The Menstruality Podcast - How to Channel your Cycle’s Superpowers in Work and Business (Claire Baker)

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Period Coach, Claire Baker has built a wildly successful, impactful, vision-led business as an author, teacher and leader in the menstruality field. In this episode we go behind the scenes of her business, exploring how she works with the superpowers and vulnerabilities of her menstrual cycle to create potent programmes, manage her team skillfully, lead with integrity and find the pleasure in her creative process.We explore:How Claire rides off the momentum of inner spring, paces her workflow to protect her vulnerable new ideas, and invites her playful, innocent maiden self to explore and experiment.The natural magnetism of inner summer, and how to harness our capacity to be seen in this phase to create connections, nurture relationships and express ourselves with confidence. How Claire manages her inner critic and imposter syndrome in inner autumn, uses the power of discernment to evaluate and wrap up her work and crafts space to be in her creative cave. Practical guidance to create space for visioning in inner winter, to receive insights, be your own ‘oracle’ and clarify the most potent next steps for your work.  ---Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here. (https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022)---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.school)Claire Baker: @_clairebaker_ 

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 so much for coming back here and for listening to this podcast. Today's episode is so enriching, so meaningful, beautiful, particularly if you're an entrepreneur, a creative, or you want to work with your menstrual cycle awareness to revolutionize your work life. I'm talking with period coach,

author, teacher Claire Baker, who's built a wildly successful, really impactful, vision-led business. And in this episode, we go behind the scenes of her work to explore how she harnesses the superpowers and manages the vulnerabilities of her different inner seasons to create a beautiful, balanced, pleasurable, joyful work experience for her and her team. So I really look forward to sharing this one with you. I hope you enjoy it. So welcome to the podcast, Claire Baker. I know you're just landing back in the UK and I'm so grateful that you made time to be with us today and to speak to us and I'm just thrilled to be chatting with you. So welcome and how are you doing today? Thanks Sophie, it's a pleasure to be back. I am yeah I'm okay today. I'm definitely still landing here. I've been back for a week so it's you know

it takes a little bit of time this transition. I've learned that over the years of living between Australia and the UK. It always takes me longer than I think it will to actually settle myself back in but I'm glad to be back. We always start this podcast with a cycle check-in so I would love to hear from you what day you're on and in whatever way you want to share how it's influencing your mood and your energy and your sense of yourself today. I'm on cycle day 10 today and it does not feel like a typical cycle day 10 at all. So that's interesting. I would normally around this time in my cycle be feeling like like day 10 is really the day I feel um like I'm almost moving actually into my inner summer because I have shorter shortish cycles but today I feel like I could very well be on like day 25 I'm feeling quite tender and um

very cozy like I just want to be like surrounded by really soft textures. And while there's definitely like the last few days I've felt the momentum of the first half of the cycle, I've also had to really pace myself because I just do not have as much in the tank as I normally would. Interesting. Do you think it's connected to the, all the travel? Definitely. I, on day two was flying. So like, it's like, well, day one, I had a little bit of rest and then, but, you know, also packing and just psychologically

preparing and then flying on day two, you know, it was fine at the time. And I'm very grateful that I don't experience any menstrual pains or exhaustion. So it was I could manage. But, you know, there's the repercussions of that later down the line. I haven't quite yet had what I've heard Shani call a menstrual day off before where I just take a day to like have that um you know recreate that experience of rest I don't quite have the opportunity to do that yet so maybe this weekend beautiful I hope you get some really great rest thank you I'm on day 19 and if I was a tree my leaves would be turning brown I could just feel that turning in me of I'm crunchy a little bit crunchy um things are a bit more annoying I can hear my critical voice just sort of the volumes

turning up and for me as a new mum it's the phase I find most challenging because like my patience drops it feels like that's the time of my cycle that I really need to care for now this especially the cusp from summer into autumn like day 2023 yeah I want to explore your your work this incredible body of work that you've built over many many years you've been leading in this field the menstruality field for a long time. And you've got this very beautiful and impactful and successful business as a period coach and now training others to be cycle coaches. Could you start off by telling us how this work developed for you? Like, where did it it when was it born so I started taking hormonal contraception when I was

about 16 and I took the pill because I had really bad acne when I was in my pubescent years and then you know just sort of stayed on it for a really long time it became convenient you know very convenient to be on hormonal contraception because I started having sex and I didn't want to become pregnant and I then realized that I could start to orchestrate my cycle around my life and I could just not have a period for months. And I loved the power I felt that I had to be able to do that. And then I was about 26, I think, when I just had begun to make some changes in my life. You know, I was taking better care of myself and practising yoga

and meditating and learning how to eat organic foods and have organic products in the house and journaling and all of those lovely self-carry things. And it just started to become strange to me that I was still taking this synthetic hormone to regulate my cycles when I was doing all of these other, you know, creating all these new rituals in my life. And so I decided to stop taking it. And my, thankfully, my biggest fear was that my skin was going to break out again. And thankfully it didn't, but my period didn't come back either.

So I went a full year with post-pill amenorrhea, which is just not menstruating. And it really scared me, Sophie, actually. It prompted me to discover that I really knew nothing about my body and that I didn't know what I was even waiting for. I knew that I was waiting for my period to come back, but I didn't understand the relationship with ovulation, what ovulation really even was, what were the signs I was meant to be looking out for, what the difference was between a natural cycle

and a hormonal cycle. So that kick-started just a huge personal deep-dive research project, and I'm the kind of person who just goes all in when I'm learning something new. Like it was just obsession territory. And at the same time, as this was all happening, I was also working as a health coach and was working directly with women on their health and on their self-care practices and their nutrition, their fitness, their self-worth and self-love and creativity. And the more that I began to learn about the menstrual cycle

and then eventually my period did come back and I then could begin to implement everything that I had been learning. I could begin to chart and begin to notice patterns and tracheopulation and all of these cool things. It became so obvious to me that I felt so incredibly different from week to week in a way that I had never done before. You know, I probably menstruated naturally for just under a year when I started taking the pill.

So this was like I honestly look back at it as like a second menarche because that really was when I felt my like power awaken um well that must have been such a revelation so how old were you at that time yeah so I was just 26 wow that's a potent time as well that gap between like 26 and 29 we're really coming into ourselves wow absolutely it's really yeah like crossing over into you know leaving behind some of the maiden gap between like 26 and 29 we're really coming into ourselves wow that's amazing absolutely it's really yeah like crossing over into you know leaving behind some of the maiden years and moving further into like mother creatress territory saturn returns like it's such a powerful time and i began to share what i was learning with my um with these women that i was working with

out of you know curiosity for me too like I was curious to see whether other women noticed these physical and mental, emotional and spiritual changes that I was observing. And it didn't make any sense to me that even in my holistic health coach certification or in any of the other trainings and readings I had done that we were approaching women's health, people who have menstrual cycles, in the same way that we might approach men's health or those who don't bleed like it just blew my mind that there wasn't any education on the differences why did we have these seven-day fitness plans or 30-day yoga challenges when literally week to week women and those who menstruate are having a completely different

hormonal experience. And that's really where it all began for me. So it was a really powerful and potent and really exciting, sometimes scary time because the changes were so big and I had a lot of pain. And when my period came back, like debilitating pain, I had really, really hard premenstrual issues and polycystic ovarian syndrome and thyroid stuff.

Like so, you know, so much came with it as well. Like there was so much excitement and just like this burst of creativity and sexuality in my life. And at the same time, there was a lot of shadows that came with it too. Wow. I feel like we could do a whole other episode talking about that moment and that transition in your life. Maybe we'll do that down the line. But for our conversation today, I'd really love if you're willing for us to look behind the scenes at your work and how especially how cycle

awareness has guided you as you've been following your calling from this very dramatic revelation that you had when you came off the pill to building the business and the body of work that you've built today because I know that so many people in our audience are wanting to learn how to work with their cycle in their work and in their business and that you're a real guiding light for so many people so if we could like get get into get inside your your your work really and I'd like to go season by season inner season by inner season but could we start with sort of how you began to bring your cycle awareness into your work life like what did that look like I'm grateful that all of these changes you know beginning to coach my period coming back

like learning about menstrual cycle awareness all happened at around about the same time because I was implementing everything right away and I really believe that you begin the journey how you how you mean to go on and so it it all happened sort of simultaneously for me I realized very quickly that, for example, when I was bleeding, and as I said, I experienced quite severe pain. I couldn't work. Like there was no, there was no option. It wasn't like I just described, you know, I managed to take a couple of flights while I was on day two recently. There was none of that. It was like, I was in bed. I was, you know, vomiting sometimes from the pain. It was not fun time so I had to had to rest and

I noticed then because the the difference between bleeding and not bleeding suddenly so so severe that when my period ended it was like ecstatic I was just so happy. And I felt that like wave of energy in such a powerful way, in a way that I actually don't feel it as much anymore now. It's interesting how these things change, but I just remember being like, oh my gosh, I am back in the game. I had so much energy in what I now know as my inner spring. And that would definitely be a time that I would be, you know, really working a lot and getting a lot of things done. And I really use that to like be very productive. Again, it's slightly changed now, but I noticed that difference so acutely.

Like there was rest time and then there was go time, you know, and I noticed that in my pre-menstrual phase that was when I wanted to work on the rich side of my creativity in my business so I might want to write poetry or take beautiful photos for Instagram or some of my courses like it was more soulful and more meaningful than perhaps some of the work that I was doing at the beginning of the cycle with my admin, to-do list, getting things done. And then I noticed just before I bled, I would have these beautiful insights and I would really enjoy like taking myself on an artist day and just receiving lots of inspiration, both of which were really valuable, you know, when you're working for yourself. And then it would be rest time again and it would be like tools down, not doing anything.

And after a while I began to then experience the gift of visioning and receiving insights and ideas when I was bleeding. That didn't come through when I was really having a difficult time with menstruating, but because I'd been in this practice of resting and taking time off, then I began to experience this, like these ideas and these names of courses landing or book titles or, you know, these solutions to problems that I was experiencing in my business. That's, you know, when I was bleeding, then they would be there. And as I began to have a better time with

menstruation and I began to really look forward to that right rather than knowing that it was dreading that it was coming it actually became something that I look forward to because I realized how valuable it was for my work I'm just realizing this could be really good for some other people listening if you could give a brief it might be really hard to do it this briefly but a brief summary of the things that you feel most supported you to with your pain to resolve your menstrual pain yeah sure um for me it's been about um hormonal it's really is just you know the headliner is my hormonal health and balancing my hormones which which is, you know, we hear these terms all of the time. But looking at the ways that there was a lot of stress in my

life, reducing stress, settling my nervous system, my thyroid health has been a big part of this journey. So getting my thyroid into gear, my gut health, sleep is a really big one for me. And I notice it now still, if I have a stressful cycle or if I have a cycle where I haven't slept enough or I know I haven't been you know doing the things that I know work best for my system like not eating gluten or dairy or having too much alcohol or caffeine I notice it like I do experience some I'll experience some cramping on you know day one or two and you begin to collect that data over a long time and you begin to see what does and doesn't work for you. But those are the things that have made the most amount of difference for me. I've had such a similar path, not with menstrual pain, but with gut pain. And it was exactly the

same steps for me. And it's making me think of something that I heard Alexandra say maybe even 10 years ago, a long time ago. And she said, the sensitive ones are the canaries in the landmine who are showing, showing the rest of the world what's wrong and what needs to change. And I think that's, that could be true for so many people who experience menstrual pain and menstrual challenges. We're showing up something for the world, which I wish we didn't have to, but at least it's showing that we're out of balance, you know, out of balance in really profound ways. It looks like out in the world, bringing cycle awareness to work and business is getting more and more popular and more and more widely known and understood. There are period policies appearing more and more, which is really exciting. And I just for fun, I did a little survey on our Instagram stories to see how many people in

our audience were following their cycle in their work life and 76 said yes which I think is amazing I'm not sure if it would have been that way five years ago um but I'd like to look at the bigger picture of why is it so essential that cycle aware women and people with periods are supported to bring their cycle experience to their work life how do you see that it is definitely changing i've had um a number of um exchanges just very recently just this year with companies big companies who are really curious to learn how um menstrual awareness can benefit their employees and support the company. It's really exciting. And it's not, what I'm noticing is it's not just coming from the perspective of menstruation is a bad thing. Let's give people time off when they're bleeding,

which is brilliant. And that's a great place to start. But there's actually conversations happening that stretch beyond that. It's like, oh, maybe the menstrual cycle is not just a burden, something that we have to consider when we're looking at our, you know, how we're paying people, the leave we're giving people, that actually this could be something that we could work with. Maybe this is actually an asset to our company and to our business. So that's really exciting. So I do also see those changes. And the truth is every single human being, regardless of whether they have a menstrual cycle or not, is cyclical. We are all cyclical.

We all need to sleep every night night we all move through different emotional creative cycles every project every creative project in a business has its own cycle so cyclic awareness is really just an understanding of how our natural um our state really is and how we work and how we created our best and how we can relate to each other so I just think it's essential I for me personally if we zone like right back in on me and my business I don't know how I could actually work for myself without cyclic awareness as somebody who has a menstrual cycle. There's just I would be exhausted, burnt out, resentful, frustrated. I wouldn't have nearly the amount of insights and sensitivity that I have.

And if you then consider that every organisation, every business, every company is just a hive of human beings, all cyclical, some with menstrual cycles, some without, but all cyclical, consider like how the potential of bringing cyclic awareness into an organisation, you know, and having this language that people can use when they're delegating tasks or considering roles or considering leave or assessing where somebody is in a creative cycle, assessing where a project is in a creative cycle.

Like it's really exciting to me actually, the potential that is there and I'm excited to see more people and more companies truly being open to it. Me too. I was talking to Alexandra and Sharni recently about how will they know when their mission has been fulfilled you know what will it really look like and I think it was Alexandra said you know some of the organizations or groups of people who have the most impact in the world when there's a big decision that's coming up they would say to one of the people who's menstruating could you take this into your bleed and come back to us with uh with some clarity you know and then we know that

cycle awareness has fully landed it's so exciting how wonderful for them like everybody wins you know it's somebody asked me recently like who benefits by women remaining disconnected from their cycle like who is benefiting and the easy answer might be to say something like you know the patriarchy but I actually don't think anybody does I think that genuinely like we actually all benefit by reconnecting with our cyclic nature, again, whether that's through menstruating or whether that's actually just been imposed upon us and I think was born from the industrial revolution and isn't natural there's nothing really natural about it apart from that we tend to sleep at night and work in the day so it feels like yeah that we're ushering in this new way I often wonder about what will our like great grandchildren think was so crazy about the way we lived our lives and I wonder if it's that maybe like what so you didn't follow cycles that's

yeah it's an embodied activism against you know corporate capitalism that's just sucking our souls it really is I believe and I know you share this belief too that menstrual cycle awareness has the ability to change to change the planet and how we're living in this state that we managed to have found ourselves in where we are incredibly disconnected from our true nature and from each other and it's right here this embodied activism it's not something that we need to make up it's right here living inside us so you like to talk about each season having superpowers and vulnerabilities and I'd like to go in a season by in a season looking at what the superpowers and the vulnerabilities tend to be and how they can play out in work life and in business and for our

creativity and of course we're talking about an archetypal cycle here so and it kind of does look different for every menstruator so I think it's important to say that up front isn't it to state for people to stay close to their own process and their experience that this is how it can play out right oh yeah absolutely yes yes yes your experience is um you know trumps anything that we will say yeah so let's start with inner spring pre-ovulation in my uh research my um what's the word sorry i've got um membrane moment what's the word when you do in my survey on Instagram I'm gonna leave that bit in because I know so many people experience this whether it's in different phases of their cycle or like reasons brain fog so in my survey 46% of people found this phase the most creative phase which is interesting and that goes along

with what you were saying about that that sense of like yes let's do it let's go um so could you share about how you see how you see the superpowers of inner spring 46 say it's the most creative phase yeah like I said earlier there is that delicious momentum here and that feels really good it feels good to move things forward it feels really good to begin to plant seeds and take action and um and work to you know having some agency to work towards bringing your intention to reality I mean that feels great it's also what we have you know we're talking about um conditioning in great. It's also what we have, you know, we're talking about conditioning in our society. It's also how we've been conditioned to create as well. It's very much, it's quite linear and it's about moving from A to B and we're rewarded for that,

for producing and being productive. So yeah, it feels great. I had always, always yeah always found this time to be an incredibly productive time for me it's interestingly it's shifted for me in the last few years um I think I've noticed a lot in myself and also in other clients and students that there can be a tendency to do too much too soon, right? Like it's shoot out of the gates and just go way too hard and then get to even pre-destruct before ovulating or right at ovulation and end up just feeling a bit burnt out, exhausted over it. So that's something I've really been working on actually here is pacing.

So I would say the superpower absolutely is the ability to, you know, to blossom, to emerge, to make things happen. But it's so important that we remember the like sweet tenderness of this phase and just how vulnerable we still are and, you know, like a blossom, like a rose just slowly blossoming, to not just to stay with our own pace and our own process and slowing down a little more here actually sometimes can really help to create a more like sustainable energy throughout the whole cycle so that you're not then getting to the premenstrual

and just feeling absolutely knackered. I'd love to hear what that pacing looks like for you. I was just talking to Louise from the Red School team today about how spring can be, I think, a bit of a tricky moment for people and maybe a bit fuzzy, perhaps because it links back to that phase in our lives of maidenhood where pretty much all of us weren't given the rites of passage and the initiatory experiences to actually know ourselves at that time so for me I experienced that kind of fogginess of that time coming into my spring and I can lose track of myself a little bit so I'd love to hear how you stay close to yourself and how you pace

making the distinction between the inner spring and the inner summer has been a really important part of my menstrual cycle awareness journey because I I used to get them quite confused and I wouldn't sort of treat the inner spring phase like it were the inner summer it would just be like zero to ten right so just beginning to to notice that actually I am still I'm naturally a very introverted person um when I'm in my inner summer I can be very extroverted very social very outgoing but actually the truth is when I'm in my inner spring I'm still very happy to be on my own and even though my energy is returning and I can feel that like, you know, the inhale, like the expansion is happening and I'm moving back out into the world, I actually still

really like being on my own and working on my own and not being that social. So that's been important for me to recognize. I still really need to have clear time and alone time playing more like uh making sure I'm not doing 10 or even eight hour days at the computer like actually making sure my work days are shorter um in that time that I'm getting outside and I can go to the park and like take my shoes off and I love you know doing handstands and cartwheels and just playing a little bit more those sorts of things and just giving myself permission to explore my curiosities here as well. So I really love learning and researching and, like I said,

you know, when I'm interested in something, I just go all in. And this is the phase of my cycle where I'm most likely to do that. So if that means that I just feel like listening to an audiobook on something I'm interested in for hours at a time, then I'm just going to let myself explore that and play with that rather than cracking the whip and forcing myself to sit down at my to-do list. If actually I feel more inclined to explore curiosity. So there are a few of the things that have helped me. And I would say the other thing I would add would be trying to remember to journal.

If you looked at my journal, I journal in basically every other season except here. It's like I just forget to do it. And actually just remembering to come back to my journal and even if it is just writing a few things, a bullet points down of what's on my mind just to try to mitigate some overwhelm that I can feel here or like a lesson more list where you write on one side like all of the things that

you want to be doing less of and all the things you want to be doing more of kind of more structured journaling works for me here just to clear my mind and assess my priorities so that I know that all this energy that's building up inside me I'm not just going to burn out on it. I'm actually being more intentional about where I'm directing it. That sounds like a really good 1% move. Alexandra and Sharni often talk about, you know, what's the 1% we can do. And maybe for someone who's working in an office,

like when I was back in when I was 26 and I worked in an office, I remember in this time of my cycle in in my inner winter and in a spring which I didn't know about then I would go and have my lunch in this big sort of winter garden that was sort of warm in a kind of a big greenhouse in the center of Sheffield and I'd go and be my by myself so at least in that I had that sort of 40 minutes in the middle of the day where I could just be with myself and take care of myself and tend to myself so maybe that's what a one percent could look like for people as well who are in a working office environment

Lysandra and Shani call this phase of the creative cycle initiation and they talk about how it's important to protect your ideas in this phase because they can be like tender shoots especially if you sort of captured something in a winter for your business and you think right I'm gonna go and do this now but actually it's just a little tender shoot and could get really easily killed off by criticism from the outside and it's good to to protect and to contain things do you experience that yes my inner critic is quite vocal at this point in my cycle and I often think about how that relates to my maiden years as well like I had a very loud critic from a very young age and this I actually find it to be yeah this is where you know day six or seven it's it's very loud so I absolutely do experience that and I know the power of reminding my critic that this is not the time for it to come in like you can come back in the

pre-match stream and we can have a conversation sometimes that's easier said than done though I do find it to be quite challenging because yeah the ideas are so fresh and you're so tender and vulnerable still and in a creative cycle it's so important that we have, we give ourselves full permission to mess up and to play and to make mistakes and to just let it be really messy for a while. I think that it's so easy for us to compare our really very messy creative process to the shiny end product. If somebody else's and social media doesn't help with this at all, if you're sitting there like playing around with an idea and you just can't quite figure it out or there's just something

that's a problem that's coming up and you just can't see the solution for it or you're feeling like an imposter or like who am I to do this? And then you check Instagram and suddenly like everyone's sharing all of their wins, which is awesome. Like I'm totally for celebrating, but you've just got to remember when you're in that, like those early days of an idea that it's not going to look like somebody's celebratory post on social media and that's okay so that's been helpful for me to to come back to and just like have to always always remind myself of that like when I've got post-it notes all over the wall it's like the beginning of an idea and I'm like where do all of

these go what categories do things sit in how am I going to deliver this whenever I'm doing anything for the first time like I'm in the process of delivering something that I've never done before and it comes up, that imposter. Like my inner critic really leans on the imposter syndrome for me and it's like, who are you to do this? They're going to find out you've never done this before and you don't know what you're talking about, you know, and I have to really like, okay, remind myself I'm in the spring

of this project um it's okay if I mess up and it's okay I've never done it before I will and then I'll you know I'll get to that point but I'm just not there right now. If you would like to explore how your cycle awareness can activate your creativity, bring joy, ease and balance to your work life and inspire you to live your calling ever more fully, we invite you to visit menstruality leadership.com where you can find out more about Red School's menstruality leadership program. In module two, we teach how to harness the map of the four phases of the creativity cycle to thrive in all your

creative expressions in the world that's menstrualityleadership.com very present right now to how many ideas must get killed off in this phase of the cycle for so many people who don't have this awareness you know because we each have a completely unique way of expressing ourselves in the world and something completely unique to bring because there's never been a version of us before and there never will be another one and it's so precious you know there's there are things that are bubbling up in this season that can so easily get killed off so I love what you're sharing about how to bring innocence and play innocence and play and let it be messy oh I feel like we could talk about each season for for days let's move on to inner summer uh yeah how do you see the the superpowers and the vulnerabilities of of this of the ovulation phase yeah so gosh I find um oh so it's such a powerful such a fascinating phase you know we talk so much

about menstruation but I really think ovulation really like needs it's you know we need to talk more about it because gosh it's a it's it's an exciting time um and it can also be yeah challenging for some people as well so i'm glad we're you know we're going to talk about the archetypal cycle here but i really recognize that ovulation is not always the like um superwoman sunshine happy rainbows phase that it often is spoken about and so i just want to really name that first up but certainly you know this is it's a very fertile phase in the cycle where you know we are often more able to relate to others to charm others to connect network and we're talking in a business context to um you know give a presentation or to jump on

instagram stories and matter away or film some some video content like that's the kind of thing i lean into because i don't like doing this i don't love filming videos but i know that when i'm in my in the summer like that's the time that i'm more able to to natter away to connecting with my team I'm having to learn all of the time at the moment how to stay being able to manage a team in the other phases of my cycle where I'm not inclined to reach out to people whereas in my inner summer I'm like setting up meetings I'm checking in with everyone has everyone going it's that beautiful mothering nurturing energy where you know we're really able to hold space for others and our capacity um is is extended and we are able to be seen and to be visible

and and have the desire often to be seen um so they're the they're the superpowers that i really see in myself and um and in others this might be the time to launch something to release something into the world um but with that comes the shadow side, which is that it can be really overwhelming to consider being seen. And we might feel that desire, but then this might be a stage actually where somebody else's inner critic might come in. I don't experience it a lot here, but I know that for others actually being seen comes with you know a lot of self-criticism too about who are you to to be seen to to release that to say this to launch something like to put yourself out there is actually incredibly difficult so that's where a lot of the vulnerability can come in here as well I think sometimes we might have the tendency to um overestimate actually

our capacity here yes it may be like the super phase, but like that doesn't mean that we areing energy that nurturing energy is extended not only to others but also to to ourselves so I for me like I know that I have the tendency to get really distracted in my inner summer because I just want to party I just want to socialize and chat. And because I am naturally quite introverted, I use this time for that because I want to and I feel the desire. And I love people. And I love that this is kind of this one week where I do feel extroverted. So I find I can get a bit distracted from actually doing work here, like getting things done work, that's where the focus shifts for me from the inner spring. It's like that's where I might get things done.

Now I'm less interested in getting things done and I just kind of want to take a break and, like, catch up with my team and catch up with, you know, anyone else I have any relationship with at the moment and maybe, you know, share some stuff with my community and be seen. But it's much less for me about productivity. Interesting. What have you seen work for people who do have the imposter syndrome

or the fear of visibility coming up strongly in summer? Yeah. Imposter syndrome is just, it can be so crippling and I really like I said it's my critics go to if it's coming up in the summer around being seen it can be helpful to talk about that like is this is this a familiar feeling? Is that a feeling that has come up for them in the past? Um, and maybe I'm going to have conversation with a client around that, the familiarity of that. Um, but also when they have, I'm really interested then in, in understanding when somebody has felt really comfortable or it's felt really good to be seen because we can talk about you know

why things might not be working but I'm actually more interested in what has worked if I'm working with a client so I want to hear stories of when they have felt that experience of being seen and then I'm interested in who was there and who saw them and how did it feel and what qualities were there that allowed them to feel safe enough to to be seen because I think it's completely understandable to want to to hide and protect parts of ourselves I think that's survival so we you know as business owners and creatives it's helpful for us to know what strategies or structures we can put in place to help us to feel safe. So for example, I don't like sharing every detail of my private life on social media. Like that doesn't feel safe

to me at all. And there are things I'm not comfortable sharing. I don't want to be seen. So I'm really clear on like where those boundaries are so that I know like this part of my life, I am happy to share. And this is how I'm comfortable talking about it and who I'm comfortable talking about it to and being seen in that way but I'm really okay with the fact that there's a lot that I don't talk about so just identifying like what are the environments you know and what are some of those qualities and maybe just beginning to like very slowly like the one percent incremental shift to begin to share a little more um but I just I'm like by nature I'm very gentle in my approach I'm never going to encourage somebody to like drive the car off the cliff and just like

you know go from zero to ten I that's not my way let's move towards inner autumn the the pre-menstruum. And there's actually a quote that I found from that Alexander and Sharni had written in our menstruality leadership program manual, which I think speaks really beautifully to this transition. They said the high energy of this phase, and they're speaking about inner summer, can be intoxicating. It can make you too driven, lose your sensitivity and reason for doing the project and losing the

heart of it. Fortunately, as you tip back into the via negativa, you begin to find your way back into the meaning. And it feels like to me in the inner autumn, there's this two quite different pulses of energy. There's this coming back into ourselves and into sort of a deeper intimacy with life and the deeper meaning of what we're doing at the same time as this can be the most challenging phase because the critical voice can be, like you said, quite crippling sometimes. And this was reflected in my survey because 30% of the people I asked found this to be the most creative phase of the cycle and 33% found it to be the most challenging so I find that really interesting how do you see the the superpowers and the vulnerabilities yes very polarizing phase isn't it um that's what I love about it because you just don't know you don't always know what you're going to get are you going to get this really like you know chilled very progesterone fueled gorgeous sensitive kind of like cozy vibe or is it going to be like more hectic and more chaotic sometimes

it's both at the same time ah the superpowers of the of the premenstruum and vulnerabilities there is there is a depth here absolutely there is you know we're descending we've been on that that expansive inhale for the first half of the cycle after ovulation we begin the descent and we're sinking you know further into our own darkness and into our own um the depths of ourselves like it really feels like I really feel that kind of where you are right now in your cycle Sophie like I just land back in my body it's like I actually feel my whole like my energetic field just like it's just like I sink back in and I actually used to really struggle with that because I was so drunk on the high and then began to actually feel like ah this is cool I actually love that feeling

of coming back into my body so there is a sensitivity here to the external world. Naturally, we become more introspective and crave more time on our own, more time to be with our own thoughts, our own feelings, feeling more permeable to sounds and smells and, you know, what's going on in the outside world and things that might not have bothered us the week prior suddenly like driving us mad. And that can be really challenging and that's certainly a vulnerability and it's one to be really mindful of. And it's an incredible gift too because this is where we find, yeah, that meaning in our work that you just spoke about directly from that quote.

This is like I'm not interested in creating a business that just replicates the structures of companies I worked for before or how things are just doneicism and I really value intuition and I value um music and I value movement and rest and play and pleasure and all of these things and I want to incorporate those values into my business and this is the phase of the cycle that really reminds me of that it's like ah that's right like I want to magic. Like I want my business to be the most like luscious, creative expression. I want this to do good things in the world. I want to contribute.

I want to like, I want to, I want this to have real meaning. And this is the phase that really reminds me of that. It's great for reflecting. I think our superpower here is very much reflecting on the cycle so far. This is where we can look back because we actually have something to work with, particularly in a creative process. We now have something that we have actually birthed. We've been through that playful experimenting, messing up stage. We've shared it with people. We've birthed something out to the world. and now we actually have some feedback and we have something on the canvas that we can actually begin to play

with it's not an imaginary thing in our heads anymore and there's a tangibility to that that I that I really love like okay cool like I can really get into the guts of of something and reflect and edit and hone and hone it um i also find this time to be very productive actually so i've i've noticed within my own cycle that my inner spring and my inner autumn there's a lot of momentum and these transition seasons right we're transitioning between menstruation and ovulations in those two seasons um i actually really feel a lot of momentum in my inner autumn as well. So that same momentum I felt in the inner spring, but this time, you know, we're heading in the other direction and we're moving down and you can feel like, right, my bleed is coming in like a week's time. What do I want to, what's important to me that I complete

this cycle? Like I really feel that sense of wrapping things up. It's like, okay, cool. What do I need to make sure is completed before I bleed? What questions do I have that I want to take into my bleed? What do I want to celebrate that I have worked on that I'm really proud of? And what also could I have done differently that I'm going to make sure that when I get to my inner spring, once I bled on it, you know, and I'll literally put this into my schedule for like two weeks time. These are the things that i want to action and work on and do differently and i'll write it literally into my calendar because um i really think like we get cycle amnesia and we don't we don't remember things like so so there is this like there is a lot of

forward movement here too actually i find and but I need to be on my own timeline in order to access that magic. So I don't do so well here with appointments and meetings with other people. I very much prefer that my time is my own and so I, you know, do what I can to make that a reality within reason. And when I can enter that creative cave, it's incredible what can happen actually here. But yeah, I have to be mindful of my inner critic

and be mindful of overcommitting here as well. They're big vulnerabilities for me because the same overwhelm that I experienced in the inner spring, I can experience it here too. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why it's important not to put your schedule and your your next month's calendar in the hands of your inner summer woman she can accidentally fill up the autumn in the winter and then you get to them and go I don't

want to do any of these things oh yeah oh yeah that's a big one and it's game changing actually that one because when you remember that and you've got your days of your cycle next to the day in your schedule and you look ahead and you think, actually, do you know what? I'm going to be on day 25. No. Could we do it 10 days later? It'll be a completely different story.

I remember when I worked worked I was the communications director at a reforestation charity called Tree Sisters and we all worked with our cycles in the organization it was fantastic and on day 23 I've really felt that creative tension of I just want to be in my creative cave I don't want to be talking to other humans right now and so we named it in the team and we actually gave that part of me a nickname we called her grumpy gertrude so that whenever I showed up to a meeting around that phase of my cycle I could say I just want to say that grumpy gertrude's here and people go cool okay we know you know we know what energy she's bringing and I think it can be quite good to bring a playful energy to that, to the critic, especially when working as a team.

Otherwise it can get quite heavy. Yes. I think that is an excellent, excellent tip. I find my tendency can just be wanting to quit everything, like not necessarily my entire business, although maybe sometimes I have thought that in the past, but I just like, oh, I don't want to finish this project I hate it it's awful I just want to throw it all away and I find the drama of the critic to be quite funny like when I can just take a step away from other like really do you actually just want to throw everything away and quit it all like it is

easy to have a bit of a laugh about it because you know I don't actually want to do that let's are reluctantly I'm pulling us on to uh in a winter which was really clear 48% of people found this the most challenging phase for work and for business it's just some quotes that came in being I'm being called to retreat and I'm not able to surrender to my body because work is pulling me out. That was from Ruby. I have to cook for my kids and I can't think of anything to cook from Emily. Just so real. Just literally want to do nothing. So doing anything is challenging. That was from Sharon. So, yeah, there's a lot to speak about here. And there are also amazing superpowers of this season. So how does that play out for you in your work life in a winter menstruation?

Yeah. Oh, it's just so tricky, isn't it? The first thing I want to say is that I really hear anybody who struggles here, and there's quite a large percentage there um with managing work and life because it's the world is just not set up um for those who menstruate so I really hear that struggle um for me I it's changes um it changes a lot and it's changed so so when I first began working for myself and like I said I experienced that pain and I realized I would have these incredible insights and pleasure

and bliss when I was bleeding I was so protective of that time it was so new and I was just so like oh my god this is amazing and so I was like absolutely nothing comes between me and my bleed nothing like three four five days do not contact me I was not available um I didn't have any clients and I've always had a pretty regular cycle so I'm lucky that I could kind of map that out in advance and I was very strict and it was great because I had some beautiful experiences and I got to really like experience that magic of menstruation in a very real way. And if I'm totally honest, like that has changed actually

over the last few years. What's interesting is that I found it more challenging as I've my business has grown and I now have people who I am managing and who work you know with me and I have had the experience of publishing a book you know working with an editor and working with a publishing team and designers and my village has grown and so actually I find it more challenging now to just completely vanish so you know I've had to like surrender to that and I think that um why I know now that what I really need is like, like I was basically having big bleeds like every month

now recognizing like, huh, okay. If I give myself one big or two big bleeds a year, then I'm really happy with that. I still have a lot of boundaries around my bleed though. Like I don't, um, I don't see clients still when I'm bleeding I try and spend as little time on technology as possible the first two days I'm I am basically offline and I won't go on social media because that's not essential maybe sometimes there might be some work that does need to get done that that's the kind of thing that I found like is less easy for me to just abandon because there are timelines that are now other people are a part of. And maybe, who knows, maybe I'm going to, maybe, you know,

I mean I totally see that I am actually in the spring now as I'm talking of learning how to manage working with more people. Maybe if we speak in a 12-month time I'll have nailed it and I'll be able to like vanish again. But currently I'm still just holding onto the things that are non-negotiables for me when I'm bleeding, which is like, yeah, very minimal tech, minimal socializing, being in a dark space, like just going into my bleeding cave. Because when I do that, when I'm really able to, even if it is just for a few hours, I gosh, like that's when I get all of the best insights for my business.

That's, you know, recently just received the messaging, like you need to hire this person to do the social media project. You need to like make this change to this course here. Like this needs to happen and everything just lands and I don't know how I would have been able to create what I've created make the decisions I've made without that insight so it really is like oracle time for me in my business it's like strategy time and I I sort of like cringe a little bit at talking about menstruation in such a like um businessy way but you know that's that's the nature of the conversation that we're having and while there are so many other gifts that I receive like in such a like businessy way. But, you know, that's the nature of the conversation that we're having.

And while there are so many other gifts that I receive, like replenishment and my health, like I've got to take time out and sleep as much as I can, like no alarms, total like restoration time. Learning how to still like, again, like there are those non-negotiables and then also learning how to run a business, administrating. Yeah, it's an ongoing journey is what I'm saying. What supports that Oracle experience?

Like what do you set up in order to allow those visions to happen? Oh, I like this question. Oh oh god i just love it it's so funny i've just had one bleed as i just said where i wasn't able to do this and i'm already i'm on day 10 and i'm already really looking forward to my next period oh wait so for me the things that um support it is um being on my own I actually find I'm able to access that oracle space when I am mostly in solitude as much as possible. And I'll go to bed. It's as simple as just giving myself a couple of hours in bed.

And I understand that some people, when they bleed, they want to be out in nature and I totally get that um I actually feel like for me it is just about being in like the cozy comfy comfortness of my bed so I'll brew a pot of rose tea I'll like put on some really chilled like piano music I'll close the blinds like create create quite a dark environment, get my eye mask and get some dates, like, you know, food dates and some snacks and just literally take myself to bed for a couple of hours and give myself nothing, absolutely nothing to do is just lie there and listen to the music. And I'm quite sensory, so I know it's the smell of the tea, it's the oil that I rub on my skin, it's the music. And it's like these rituals just transport me into this portal. And, like, when I'm in that portal, that's when it's like,

ah, just total surrender and letting go. And as you say, the practical wisdom that can come through, it's really extraordinary and also the trust like this is when i maybe i've had some questions that have come up in my pre-menstruum like i said maybe some concerns and doubts this is when i just remember like why i'm doing this, what my calling is. I remember to trust the process, trust exactly where I am, and I feel so abundant and so grounded and so held. And that feeling really, you know, it's important to nurture that as business owners and creatives.

Like we have to be able to hold ourselves, to nurture, to self-soothe, to buffer ourselves, to back ourselves. And it's really when I'm bleeding that I feel so connected to myself and to the planet and so held and that really supercharges my confidence for you know for the rest of the cycle. Thank you Claire this has been so fun you've got two programs which feel really relevant to this conversation. There's the Heartful Biz course, which uses cycle awareness to build a heart-centered online business that works really well. And also Optimize, which explores the intersection of mental cycle awareness and creativity. Could you share just a little bit about those programs for people that might be interested? Absolutely. So I created the Heartful Biz as a co-creation between myself and my friend, Fienda. And it was originally an in-person workshop in London that we held a number of years ago and it was so popular. We wanted to create, we just wanted to bring people behind the scenes of our businesses, similar to the conversation we've been having.

I love hearing about how other people work and how they create. So we turned the live workshop into an online program that people can take, and we do exactly that. We both share the similarities in the way we run our businesses, the differences. Bienda and I both work with cycles. She works a lot with astrology as well. So we bring our differences and our different magic,

but it's essentially the idea is like how can you create a business on your own terms and how do you find your way of working in the world as a cyclical being? And Optimize is very much, yeah yeah very much focused on creativity so exploring that that relationship between having a menstrual cycle and creativity like we've discussed today the way that the creative process is mirrored in in the menstrual cycle and it's practical in some ways and that we explore you know the action steps that you can take in each phase of your cycle and it's also more conceptual.

It's understanding that the more you work with your own menstrual cycle and begin to familiarise yourself with its process, then you can apply that wisdom to other creative projects so that you can identify where you are in any phase of a creative process and lean into that, surrender to that plan for what's coming and just applying that wisdom to your creative expression. Oh, Claire, I've really, really enjoyed this conversation.

I feel like we've been able to go from the kind of big picture, visionary dreamy side of this to write down to the nitty gritty details of schedules and how we make this work. And I think it's going to be really supportive for our listeners and I just love your brain I love your being I love your integrity your honesty how real you are thank you Claire thank you it's been such a pleasure Sophie thank you thank you so much for being with us today and listening to the menstruality podcast from red school please subscribe and follow wherever you listen to podcasts and it'll really help us to reach more people if you could leave us a review and if you'd like to explore how to activate your

unique form of leadership through menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause you can visit menstrualityleadership.com. All right see you next week and until then keep living life by your own brilliant rhythm.