The Menstruality Podcast - How Cycle Awareness Can Prevent and Heal Birth Trauma (Tessa Sanderson)

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

One of the big initiatory moments along the menstruality journey from menarche (our first period) to menopause is pregnancy and childbirth, if that is our path in life. In a world which has a lot to learn about how to support mothers and birthing people through this profound initiation, we need all the help we can get to prepare for and create a positive birth, or heal from a challenging or traumatic one. Enter menstrual cycle awareness - as a powerful tool to cultivate body sovereignty, guide us in the art of surrender, and teach us how to advocate for our needs. Our guest today is pregnancy yoga teacher and mother of two, Tessa Sanderson. She’s a graduate of the Menstruality Leadership programme, as well as our Menstruality Medicine Circle training, and her insights today are based on hundreds of birth stories that she has received from her clients.This is a big conversation, with lots of potentially triggering or stirring topics, so we invite you to take care of yourself as you listen, especially if you’re currently pregnant.In this episode:- We explore childbirth as a rite of passage, and how menstrual cycle awareness can prepare us for the inner journey and help to create a positive initiatory experience, however it unfolds.- We define birth trauma - or perinatal trauma - and menstrual trauma, and explore how the two can be connected.- We share our own birth stories and how cycle awareness helped us in these mother of all journeys, especially through the challenge of giving birth during lockdown. ---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.schoolTessa Sanderson: @tessa.venuti.sanderson - https://www.instagram.com/tessa.venuti.sanderson

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, how's it going? Welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us this week. It's so wonderful to have you in this podcast community and today we're exploring something that's really close to my heart. It's one of the big initiatory moments

along this menstruality journey from menarche, our first period, to menopause, which is, if this is part of your path in life, pregnancy and childbirth. And in a world which has a lot to learn about how to support mothers and birthing people through this profound initiation we need all the help we can get to prepare for to create a positive birth or to heal from a challenging one or a traumatic one so enter menstrual cycle awareness as this powerful tool to not only help us to cultivate body sovereignty, but to guide us in the art of surrender so needed in birth and to teach us how to advocate for our needs. So our guest today is pregnancy yoga teacher and mother of two, Tessa Sanderson. She's a graduate

of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Program, as well as our menstruality medicine circle training. And the insights that she shares today are based on hundreds of birth stories that she's received from her clients. And just a heads up that this is a big conversation with lots of potentially triggering or stirring topics. So I really want to invite you to take care of yourself as you listen, especially if you're currently pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Okay, let's get started with how cycle awareness can prevent and heal birth trauma with Tessa welcome to the menstruality podcast thank you for joining us today let's start with our cycle check-in how's it going for you what day you on I'm day 20 and

for me it was my crossover into autumn yesterday so day 19 can sometimes be a little bit rocky and sort of bit of overwhelm and I can precisely feel when the crossover was because I was looking at a post and there's something about it that sort of I don't know brought up some emotion and made me feel a bit overwhelmed about the situation we sort of face in various ways in the world at the moment and then today I woke up and actually I feel like that was a bit of a road bump and I'm back to a smoother place. Wow that's a fascinating level of cycle awareness to be able to pinpoint it to the time that you read a post that's amazing. I could just feel that emotion flare up and I was like ah I recognize you it's

that recognition that comes from the cycle awareness over some years I just could just caught it in time to know what was happening beautiful because otherwise that could have turned into all kinds of anxiety or other things yeah so we're hoping that this conversation can speak to lots of different people you know firstly there are people who are professionals working in the menstruality field or in birth work and they want to expand their understanding of cycle awareness as a healing tool when it comes to pregnancy, birth. And also, we recognize that people might be listening who have had challenging birth experiences or have birth trauma to process. And, you know, this can be a really challenging thing to encounter, a challenging thing to explore.

So can we start by looking at how we can take care of ourselves as we're listening to this conversation yeah as you say I think because of the subject matter big emotions could come up so really invite the listeners to at any point pause the recording and you know maybe just take a quick break it might just be taking some deep breaths having a bit of a stretch it might be something bigger like going to get a new drink having a little walk around or going to speak to somebody it might even be that you decide you need to come back to the recording another day so to really pace yourself with it and we're going to do some little check-ins part way through to just give that little pause and

gap so that you can check how your nervous system is doing because often we feel actually this is okay we're interested in the topic and and the the feelings you know increase and before we know it it has overwhelmed us so we just feel it's really important that we look after each other in this yeah so true and we know this intimately because we've already tried to have this conversation once and it was on day 27 of my cycle and I was in the void feeling very vulnerable very permeable and I actually burst into tears halfway through this conversation and I wasn't tracking that my own challenging the challenging parts of my birth were coming up and so Tessa was amazing because she held me calmly through this even though I was the podcast host and then we just figured you know what should we try that again because I'm on day 12 now so

I can feel that I'm bringing more um I've just got more ground underneath me and I feel more solid and robust and um whole right now yes but I'll be pacing my nervous system as we're having this conversation too you know and we can we can all we can all pace our nervous systems together as we talk about this it's so important so important because when I do work one-to-one with people I often check in where they are in their cycle and I might say is it okay if we wait a week until you're in a place where you feel less vulnerable particularly to start the work it might change as the journey goes on but um it's yeah it's a really key component of the work that I do with people and it's really worth persevering because this is a really important topic it doesn't get enough

attention in our world and I'm really glad that we're shining a light on it today. And also, let's give a note for people who are pregnant. Yeah, you might be pregnant at the moment. And I think, you know, it's a vulnerable time when you're pregnant. There's lots of changes going on. It can be a bit of a roller coaster of emotions. And so, again, you know know it might be that today is a fine day to listen um other days it might feel like there's a there's too much going on so often people are moving house or doing major DIY projects they've got so many stresses because

they're trying to get this nest ready um and so you might need to come back to it again we are going to be talking a little bit about birth trauma. And so if you're pregnant and you're planning being hopeful about what it's going to look like for you, just look after yourself. I mean, I've actually been giving this a lot of thought recently because when I teach birth preparation workshops or I'm talking my pregnancy yoga classes, you know, we want to be hopeful and we want people to feel very prepared. And I think part of that actually is saying, you know, what happens if things go off your plan A, something crops up? Actually, how can you look after yourself if that happens? So I am in my in what I communicate to people saying a little bit more about this this thing exists unfortunately called birth trauma and what what would you recognize it by where would

you go and get support if it did happen to you so that might just be a little something that I say it's not going to be the main part of the content but I think it's really important to acknowledge it because as you've said you know it still tends to be a taboo um we tend to focus on well as long as the baby's happy and healthy then everything else seems to go into the background in terms of importance I think that narrative is changing um and we realise that the mum needs to be happy too, to be able to then care for the baby. So when you're pregnant, there's all of this going on that you're hoping that you can have the birth that you would really like. But I think it's important to acknowledge you can't control everything about birth. Just in the same way we can't control everything about our menstrual journey and what happens

you know in terms of the kind of symptoms we get if there's heavy bleeding or cramping you know so some of us have a much harder journey than others when it comes to cycling yeah and we definitely can't control everything when it comes to parenting parenting no that's been that's been my big learning of the last 17 months it's that controlling part of me yeah just as you think you're getting the hang of something with with parenting they change again so it's a constant journey yeah so we've started we've actually begun talking about this but let's let's define what birth trauma is how do you define birth trauma yeah I like to call it perinatal trauma I think that's useful because then it goes from conception through to early parenthood. So it might include things connected to the process of getting pregnant all the way through to breastfeeding trauma,

where somebody might have really, really wanted to and for various reasons have really struggled. And I certainly know my mother and baby are in the classes. There are people who have breastfeeding trauma. So I think it's good to kind of extend it slightly often when we think about birth trauma we're thinking about the sort of the labor so it might be something to do with that it might be that suddenly there was an emergency cesarean and it was all very fast and it felt out of control or it might be that there was a birth injury, perhaps through big tearing.

So third or fourth degree tearing that then leads to issues that affect quality of life. Birth trauma might be around baby loss, unfortunately, from miscarriage through to a stillbirth. So it encompasses so many different experiences. And what I really want to point out is that I think very often when we talk about trauma we think of trauma with a capital T there's like one event that is life-changing so of course it could be it could be a stillbirth but also trauma can be with a small t that there's just repeated things that have happened maybe through the antenatal journey and that continues maybe into not feeling listened to in the birth um or maybe it's solely postnatal which has particularly i think been in the pandemic where partners have had to leave the

hospital very quickly and then there's that in that really intense early time, there hasn't been that support. So it's not one event, but it's just a cumulative that that can set up a trauma as well. So it's quite a mix of things that we're talking about here. Yeah. And something that I guess something that I want to bring in from my own experience because I had my plan a for my birth I had like I'd like it to be in the water I wanted to be in the birth center and then various things happened which meant that that couldn't happen and there were lots of interventions and eventually an emergency c-section and actually all of that it's not a fond memory I wouldn't say I mean it's a fun memory as in I really respect the strength that I had but I don't feel particular trauma or challenge around those parts even though

there was so much more intervention than I had wanted to have in my birth plan but it was the fact that aid had to leave pretty much I think it was two hours after Artie was born and that for me was very very difficult so that's where I think most of my what I need to still process but I won't do it in this podcast what I need to process is from that moment and as I was reflecting about this conversation I wanted to name that there's no such thing as a good or a bad birth or like the right way to birth and the wrong way to birth and there's no such thing as a good or a bad birth or like the right way to birth and the wrong way to birth and there's there can be stigma both ways like judgment of beautiful home births in water judgment of births with lots of intervention and medication and c-sections and I think it's really important to say that how we bring our children here is exactly as it is.

And there's no there's no right or wrong. There's no there's no stigma that it's an initiation. However, it happens. And a meaningful one. Yeah. A lady called Rachel Reed wrote a book called Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage. And in that, she talks about grooming. And I remember reading the word and thinking, gosh, that's a very strong word. And I had a real reaction to it initially. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, yes, I think she's right. And it can go one of two ways.

It can be that you're groomed towards intervention and medicalization. But likewise, somebody like me, who's a pregnancy yoga teacher, I could potentially, if I just talked only about physiological birth and, you know, groom somebody the other way into feeling like it should all go smoothly and, you know, has to look a certain way so the grooming can you know cover the whole spectrum and you're right we have to get away from that because it's about really giving agency to the expectant parents so that they feel in control of the choices that they're making that inform consent that they have the information every step of the way and I think another point I want to make about the trauma is that it is subjective and so for one person what might seem like a really big deal hasn't affected somebody else you know it might be a traumatic experience but actually you don't go on to develop PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder because you've got the inner resources

you're otherwise in a good place um for somebody else it might be a seemingly tiny thing that happens but it's just enough with everything else that's going on in life to tip you into this new place where you really need some support and I think this is part of where the menstrual trauma comes in because it might be that just through your life there has been sort of something piling on one on top of the other maybe around having a female body for example maybe you had a very difficult experience the shaming experience as you started your period um and then there's been other experiences in your life where you you've gone on and felt that it's difficult to have this body and then you get to to pregnancy and birth and feel that people aren't listening to you and

so it's this this compiling this sort of layering that our nervous system at a certain point just can't take anymore and that's when you know it could tip over into being a problem that you've had this traumatic experience so let's pause for a moment could you walk us into how to take care of ourselves if you know some of what we've been sharing already has been stirring or how to even notice that we might be feeling uh triggered or stirred by this so you might want to keep your eyes open and just have a look around the room where you are just noticing some things that you can see just taking your awareness away from listening for a moment. Switching channels to what you can see. Maybe something that you can smell. Using your senses around you.

If it feels okay to close your eyes, you could then just lean back into whatever you're sitting on. So if you're sitting down, feeling your bum against the chair, your back against the backrest. Maybe your feet are on the floor. Wiggling your toes. Really bring your awareness into the body. And that's when you might notice that your nervous system has been activated, maybe there's a tingling around the solar plexus, or you feel a contraction in the tummy, it'll be different for different people. But just noticing what's what's there is there physical sensation is there emotion coming up

and perhaps taking a big breath or moving around checking in that you're okay thanks tessa for me i noticed that i start to fly away that i i feel floaty and so i've got my trusty orange here which is the smell of like just pinching the orange and smelling the orange really helps me to remember I'm here I'm safe in this moment which is helpful I love that with the orange I'm going to remember that one my trauma orange oh so nice for me what works best is um something called havening so when you like you're giving yourself a hug and you can either just keep your hands still on the arms or you can stroke and it's just that lovely touch it's like you're mothering yourself that for me really sort of helps ground me and brings me back into myself so for those of you I mean you're all listening because it's a podcast Tess has got like one hand

on each on each shoulder as if in a self-embrace. Yeah, that is so soothing just to do that. Yeah. Ah, beautiful. So we've defined birth trauma. And, you know, one of the things that led us to have this conversation is you listened to the episode with Jane Hardwick-Collings and she was talking about menstrual shame and menstrual trauma. And you started reflecting on the connection between menstrual shame and challenging birthing experiences.

So let's let's look at menstrual shame because it's an important part of how we can work with with cycle awareness to to heal and to set up the conditions for for a positive safe gentle birth so can let's define menstrual shame menstrual trauma i really think menstrual trauma is something we'll hear a lot more about over the coming years because it's such a pivotal moment when somebody starts their first period and I've I hold girls circles um so I hear of stories there from the mum sharing I've been in lots of sort of menarche ceremonies and it is a really critical moment I think so I want to give you an example to show you. So one retrospective menarche ceremony I went to, a lady was sharing how she'd started her period. And she told her mum immediately and her mum was very excited and wanted to share with all of the family and not just the sort of the brothers and sisters and the dads but everybody and this girl had said I mean she's she's recounting this 30 years later but she said as a girl I didn't want that I still was getting used to the idea and I said no

mum please don't but the mum in her excitement went and told everybody and all the aunts and uncles started ringing up congratulations so for one person that might have been a really wonderful experience but because she specifically says please don't not yet there was such a sense of betrayal so 30 years on I'm getting goosebumps talking about it I remember the anger that she talked with she was still so angry she still had that sense of betrayal from from that very sort of private moment that that she was trying to get to grips with being shared too early and so you can imagine the kind of consequences then for how you might share other information about your body or other sort of vulnerable things so that's just one example that I think shows the the power of that moment and I guess it was sort of gradually changing through puberty it might be over 10

years that we're changing but there's something about that first proper bleed I think that is particularly potent so I think sometimes there might be mental trauma attached to that moment you know maybe unfortunately I've heard this so many times and not from people who are a lot lot older than me where they just didn't know what was happening when their bleed started they didn't have the information and because you associate blood with something being wrong with you and you're ill um they thought that something was seriously seriously wrong and they didn't want to upset their close ones so they didn't tell them so they're sitting alone with this information that they think something is seriously wrong and although okay life goes on and you start to realize that this is a period

and it's going to come regularly i think that does something to your psyche that that initial shock so there are a couple of examples it might be other things like perhaps in your household it just wasn't the done thing to have period products in the bathroom but it was something that had to be hidden away and I know lots of mums that come to the gatherings I run that's that's a major shift that they decide consciously to make is to say I'm going to start putting these out on view for all the boys and the girls in the family to see because I've realized it doesn't have to be something that I should feel ashamed about or I've realized it's not something dirty

and so you can imagine if you know as you're you get to puberty and your period starts and you there's that continued having to hide everything away that sends a very strong message even if it's subconsciously that there's something not okay with your body so i think one of the things i want to get across today is this layering this palimpsest of experiences that happen so you know it might even be pre-puberty you get i know through media or other things ideas about your body um i a mom last week was saying that she really noticed a difference when her daughter started school from one day to the next she was just playing with everything and then she started school and she became fascinated by princess

dresses and really the there's a shift into this very particular sort of feminine identity that she she hadn't had before so we get all these messages and these layerings um and it's how gradually or sometimes suddenly that affects our nervous system can you say more about that how it affects our nervous system well i'm thinking particularly as you're leading up to the birth. So you're pregnant and you're preparing and your body's changing so much. I don't think enough attention is given to the inner journey. So we tend to have birth preparation classes that might concentrate on giving information about interventions, which is useful so that we can plan for our plan b plan c plan d during labor and we have things like hypnobirthing that can really help us with relaxation with breathing

techniques but i think often it's sort of more on a surface level and i think it's really important that we can reflect on what have my experiences been over my lifetime that might have an impact on how I can be during labour so I'm particularly thinking about being comfortable with being vulnerable that I think there always comes a point during labour where it's almost that you need to be vulnerable but But you want to do that in a safe way, finding strength in vulnerability or feeling that you can surrender to the process of it. But if there's a lot there from the past,

maybe around body image or body sovereignty, you could see how that might create this sort of barrier during the labour process. And one of the ways that you can begin to work with all of this is through cycle awareness because that helps you think about you know the patterns of your behavior patterns of emotions that tend to happen so that's great before you become pregnant but perhaps also Sophie we can talk about if you're already pregnant what can you do definitely that's that's a before you become pregnant but perhaps also Sophie we can talk about if you're already pregnant what can you do? Definitely that's that's a place that we can go to let's keep going with this because I think what you're sharing is really important

and I'm thinking right now of your book Pearls of Birth Wisdom where you explore the inner journey of preparing for birth and you share lots of birth stories from people who look back at their births positively and they include everything from home births and water births to people who have had inductions to breech babies, cesareans and vaginal births after cesareans and you look at this topic of body sovereignty and let's could we define that too Tessa because that's it's a beautiful term and I'm not sure I quite fully understand it and it would be great to hear a definition of it what body sovereignty is how do you see that? Yeah because sometimes people use autonomy as well and they're very linked they're both about having control over your own body but for me sovereignty is about sort of claiming your

innate right to control over your body claiming your innate right to have control over your body that's beautiful can I give an example of please yeah so give an example of how that might look so I remember a lady about four years ago in class and she was pregnant with her third child and the first two both labors at a certain point she felt very out of control and we were exploring why that might be and she's somebody that had converted to Islam she wore a headscarf very modest and it suddenly struck me that maybe the way that the room was set up in the first two labours, she felt very vulnerable and exposed. And her modesty wasn't maintained. So she said, Yeah, I think you're right. And so with with her partner, we made a plan that he could stand between her and the door to create like a physical barrier to sort of protect her and feel like her modesty was being protected and just little things that would make her feel more comfortable. And she thought that would make a big difference,

but that was actually underpinning this feeling of not feeling safe in the first two labours. So that's a very particular example, but I think sometimes when we have space to reflect on what's important to us what's happened that may make us feel uncomfortable during a labor scenario we can get some really key information that could just make the whole journey so much more comfortable feel much safer and actually can be then a really healing process we can reclaim something in in that journey yeah there are lots of issues here that this is bringing up for me so for example

if someone has had health conditions menstrual health conditions like endometriosis or fibroids or PCOS the challenge and potential menstrual trauma or just general trauma from the process of getting diagnosed with those conditions and perhaps the dismissal that they might have experienced or the difficulty of being heard by the medical profession that could set up a certain dynamic when you come into preparing for birth around how much agency you feel you have or how much power you feel you have. Absolutely I think I'm right in saying that for endometriosis it often takes seven years eight years to get a diagnosis so for all that time you've been battling to understand what it is that's happening maybe feeling that you're not heard

and I've had quite a few clients over the years with with endo and very often they're really frightened of managing the pain of labor and actually when you're able to sit and reflect with them and share how actually they're amazing at managing pain they've had so much experience they often start to feel reassured and actually manage labor pain very well but yeah you're right there's it sets up this this anxiety it might be a feeling of being afraid of your own body or feeling you can't trust your own body or that other people won't listen to you about your body. There's so many layers to this. And then to bring in the other layer of the medical racism that can impact Black women's birth experiences because they're perceived to be able to experience pain

differently or manage pain differently of having a different pain threshold yeah and there are studies about that i was looking recently at research on this and for example there was one in america and they were asking medical students and residents in the hospital to subjectively rate their patients pain and depending on whether it was a white patient or black patient they would give it a different score and they were able to show significant difference yeah it's it's incredible there's there's research from the UK showing that midwives stereotypically view Asian women as needing less support that they're generally well supported by their families and they have a lower pain threshold in labor so some sort of good stereotypes but that

might mean that they don't actually have support from their family and then they're overlooked for some support from health visitors or things like that. It's just so important that we work to change this, isn't it? Unfortunately, more research is being collected around it now. Yeah, it's it's clear to see how body sovereignty and issues around body sovereignty can really impact birth experiences I'm just going to take a breath here actually because it's big what we're talking about it's it's yeah let's take a breath it's really big yeah I feel my heart is sort of beating a little faster and I feel yeah there's like a nervous energy to it let's let's look at how menstrual cycle awareness can

directly support positive body sovereignty experiences that can help us to prepare for a gentle birth or a safe birth or prevent birth trauma even if you know certain interventions need to happen how do you see the process of cycle awareness as being supportive here well I think if somebody's not yet pregnant, but they're planning to conceive, being able to chart your cycle, first of all, helps you, you know, know your own patterns of emotions and behaviours. It's that close attention that you're paying, that deep listening to your body that's very helpful. Because I think just going through that process will begin to show show up things and when I do the menstruality medicine circles with pregnant women there's often a big piece there around self-care and explicitly asking others for the support that you need often they they're not voicing they know what they need but they're not voicing it

um I think it's something around feeling like you should just be able to get on with it it's okay you're pregnant but just just get on with everything um and i wanted to give a sort of a personal example so i was talking right at the beginning about yesterday being day 19 and if if I'm not careful, I can become overwhelmed if I've not been looking after myself and pacing myself through the cycle. And I think that was a really good training for going overdue. I went overdue with both of my daughters. And I think there's something around learning how to pace yourself and learning how to hold the tension in your cycle that becomes really really useful at the end of pregnancy when you're waiting for

labour to start because there is a roller coaster of emotions I remember feeling at one moment completely frustrated that the baby wasn't here yet and the other moment thinking well you know she'll arrive when she's ready and swinging backwards and forwards between those and I think that had that practice of really holding attention meant that I could hold on and I was able to to go into labor naturally so my first daughter arrived 15 days overdue. So there was a lot of holding on. That's a lot of holding the tension. If you're loving exploring menstrual cycle awareness through this lens, and you'd like to know more about how a practice of cycle awareness can support you

to have more body sovereignty and autonomy to be able to do this art that Tessa was just talking about of holding the tension to be able to work with your cycle to soothe your nervous system to cultivate an intimacy with your needs and also to cultivate your capacity to express your needs then I really warmly welcome you to explore Alexandra and Sharni's book Wild Power. Discover the magic of the menstrual cycle and awaken the feminine path to power. You can order your copy today at wildpowerbook.com. That's wildpowerbook.com. Okay, back to holding the tension with Tessa. I really relate actually with my pregnancy. So I had an extra interesting piece to work with here in that there was a consultant who really wanted me to be induced at I think even 39 weeks because I was an IVF mum and I didn't want that and I had to advocate for myself which actually my own experience of

inner autumn and having to negotiate with the world and my needs in fact all the way through the cycle but particularly I noticed this from inner autumn that I can find the metal in me or the strength in me to advocate for what I need even when I feel vulnerable was really helpful there and then same so I then went overdue or I mean overdue is just such a funny term isn't it because the babies come when the babies come and it's just this these due dates are are an interesting interesting thing to navigate but they I really think that the practice of letting go and surrendering and learning how to drop my bundle and let go as I head towards menstruation really helped me to be able to turn towards myself be with myself and yeah same as you hold

the tension through this process of when is this baby coming is this labor do am I in labor now what does what is this what's that and it really helped me to hold myself to manage my anxiety to be with what was happening I think that's that's the power of cycle awareness is it's a daily practice of being with ourselves yeah and that's what I often do in the pregnancy yoga classes is I might give an instruction say we're going to circle the hips and I'll say you know you can choose to make them very small circles or you can explore bigger circles. So I keep trying to give the choice back over to the person so that they're doing this birthing journey because you've got used to listening to what the what would help the body be most comfortable in that that massive physical journey of birth um i also think that just yeah as a whole the cycle awareness helped me in the sense of you know that everything is changing it might be really difficult through

the autumn phase but you know that you will come to the inner winter and then you'll head on into spring and into summer and is there something about that moving on yes which i think is the same for the mental anti-medicine circles that there's something so powerful about knowing that you're not stuck in one place but you will move on that's that's just how it is and so if you're in a difficult moment in labor for example if you watch videos say on youtube of people's birthing experiences that they've shared there's often this moment of the look that's what i call it the look where they look around the room and they just need to lock eyes with one person that looks back at them yes you can do this you know and there's that moment where all that that tension

and can i do this can i do this and if you get that that confident look yes you can do this, can I do this? And if you get that confident look, yes, you can do this, you sail on to the next part, and it's changed again. So it's something about if you've practiced again, and again, tracking through the cycle, there's an inevitability, that's the word I was looking for, an inevitability to this situation will change, this might feel really hard. Now, you might have got towards the end of labor and you just feel like you've got nothing more to give it but when you've practiced really deeply your cycle awareness you know it has to change and for me that's something that I could always hold on to very tightly like a rope pulling me forward that's really beautiful I want to point people to a podcast episode that we did

with JD Mountjoy who's supported lots of people through their births and we talked about how and we talked about how cycle awareness can support self-care during pregnancy and how the seasons of the menstrual cycle can unfold as the seasons of pregnancy and it looks different for each of us but it was a fascinating conversation so for anyone who is pregnant now or supporting pregnant people that that's a fun one to listen to I'll link to it in the show notes. I was just thinking you know what if somebody is already pregnant so maybe they haven't they've only just recently discovered cycle awareness and they haven't been charting regularly and what can you do if you realize there's maybe menstrual trauma

then it'd be other things making you feel very anxious so one thing that I would recommend is a menstruality medicine circle because I think that gives you this really beautiful framework where you can connect with the inner seasons even though you're pregnant and I've done that again and again it works just as you know as if somebody is having a regular cycle so that that can really give some insight their own wisdom coming from their body about what would help to clear any sort of barriers or blockages as they move towards the labour. Another thing I thought they could consider was doing a retrospective menarche ceremony because you might realise there's something that really is pivotal around when you started your period or those sort of early years that has just set up this disconnect with the body or toxic relationship with the body and

it's such a beautiful experience to go through because you can reimagine you can say this is what happened and actually this is what I would have loved to have had and there's some wonderful healing that comes from even just being aware of what you would have liked and I also thought there are lots of amazing people out there whether it's maybe a consultant midwife that you could make a special plan with and maybe there's a doula you could work with or a trauma-informed pregnancy yoga teacher even if you just have some sort of reflections about things that are worrying you around the birth that might be linked to your experience of your body in the past or others who treated your body in the past

you can begin to put a plan in into place and it might be as simple as that one I was describing around the modesty it doesn't have to be really long process. There can sometimes be very practical things that can be put in place. For example, at our hospital, instead of having to tell your story again and again, maybe around baby loss or around traumatic birth experience, they put that information on the top of the notes not immediately visible but there's just sign that they use so that somebody will go okay there's something I need to know here and they can read through it rather than making the person tell the story all over again that's so important yeah that happened to a friend of mine who had experienced um abuse in younger life and she didn't want to keep talking about

it again but it was relevant for her birth and the same thing happened it was in her notes and she had a couple of difficult difficult experiences at the beginning of the pregnancy before it was in the notes but then once it was in it was it was good and then that got passed on to the health visitors who were visiting her after which was great so she got good support from then on yeah that should hopefully be a standard thing that that happens so that you're not having to do that emotional work all all the time when you're already in a very heightened or maybe if you're not even in a heightened emotional state you're dealing with a lot when you're pregnant so you don't need to be yeah and when you're laboring so I want to point to a couple of the resources you just shared so first the menstruality medicine circle for those of you who haven't

heard about this it's a one-on-one facilitation healing tool created by Alexander and Sharni from Red School and Tessa is one of a small group of people who are qualified to offer menstruality medicine circles and it's a very simple profound way of accessing the wisdom of our cyclicity and of our cycles and I'll put a link to the show notes to be able to book in for a menstrual medicine circle and with Tessa and also you spoke about doing a menarche ceremony and we have the menarche or some people say Menarche Menarche course at Red School, which actually guide you through creating your own Menarche ceremony if you want to heal challenging early menstrual experiences. And perhaps you have a resource for that too, Tessa. Well, every so often I run gatherings like that. And do you know what really strikes me about those is that often what somebody wanted was a hug.

That's it. They just wanted to tell somebody and have a big hug. And so often in the ceremonies where it's a group of people, you might pair up with someone and they can give you what you didn't have. So it might be a few words it might be a hug it might be something else but it's often so simple just want to share one personal experience before we move on to talking about how to work with healing birth trauma through menstrual cycle awareness it's just one little piece which is when it became clear that I needed to have an emergency c-section everything moved very fast and I was actually very glad for my antenatal classes and for understanding what a c-section could look like because my teacher had prepared me and said you know things can go from moving quite slowly and gently to suddenly pretty fast and there's lights on and lots of people and that's exactly what happened

and I was shaking because I think I was perhaps going into transition and my body was shaking and I reached my hand out to my midwife and I said will you hold my hand oh and I just I can feel tears coming but like joyful tears because she said of course and he hold my hand oh and I just I can feel tears coming but like joyful tears because she said of course and she held my hand and I think the reason why one of the reasons why I could ask for that is because of my cycle awareness experience because month after month after month I've learned how to negotiate or first hear what I need and then ask for what I need so there was something you know I had power in me even though I was in a vulnerable moment and then the other beautiful thing that happened was the woman that was doing my

Emma her name was the woman that was doing my anesthetic she actually stroked my hair I think she could see that I you know I needed comfort and she stroked my hair and she said you're doing amazingly you're doing so well for the whole thing she was just stroking my hair it was so beautiful um yeah oh thank you for sharing thank you yeah you're welcome and it's just it's such a such a moment of recognizing the power that we can develop with ourselves through this intimacy of ongoing cycle awareness it's amazing it reminds me of um there's an an author called maggie o'farrell and she wrote a book called i am i am i am about 17 near-death experiences and she has such a beautiful way with words and one of the experiences was her first child arriving and she says she doesn't know who this man was he was in sort of hospital

clothes but she couldn't tell who he was but he reached across during her cesarean and held her hand and she said that that stayed with her ever since that that touch that reaching out from another human being so people might like to read that book it's uh yeah very interesting look at um how how we how we deal with all sorts of different experiences in relation to our body. That sounds great. So let's look now at how we can heal through the practice of menstrual cycle awareness. So for people who have had challenging birth experiences or birth trauma or professionals that are working with birthing people, how can an ongoing practice of menstrual cycle awareness help to hold and nurture us and support us as we're healing from these experiences I think you hit the nail on the head before Sophie

that it's that learning what you need and being able to ask for it that really helps so whether it's before somebody embarks on another pregnancy or maybe they're postnatal their cycles are returned and they feel like they're ready to start to pay attention for what's happening to them I think it's you know the basic practice of charting is where to start. It might be that you need some support alongside that. So I wanted to just give some ideas for birth trauma. So, for example, most hospitals have some kind of birth reflection service and you can ask to go along. It's usually a consultant midwife that runs that service and it's very much information giving so if it's about you just can't remember what happened when it's quite good if there is sort of gap in the chronology of something

um you can also self-refer to talking therapies um and something called emdr moving the eyes um and cbt are in the nice guidelines for treating birth trauma so you should be able to access services around that um there's also two organizations i'd recommend for they signpost lots of other support like the birth trauma association and pandas which is about postnatal depression they also talk about birth trauma and then also somebody like me who's trained in trauma-informed yoga i think that's not so common but it's it's a very beautiful way of working with the body so often that the body stores what's happened to it and we can can very gently through little movements work to soothe. Because I find sometimes when somebody first comes into a session,

there's lots going on for them. There's lots of raw emotion. And just through some very gentle movements, we can start to soothe the nervous system to a point where we're ready actually to work on the trauma itself so there are some ideas you know sort of if you feel like you need some external support but I think the cycle awareness is really helpful to run alongside that so that you're getting to know you even even more deeply there might be particular parts of the cycle that you notice

you're more likely if you're suffering from ptsd that you're more likely to get flashbacks in a certain part of the cycle or that because of what the hormones are doing you're more sensitive and then you can become overtired irritable and then that's more likely for for other symptoms to be triggered so I think if you do have symptoms it helps you manage if you're tracking and you know what what happens when you can put extra support at that part of the cycle to to get you through it yeah I also loved how you brought in the nervous system there when you were talking about yoga my experience of cycle awareness is that it's over time over months and months and months and years I've learned to what Alexandra and Sharni would would call pace my nervous system so listen to my nervous system understand when I'm dissociating

which I didn't for a long time I think you know a lot of my early sort of spiritual exploration when I was doing long meditation retreats I think I was probably spending most of the time dissociated I thought I was in deep states of meditation but actually I wasn't really present in my body and cycle awareness has helped me more and more to recognize when I am present in my body when I am floating away when I'm in a stress response and I need to lie down and do some deep breaths which is often these days in my inner spring interestingly it used to be an inner autumn but yeah it's that it's that intimacy it's that self-awareness or as Alexander and Shani say it's the mindfulness practice for people with yeah it's that it's that intimacy it's that self-awareness or as Alexander and

Sharni say it's the mindfulness practice for people with periods it's um so helpful in that way yes I want to give you another example so particularly around birth trauma anniversaries can be really really difficult to navigate I'm not talking just about you know if there's been a stillbirth which would obviously be very difficult to navigate that that anniversary of that baby's birthday but also it might have been something that happened to to the mum then perhaps there's a birth injury but when you come around to the child's birthday there is this difficult situation where yes you're celebrating that the child is is here but there's also this undercurrent and this shadow of the the experience you had on that day or night um and so I think when you need to sort of begin to think about

the nervous system when you approach an anniversary like that and you think okay I'm not going to have maybe a massive party with the whole class of children that would be really stressful and um you know put too many things around that anniversary because you know that already your nervous system is going to be really really activated and it wouldn't take you much to to go over the top as it were so you know and i think the cycle awareness just adds this this other layer so you might think oh wow not only is it the anniversary but i'm coming up to a part of my cycle that i find harder they're coinciding i'm going to need to put even more space around this you know maybe on the actual day you might just have grandparents around and you keep it very low key and you celebrate the birthday two weeks later with friends you know sort of little practices that you can do and when you've got that layering with the cycle awareness you can

just be on the alert to this is going to be maybe I'm going to be more sensitive than usual a little bit more vulnerable than usual that is such great advice and it feels so important especially when it comes to birth trauma because with birth trauma you have this huge experience of of giving birth and then suddenly you have this newborn baby or babies and you have to look after them and then you go through this experience of matrescence of becoming a mother or if it's your second or third or more child then you have another person in your family to look after and there isn't a lot in my experience there wasn't a lot of time to do processing which is why 17 months later I'm still feeling the the ripples of my birth experiences because I literally it's hard enough still for me to figure out when I can

do a workout or take a long bath let alone go and book a book a session with a counsellor for those who have the privilege to be able to do that so it's if there are little ways through the day that we can tend to ourselves I think that's really meaningful in this motherhood experience. You brought up such an important point which is you know at the beginning you might just be surviving getting through the day and the night with this newborn and sometimes it's only much later into the postnatal journey that you realize what you experienced was traumatic it might just be buried at the beginning. And so sometimes I might work with somebody 10 years after the actual birth happened. It's never too late. If you, you know, through hearing this, you think, oh gosh, actually there's a lot unresolved there.

There isn't a cut off. So Tessa, how can listeners connect with you if this has stirred them and they know they need some support how would they be able to connect with you so they can go to my website which is cyclicalwisdom.com or they can find me on instagram which is tessa.vanuti.senderson and yeah get in touch and i can always signpost you um to the most relevant source of support you know i think the the birthing journey that the pregnancy the matrescence you've been talking about it can be such a powerful time of transformation and sometimes it's that we have to go through this

sort of shadowy part first before we can emerge into the wisdom that comes from it so please you know do reach out for support so in closing tessa are there any final thoughts or words you'd like to share about this connection between cycle awareness, birth trauma, menstrual trauma and healing? I think as I've gone more and more into this work, I realised the importance of the rites of passage that we go through and it really heartens me that there are more and more mums and dads um you know who want to give veterans such a positive start as as their bodies change as they go through puberty that there seems to be more awareness of how this can really have an impact on us psychologically. And I always joke that as a pregnancy yoga teacher, my life would be so much more easier if everybody practiced cycle awareness

because there'd already be this sort of deep listening that would happen. And then as they come into the pregnancy and head towards the birthing journey they would be used to that deep listening and they'd be able to make little shifts and changes to look after themselves to make it as comfortable a journey as possible so that's my hope that more and more people practice cycle awareness and then they'll even if there are twists and turns in the labor that they'll come out the other side feeling that this was a positive experience thank you tessa thank you so much for the work that you do the menstrual menstruality medicine circles that you hold the way that you support people through your yoga and

your your presence in the world and thank you so much for everything you've shared today thanks for being with us oh thank you for inviting me it's such an honor thanks for joining us today i hope that this was insightful for you i as always would love to hear from you you can email me anytime sophie at redschool.net, would love to hear from you. You can email me anytime, sophie at redschool.net. I'd love to hear how the podcast is landing. If there are topics you'd love us to discuss, if there's anyone you'd love me to interview, please get in touch. And I really look forward to being with you in our next episode. So I'll be with you then. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.