Could you kick us off by sharing maybe a couple of the key ways that cycle awareness has enhanced your life, enhanced your vitality, your creativity, your leadership? Yeah, definitely. I would say as an overarching thing, it's just made life feel easy, as in, I don't have to kind of feel like I'm the one who's responsible for everything. And that I always have to make things happen. It's allowed me just to trust in my body and trust in what's happening in my life. And that's obviously reduced a lot of um grabbing and stress so as an overarching theme I would say it's just made things a little bit easier it's definitely given me more energy as well um I used to have a lot of burnout around my inner summer and now I have as you've seen today already um a lot of energy just from learning how to rest and how to how to go

with the flow of what my body is asking for at any given time instead of squashing it all into one particular place or trying to do the same thing all the time and I just haven't been able to stop sharing it so it's crept into my leadership style because it just can't not you know it's it's it's like a you can't hold on to this secret once you know it so it's definitely just made me a lot more all-rounded I would say I feel like I'm I feel a lot more whole yeah how about creatively as an author do you follow your cycle as you're writing? I actually haven't until now. But the last book, I just made sure that I wasn't writing while I was bleeding. But this new book, I literally started it yesterday on day six and I had such a strong urge it was one of the reasons why I needed to really break on this last

bleed because I knew that this was when I wanted to start the new book was in my inner spring and it will be interesting to see how it pans out I mean I've got a very very tight deadline of 28th of February so um it's I don't think I will be able to really plan it the way that I would like to using my cycle. But having said that, now that I know the peaks and valleys of my energy and where I tend to feel most creative, I think I'll probably write chapters according to where I am. The more playful stuff will be now, the more kind of raw stuff will probably be in my premenstruum. So, yeah. Wow, the more raw stuff in my premenstruum so yeah wow the more raw stuff in the premenstruum I love that we should have a conversation on the other side of this to see

how this goes it'd be really interesting absolutely so let's look at how cycle awareness has changed your relationship to your body because before you came into cycle awareness you were very connected to your body a yoga practitioner yoga teacher how has your cycle awareness practice influenced that or helped you connect to the intelligence of your body yeah it's funny because I used to think I was very in touch with my body because of the yoga practice and teaching but I really wasn't I think because I just never connected to that that part of me I never connected to actually what was happening with me cycle wise and so I think it's definitely the yoga and everything definitely helped me to start to tune into the breath and to feel sensation in my body

but cycle awareness has it's it's a strange kind of almost intangible layer of my body and or not even my body my being that kind of informs how I breathe and how I move because obviously yoga for the most part it's very led and guided and you know especially the kind of yoga that I teach and enjoy you're told when to breathe when to inhale when to exhale when to move and it's a different kind of level of embodiment when you're just tuning into actually your your own rhythm according to where you are so in terms of how I feel my body and how I connect to myself it's like another world completely and I didn't think that was possible after all of the yoga work and the breath work and and the meditations and all that kind of thing but it's it's it feels a lot deeper or finely tuned let's say I'd love to take a walk through the cycle and explore how the world might suggest we move at that phase but how actually it makes more sense for us to move so that we can be closer

to our experience more intimately connected to what we're actually experiencing and it feels like a good place to start is in in a winter in the menstrual phase because that's probably for the people that are listening the phase where they might experience the most challenge when it comes to stopping and resting or adapting the way that the world wants them to move to their own body's needs and we're just sharing before we started actually about how you had a wonderful restful bleed this last time so maybe could you walk us into how you move in your menstrual phase and then you know what you share with your students and and what you think could be beneficial yeah sure um so for me my the most that I do my menstrual phase now is walking my dog walking around my house from room to room

and um restorative yoga so restorative really became my go-to in the menstrual phase because I mean it's just so juicy it's so yummy it's you know for me it's when I practice it and also when I teach it it's very quiet so I don't speak once I'm in positions when I'm teaching it and I I don't really like to follow classes where the teacher is constantly talking for me I want to get into the position and I just want to lay there and have my alarm go off when it's time to move again and that for me has just been a huge revelation because it's so quiet and you know I think that the menstrual phase of the cycle, we have so much insight and knowledge that can come out. But if you're constantly being distracted by a teacher who's talking all the time, or, you know, whatever's going on, you can't really hear it. So for me, it's absolute quiet. And this cycle that has just started this last bleed, did I think about 45 minutes I also had some cacao so I was drinking some cacao in between and I had such a menstrual migraine before then and it

just it just melted afterwards so for me restorative you know it's people look at it and they're like you're not really doing anything you are your body is resting and um you know I find that if I do it before day three then I tend to get the most out of it and already by day four I'm starting to feel like maybe I want to stretch a little bit but I still will incorporate some restorative in there that's for me that's what I call temple time it's non-negotiable it's me just lying on my props with some incense and um and that can be very difficult for people because it's so still it's so quiet your mind can travel to places where there might be lots of things coming up in there but I for me as a as a student and as a teacher I always just encourage just let your

mind go sleep if you want to sleep dream if you want to dream yeah so that's how I that's how I move on my menstrual phase for people who might have a lot of momentum going especially people who are really creative in the autumn in the autumn phase or they've got a lot of caring that they're doing in their life or they've got a lot of responsibility and life's moving fast you know I'm asking for a friend here I find it hard to slow down into that you know and and if I you know kind of go go go go go stop my mind just you know plays crazy tricks which I think can happen for a lot of people in that void space between autumn and the bleed have you got some advice for how to wind it down get to that rest yeah for me I think I would say the easiest entry

in my opinion is always at the place where it feels easiest anyway. So for people who just find it hard to wind down generally, if you want to start doing some restorative yoga, do it at a time when you feel really crap. So, you know, if you've got really bad cramps or you just feel really tired and it might just literally be five minutes in child's pose it doesn't have to be this like hour-long thing so physically speaking I would say try to do it at the time when you you really feel the worst anyway because at that point you're probably willing to try anything and when it when it comes to the mind the first thing to really understand is that you're not trying to quiet your mind down. It's not possible to do that. Yes, you might be able to meditate easier in that kind of void space or in your menstrual phase. We're not trying to stop you from thinking. It's really about just giving your mind a bit of space. So one of the things that I like to do is have a pen and paper nearby.

And, you know, if I'm sitting in meditation, or if I'm doing restorative or whatever, and I've got things that are coming up, just write them down. Doesn't matter if it's like a creative idea, or, oh, gosh, I've got to remember to do this, or, you know, just a random thought, if it's stopping you from really dropping down then just take a moment write it down and just think of it as literally plucking this stuff out of your head and emptying quote unquote um your mind so that you can just sit for it might only be like a minute but a minute of quiet is better than no minute at all so that's where I always start with with people who are really struggling to kind of slow down to literally help your mind by just taking it out

I love that so speaking of a minute of quiet I'm thinking about someone who might be at work it's day 28 that suddenly becomes day one they've got a meeting that they need to be part of or you know someone who's parenting or taking care of a relative or you know many things can be happening on day one could you share some ideas for how we could sort of hold ourselves through that in the in the menstrual moment or how we can adapt the way we're just moving through the world yeah um in those instances I would say prolong your toilet break so you know it's just becoming day one instead of you know rushing in putting your tampon your cup whatever it is like literally just sit for a minute longer if you can I mean most of us can um and you know a minute is totally doable

and then from that point on for me it's about cultivating slowness in the body um I also work part-time in a cafe and I've been in that situation where it's a busy weekend and it's like oh god walk slower move slower so do you have to kind of you know be in a bit of a frenzy and and gathering things from your desk and you know because when we're when we're rushing we're creating stress in the body and the mind anyway and we're usually actually slowing ourselves down by rushing um you know but just moving more mindfully literally just the way that you pick up your phone or the way that you drink your um your drink while you're in that meeting um or walking from your desk to the meeting room it's you know it's it's about just slowing down as much as you can inside

because obviously in those situations you can't just drop everything and and go into a period cave as lovely as it would be um and that's something that I one day when the world is right we'll all be able to do that but yeah that's that's what I do because I am that person I'm very quick generally I live in a Bavarian village I walk like I'm still in the middle of London usually and when I've got when I'm transitioning in that void space and when I'm bleeding especially if I can't tap out and rest then it's like okay just literally slow it down if this conversation is inspiring you to deepen your menstrual cycle awareness practice this year and you'd like support from alexandra sharni and a community of like-minded cycle aware people

we invite you to visit wildpower.online where you can find out more about our 2022 Wild Power Immersion. This is six weeks of inspiring teachings, live coaching sessions with Alessandra and Sharni, a supportive community to help you awaken to the inner architecture of your cycle so that you can embrace the full force of your cyclical intelligence and create a new power story for yourself and the world. You can find out more at wildpower.online. That's wildpower.online. And this is how we bring more sanity into the world because our world is cyclical, the human world, not so much or many parts of the human culture. So this is how we can quietly have this wild power, as Shania has had to recall it, the wild power revolution of bringing everyone into cyclicity.

Thank you. Let's move to inner spring, which is I find it my blind spot in the cycle. Like I often lose track of my cycle tracking in these days. And yeah, could you share about how our movement practice can support us to stay connected to the wisdom of our bodies as we're coming up out of menstruation and starting to feel the via positiva rising? Yeah, for sure. For for me it has two sides if it's a cycle like right now where I've really rested then I'm feeling full of beans and it's also difficult for me to keep track of where I'm at in my cycle because I'm just like oh so in those times for me it it's I move around a lot. I dance a lot when I'm at home and I have have playlists according to each cycle of where I'm at. And when I'm in that kind of very bouncy, everything's just like wonderful.

For me, the way that I check in is in those moments of dancing and singing. I have a pop playlist that I listen to like 90s 2000s pop and for me linking it with music is it makes it happen automatically because I'm I'm very aware like oh wow I feel so good you know like I can feel my I need to dance and move my shoulders a bit or I want to put some makeup on and it's it's a very strange way of linking the two but for me it's that's when I do my cycle check-in in the morning when I'm getting ready because I really realize that I've got like just so much energy and it's totally completely the opposite to how it was a few days ago it's like

you know very apparent but in cycles where I don't get to rest that much when I'm bleeding the transition can be quite rough um and in those times it's literally the complete opposite and I feel the need to actually make my body move and so in that way for me I talk a lot about yoga because that's the movement practice that I tend to do the most but in those times I will go for almost like a yin kind of practice where it's allowing me to stretch and open my body but still giving me space to connect to you know like for example my inner thighs today are really they're just really tight. No idea why. And in yoga this morning, it was a moment where I was like, gosh, I feel like I haven't really stretched properly.

Why would that be? When did I last get on my mat? What day am I now on? You know, it's just this kind of actually what's happening in your body and asking why is it like that? And for me, that usually brings me back to okay I'm at this point in my cycle and this is what I've been doing or or not in the last few days so yeah it's for me it's it's they're both different ways to get there via music and um and also through the

movement practice but in the end both of them are bringing me into how does my body feel right now? How's my energy level? And then kind of investigating it from there. I think what you're describing is how cycle awareness can be such a great way of working this muscle of taking awareness outside and turning it in. And then we go back and then we turn it in. It's sort of developing

this capacity to just keep being with ourselves being with ourselves being intimate with ourselves and I also wanted to point people out to your Instagram feed where you often move you know on your videos it really inspires me you know to see you moving because you move in such an authentic way you know you're just so alive and real and it often inspires me so I'll be like what's Natalie doing today it's my cycle so go over and visit Natalie's Instagram it's beautiful oh thank you summer what can we say about summer I mean often people you mentioned this often people burn out in summer because there's so much energy. And I guess this could be the phase when your movement is more aligned with the fitness world and the yoga world and the dance world that wants to push and express.

How can we take care of ourselves in summer? Yeah, for me, summer is like spring. It's a two pronged way. So in a cycle where I feel very, very good, then that will be the time where I naturally feel like I want to just move, I want to do some fitness or higher intensity yoga, I don't have any time for meditation, usually, I find it quite difficult to sit. And it's also I dance a lot here as well. You know, there's this kind of, okay, I feel good. Let me do this higher intensity movement, but it's, it has a very different quality for me. It's already getting into the, how I feel in the premenstrual phase, this kind of very, almost very sensual and just being there because it feels good. And I would say when you're in that place and you're in a summer where you're feeling good, you're feeling fine, then really just do whatever your body wants

from you. If you want to go running, if you want to go swimming, because it's all about, in my opinion, I call my inner summer archetype, the queen, it's about doing what feels good for you. So, you know, if you want to go hike a mountain go hike a mountain on the flip side if you want to just do nothing or do a restorative yoga or something very quiet then do that because although it's less movement it's still again connecting to what's going on inside and that can feel so luscious if you're someone who burns out at summer like I I tend to when I'm not paying attention then I actually treat that like in a winter and I will just well I have to just rest because I don't have the energy I don't have the drive no creativity no motivation no nothing I'm just you know the worst dog mom in the world the worst girlfriend in the

world I don't want to do anything and so I treat that then as a day or two of inner winter and I do exactly what I would do in my inner winter in my inner summer and that's usually what when I've worked with people who have that that tendency to burn um at least until you start to get to feel like you're in balance again I would automatically treat that as an inner winter even if it's just for a day just to let your body kind of um rest because there's a lot going on at that time for the body to handle hormonal hormonally I think there's also and you hinted to this there's this gateway of pleasure here in the inner summer and that can be a massive gateway for vitality like for health and creativity and it's probably the easiest phase of the cycle to actually I don't know sometimes

it's inerranting for me too but to really embody our sensual side and and start to let some of the wildness that's in us be expressed through movement yeah and I think that's such a it is a gateway and it's definitely been a gateway in for me um and you know moving away from movement but also just massaging the skin and um you know pelvic steaming and and just things that feel like oh that could be nice eating food that you like it you know it's whatever is landing you in the body um and also just stretching like I find at that time in my cycle I will just sit and stretch a lot just because it just feels nice yes just do what feels nice like permission I think inner someone can really give us permission for that I really want the time is ticking I really want us to talk about inner autumn especially

because it's your passion and it's where I am right now and I'm noticing myself you know wanting to really move sort of unleash myself a bit which is probably the same for a lot of people at this phase and it's also a phase where we can be crippled by the inner critic it can be a phase where you know shadow arises for us and there's and it can also be immensely creative for a lot of people too so how do you play with with movement in this phase of the cycle I used to come to this phase of the cycle in a, I want to do yin yoga kind of vibe. You know, I want to almost be kind of tortured a little bit because I can feel there's so much in there and I didn't, you know, don't know how to provide space for it.

And yin yoga can be such a good way of bringing things to the surface. Having said that, lately, I've been leaning a lot more into dancing and just you know again putting on one of those playlists and just moving and I appreciate that that's not so easy for everyone because in a critic and you know how am I supposed to move and what should I look like and all of that kind of thing. At that time in my cycle, unless I'm feeling a little bit like the showgirl that wants to record it to upload it, and that's a very spontaneous thing, I will usually close the curtains, no reflections in the room, even maybe have the lights on very low, and just put on music and sit there and then just see and you know just maybe take a neck circle um I find I'm very partial to hip circles at that time so and then there's songs where I just like

thrash around and and go quite wild but I think the premenstrual phase can be so difficult because we know that we're annoyed and angry and frustrated and and critical but some in my in my experience and um having coached people it can be really difficult to pinpoint actually what is it and intuitive movement works so well because you're listening to your body's own intelligence your body is telling you i want to stretch my fingers wide so you stretch your fingers wide as opposed to a yin yoga class or anything else where you're being told to move your body in a certain way and I find that that helps to kind of also create the space in my emotional body and my mind to then get a little bit more of a grasp on actually what is happening what where am I feeling so contracted um and also sounding as well like actually using sound at that time if you can if

you're in a in a in a in a living situation where you can you know scream and not have neighbors think that something's happening to you or or you know incorporate your children or your partner or whatever just like put on some music and my friend does it when she's making the smoothie with her kid like yeah yeah it's for me an intuitive movement is the thing that I go for the most because it's what feels most natural and it feels like that's what the most authentic expression is and it's also it can be very sensual as well and a big journey for me has been reclaiming my sensuality and sexuality and so actually just moving in that way has allowed me to find the confidence to upload those videos that you're mentioning because I never used to do that before never and that's all come from intuitive movement in my premenstruum so yeah I love this because when you described you know how does my

body want to move my hands want to flex like this it's we're developing a relationship of trust I mean we're not really broken into fragmented parts but it's sort of between our mind and our body like I'm listening I'm receiving I'm following and that feels like the foundation of so much healing I mean we're taught to distrust our bodies because it's they're irrational and no one understands them and you know like it's just this big mystery and so we're taught to to not trust the body I think but I also I always think the body is talking all the time we just have to learn how to understand the language and how to listen to it and for me those moments of almost giving over control to your body and saying okay move allows that to happen might not happen in one cycle it might not happen in five

but little pockets of it can build up over time. Beautiful. You know, I could keep talking but we have a quick fire round to look into your own cycle awareness practice. So quick fire, number one, how do you track your cycle? I use my planner. I use the Do Less Planner by Kate Northrup and that's helping me a lot at the moment and also using Kindara to record my temperatures and track my ovulation and so on. Yeah brilliant. How do you take care of yourself on day one of your cycle? Lying on the sofa, watching Netflix, napping and at the moment not eating very much I'm not having much appetite so just resting watching terrible tv what are you watching at the moment um I don't have anything

I just finished this astrological guide to broken hearts or something it was actually pretty good I finished it on um during my period so this last round yeah love it okay you're pre-menstrual and life throws you a curveball what's the very first thing you do get annoyed been there get annoyed get annoyed get annoyed get annoyed and then okay what do we do you're with it I'm with it yeah yeah such sweet permission I'm gonna take that permission on my day 24 what inner season are you most enjoying at the moment final one I'd say my pre-menstruum yeah or inner spring they feel both the same but just with different flavors so yeah I'm enjoying them both

I want to hear more about that but later we will have another conversation could you yeah I want to invite everyone actually listening to to sort of find their own golden nugget from this conversation you know the one thing that really landed with like oh yes I'm gonna work on that or the one thing that was most inspiring and there's space in the journal for those of you who are following with the journal to to write that down but yeah Natalie is there something that you want to share to sort of summarize the conversation or any final words yeah I think you know just take every day as it comes because I think especially if you're new to cycle tracking there can be this tendency to like I want to have this perfect cycle

and you know I know that I should feel like this at that time so I'm going to behave like this at that time but actually just literally take each day as it comes and keep checking in with the body because that's going to inform what's happening and the moment that you try to act a certain way even if your body isn't feeling in that way is the moment you go against the cycle. So, yeah, really being in it as much as possible and listening to your body, your cycle, as opposed to, you know, it's that big red ball, isn't it? Like what your body is saying is true, not what I'm saying. What your body is saying is true. That's such a beautiful way to wrap up this conversation Natalie thank you I feel like in a really short space of time you've walked us so deeply into each in the season and I feel really inspired to go and like play with my own movement in different

ways and thank you so much I can really feel the depth of your practice and I appreciate everything you've brought to us today thank you you're so welcome thank you okay we're going to carry on with the wild power retreat in two days time with session four which is how menstrual cycle awareness can reduce stress and create balance and that's with nicole jardim who's a period and hormone expert and the author of fix your period we're going to be looking at how to honor your cycle at work how to manage stress and how to set yourself up with foundations to lead so if you notice that you've got hot spots in your cycle which are creating stress and challenges in your relationship or your work life or your caring roles and you want to learn how you can track your cycle to create a bit more ease and more balance then we look forward to sharing this conversation with you.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope you continue with session four of the Wild Power Retreat, which you can tune into here on this podcast, or you can register to be part of the retreat at redschool.net forward slash wild-power-retreat. Okay, see you next time. And if you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe and consider leaving a review for us, especially on Apple podcast because it helps us to reach more people. Okay, see you soon. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.