The Menstruality Podcast - My Year of Menstrual Cycle Awareness (Louise Ryder)

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

At the start of 2022, we invited you all to join us for a Year of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to enhance your vitality, creativity and leadership. To inspire you on your journey, today we're sharing this story from Fertility Awareness Coach and Menstruality Leadership Programme graduate, Louise Ryder about how a year of menstrual cycle awareness transformed her love life, her work life... her ENTIRE life. This is a deeply personal episode and we're grateful to Louise for sharing so openly about her relationship breakdown, how her cycle awareness supported her grief journey, and how she came to understand her Calling - to bring cycle awareness into the workplace, globally. We explore:- How to follow the instinctive nudges you receive from your cycle tracking to make big decisions in your life, even if they clash with your logical, rational mind. - How menstrual cycle awareness can support you to navigate periods of deep grief, and trust in a better future to come. - How a steady practice of menstrual cycle awareness cultivates a deep trust in ourselves, our knowing, our instincts and our purpose. ---The doors for for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme close on March 31st. 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)

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, welcome back to the menstruality podcast. Thank you for joining us. We really want this to be a conversation. The work of menstruality is unfolding through each of us and developing through each of us and we always love hearing from you. So let us know if

there are any themes you'd love us to explore or people you'd like me to interview you can always email me at sophie at redschool.net okay today we have a fascinating conversation with Louise Ryder who's a fertility awareness coach she's one of our menstruality leadership program graduates and she actually used to be part of the red school team about her profoundly transformative year of menstrual cycle awareness so we hear how louise's cycle supported her when she lost her job due to the pandemic how it helped her to end a long-term relationship that was no longer working for her and how it helped her discover her calling as a menstrual cycle in the workplace pioneer which she's now living out in her new job at Cirque du Soleil exploring how to

make it a cycle aware organization and along the way we hear about the surprise new love affair that she's cultivating this is a deeply personal episode and I'm so grateful to Louise for her generosity and her openness in sharing her stories. And if you're looking for inspiration for your year of menstrual cycle awareness, then you'll find bucket loads here. Enjoy. Louise, it's so good to be talking with you today. You've had such a wild and amazing and transformative year of cycle awareness and I really can't wait to get into it all with you. But let's start where we always start with today and your cycle today. So could you share your cycle check-in? Absolutely. It's so good to be here with you as well Sophie I am on cycle day 14 today yeah what

I'm noticing in myself right now is we were just having some some audio issues and I just I'm noticing the pleasure in my system the joy and ease of how it feels when things don't go to plan. Yeah, I'm really like feeling my sense of humor. And before that, I was a little bit nervous. But now I feel like we've just blown the cobwebs off. And I'm like, ah, cycle day 14. I feel the joy of that. Let's get into a simple overview first of the ways that menstrual cycle awareness has transformed your life over this past year. Could you give us the highlights? Yeah, I suppose the headline is that I left a relationship that I was engaged and I left that relationship because it just wasn't it wasn't for me and now I am engaged to the absolute love of my life and so I suppose that's

the big turnaround is that I left one relationship that really wasn't for me and in doing so found the relationship which is absolutely for me and I did the the menstruality leadership program and through that found my calling you know found what I want to do in the world and also just came into really a deeper relationship with myself I feel like I know myself now in a way that is quite hard to put words to just a deeper relationship with myself and I trust myself in a way that is quite hard to put words to just a deeper relationship with myself and I trust myself in a way that I actually didn't know was possible. I can't wait to get into all of this with you especially the relationship arc and how yeah how menstrual cycle awareness and the MLP held you through that initiatory process because

it is an industry process the breaking down and then the rebuilding and your your work life has been especially interesting that you've gone full circle that you're arriving in the same place in a completely new place so we'll talk about that too and um I'd love to start with where you were at at the start of this year you know had you been tracking your cycle were you plugged into cycle awareness what got you inspired about it so I was tracking my cycle I found cycle awareness through fertility awareness and like a lot of people in those sort of first sessions with my fertility awareness instructor was like whoa you know how on earth have I

been living my life without knowing this fundamental information about about my body um and prior to that I'd had a long journey I like to joke that I've tried just about every type of contraception there is out there. I was on hormonal contraception for about, I don't know, 12 years or something from when I was 14. And then found fertility awareness and felt like a total convert and wanted to tell everyone about it and then there was this time in my life where it felt like everyone in the world was recommending Red School I was like what is going on who is this what is this organization it felt like it was coming from all angles and so I followed that and um and here we are I mean red school completely changed my life it turned out there was a job available at that time when everyone was talking about red school um so I took that and um yeah started started to really see the possibilities of not only practicing fertility

awareness for contraception but really living my whole life in tune with my menstrual cycle and that's what's changed everything for me it sounds like something in you knew that there was more and I just think that's a really interesting point to focus on because it happens for so many of us in fact every pretty much everyone that I encounter through red school says I just knew there was something going on in the cycle or in menopause and I couldn't put my finger on it I couldn't quite explain to you why it's just a sense that I had yeah and I don't even think I I suppose at that point I knew it was related to the cycle because I'd started to tune in but I think I always had this sense of like there is something missing there's something more and that is and was the cycle so in February last year you joined the wild power immersion that was

the catalyst for that was the beginning of this massive year of transformation through cycle awareness for you so yeah can you talk to me about the experience of the wild power immersion and how that began this transformation process yeah and I'm saying transformation process as if it's a neat and tidy and understandable thing and obviously it's an emergent journey that you're still on and like let's just look at the beginning let's go to the beginning yeah well I think if we go back to my first listening partnership, I can remember it really clearly that I said to my listening partner, I'm in this relationship, I'm engaged and I don't want to be. And I'm consumed with anxiety because I know that I need to make a decision. And I know that that decision is to end this

relationship, but I don't want to. And I don't feel like I have the words or the capacity in my system to be able to do that. And I think that was the first time that I'd really acknowledged that out loud. I'd been really like searching for what can I do anything, not have to do the horrible thing of ending a three-year relationship and then it was through the course just like listening to Shani and Alexandra and listening to them talk about surrender letting yourself be held by something bigger and taken by something bigger and in the wild power immersion it's really about the journey of the cycle so it's about laying the foundations at menstruation you know surrendering to these bigger powers and then

really looking after yourself in the inner spring cherishing yourself so that when you get to the inner summer you're bolstered and you have enough chi in your system to be able to deliver yourself onto the world and for me in that circumstance that delivery was actually about being able to say what needed to be said and make a big scary life change I mean I was out of that relationship by the end of the wild power immersion and I felt of course ending a relationship is never easy or good but I totally felt held by my cycle and really by the container of red school as well. But it was this feeling of being in something that was bigger than me and trusting that I would be OK because I was part of something that was bigger and because I was on this ever moving journey that is the cycle. It's a sentence that we often throw around a lot at school we want you to feel held by your cycle and I think it can sound quite jargony or like what does that really mean how can we be held by our cycle and I think what you're describing is such a great example of it's a rhythm it's uh you know it's like a drum beat that ebbs and flows and rises and falls

that is happening below and around everything that we're experiencing in our lives so in that way we are we're held like you said we're held inside something bigger and that can be very a very resourcing thing we can draw a lot of strength and resilience and tenacity from that rhythm I think even if you can't if you haven't experienced the feeling of that before there's something so grounding about having the maps in front of you that Shani and Alexandra have developed because it it shows you that there is a way ahead so even if you can't feel it yet just being able to see and know that it is an ever-changing journey that was what really gave me the trust it was like okay I can see that if I go into this in a winter phase of of life that is necessary now I can see that up

ahead there is a spring and there is a summer yes I think that's what the practicing cycle awareness day-to-day cycle to cycle it's almost like practice rounds for these moments in life when it does all go to shit because yes you you trust that when you do let go or that when you do have a big cry or a big outburst that there will be good days ahead and I like to compare that sort of part of my life it felt like a practice round for menopause and honestly I held on to that the structure of I mean the structure of the menopause process and the structure of the five chambers of menstruation really sort of echo each other but I always had Alexandra's words in my ear about just letting go and going into that phase of you know in menstruation it'd be called separation or in menopause it'd be called betrayal

I felt like her words were always with me just like let go and and let yourself fall you know into the depths of what you're feeling because afterwards come these other four phases of really bringing yourself back together with the bits that are are going to serve you and it was that that sort of I really consciously followed like a five chambers process and when I say followed I don't mean I was like, today, I'm in betrayal, and tomorrow, I will be in repair. It was just about noticing how things changed in my own system. And noticing art doesn't quite feel so hard today. Or actually, today, things are looking really bright. And I could follow along with these sort of five chambers

of five stages. And I feel like I'm losing my words a little bit here but am I making sense I absolutely love what you're saying I mean firstly you are making sense and secondly in a way because this is such new language for our world and because it's such a new and emergent exploration like from in many places it wouldn't make sense and that's okay I just want to say that because I think so many of us when we're exploring our menstrual cycle or menopause experience feel like we're losing it losing our minds or that we're not making sense and that it's that we're crazy frankly you know I hear that from a lot of people and so it's just good to name that yeah it probably won't make sense if you went and talked about this down the

pub uh or like to in the library to the assistant that's getting you checking your book out or I mean maybe it will one day but um but yeah what you're saying makes so much sense so so you were I'm just going to bring us back to the moment of the wild power course where you knew that you needed to make this big decision or something in you knew but you were resisting it and tracking your cycle in this new way and or relating to your cycle in this new way resourced you to be able to make this move because I love this term the cycle as a practice for like the the mini initiation that we go through every cycle is a practice for the big initiations that we go through in life and like you named menopause so that gave you the strength and the courage to in to begin this initiation of

the breakdown of the relationship um so how did it go from there I love the way you spoke you've spoken about the five chambers of menstruation as a map for the relationship but breaking down let's use that as a map maybe so how was it then when you came from the wild power course how did you initiate the breakup and how did that how did your cycle awareness support you with that. It's funny as you as you were talking then I remembered a piece which is that we actually did the breakup slowly so it's like there was a we were on a break at first um to sort of get that distance and I suppose trial what it would be like to not be in the relationship and then there came a moment of I suppose realization like not that what I wanted to say with them was like that it couldn't be saved it wasn't that it was that I didn't want to save it and I realized in myself I can't be who I am in integrity and continue with this relationship wow so is there is this a

moment of your calling calling yeah because of your connection to your cycle that's really beautiful a hundred percent because I was I was doing wild power I knew that I wanted to do, that I wanted to work with the cycle and that I wanted to teach other people how to work with their cycle. And what I was saying to people, you know, in my life who were talking to me about the cycle was, you know, it's all about being true to yourself.

It's about listening to yourself and acting in integrity with that. And as those words were coming out of my mouth, I was thinking, I'm not being in integrity. I'm in a relationship that I don't want to be in. Yeah. Yeah. And I felt it was it was so much bigger than me. It was like, wow, I actually have to end this because I'm not being true to myself.

It doesn't feel right in my body and I can't ignore that anymore. And did it make sense in your mind because I think those two things can really be in conflict you can get these nudges and knowings from our body experience or gut intelligence or you know the different kinds of body wisdom that we have but was your head in agreement with you or was there resistance there there was resistance because in my head it was like he's a great guy you get to you know get married and have babies and that's what people do yeah and there's nothing wrong you know nothing's happened no one cheated on anyone nothing really broke down it just wasn't right and that was a real that was very challenging in my system because I could reason myself into the relationship and it actually I just needed to listen to this deeper knowing in myself and find

the courage to actually take action I really feel like we're getting kind of forensic almost in our way of looking at the cycle here but I think it's really interesting how did your cycle awareness experience help you to negotiate that knowing from your body clashing with the reason from your mind? What my cycle really taught me was to to hear what my body was saying because you know when you take those moments each day to really check in with yourself what I was noticing was just consistently in my cycle tracking it was like anxious anxious you know like sad by paying attention to every day I realized this is this is chronic this is ongoing this is a problem and one that I can solve you know it's not this is not how I want to feel this is not how I

want to live and it was by checking in with myself every day through my cycle awareness practice that I was able to I mean literally see it out on paper in front of me yeah and it was that evidence looking back at me that I was like I can't actually ignore that anymore and I had been ignoring it for a long time yeah I really relate because I'm thinking back to a relationship that I ended and nothing in my mind thought it was a good idea we were married yeah we were we had a great life we were a filmmaking couple we were going on adventures all over the world it was thrilling and brilliant and something in me knew it wasn't right and it was my inner autumn it was the premenstruum three years of premenstrual rage that finally made me click the switch in my head and go

I need to make this impossible choice yeah and it took me three years which is quite a long time so you move faster than me but I'm very interested to hear about how inner autumn was when you were negotiating that doubt yeah um it was when inner autumn was when I found it easiest to voice it because I didn't do this alone I didn't keep it to myself in the inner autumn I would I would be saying I don't think we should be in this relationship I don't want to get married and it was just easier for me to say it then and in the other times in my cycle I found it easier to see the good and talk myself into it but it was in the inner autumn when it was so overwhelmingly apparent like I would wake up in the night it was like I was brushing something

off my arms it was like all this anxiety and I was like awake just going you know what is going on and it was like my my body was like if you're not going to listen when you know when I'm quietly telling you I'm going to make this so big you can't ignore it and that was in the autumn it was so loud I can imagine a lot of people listening relating to this because what it often becomes then is physical symptoms so and I'm not saying that to say that all physical symptoms come from an emotional place but I know for me and for many chronic illness symptoms are often eased by life changes or course course corrections in the way that we're living so yeah it's great that you're able to catch the signals earlier and that's a cycle awareness game isn't it that's you could you

actually in conversation with your your body that's one of the places where you know cycle awareness can be so complex but really it's so simple on one level it is embodiment it's about saying how is my body feeling today and and and I can remember the first coach I ever worked with, this was years ago now when I was working in the West End. And I can remember doing a, like I separated my, I sort of put my, my hand across my neck. And I said, I feel like I know what's going on above my neck. And I have no idea what's happening below. I really, it was, I was frozen. frozen I had no idea no connection to my body and at that time I was on hormonal contraception so you know in hindsight it makes a lot of sense yeah and it's by actually having a cycle and then paying attention to it it's really brought me in

relationship with my body and now you know I could tell you what was going on in my little toe even because it is about conscious awareness so you actually made the move to create the separation the relationship how was it then and I'm really aware that you're sharing really personal a really personal story here and I'm so grateful to you for your generosity how did cycle awareness hold you through the inevitable grief grief that can arise when something ends even if you know it's the right thing. Mm. I mean, it was horrible. And I, I cried a lot. But what was kind of amazing to me was how I knew that it was going to be okay. And in knowing that it was going to be okay and in knowing that it was going to be okay I really let myself

go into my grief and to give a comparison my friends if we take it back to that when I used to live in London my friends used to say that I had like a heart of stone because I would never cry never ever cry and I can remember going to like therapists and things and being like, all I want you to do is please make me cry. And no one could just was like a closed book. But there was something about cycle awareness, honestly, that it was like it allowed me to open the floodgates in myself. And I cried. It felt like I was crying years worth of tears. And it wasn't even specifically about the relationship.

It was about completely letting myself go. Yeah. And I trusted so much. And it was in the trust that I could let myself go there because it's terrifying, you know, to let yourself be on your knees sobbing. I can remember thinking, like, will it ever end? When will it get better? You know, but I knew that it would. so interesting because a lot of people who enter the work and especially people who do the menstruality leadership program or really commit to a deep cycle awareness practice it's very catalytic in terms of generating emotional response and it can be quite it's a lot and i think what you're pointing to here is that it's actually bringing us home into connection with ourselves so that we can feel what is already happening and then it can all come up and out. And I'm thinking of my module, I think this was module two actually of my menstruality leadership program when I was deep in my infertility challenges it was I think it was a couple of

years before we did IVF and I cried the whole way if I don't think this is what actually happened but it feels like I cried the whole way through that module and I think it's because I was firstly I was feeling everything so strongly because I was in this community of people who were willing to actually be in relationship with life and and feeling in this profound way but it was also the community of people and feeling held not only by my cycle but by a group of people who I could genuinely feel their care and was that a relevant was that relevant for you and was that happening for you when you were in this module one of the MLP? Yeah absolutely you know it's it's very what's the word I want to say permission giving which feels like it's not quite what I want to

say but it's yeah when you're surrounded by other people who are really willing to go there you sort of build this evidence that oh well they're doing it and so maybe it's okay if I go to those places in myself as well because I can see in them that they're safe and so it gives you that evidence of like okay well I'm safe as well and I'm held in this community and so I know that I can lean back into the community when I need it um and I felt that so strongly with Red School and actually one of the things that I think Shani and Alexandra do better than I've ever experienced anyone do is that they create a container that feels physical so I did the

program online but it felt like I had them with me because they really take the time to open that container and to close it and to make it real and so I it felt very tangible to me it felt like I could feel it at my back and like I could lean on it when I needed to there's also as part of that container there's a lot of other holding too isn't there there's the personal leadership mentor that you're seeing one-to- container there's a lot of other holding too isn't there there's the personal leadership mentor that you're seeing one-to-one there's the home group that they're holding and you're with that small group of people that's consistent throughout the program and then back to your wild power moment with your listening partner there's the listening partnership which for me feels so synonymous now to a deep cycle awareness practice because it's having that

regular pulse of connection with someone who is also cycle aware that is I feel like it's a bread trail that keeps leading us back to ourselves again and again and again okay so it was all feeling terrible as it does like I love how Alexandra always says we go through death and rebirth processes in life but when you're in the says we go through death and rebirth processes in life but when you're in the death part of the death and rebirth it just feels like death you don't know well because of cycle awareness we have we have a knowing that rebirth is coming but often in the depth you can't feel that rebirth is coming so it actually just feels awful so you're in the terrible terrible is the month of grief

you feel like you've been crying for a month what happened next I I feel like there was a real moment of of what I can only describe as rebirth I felt myself coming back to myself and I can remember really consciously pursuing pleasure like I wanted to feel good and I wanted to feel the freedom of being on my own because it's something that I actually really enjoy I really enjoy my own company I really enjoy those days where you just go for a wonder and see what happens and so I consciously pursued that of like okay I'm on my own now and one of the things one of the reasons why I was holding on to the relationship was that I really wanted children and I was very aware oh I need to get into another relationship so that I can get married and have children and I was having that conversation with myself and I decided to let that go and to just choose to enjoy my life as much as I could and to follow what felt really good to me

and I can remember having an actual conversation with myself of like if I don't find someone and if I don't have children that's actually okay because that's what's meant for me and it was such a conscious decision and it felt like a weight off my back of like actually life doesn't need to look a certain way and I as much as I would like children I would like to be true to myself more and so if I never find someone that I want to do that with I'm okay with that and I really made peace with it and I can remember it feeling so true in my body and like such a relief to be with that I was like wow and then I felt like I could do anything I was experiencing some of that renewal

I'm like it's been really bad it's getting better I'm definitely going to be okay and it was like I came into this really new sense of trust with myself like wow I've made it through that and now the possibilities are endless about what's going to happen next in my life and it was really exciting actually. If Louise's story is inspiring you and you'd like to deepen your own menstrual cycle awareness and discover the deep transformational power of this practice for yourself as well as be supported to explore your way of teaching this work we invite you to visit menstrualityleadership.com where you can find out more about the world's first leadership training

designed for pioneers change makers nurturers and creatives to realize your full authority and leadership through the power of the menstrual cycle and conscious menopause. We're starting in April and you can join us online or in person. The doors close on March the 31st and this is the final year that Alexandra and Sharni will be offering the in-person version of the training so now is the time to step in if you'd like to train with them in person you can register at menstrualityleadership.com on the training you'll be held by Sharni and Alexandra by your own personal leadership mentor and a community of inspiring cycle passionate people to explore the inner seasons of your cycle the power of menstruation the five chambers of menstruation the menopause process the creative process in the menstrual cycle

the list goes on you'll also explore your calling your unique genius and how to embody it ever more fully in the world and so much more we begin in april and the doors close for this year's round on march the 31st you can find out more and register at menstrualityleadership.com so you were cycle aware but you started wild power and that supercharged your cycle awareness experience to the extent that you got really clear that you needed to end this relationship because your calling was calling as in the truth of you, you knew that this relationship wasn't in alignment with that. And now you've entered into the MLP and I'd love to hear about the impact of these deep menstruality teachings on your calling your expression of your unique self really break

down my year and the experience of that year into these different modules and courses it was like wild power was the big catalyst module one was falling apart and it feels like sorry module one of the MLP was about falling apart and it felt really like module two of the MLP was about putting myself back together and getting really clear about the path that I'm on in my life. And what was very clear to me about my work in the world was that I want to make cycle awareness mainstream and that I want to work with cycle awareness in the workplace. So I want to create essentially organizational change that

brings the cycle into the workplace yes please but what's interesting about that and as we've been you know crafting what this looks like is that it's really about bringing people into relationship with themselves because the experience that I've had of going into myself and being able to make these big life-changing decisions it's it's unlocked this it's unlocked so much within me in terms of my creativity my authority my leadership and that is what I would love everyone in every workplace to be experiencing in themselves because I think at work people spend so much of their energy pretending I mean I sort of want to end the sentence there they spend so much of their energy pretending you know pretending they're okay pretending they're not in pain um pretending that

they're productive all the time when it's not true and that has become my driving force behind the trainings that I've been developing is how can we empower people to feel like they can trust themselves and like they can bring the truth of their experience to work because when we do we free up all of this energy when I think of the amount of energy I spent on anxiety as I was building up to that big decision to lead the relationship all of that was freed up by me just going into the truth of my experience and I say just but it's not a light thing at all but yeah what I really became attuned to was this mission to just I mean to make it mainstream so that people the world over can have this experience of truth in themselves, because that's going to open up so many avenues that we don't even know exist yet.

And on a global level, I mean, I can't even comprehend the change that will come when that becomes a reality. I love to hear you speak of it. And I love feeling your passion. And I'm, I'm wanting to trace your calling through this experience, because you were fascinated with fertility awareness before you started entering into a deep menstrual cycle awareness practice. So your calling was playing with you back then wasn't it it was you knew there was something in the menstrual cycle right yeah and the funny thing is I it's it is like you say it was it was playing with me and I even I trained as a fertility awareness instructor and it's something that I still do just with a few people on the side but what I'm realizing more and more is there's something that um Shani said once about all roads lead to Rome, like you will end up wherever you're meant to be.

As long as you follow all of these little rivulets and stuff. And I'm really grateful for my fertility awareness instructor training, because it taught me to teach people how to identify ovulation. And that is a, an enormous skill. Because when we know when we ovulate, then we know within a day when we're going to bleed. So we no longer have surprise periods, late periods, because we know ovulation happened this day and I always bleed 12 days, 14 days after ovulation and that to me feels like an essential piece of making cycle awareness accessible because if people can identify their own signs of ovulation they can much better yeah plan their lives around their around their bleed which is such an important part of this you know creating space to bleed so it's it's it's one of them I went off on this tangent of facility awareness and it doesn't feel so much like a tangent because it feels like that is feeding into

this bigger picture if everyone's tracking ovulation they know when they're going to bleed and then they can plan for that and you can see that now looking back and I know a lot of people come to the red school work saying I don't know what my calling is and and of course the underground teaching through all of this is your calling is you so you can't know it or not know it because it's the it's your wild power it's your it's the the unique expression of you and it can come out in all kinds of ways and I love thinking about this with you because one of our first conversations that we had was you'd been out with your friends from the gym and they all came back to your house and you were teaching them about cervical mucus and I was like that is you see this is Louise this is who Louise is this is her calling because at four in the morning she's with her gym buddies teaching them like what difference is cervical mucus looks like at different phases of the cycle so my question here is say like in between the two MLP modules when you could feel the shift

that was happening in you having made this big bold choice how did that how did it feel to be on the scent of your calling or a new expression of your calling I felt like I was in this groove of myself and I just noticed how much ease there was in my system and even though I really wasn't sure how things were going to unfold like in between those two modules I had no sense of this workplace thing or the mainstream thing that wasn't on the on my radar yet but I knew I was going somewhere and I knew that it was the cycle that one was holding me and two was my work I just didn't know exactly what that looked like yet and honestly there was a part of me that wanted to force something or do something and I had all these different ideas for courses and books that I would write in the future and all of these wild things that I still have written down

on random bits of paper and in different places because I'm sure some of them will come full circle and they'll come back around but it was like I really wanted to sort of produce something. And I also knew not to force it. I knew that was sort of an old pattern coming in that wanted to always be productive. And I knew, you know, it's that inner spring power of containing. I knew that because it wasn't coming easily, that it wasn't the time to push it or try to make something happen that didn't feel quite right yet or quite ready yet. And that is such a cycle awareness experience, isn't it? Of being able to, well well it's holding the tension it's holding the tension which the premenstruum teaches us to do so well holding the tension and I always think of buds in spring because the buds on the trees and the plants don't open until

there's the right amount of light and the right amount of warmth and that makes so much sense and yet us humans or in our culture we just try and push that flower to open even when you know the days are only seven hours long and there's such wisdom in that that comes from really tracking that we're cyclical beings that open and close and open and close and we get to we get to be able to feel when we actually do really truly want to be open or expressing something yeah yeah so speaking of coming full circle at the beginning of your menstrual cycle awareness journey you were working for the circus and then you you know lockdown happened and you came to work with Red School.

And now you're going, you're running away with the circus again. So this is an amazing experience of a full circle. How will you take this cycle awareness wisdom that you've been gaining and bring that into a new kind of way of working at Cirque? Well, it's funny. I've been back at work now for three weeks now, I think. And what's fascinating is to observe the cycle in this different context because everything moves so fast

and tracking that in myself and tracking the different pace that is around me is really I'm just finding it really fascinating to be honest right now and I actually don't 100% know yet what it's going to look like to practice cycle awareness while I'm doing this really busy demanding job what I'm observing for now is how different that pace feels in the different parts of my cycle and from my inner summer today I'm noticing how easily I'm pulled into that really fast pace and how easily I'm giving myself to the other, if you like. But my cycle awareness is bringing me back to myself. So I'm staying, I feel tethered to myself.

I feel like I know myself and I'm doing my best to bring the sort of truth of my cycle day to what I'm doing at work. And my hope is, you know, that I'll really bring it and that we will create a cycle aware culture at work. But to be honest, what I'm really excited about is figuring that out and figuring out the ways for it to be accessible to people who've never experienced or even thought about cycle awareness it feels like I'm entering into this whole new realm of um it feels a bit like a testing round to be honest like testing my authority with the work testing my ability to convey it to people who don't know um and testing my ability to convey it to people who don't know and testing my ability to really like make a culture shift ultimately. And I actually love the not knowing.

I love that I'm not going in with a plan of like, this is exactly what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to roll it out. And it's cycle awareness that gives me that trust to go no let's go and experience it and play and find the ways for it to unfold organically with yeah some moments of pushing and other moments of allowing yeah it's going to be so amazing for this body of work that you're developing around cycle awareness in the workplace you know I supported you on the workshop that you did recently for Facebook for Meta for their staff about cycle awareness in the workplace

and I could feel the potential and like you said the the world changing potential of actually being able to bring our cycles to work so I'm so excited to see what comes from this next year year and a half where you're trying it out in real life inside a wild and chaotic place to work so in closing I hoped we'd have more time to speak about this but maybe that there's another conversation down the line but in closing so you came out of the MLP second module of the MLP and then something unexpected happened in your life tell us about that something very unexpected happened I walked into the gym one day and the love of my life was standing at the door. It looks a bit wild really from the outside, but again, it comes back to that trust.

I trusted myself and I recognised when love was in front of me and I have developed such a deeper capacity for feeling because I think it's terrifying to let yourself you know let go into grief it's also terrifying to let yourself go into love because it's so vulnerable to be in really deep love it's it's scary it makes me think of inner winter like that the practice that we get if we're able to have time and space to be conscious to menstruation that the mother hug that's waiting for us there yeah it's exactly that and I can you know there's been moments where I've sat there going like I don't I don't like this I don't like being in love because it feels so feels like my heart is outside of my body in the way that it hasn't been before um in that really vulnerable place but I know as well that beautifully taken care of that I trust it and again the cycle has I totally consider it the

foundation of our relationship it is what in it's holding us in its bigger thing and it's given us language to communicate around you know the places where we clash like we know that the summer to autumn crossover is when all of my insecurities bubble up to the surface and if we're going to have an argument it's going to be then so what is that like day day 17 18 uh for me it's about day 23 okay that's when I'm like oh boy it all you know my I can feel it in my system I'm like if I can pick a fight about anything I will on that day it's so historically been my day as well well day 17 18 and then day 23 definitely they're my like let's fight days yeah yeah but I often say imagine if we didn't have cycle awareness and it's just that every now and again it comes around that we that we have an argument and I say to him imagine how tricky that could be to navigate when things are so good

and then they seemingly not fall apart but it's like we we clash and I start picking start picking out things that I can argue about but cycle I mean from our first conversation I've been talking about the cycle and so we now know that that day is going to be a challenge. And so we can treat it like what it is, which is a crossover day, and we can navigate that and we can name it. And I think that has given us a level of communication that it would take years to develop if you didn't know yourself in the way that cycle awareness has taught me to know myself and and similarly at the end of the cycle the holy grail moment that shani and alexandra

write about in wild power we experienced that right from the first bleed that I had. And the holy grail moment, to put it in a nutshell, is the point just before bleeding when you're in real, you're in a vulnerable place. place but if you can be met there it's like you get to bring your partner with you into the vulnerability and by being there together you can experience the just just deep deep well of love and again it's by knowing the cycle that I sort of give to myself what I need in those moments and he recognizes that and now he is also able to give me what I need and meet me there in these different moments different flavors of the cycle and it does feel like the cycle works us and works our relationship and it's what has allowed us to be in such exquisite love and communication and a successful relationship really it's it feels like the cycle has made all of that possible so in closing is there this is going to be a hard question, but let's go for it anyway.

Is there one core thread that you would pull out or one kind of medicine that you feel that this year of cycle awareness has given you? It doesn't feel like a hard question at all it feels like the answer is trust and the reason I say that is because when in practicing cycle awareness in paying attention and in tracking just how much it's possible to change over the course of one cycle and by that I'm talking about just my inner experience of how it's possible to feel deep grief and deep joy within two weeks of each other practicing that every month is what has developed trust in my system and it's that trust that enables me to make big decisions and and yeah be held by life and trust that my life will be good and also it it shows me that there will be hardship again and I trust that that I will be okay as well let's come around well thank just thank you so much for being so honest and real and generous and vulnerable in the personal stories that you shared today I really appreciate it

and I'm so excited for what's next with this your cycle aware relationship and this profound trust that you have with yourself and life and also with this new expression of living your calling as someone who's bringing menstrual cycle awareness to the mainstream through your work at Cirque du Soleil I'm so excited to see how it all progresses and I'll be rooting for you every step of the way. Thank you Sophie it's been such a pleasure to to talk yeah about it all with you today hey thank you so much for joining us today i hope you feel inspired by louise's amazing year of menstrual cycle awareness and if this conversation has piqued your interest in our menstruality leadership program you can come and explore the curriculum, how it all works at menstrualityleadership.com.

We also have amazing stories from our graduates on that page. So you can hear about how Nishma has woven her menstruality into her mothering, how Suad helped Suad to transform her relationship with her inner critic, which in turn transformed her her work you can hear about how Adele is bringing menstruality into the British education system with the young people she works with with behavioral challenges how Kate is bringing menstruality to the NHS through her program menstrual cycle support there are so many brilliant stories from our graduates so come on over to menstrualityleadership.com the doors for this year's round are closing on March the 31st. Okay that's it for this week see you next week

and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.