The Menstruality Podcast - The Cultural Story of the Taboo, Power and Wisdom of Menstruation (Dr Lara Owen)

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

There are a handful of trailblazers who have paved the way for the positive menstrual culture we’re beginning to see today, and Dr Lara Owen is one of them. She was researching and writing her book about the power of the menstrual cycle, Her Blood is Gold in the 1990’s, and it has been a game changer for thousands of women and menstruators. She’s now an expert on the culture, politics and organization of menstruation and menopause. She consults with global and local organizations; teaches in academic and general contexts and has created a first year masters level programme called Contemporary Menstrual Studies. In this far-reaching conversation we explore:A cultural and historical exploration of the stigmatisation of the menstrual cycle.What Lara learned from indigenous teachers raised in menstrually positive cultures.The wisdom of menstruation, and Lara’s personal experience of two years of deep menstrual retreat (including moments of powerful clairvoyance!)---Registration is open for our FREE Love Your Cycle course. You can join for free here: https://www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolLara’s website: laraowen.com

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 to the Menstruality Podcast. There are a handful of trailblazers who have paved the way for the positive menstrual and menopause culture that we're beginning to see in the world today and Dr. Lara Owen is one of them. She was researching and writing her book

about the power of menstruation and the menstrual cycle. Her blood is gold. Back in the 1990s and it's been a game changer for thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of women and menstruators across the world. It was the first book I ever read about the menstrual cycle. And Lara is now serving the menstrual movement as an expert on the culture and politics and organization of menstruation and menopause. She consults globally, she teaches in academic and all kinds of contexts, and she's created a first year master's level program called Contemporary Menstrual Studies. It's a far-reaching conversation today. We explore the cultural history which led to the stigmatization of the menstrual cycle in the first place. We hear a lot about what

Lara learned from indigenous teachers that have been raised in menstrually positive cultures and we hear some really fun stuff about Lara's personal experience of the wisdom of menstruation that she received in two years of deep menstrual retreats including a moment of being very psychic. I just want to drop you a little note that we're in the middle of a house renovation here so I didn't have my good microphone with me today and you might hear some banging in the background so sorry about that but let's get started with the amazing Dr Lara Owen. So Lara, welcome to the Menstruality Podcast. It's such a joy and an honour to have you here. I would love to start by asking you about your story and what inspired your work. Now in your book, Her Blood is Gold, which I have right next to me here,

you share, you know, in depth, beautifully the story of how you found this work. But I'd love if you could share some of the highlights with us today. Thanks Sophie for doing this and having me on the podcast. Yes my story, I'm always curious about telling one's own story because it changes over time which bits you emphasise and which you don't and so I'm really glad I wrote it all down in the early 1990s at that point. Obviously there's a lot more to the story since then so yeah so the highlight really of the early part of my story was when I first came off the pill when I was either 19 or 20 I've been on it for a couple of years and I've been getting increasingly anxious and depressed and I wondered if it had anything to do with the pill but I didn't really know and I came off it and after a couple of the pill, but I didn't really know.

And I came off it. And after a couple of weeks, I had this thought that I felt like myself again. And I was somehow aware enough to think, oh, that's an interesting thought. What does that mean? What does it mean to feel like myself? And how is that tied into not being on the pill? So that led me into being really interested in my menstrual cycle and what difference it made, whether I ovulated or not, because that is the key distinction about being on the pill. So obviously there's also the fact that you've got exogenous hormones, you know, hormones from outside your own body influencing your body the whole month but the the you know the main story of being on the pill is it stops you ovulating and I realized that actually as I began to track my cycle over time that the whole cycle had meaning for me and that I felt

subtly different and sometimes highly different at different parts of the cycle so I started to follow that and um realized that that had some core relationship to my capacity my sense of self my happiness and um and that actually it was much more important than society had sort of led me to believe. I'm always fascinated by trailblazers. What gave you the audacity to be interested in something that no one else was really talking about at all and to dare to follow it instead of following paths that were perhaps more carved out before you? It is a really interesting question, isn't it? Because, you know, yes, I have a certain kind of confidence, but I also have the vulnerabilities and frailties and insecurities that everyone has and also that women have specifically in a patriarchal society. So where did I get that from and what sustained me? Because there were times when it was really difficult. When her blood is

but gold was first published, I had nightmares about being attacked by patriarchal figures. You know, I was aware that I had crossed a line that was a pretty deep line in a patriarchal society that had used menstruation for centuries as a way to essentially make women feel bad about themselves. You know, if you want to control 50% of the population, that's not so easy to do, but it becomes much easier if you shame them about something they can't help doing right so you're right it was it was audacious um and i was i was scared as well as somehow having the courage to do it but there were also moments where it felt and this is going to sound you know strange and mystical and mystical and whatever, and possibly self-important, but it's really not meant to be self-important. I felt that I'd been given it as a job.

You know, it felt like, okay, this is my task. And I felt incredibly fortunate that I knew what my, you know, mission, if you like, was. And there were many times I tried to walk away from it. I remember someone saying after Her Blood is Gold was published, are you going to carry on with your research? And I said, oh my God, no, I don't know. I've done it now. I'm going to do other things now. I'm going to do more popular things that are easier to talk about at parties. I've really had enough of it. I don't want to be Mrs. Menstruation. I was like, No, no, no. God, don't put me in that box. I just wrote this book and that's it. And I know other people who've had similar responses after doing something big around menstruation. into another area because it is really hard to do something that you know that that trailblazes but also goes against this convention that is all about stigma and shame and you're daring to stand

up there and say why why the stigma why the shame I'm not buying it and actually I think there might be something good about this thing that you're all telling me is terrible. It's an uncomfortable position to hold. It's also not very sexy. It's not. When you talk about parties, whenever I try and explain to people what I do, even now, you know, 2020s, it's not the 1990s anymore. The best thing I get is just blankness. And then we move on. Or like the worst, like, why?

Why on earth would you do that? Exactly. the worst like why why on earth would you do that exactly I still get well why would you do that you know what are you thinking yeah and I I you know I wanted people to like me and I wanted people to be attracted to me and you know that experience you have at parties of uh and then sometimes men would be very attracted to me because of it. And that was also weird because there was something weird about, you know, a man who was really turned on. And they would think that this meant that I would be interested in, you know, perverse things. And I actually wasn't, you know, and and there would be this assumption of, oh, well, if she can talk about menstruation, then that means I can talk about anything I want. So I got some very, very weird emails. Really, once you've stepped outside the boundaries of normative society in that way, then there can be quite a lot of misunderstandings about who you are and people will project things onto you.

And, you know, so that was all a bit tricky to handle when I was young um because I was young when I got into this I mean her blood is gold was published when I was in my mid-30s but I've been doing the research on it you know since I was about you know well actually for the book since my late 20s and then earlier than that I was doing my own exploration of you know I had my bedroom was covered in charts of my cycle as I was trying to figure out what on earth was going on I think it was lonely that's another aspect of it you know I remember when I was looking for people who might have something to say about menstruation when I was doing the research for the book I was advertising in newspapers and just looking for any mention of it anywhere and writing to people there were very few people who had anything to say about it yeah so so the loneliness

aspect somehow I was able to tolerate that and when I was actually writing the book, when the genesis for it came and I was writing it, my partner was a very, very wise man. And he could see that it was something really, you know, quite important and potentially useful. And he supported me without ever getting particularly involved in it. But he was very supportive. And there were also other people along the way, like the first person, the first editor, Howard Rheingold, who published my writing in Whole Earth Review. So that was very early 90s. And he was just really supportive and he could see, oh yeah, this is something that's actually important

and needs to be talked about. And so there were some people who were really really lovely and very supportive in a really straightforward way not creepy at all and um and in fact in some ways I think at that point it was easier for men to be supportive than women because they didn't have so much of the internalized misogyny going on even now some of the negative comments I occasionally get are more likely from women actually than from men yeah well thank goodness for these allies because your book has been transformative for so so many people and I'm one of them

your book was the first book I read when I could feel something stirring in me I'd been at this I told you this Laura but I've been at I had been studying at a yoga school where which proclaimed itself as being very honoring of the feminine but was actually riddled with this patriarchal culture that you were talking about and we were actually taught at this yoga school to do certain fasting practices and yoga practices to actually stop our menstrual cycles from happening and and I did it you know and I was following it and I believed in it and then I had it was a very toxic place and I eventually left because there was a lot of abuse happening there as there is in so many places and I swung totally the other way I've been so immersed in kind of male spiritual paths and I was just so hungry looking for okay who's talking about women and the spiritual practices of women and I found your book you're googling and yeah and it just opened up so much for me thank you thank you that's great

to hear I know so many people feel the same you you pointed to you know you started talking about the stigma around the menstrual cycle you know I've shared my example of the the stigma that was there at this yoga school how do you see this impacting the world today this taboo around the menstrual cycle and menstruation well it's interesting that you had that experience in a yoga school because of course one of the main ways in which menstrual stigma was generated was through religions and still is. So there is a strong connection in there. And again, it's a very powerful way of reinforcing patriarchal control. I mean, still in Orthodox Jewish practice, I don't know whether you know this, but there's a strict regime around what happens after menstruation. And you have to have not been bleeding for seven days before you can reconnect with your husband in an intimate way,

which includes it's not only to do with having sex, but other things as well. And and so if you're spotting or you have an irregular period, you might be unclear about when is actually seven days after the end of my period. And the way that this can be tested is the woman takes her period products and her underwear to the rabbi. So the male rabbi looks at her stained underwear and determines whether this actually constitutes a period or not, which is quite extraordinary. And there are similar things in other religions. It's quite extraordinary.

It's a man that determines whether you've got your period or not. So the control, if you like, or the ownership of the experience is completely taken out of your hands. And in more subtle ways, that continues to happen through the ways that menstrual products, for example, are marketed. And through the expectations of contemporary workplaces that menstruation will be completely disappeared, that it won't be spoken about. This is starting to change now, which really exciting but until quite recently menstruation was something that could not be mentioned and menstrual products could not be openly carried you know or you couldn't say I'm not coming into work because I've got really bad period pain you know you had to make up some other reason and we're all really taught aren't we to grin and bear it you know to go about some other reason. And we're all really taught, aren't we, to grin and bear it,

you know, to go about our lives as if we weren't actually in pain or bleeding heavily or desperately needing to get to a toilet or, you know, whatever. The things are which don't happen to every woman every period, but most menstruators have some experience of an uncomfortable situation where they're unexpectedly bleeding heavily or have debilitating pain and not being able to talk about that or to not feeling that it's legitimate um you know really doubles down on the sense that there's really something wrong with you it's not just that there's something wrong with you something really wrong with you because you can't even mention it um and you know I just have so many experiences from the um focus groups I've led and all the people I've spoken to over the years of girls who still don't dare tell their mother even that they've got their period couples that never

discuss menstruation between husband and wife not only in the public sphere that there's this control and this inhibition around menstruating but also in the private sphere so this causes a you know a psychological constriction and a sense a deep sense of there being something that's not right about oneself. And this is very pervasive, isn't it? I was listening to an interview with you recently and you were talking about an experience you had with some Steiner school kids who had actually all been raised in a very menstrually positive culture. But still, somehow this stigma and this messaging had found its way to them well what they said was that what they needed was practical advice and they didn't really care about the spiritual woo-woo stuff now that's pretty common for 15 year olds

yeah but I think they were also making an important point was which was there was a disconnect between their educational environment and maybe their families and the wider culture. And of course, a healthy adolescent will really want to understand the wider culture that they're growing up into. I mean, this is a life skill that they absolutely need. So they're very interested in what their peer group thinks is cool. What what society houses, where society is going, what skills they need to develop. They're really, you know, adolescents are really tuned into that. So they're listening more to the prevailing culture than they are to the home culture,

or to the, if they're in a particular kind of school even. If it's very different to the if they're in a in a particular kind of school even if it's very different to the prevailing culture then that they'll sort of tune it out I think now it may well be that that background will have given them a foundation of respect or understanding or awareness that will come back in later on and will give them some strength also to stand back and look at the prevailing culture and critique it but I think we need to do more and I'm sure people are doing this already we need to do more to bridge the idea of you know menarche the first period of something special and having a ritual around it and whatever with actually the reality of life in 2022 where girls have already absorbed um all this information all this negativity and

and about menstruation and this sense that in order to survive as a woman in the world you need to minimize it you have to minimize the experience of menstruation not amplify it through a ceremony so one of the things they brought up one of the girls said well what we really needed to learn was how to use a tampon now of course a tampon is a brilliant device for disappearing menstruation for minimizing it right it's the best way you can pass as a non-menstruator is to become adept at using a tampon that was what they were interested in and then in some subsequent research I did on menstrual cup use in undergraduates that was really interesting because what those young women talked about was that how successfully they could disappear menstruation using a menstrual cup because

they didn't have to change it all day and they didn't have to carry any pads with them during the day or tampons and for most of them the cup would last all day and you can say quite safely leave a cup in for 12 hours so they would put it in in the morning go to work school whatever they couldn't feel it it was like they'd say it's like I don't have a period when I'm out that's great so they would disappear it completely in the day but then have this opposite experience when they got home and they took the cup out and and of course the blood is kept in an anaerobic environment in the cup so it's it's still very bright red often but usually so they would have this very strong encounter with their menstrual blood once they got home so that was really fascinating how that then gave them a sense more of ownership of the blood because it wasn't dried up on a tampon or on a pad you know it wasn't absorbed it was this really vital fluid and some of them said they

found it beautiful so they started to have a more positive feeling but this was while it was contrasting with this what happened during the day that was also a positive feeling so we get these complex scenarios where yes so if you use a menstrual cup you're still in a way going along with this idea of minimizing menstruation in public but then at night they're having this opposite experience which had quite a profound impact on their sense of themselves and their bodies and of menstruating so hopefully I will be able to track some of those people later on down the line or another cohort and see well what's that like when you're in your 30s? Because we haven't yet had many examples. We don't really know that much about what happens if you use a cup for 10, 20, 30 years. And how much does

that detach you from the concept of stigma? Does it or doesn't it? I'm so glad that you were doing that research then because that means the data can come out sooner. Well, yes, we just need a lot more people doing a lot more research. And I published a paper earlier this year called Researching the Researchers about the ways in which menstrual stigma continues to impact research funding. And we are seeing some breakthroughs, but largely most of the funding is for small scale studies. And we're not seeing the kind of funding that we really need for major studies on menstruation but we'll get there. We will get there we absolutely

will. I want to speak about your direct experience of the wisdom and power of menstruation but before we do I'd like to speak about the menstrually positive cultures that you explore in Her Blood is Gold. Because it's such a fascinating and powerful antidote to everything we've just spoken about. So at the beginning, you speak about how actually the title of the book came from a creation myth from the Kogi people of South America and you write the Kogi say that the world was created by the great mother during her period that her blood is gold and it remains in the earth it is fertility and then in in chapter three you write about the teachings of Sabonfu Some of the Dagora people from Burkina Faso and she speaks about how menstruating women in it with the daguerreor that they carry healing energy within them that they have this tremendous ability to heal and see

into things in my village people will seek help help from such a woman such a different culture to be raised in isn't it it is really different what I found then was that what united those different cultures was a very strong relationship with with nature with the earth with the cycles of nature and a very strong sense of communion with it and also of wanting to protect it and a very positive conceptualization of the natural world um that it's you know compared to a loving mother or a you know benign father there's a sense of being a child of the earth and you know with the onset of the whole long history the history of ideas shows us where we started to separate from those kinds of ideas and obviously we haven't got time to go into that

today but that was the thread that connected all of those societies and of course there's not very many of them and not very many of them left now um and notably also largely they weren't particularly patriarchal um and for example the Navajo who for whom the biggest ceremony of their ritual year is the Kinalda which is the girls menarche ceremony where the whole extended family will come back together, which is still practiced. They're matrilineal. So all land is owned by women. They think that this makes for a more stable society. And that and also that I mean, this is sort of a rather tricky, tricky territory. But their sense is that women have a easier stronger relationship with the earth and so women should own land and and and they've lived like that for a very long time

um so you know that that gives women a completely different status in society i mean you imagine a country the size of britain where all the land is owned by women. I mean, we can't imagine that, I don't think. And we would say now with our modern sensibility, we'd say, well, that was sexist, you know, and that that that was wrong. And maybe now it wouldn't actually make as much difference. But it does really alter the way that we understand the relationships between humans and the natural world. They were making big decisions like that based on protecting both the land and the human beings and all the other beings that lived on it. And we haven't made decisions like that. I mean, look at what's happening now with the waterways and our primary starting point for political decision

making is not is this good for the earth our primary starting point is will we make money from it or will someone make money from it that's where we start from if there's profit in it it's okay anything is allowed now pretty much if it's profitable that that has become our God pretty much. Right. So we've come a very long way from these societies that, you know, nurtured the world around them and also were positively inclined about menstruation around and starting to think positively about menstruation have an impact on our relationship with the earth and i still maintain that understanding the cyclical nature of the female reproductive body and living that profoundly alters your relationship with with the earth and that the more the more we can do that as a society the easier it will be for us to you know move towards a healthier planet and start making decisions based on you know the impact on seven generations rather than on this conglomerate

right now and they're making a profit and being able to give pay their shareholders and but what's so still so problematic is that a lot of people would hear that and just say that was a load of rubbish and that the way that you create a solid long-term society is by focusing on shareholders and corporations and making money but I think we're seeing the proof of the pudding now you know that no that's a myth it doesn't work we're just creating an absolute mess sorry I'll get off my soapbox now do you know Lara it's what I've been thinking about for my whole holiday is exactly this is the connection between the distance we have from our menstrual cycles and the distance we have from the earth and the distance that allows us to make the kinds of decisions that we make. And wondering what it would look like.

You know, I used to work for a reforestation nonprofit. So we were all madly passionate about getting as many trees in the ground as possible. But we're all burning ourselves out doing it and our director of operations at the time Edwige Fairchild had studied your book had studied Miranda Gray's book had studied Alexandra and Sharni's work and said well let's put the menstrual cycle at the heart of our work let's run the organization around our cycles we'll do a cycle check-in at the start of all our meetings you'll have a paid day of menstrual leave and we we also organized our annual calendar around the seasons of the year so it sort of expanded and that was when the organization went from planting about 4 000 trees a month

to planting a million trees a year we saw the impact of it of this seasonal cyclical living although it doesn't seem to have a direct impact could this be one of the most powerful ways for us to turn things around ecologically on our earth is to actually turn towards our own inner ecology as alexandra shani would say that's really interesting i i've heard about that organization and i've actually interviewed other people who work there but i hadn't heard that the the productivity had gone up so much when you switch to the cyclical way of life. That's really interesting. Were there men working there, too? Not at the time. It was just five of us then. But we did have a man on the team later who was totally into the whole thing.

He had his own way of understanding his cyclical nature and used to check in about that. Yes. And, you know, when I did research, Coexist menstrual policy, when they brought that menstrual policy in 2017, 2018, one of my findings was that the men in the organisation felt that they had more permission to take care of themselves as well. And that they felt that it was just healthier overall because you could bring your body to work was one of the phrases. You didn't have to kind of leave your body out of what was happening. When you start unpicking it, these ideas about the subjugation of the body to the mind and of nature to the human being, you know, these ideas go back a long way, I mean, at least to Descartes. So it's very much what has actually produced the industrial and the post-industrial

age and now the digital age that we're in is this idea that the body is subordinate to the mind. And along with that, when the woman is subordinate to the man, obviously that's an older idea still, but this sense of hierarchies, which has created this extraordinary progress and allowed us in some ways to create a remarkable series of what we call civilizations. You know, I wouldn't want to not have indoor toilets and central heating, although, of course, central heating is something we may be seeing the end of. But still, there is this incredible cost. And one of my obsessions has been um the use of electric light at night and uh the shift that that can cause in the menstrual cycle um and that the menstrual cycle is is connected to the

moon and that there's now an idea that it's a coincidence that the menstrual cycle is exactly the same length as the lunar cycle because because when you use particular lens you can't actually understand the relationship but when you live it in your own body you do understand the relationship you know I try as much as possible to go to bed when it's dark and get up at sunrise I don't always manage it but I always feel better when I do and I feel calmer in a place which is actually quite difficult to locate really and to describe exactly what it is there's something soothing about it you know my mother was reminding me not that long ago that my great-grandparents had kept to country rhythms my great-grandmother came from a village not that

far from where I live now actually in Shropshire and they they had even though they had moved to Birmingham and lived in the centre of Birmingham they carried on going to bed when it was dark and getting up when it was light and they never lost that their whole lives they lived into their 80s and they kept that they kept that pattern because it was so ingrained in them and even hearing that story I find soothing yes yes you know what I mean there's just something in you relaxes but oh right because it it speaks to the animal in us you know that just does if you have a dog you know you know that they will often put themselves to bed just after

it gets dark even if there's still activity in the house they will just find themselves a quiet spot and curl up and then they just love it if you get up at dawn because they don't really want to hang around for two hours waiting for you to wake up you know so these are these seem like you know old-fashioned ideas or small, but actually when you start integrating them into your life, it makes a big difference to your sense of place, belonging, base these too much on these outer issues like what other people think of us or how successful we are or how many people liked our latest post or whatever, that doesn't affect us in the same way.

So it's no wonder we have what really has become quite a narcissistic culture, I think, because we're always looking for approbation you know we're looking for people people's approval that's a natural part of being human but you become much more resilient to all that if you just have a feeling of belonging in your body because you're living with the amazing dr lara owen is inspiring you to want to step up in leadership in the menstruality movement firstly we warmly welcome you to explore lara's new program contemporary menstrual studies which we actually chat about towards the end of this conversation and secondly we invite you to join our new free program which is called love your cycle

we explore the menstrual cycle through the lens of the four inner seasons and how they can support you to access more power more creativity more health and vitality and support you in your leadership as well you can find the course at redschool.net forward slash love that's redschool.net forward slash love I'm thinking back to when I was preparing for IVF I had a lot many years of infertility before this and something in me knew I needed to go very quiet for a good few months and I pulled my work right back I wasn't really online and the peak of it was we went to the outer Hebrides and we got a cottage uh no internet and I just spent I think it was a good two weeks it was beautiful just walking up and down the beach sleeping for a lot of the time because it was only light for about 9am to 3pm or

something but sleeping when it was dark being awake when it was light I knew I needed to calm my nervous system ready for this experience and it was I felt so profoundly healthy and then the IVF was successful I don't know how much that Scottish holiday had to do with it was I felt so profoundly healthy. And then the IVF was successful. I don't know how much that Scottish holiday had to do with it, but I do have a body memory of that is health for me. That slow earth rhythm. That's a that's a beautiful story. I remember my grandmother telling me when Oprah was first on and it was that she was getting old and she was watching a lot of television and she loved Oprah and she said what's all this fuss about fertility she said I don't understand it you know when I was young everybody just got pregnant she said I lived on a whole street of

of you know families and everybody it was more about not getting pregnant than getting pregnant and um and she didn't said I didn't know a single person who had trouble getting pregnant and um and she didn't said i didn't know a single person who had trouble getting pregnant people might have problems with the pregnancy or you know problems with whatever but they didn't have a problem getting pregnant and she said it must be to do with modern life and you can't really argue with that you know obviously there's something there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that it is you know one of the aspects of this is the disconnection with the natural rhythms of life. But as you say, our conundrum now is, well, how do we how do we integrate that knowledge with contemporary life, which is actually so, so based on speed and we're so accustomed to these luxuries like the internet you know what we're talking on now and and just it getting faster and better and having a better connection and

it's interesting to be involved with a topic like menstruation which is so much about actually restoring an ancient essential continuous rhythm in the female reproductive body that has really changed very little, essentially, from what we can tell. The only difference really, well, the main difference is that because we don't have as many children, we have a lot more periods. But other than that, you know, yes, maybe there probably is a lot more endometriosis. And we know for sure there is more infertility, which may have causes that are related to, you know, other factors such as pollution. But we don't know to what extent they might be based on our disconnection from the natural world and from those rhythms. And what we do with that, it's really fascinating. I mean, obviously we carry on doing what we're doing, but I think we have to keep these questions in the forefront of our mind.

It's not really helpful to people to go back to the steiner example it's not really necessarily the best thing to do to just think that a solution is to bring in something from another time we have to really adjust it to what's happening now and what people's needs are now you know maybe um the you know the brain's pretty plastic as an organ maybe the changes that are being created in the brain through using the internet and you know using computers and the other things that we do maybe that is important for our capacity to cope with the problems that we have now you know speeding up technological development is actually vital when we've got the planetary problems that we have. So I think we have to be really kind of open-minded and generous in our assessment. Yes, I love this. I love this curiosity in you. I'm also wondering how we could have possibly

unpicked all this stigma without having all these ways of communicating together across the globe. You know, there are so many of us now absolutely sophie you're absolutely right and i have i have written about this that technology is a big part of um menstrual activism and and exactly this we could not have dissolved the stigma in the way that we have so rapidly really it's been the last 10 years there's been this extraordinary shift in understanding and legitimization of menstruation and that has been largely fueled by social media and then by also the development of fertility tracking apps which again double-edged sword you know does that does all the awareness

then become externalized do you know that you're going to have your period because your app tells you that rather than because you've actually fostered an internal awareness of your body? Or does the app help you feel more in touch with your body? And then what happens to the data that's been gathered by the app? Will that ultimately be used against you? You know, Handmaid's Tale sort of scenario. Now we've got the changes in abortion law in the states there's a lot of fear there about well god now you know the apps can actually say if you missed a period is someone going to come around knock on the door and say what happened

so I think one of the things we can conclude from this is that we're living in a much more complex world in certain ways it's not to say that it wasn't complex before but it's complex differently I know for me one of the things that helps me to hold all of the paradoxes in our world is my menstrual retreat time because I can drop out of time for I mean these days with a toddler it's sort of an hour but it does it does the trick you know and one of the things I loved as I was rereading Her Blood is Gold for this interview was reading about your natural knowing in fact you were guided by a teacher as well I think but to go on retreat at menstruation it was so clear and it

became a really strong practice for you that you would actually go away for five days each each cycle and have that retreat can you tell us about that well that was that was really how I I was researching myself as well as talking to other people when I was preparing, writing Her Blood is Gold. So, yeah, so for two years, I went away for five days every month to a retreat, on a retreat by myself to a cabin on the shore of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. So, yes, that was a very special time it was a fortunate time I didn't have to work during that time so I was able to do it and I learned an awful lot from doing that but then you know life kind of kicked back in in different ways and I started having to make a living again and so I had to you know learn to adjust that and

I still would take some time out when I have my period um mainly by actually adjusting my social life and if I have my period on a weekend I just you know would spend time by myself and then of course then when I went through menopause, that's another interesting shift because you haven't got this very strong body rhythm that's telling you when it's retreat time. I found that really difficult to start with. I felt it was a, you know, it was a big loss. I didn't mind that I didn't have my period so much as I minded that I didn't have this, you know, very strong message from my body about when to retreat and when not. And in fact, I had a very strong experience of what some people call menopausal zest, where you get a lot of energy after you've been through menopause. And

and I, my life became much more worldly, in fact. So what I think about this now is that I think the years when you're menstruating are often for many people it's the years when they have children and I think retreat is also really important when you've got children because you're often juggling lots of different roles you can be extremely busy people are pulling on you for this that and the other um because most women now most menstruators now work as well as raising their children so it's a can be a very hectic time of life and so I think the menstrual retreat is even more important because of that I didn't have caring responsibilities after menopause for a long time. Now I do because I have elderly parents, but really it was just,

I only had to really be concerned about myself. So I did go into a phase where I didn't really take retreats so much. I still had a meditation practice and I would sort of check myself and whether I needed to take some time out. And I would always I have always followed the lunar cycle. So if I can rest at the new moon, I do. But it stopped being such a big rhythm in my life. The other thing is that when you are menstruating, your body is doing this extra work of your menstrual cycle.

And I think part of the reason for a rest at menstruation is it really helps your hormones regulate. And once you've really gone through the big adjustment of menopause and your body is used to running on a different kind of estrogen and a different balance of hormones, you need to, you know, pay attention to your energy, but in a slightly different way. And I'm sure that you need the big rest of the menstrual cycle. But yes, it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a different phase of life, but I'm eternally grateful that I was able to have that two years where I literally took five days out a month to really experience my period but you know that was a very particular life experience and not everyone is going to be able to do that I mean I should say that it didn I mean, living the life I have lived and really

being a pioneer in that territory and really going for it did not help me create financial security for myself, for my life. And that was a trade-off I made willingly, but that's not necessarily something I would advise. Yes. Yeah. We're back to the paradox again back to the nuance we live in a capitalist society that demands certain things of us and we don't just get a home like if we lived in an indigenous society someone would you know some you know all the chaps would come along and build something and that would be that and you don't the land because you're either your ancestors owned it forever or you didn't have a sense of land ownership.

You just lived where you lived, whatever. We live in this ridiculous situation where, you know, homes are extraordinarily expensive. Yeah, so that, you know, I think like a lot of people who get actually drawn to menstrual or cyclical wisdom and these ancient earth teachings I do feel I think I've always felt rather disaffected when it comes to normative capitalist social structures I do look at it and I just go oh that is mad you know why do we organize it that way it doesn't make sense to me. And I know a lot of people for whom it makes perfect sense. They're completely okay with it. They just, they do it, they live it. So there is something deeply alternative and radical, I think, about a menstrual sensibility. Even if some of us managed to get PhDs on the topic and appear quite

conventional in some ways, I think there's something radical about it as an idea. Do you experience it that way? Oh yeah, very much so. I've got a particular passion here because one of the reasons why I left Tree Sisters, the reforestation organisation, was I wanted to see more wealth in the hands of, and more agency and more power in the hands of and more agency and more power in the hands of the women and the people that I was working with who did do have this sensibility and so I actually set up a consultancy a business consultancy guiding small business owners to create more financial stability and to have a bigger impact so I'm with these questions all the time and people come to my you know we've created a program at Red School called Your Cyclical Business.

And people come and say, I don't want to do marketing. I don't want to do all the like business side of business. I just want to do what I'm here to do. And I do, it's a conversation for another time, but I do see how our cyclical intelligence can support us to create sustainable businesses that actually sustain us, you know, as well as the work that we're doing. But yeah, full of nuance and full of paradox. Yes, absolutely. Yes, it is. That's great that you're doing that. No, I'm really impressed

by that. And I think it's really, it's really important because we have to have new models of, you know, how do you market yourself and your business without losing your authenticity? And integrity and being in alignment with your values. And your integrity. Absolutely. Because, you know, when you walk into any of these social media platforms, they encourage you to actually lose integrity in certain ways you know they are constructed I mean we know that for example negative posts on Twitter get far more attention than positive ones and there's a fine line between promoting yourself and presenting a false image of yourself and bragging and you know things that really can go against the grain um of someone who's striving for a life of integrity and then you also have to be careful about getting too precious about that

and moralistic about it and judgy you know so it's um it is a bit of a minefield it is yeah oh but there are so many conversations we could have Laura yeah so there are a couple more things I'd like to ask you about the menstrual retreat and then I'd love to speak to you about your contemporary menstrual studies program what I wanted to ask you was you said that you'd start to experience a kind of clairvoyant state at a certain point and you actually got a download about how to publish your book with HarperCollins in an useful way in one of these windows which I just found really exciting I think you spoke about it in an interview recently did I I wonder what that was um you were talking about how you would have moments of of not necessarily being psychic but

but of seeing and knowing in a way that you didn't normally oh it would be literally being psychic I mean the fifth or sixth day of my period I just if if I could really sit quietly during that time which is quite difficult because your energy is starting to come back up and and so you sort of want to rush around doing things but if I could sit then and just tune into the month that was coming people would come I'd see people who I didn't know I was going to see and then they'd turn up in the month you know I go okay so-and-so is coming to visit or so it was it was um yeah um in terms of getting her blood is gold published I mean that was an extraordinary story really I mean you know I had I had no contacts in publishing or I didn't think I had and then I remembered that I'd met this woman on a retreat before I'd moved to California and that she had worked for a little publishing company, a fairly small publishing company.

And I thought, oh, I'll just write to her. So in those days, it was all letters, you know, so I wrote her a letter. So it's funny to think back to those times. I know. I wrote her a letter saying, you know, hi, I'm writing this book on this. You know, would you have any interest? And she wrote back, she said, oh, yeah, I'm really interested. You know, next time you're in England, you know, come and see me and we'll talk about it. And then I actually, I think I sent her a draft and she said, oh, this is all right. But, you know, I'm not really sure it's, you know, enough or whatever.

I said, oh, I'll carry on working on it it and then her company got bought out by Harper Collins and I was living in San Francisco at this time and Harper Collins had this um major imprint called Harper San Francisco which at that time was publishing women's spirituality books in particular and broader sort of new agey spiritual spirituality books they had a really good reputation and every day on my walk I would walk past their offices and I'd always look at the thing that said Harper San Francisco and go I wonder it's funny isn't it because I've got so many books I'm reading at the moment by them but I didn't I don't think I even dared to think maybe they would publish me anyway so her company got bought by Harvard San Francisco and she said oh

and I'm coming to talk to the editor there who's going to take on some of the books I've been preparing and could we come I'm coming with my boyfriend can we come and stay with you so they turned up on my doorstep brilliant and so I went from knowing nobody to knowing someone who was having a meeting with the editor and she talked to the editor about me and they said so that sounds really interesting let's set up a meeting amazing yeah so it was it could not have been easier actually you know I mean I I all I did was I did write to her in the first place so she knew what I was doing but I wrote the book really just from a sense of this is what I've got to do I didn't know what was going to happen with it I was just I mean you have to think at the time I

just felt completely guided I felt like something was pushing me into it when you asked at the beginning of this conversation what gave you the you know confidence to do this it was it wasn't really me I mean obviously I had enough confidence to do it but it was something else that I was in touch with that was and was your deep deep experience of menstruation was that woven into this it's all it's all completely connected in you can't really tease apart those strands you know what a causes b causes c it was it was a continuous experience over a number of years that took me in yeah magical the other thing we won't talk about it now because I want to talk about your course but there's you you created a map of the menstrual terrain in her blood is gold and these four phases the preparatory phase the release phase the emptiness phase and the wisdom phase

which I just want to point people to your book to explore because they're really beautiful yeah yeah yeah great yeah yeah good done so let's talk about your amazing new offering which you're in the middle of the first round of right now is that true yes we're just about to start the second semester so I did this course I've designed it like a university course so it has two semesters with a quite a break in between them. So the first semester ran from March to June this year and the second one's from September to December. And yes, so this is a first year master's level course on contemporary menstrual studies. So each module, there's 10 modules altogether, and each module looks at menstruation through the lens of a different discipline so um you can look on my website to see what they all are um so that's laraowen.com and the next one for example is on menstruation business and technology um the one after that i, is menstruation and sustainability. And we've already looked at menstruation and feminism, menstrual stigma, where those ideas come from or throughout and various other topics.

And throughout all of them, we look at the ways these have been researched to date. You know, what are what are some good examples examples of research that's been done on this topic, which are the best books and papers to read to give yourself a grounding in that. And also what research methods and theories are being used to interpret, to either get the information through the research and then how it's interpreted. So what I wanted to do with this course was to really help people who work in the field of menstruation, whether they're menstrual educators or advocates or activists or, you know, whether they work for foundations or businesses or whatever, or whether they're thinking of doing a PhD or there are two students on the course this year who are doing a PhD on menstruation, that it would give them, you know, give students the grounding to become better communicators in

the field, to feel more solid, that they really understand what's going on, and that they understand how to gauge which research is good and which maybe is a little bit flaky so you learning how to read an academic paper is a big part of it so yeah and just it has gone so well I'm so pleased with it I mean this first year I restricted the numbers because I wasn't sure you know what the load would be and I wanted to make sure I could look after everyone so it's 15 students who this year who come from nine countries um which includes Iran, India, Nepal, Pakistan as well as the US, UK, Australia and some European countries and Mexico, Germany so that really, I'm so pleased

with that, because that means that the cohort, when everyone comes together, there's this real variety of experience. So people are learning from each other in that way. It's taught through a combined lecture and seminar format, like a fairly traditional university course. So there's a lecture and a seminar on each topic and then there are some assignments not too burdensome but there are some assignments and a lot of reading so yeah I'm really I'm really pleased with how it's going I'm going to be able to accept more students next time because I know what I'm doing with it. And there are some scholarships available for people from low to middle income countries. Brilliant. So you spoke to the students who are on the course. Who else would you say it's for?

People who are really interested in menstruation as a topic and who want to become more proficient in their understanding of what we know and what we don't know. I mean, I felt there was a real gap in that there isn't any course like this being taught anywhere. And I was also aware it was a good complement to courses such as the Red School and other courses, which are really fantastic on teaching people how to develop their own inner experience and bring a whole wealth of knowledge about lived experience of menstruation and menopause to the courses that they run, but aren't so academic and don't necessarily emphasize the research that's being done. I also wanted to, you know, try and make the way that academic research is taught, make it a bit more holistic. So also to bring in that the more holistic and spiritual and alternative ideas and to look also to look at them critically and go, OK, what out of this do we have any research to back this up? And if we don't have research,

that doesn't necessarily mean this isn't authentic or genuine or real or useful. It just means, it means no one's done any research on it and which of these aspects could really use some research, you know, and to encourage people to actually start to think in research terms about some of the things we've discussed today, for example. And so it's, it really is a course that aims to sort of bridge those worlds of academia on the one side and the sort of alternative and more spiritual world in which was the only place that was paying attention to menstruation for a long time yes yes um and it really sort of held that candle alight for many

years when you know it was very very hard to do academic work on menstruation um because of all the prejudice against it yeah oh and this is so key to um get just totally getting rid of the stigma worldwide is actually having academically approved research about the menstrual cycle and menopause yes thank you lara it's so fantastic that you've created the program so people would visit laraowen.com to explore it yeah yes um and the registration for next year um will open on September the 1st this year. Brilliant. And I'm currently debating whether to start an extra course a bit earlier because at the moment the course is scheduled to start in March.

But I'm thinking about starting because there's been a lot of interest. I'm thinking about starting an extra cohort that would begin in January. But I'm just I've just got a couple of days to figure that out. So check out the website and you'll see what I've decided to do. So, yeah. So if you're interested in the course, do do have a look at my website, Lara Owen dot com. And you can also email me through the website with any questions that you have about it. Brilliant. We're going to have another conversation about menopause soon yeah we'll come out on the podcast soon yes so we'll have a whole other conversation there

and I must tell you I just found a photograph of me and Alexandra Pope taken in 1992 wow we presented a little hour-long workshop together on menstrual wisdom in Australia. That's amazing. Thank you, you two, for breaking ground here. Gosh, so grateful to you both. I did. I look forward to talking with you, Sophie. Thanks so much for doing this. Yeah, thanks, Lara. Thank you for listening to the podcast today and for being part of the community that's gathering around the conversations that we're having i'd love to hear from you if there's someone that you would love us to interview if there's a topic you'd love us to explore you can always email me

at sophie at redschool.net and please do subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already it helps other people to find the podcast all right i look forward to being with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm