Menstruality

The Feminine Path to Leadership
know yourself – live your calling – stand for life
the key for this revolution

The Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme

is the world’s first leadership training designed for pioneers, change-makers, nurturers and creatives to realise your full authority and leadership through the power of the menstrual cycle.

It’s time for women – and all menstruators – to unashamedly claim our power and use it to serve and stand for Life itself. This world needs the full reinstatement of the Feminine for all life to flourish.

In-person and Online

We offer our Menstruality Leadership Programme once a year. This year we are hosting two of these trainings; one in-person for people who can travel to the UK and take two weeks away from home, and one online for people in other parts of the world, or who prefer to study the modules online over a longer period of time.

There is much suffering in the world today; oppression, poverty, injustice and the wilful destruction of the planet – our very life support system.

In amongst this chaos and suffering a healing force is wanting to be known – the power of the Feminine.

Conscious women are setting the pace, demanding to do things on their own terms and modelling a new way that is cyclical, relational and organic, recognising all life as connected and sacred.

Do you long to join this new wave of feminine leadership and be a leader in this
emerging field of Menstruality?
Would you love to restore a feminine spiritual path and practice for yourself
and for the sake of the world?
Do you want to discover your Calling, step more fully into your authority and be a leader in your own unique way?
Your Menstrual Cycle is coded with your unique brand of leadership.

We invite you to join us for the journey of a lifetime, to work with your cycle as your ultimate ally to realising your full authority and leadership/power, for the sake of Life itself.

Register Now

We will plant 10 trees through
TreeSisters when you register

About the Training

Red School’s Menstruality Leadership Programme offers a radically new approach to women’s leadership training based on a cyclical model of development: the menstrual cycle and the psychological and spiritual developmental journey from menarche to menopause and beyond into our mature years.

This is the only comprehensive training of its kind in the world – exploring and developing the exciting new discipline of Menstruality, a discipline that is set to change the way we approach women’s and other menstruators’ wellbeing at all levels of our personal and professional development, creative & spiritual life.

This programme is an initiation into a wholly new consciousness—one that is organised by the dynamic of your menstrual cycle and your journey from menarche to menopause. It is highly experiential requiring deep commitment, engagement and a willingness to meet your edges in order to heal and evolve.
 

The purpose of this training is to evolve you into a leader in the menstruality field

This could mean you go on to:

  • Being a menstruality teacher, guide or mentor.
  • Or infusing menstruality into your existing career/role. For example bringing into your role as a mother, activist or community leader. 
  • Or into your job as an educator, entrepreneur, health practitioner, artist, environmentalist, politician. 

At this point, you need not know what the future holds for you as a menstruality leader. The programme is designed to facilitate this clarity and knowing. It will:

  • Awaken you to a different way of being, perceiving and living in the world, one that is sourced in/from the via negativa, the way of the Feminine. And, through this, you’ll be lowered into a deep well of trusted support and a source of ongoing guidance. 
  • Initiate you into the deep river of your Calling, awakening you to the creative flow of your life and the unique shape and direction of your Menstruality Leadership. 

We do this by:

  • Working the initiatory process of your menstrual cycle through experiential exercises, reflection, sharing and facilitated processing.
  • Giving you an experience of all the elements of the menstruality cosmology so that our menstruality maps become a deeply embodied, implicit knowing in you.
  • Providing a well held container in which you might feel safe to experience and ride the evolutionary forces at work within you

We will not be:

  • Teaching you how to share or teach this work
  • Training you professionally in one-to-one or group facilitation.

    However this programme is the prerequisite for our professional training and can be integrated into any existing coaching, therapeutic or facilitation skills you have.

It is a training rooted in an apprenticeship to your own lived experience of the menstrual cycle** that will:

  • Ground you in a custom-made personal and spiritual development programme for life.
  • Give you clear information, and growing skill and authority to share, teach and facilitate this work.
  • Guide you to establish an ongoing discipline of Menstrual Cycle Awareness as a life practice.
  • Embed you within the Red School menstruality community – creating collegiality, friendship and creative support networks.
  • Initiate you into the via negativa – the way of the Feminine.

You will learn how to:

  • Forge an intimate relationship with your cycle, to recover a deeply felt sense of trust, worthiness and belonging in your being as a woman.
  • Awaken and activate the inner architecture of the menstrual cycle as the feminine pathway to personal healing, creativity and spiritual awakening.
  • Root into your cycle experience and how to work it as an evolutionary process from menarche to menopause.
  • Step into your own authority with menstruality so you can find your own voice and express your unique vibrancy, creativity and leadership in the world.

** If you don’t have a menstrual cycle, you can work with the moon cycle. The patterning is the same although the menstrual cycle is felt more deeply as it is an embodied process. If you are on the cusp of or have crossed the menopause, you will work retrospectively recovering something of your menstrual cycle story, understanding how the cyclical powers exist within you still and how to honour them, while also exploring this in the context of the transition of menopause itself. If you are pregnant or in early motherhood your exploration of the menstruality maps and the creative process will support the initiation you’re currently in.

This recording is last year's introduction to the 2020 MLP online:

‘Western women long for a modern cosmology that inspires us to be our whole selves: passionate, powerful and instinctual. Menstruality is the golden thread in a living tapestry that is being woven by women around the world. It helps us make sense not just of our own cycles, but our souls and our deeper calling to create a new story for womankind, the womb of the world.’
Clare Dubois
Founder, Treesisters

What women are saying...
This menstruality work has, and continues, to influence my life at the deepest level and I thank you for, and honour you for this amazing gift that you have given, to me, to so many others. As you know, my own entrance at the door of menopause was pretty dramatic, and I can honestly say that without the understanding I had from the training, from practicing cycle awareness and of the menopause rite of passage, I don’t think I would have got through it.
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Doing the training was one of the best decisions of my life. As a holistic therapist and yoga and meditation teacher, the training and my own practice with MCA are priceless in the work that I do. Teaching and sharing this deep wisdom with women, I see the profound change and understanding that develops in them; the healing, the delight in finding where their power and happiness lies.
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Working with my own cycle brought me to a place of really meeting my power and honouring myself and it gives me so much pleasure to see this happening for other women. This truly is the absolute ‘key’ to women’s wholeness on all levels. The more women that become educators of this deep wisdom and share it, the quicker the earth and this world will heal.
Nalini Deane
Women’s Wellness Therapist, Yoga and Meditation teacher and Dance of Awareness teacher, 2014
You would not be able to fully understand how much my life has changed or how much you and the other women in the MLP Tribe have changed my life. One of things that I have learned from you…is that I must learn to trust. You trust and you have co-created with the divine. You have touched so many lives. And now the women in the MLP tribe are motivated to go out and help and serve other women! I never imagined or even believed that I could be this well and I know that I still have a lot to do. But here is the big change for me, I am actually getting on with it. I am all zipped up, a whole complete woman full of light, dark, softness, harshness. So while I had absolutely no intention of enjoying this journey…I am loving it! Not that it is easy on the contrary, but it is blissful because it is honest, real and true!
Althea Hart
Community worker, 2012/13
The best thing I have ever done! To learn to live The Womanly Way, to befriend myself in all (yes, all!) seasons of my menstrual cycle, to delve where I have never delved before, and come out feeling so, so alive and juicy wanting to share it with my sisters. This apprenticeship has given me the biggest Mother-Hug of my life!
Jane Legge
2012/13
The Curriculum

The aim of the Menstruality Leadership Program is to restore the initiatory process that is held within the menstrual cycle and in the arc of the menstrual journey from menarche to menopause, and in so doing to fully name and thus make explicate the spiritual path and practice encoded in a menstruator’s body.

In this training we will encounter and explore seven key elements of menstruality:

1. Initiatory journey

  • Initiatory arc each menstrual month
  • From menarche to menopause (including how it prepares you for the initiatory journey of conception, pregnancy, birth and motherhood)
  • Initiation is the evolutionary path to psychological and spiritual maturity—a death and rebirth process, moving from ego to Self, from ‘me’ to ‘us’, developing participatory consciousness
  • The menstrual cycle + menstrual cycle awareness = the ‘gold’ of your Calling (an alchemical process)

2. The birthings (peak moments of  initiation)

  • Birth
  • Menarche
  • Monthly menstruation
  • Menopause
  • And for women who have children, giving birth

3. The Three Inner Maps (the inner architecture of the menstrual cycle)

  • The vias (via positiva—first half of cycle, via negativa—second half of cycle)
  • The inner seasons (the workhorse of the initiatory process) + the cross over days
  • The 5 chambers of menstruation (which mirror the five stages of menopause)

4. The layers (the processes at work through the initiatory arc of your life)

  • Wellness—self care (modulating the nervous system; the cycle is stress sensitive and the act of cycle awareness is soothing), inner work, building the initiatory vessel, restoring (establishing) the order of the cycle/restoring (establishing) the psychological inner ecology. Predominates in 20/30s
  • Creativity—finding and fulfilling your Calling. Predominates in 40s
  • Spirituality—putting together Wellness and Creativity, gives you the means to experience the full ineffability of menstruation, the Holy Intimacy. Operating in the background through all the years and reaching its zenith in the 50s and onwards

5. The three archetypal powers

  • The power of agency (via positiva)
  • The power of encounter (via negativa)
  • The power of presence (the meeting and integration of the two vias)

6. The role of the inner critic in the initiatory journey

  • Wellness—build the inner container, establish your boundaries, face your shadow
  • Creativity—holds you to your Calling; refine, edit and clean up your act; create mastery, become an authority
  • Spirituality—grow the muscle of discernment, the gatekeeper of the holy grail, calls you into leadership, matures you into a truth speaker

7. The four psycho-spiritual menstruality foundations for healing

  • The archetypal menstrual maps – an understanding of the cycle’s inner architecture is a core pillar of healing for women, establish your boundaries, face your shadow
  • Menstrual cycle awareness – as a potent form of medicine that can ease symptoms in and of itself
  • The natural order of the cycle – restoring our inner ecology
  • Honouring the Via Negativa – reframing the pre-menstruum, a psychological underpinning needed to reclaim our feminine power

What you won’t get from the Menstruality Leadership Programme

  • The physiology of the menstrual cycle
  • Instruction in how to do fertility awareness
  • Specific details/material on how to prepare young girls for their first period, although we will speak of the ingredients for celebration of this. (Check out the work of Jane Bennett and Celebration Day for Girls for training in the girls’ work.)
  • Specific instruction in how to facilitate this work although you can use the exercises you learn on the course, with an appropriate credit to Red School. Many of the previous apprentices have gone on to set up their own workshops/programmes driven by a passion for the work and with the skills they already have. The vital first step towards facilitation is your own embodiment of the material—you can only teach what you have deeply felt. We will be offering further training in the Menstruality Medicine Circle Process in the future
Register Now

Personally you will receive:

  • A detailed and intimate grounding in your own cycle pattern through its various seasons and layers
  • An ability to read your cycle’s signs for insight into your own nature, needs and Calling
  • An appreciation of your strengths and vulnerabilities and how to care for and capitalise on them
  • A self–care tool kit
  • Greater clarity and connection to your Calling – your Wild Power
  • An emerging inner authority
  • A feeling of being recognised / seen by yourself and others
  • A community of sisters who are on your side with support, insight, cheerleading and extraordinary wisdom and skills to share
  • A deeper understanding of the Feminine and a stronger capacity to realise its presence in the world

Professionally, you will gain

  • An inner authority to share and facilitate this knowledge
  • An understanding of menstruality – can be used to hold menstruality circles and/or offer menstruality coaching
  • Apply menstruality within your chosen field/profession
  • Become an advocate/activist for menstruality in the world – raising awareness
  • Develop your personal expertise or area of speciality within the menstruality field, for example birth, motherhood, menopause*, research, mental health
  • Embed within a professional menstruality peer group
  • Be a forerunner in the menstruality movement

* If you want to teach and coach in the area of menopause, you would also need to attend our Menopause: unveiling the hidden power workshop or Menopause Online Course. As we are unable to cover the full scope of the menopause transition itself. Please note: we don’t teach you how to teach this material but rather support the awakening of your authority to do that.

Watch our introductory event to
find out more about the leadership programme
What women are saying...
The Menstruality Leadership Programme is a rare gift; a unique opportunity for self discovery that opens doors to every aspect of our reality. It is humbling to see how far I have come myself in terms of emotional strength and awareness. The programme has enabled me to embody an understanding of how vital it is for women to befriend their menstrual consciousness – undoubtedly a fast track to progress in terms of personal development. As these past 9 months have been possibly the most insightful and potent of my life so far, I look to the future with intrigue, awake to the manifold possibilities that Alexandra and The MLP have brought.
Penny Fuller
Yoga Teacher, 2011/12
As someone who has grappled with the ‘feminine principle’ and how to recover it to some balance in my own life, the Menstruality Leadership Programme takes the notion of the restoration of the feminine principle into a grounded embodied place. After years of trying to search for answers this training has revealed much to me, and drawn it out from within; clarity, how I operate in the world and a very clear path of what I need to do now. Practical magic! I’m finally feeling at home in myself for the first time ever. The impact has been massive for me.
Adrienne Egan
Maya Massage therapist and healer, 2011/12
The Menstruality Leadership Programme is nothing short of a miracle. Through the experience, I am delighted to have created a personal, practical and useful toolkit to life, including: a feminine instruction manual on the inner workings of my cycle and the creative process, an internal map that guides me straight to profound connection with nature, a sound-proof room to keep my Inner Critic in when it gets too much, a five star cleaning service that has loosened some deep rooted emotional clogs and blockages and a Dictionary of Acceptance that allows all my feelings, thoughts and words to be heard and not judged.
Grace Winteringham
Co-founder PATTERNITY, 2018
Course Prerequisites

The following are prerequisites for participation in the Menstruality Leadership Programme. If you are still in the process of reading the book, please go ahead and register, and ensure you complete it before we begin the programme.

  • Read our Hay House book Wild Power at least once
  • Get stuck into the foundational practice of ongoing menstrual cycle awareness. Above all begin charting your cycle (work with the moon cycle if you are in or post menopause). You can’t know it enough!
Strongly recommended preparation:
Certification Criteria

Once you’ve completed the training and met the criteria outlined below, you’ll be a Certified Red School Menstruality Mentor, and will be listed on our website.

Criteria for Red School Menstruality Mentor Online Certification:

  • Minimum of 10 Listening partnerships
  • Present at 80% homegroup meetings
  • Attend 80% of the weekly live sessions
  • Listen to all teachings
  • Complete all exercises
  • Participate in  2 x MMC sessions with mentor

Criteria for Red School Menstruality Mentor In-person Certification:

  • Minimum of 15 Listening partnerships
  • Present at both in-person residentials
  • Listen to all online audio teachings
  • Participate in 2 x MMC sessions with mentor
  • Present at min. 3 online home group meetings

This course is for you if:

  • You are longing for an immersive deep dive into the world of menstruality.
  • You want to actively participate in a like-minded community of cycle-savvy women.
  • Online participants: You are able to dedicate a minimum of 6-8 hours a week to engage with the material and practice during the two live modules, including: the online teachings, the live sessions, the MMC coaching sessions with your mentor and the zoom homegroup meetings
  • In-person participants: You are able to commit to attending the live residentials from start to finish. And complete: the online teachings, listening partnerships, the MMC coaching sessions with your mentor and the zoom homegroups meetings
  • You are resourced to tend to your inner process and have the support you need to immerse yourself in this work. (It’s important that you have the support to look after yourself as this work can sometimes be catalytic).

This course is not for you if:

  • You’re looking for a quick qualification in the menstruality field.
  • You don’t have the time / space / capacity to attend the live sessions and complete the course work.
  • You don’t want to engage with a community.
  • You are looking for therapy or a quick fix for your menstrual problems.
How to Book

In 2022 we're hosting two of these trainings; one in-person for people who can travel to the UK and take two weeks away from home, and one online for people in other parts of the world, or who prefer to study the modules online over a longer period of time.

What's included?
Whether you choose to join our in-person or online programme, you’ll receive:
  1. 2 x one-to-one coaching, plus 1 x 40 mins orientation session with one of our Red School Leadership Mentors.
  2. A series of online ‘homegroup’ gatherings, with your dedicated Leadership Mentor.
  3. A course website with a series of Menstruality teachings from Alexandra and Sjanie (lifetime access)
  4. A comprehensive 50–page manual.
  5. Closed online group on our community platform, Circle (this proves a valuable resource in the sharing and development of experience).
  6. BONUS: You’ll also receive £50 / US$70 off our Online Wild Power Immersion

Refund policy: If you choose to cancel, you’ll receive a 75% refund until Dec 31st, and a 50% refund until Mar 1st. After that date there will be no further refunds.

In-person

Format:

Two five-day residential trainings at Hawkwood Centre, near Stroud, UK with optional online sharing circle in between modules.
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For you if you live in, or can travel to the UK and take two full weeks away from home.

Dates:

Module One: Sun 24 Apr - Fri 29th Apr 2022
Module Two: Sun Sept 4th - Fri 9th Sept 2022
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Arrival from approx. 5.00pm on the first day and leaving at 4pm on the last day (more information and exact timings will be sent closer to the time.)

Investment

Tuition Fees:

Paid in Full: £2,495 (+ VAT)*
Or Payment Plan: 12 x £215 (+ VAT)

Accommodation and Food
(PER MODULE):

Single £793.31 x 2 (incl VAT)
Shared: £679.98 x 2 (incl VAT)
Non-residential or camping: £524.15 x 2 (incl VAT)

We will book accommodation on your behalf at Hawkwood and will invoice you for the cost, separately to the tuition fees. We require the accommodation cost for each module to be paid for no later than 1st March 2022 and 15th July 2022 respectively.

40 places available

We sell out each year, so please book early to avoid disappointment.

Book Your Place Now

This registration process will take 20-30 minutes and will require some deep thought and reflection - please set aside time to fully complete the process before you begin.

In the event that you can't attend for any reason we recommend you  take out cancellation insurance with Guest First

*VAT is a UK form of tax that is payable by EU and UK residents only. 20% VAT (or the amount of VAT relevant to your country) is payable by everyone for this programme, because the event is being held in the UK.

Online

Format:

Two online 6-week modules.
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For you if you live in other parts of the world, or would prefer to study the modules from home over a longer period of time.

Dates:

Module One: Friday 6th May -  Friday 17th June 2022
Module Two: Friday 9th Sept - Friday 21st October 2022

Live sessions & homegroups:

When you book, you’ll be invited to choose between two live call times, as well as a series of homegroup times. These will be offered on a first come, first served basis.
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Live group time options:
Mondays 11am - 1.30pm New York EDT/ 4pm - 6.30pm London BST

Tuesdays 8:30am - 11am London BST/ 5.30pm - 8pm Sydney AEST-AEDT

Investment

Paid in Full: US$3,515 (£2,495) (+ VAT)*
Or Payment Plan: 12 x US$310 (£215) (+ VAT)

96 places available

We sell out each year, so please book early to avoid disappointment.

Book Your Place Now

This registration process will take 20-30 minutes and will require some deep thought and reflection - please set aside time to fully complete the process before you begin.

*VAT is a UK form of tax that is payable by EU and UK residents only. Your 20% VAT (or the amount of VAT relevant to your country) will be calculated and added when you register.

Through the Red School Menstruality Foundation we’re able to offer some full and partial scholarships for our programmes. The deadline for scholarships this year has passed and scholarships have been allocated.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Therapeutic resources

We aim to create a supportive and safe community within which you can explore deeply the inner forces of your body. However, such is the power of menstruality, we have found that the initial awakening to this work can sometimes be challenging and catalytic. It is therefore important that you have some personal development skills and your own therapeutic resources in place should you need it.

Your guides

Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer & Alexandra Pope

Co-directors of Red School, Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer have developed a radical new approach to women’s health and wellbeing, creativity, leadership and spiritual life, based on the power of the menstrual cycle.

With combined experience in the fields of psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, coaching, embodied movement practices, teaching and facilitation, they are published authors and experts in the field of women’s wellbeing and spirituality. They are a very creative and productive partnership, bringing liberal doses of irreverent humour to their work.
Our Team

Leadership Mentors

Meet Penny Fuller, Jane Watson,
Jady Mountjoy and Abi Denyer-Bewick.

Our faculty at Red School are a team of accomplished, wise and insightful menstruality mentors who collectively bring over three decades of cycle awareness to the Menstruality Leadership Programme.

Working one-to-one through your Menstruality Medicine Circle sessions, as well as guiding your homegroups, your dedicated leadership mentor will tend to your challenges, celebrate your progress and hold you through your initiatory process.

Abi, Jane, Jady and Penny each bring a unique blend of cycle wisdom to the programme, gained from years of being worked by their cycles, as well as apprenticing with Alexandra and Sjanie through all the Red School leadership trainings. As expert pioneers in the field of Menstruality they will support you to embody the living Inner Intelligence of your cycle, champion you to step ever deeper into your authority and walk with you as you forge an intimate and trusting relationship with your cycle.

FAQs
What is Menstruality?
Should I do the in-person programme or the online programme?
Who is this course for?
Does this programme give me a certification?
Can this programme be used as Continued Professional Development (CPD / CEU)?