Cosmopolitan named 2015 as “the year the period went public”.
Newsweek declared 2016 as “the year of menstrual change”.
In 2019, a film about periods won an Oscar.
Taboos are being healed, shame is dissolving. A new movement, the menstruality movement is going global…
Whether you’re new to cycle awareness or you’re a leader in this field, our new weekly podcast will inspire you to activate your vitality, creativity and leadership through the magic of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause.
Whether you’re new to cycle awareness or you’re a leader in this field, our *brand new* weekly podcast will inspire you to activate your vitality, creativity and leadership through the magic of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause.
to develop a radical new approach to health, creativity, leadership and spiritual life. And the best bit? It’s rooted in the bloody, wild, radical power of the menstrual cycle.
We warmly welcome you to join us as we speak with the pioneers, troublemakers and culture-shifters who are leading the menstruality movement.
We’ll release a new episode every Thursday and you can subscribe today wherever you listen to podcasts.
Recent Episodes
Welcome to number five of our bonus Wild Power series. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.
Today we're diving deep into an exploration of the "cosmos" inside you. We reveal the basic pattern of this cosmos - the two energy dynamics (the way of the Feminine and the way of the Masculine) - that form the underpining of your cyclical life journey.
This is our fourth bonus Wild Power conversation. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.
In the fourth installment of the series, we explore the initiatory process that is unfolding from menarche to menopause, leading you ever deeper into embracing your Wild Power. We illuminate how this initiatory path is working you - an amazing hidden intelligence that is leading you Home.
Chloe Isidora is the creator of My Moon Power, a set of essential oils to help you connect to yourself and your menstrual cycle process through the inner seasons. She is also the author of 'Sacred self-care: everyday rituals for a more joyful and meaningful life' and has worked with women and womb-bearers for almost two decades to restore their connection with their womb space, encourage self-care and teach practices that heal, empower and enhance lives.
She’s a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and has a deeply devoted practice of menstrual cycle awareness. We invited her to the podcast to explore her creative process over the past several years, through a cycle-aware lens. It’s a beautiful, inspiring and very relatable journey from self doubt, uncertainty and low self esteem, through a series of unexpected twists and turns to a life where she is living her Calling through the My Moon Power project.
Today we're excited to share our third bonus Wild Power conversation. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.
Five years ago, when women’s educator, storyteller and songstress, Tara Brading was burnt out from the hustle culture of the non-profit world, she dropped everything and went on a pilgrimage to Ireland to connect with her Irish ancestral lineage. This trip changed her life, setting her on a path of studying mythology and honoring the earth based feminine wisdom left in her blood and bones.
This episode is for you if you feel a call to reclaim the wisdom of your ancestors, to return to a way of living on earth which is balanced, to heed the call to the wild that you perhaps (like me) hear each cycle month when you bleed or during your menopause process…
It’s also for you if you are committed to decolonising your mind and your life as part of your leadership path. I’ve been lucky to have had conversations with several Black and Indigenous educators for the podcast who have clarified the connection between reclaiming the cyclical wisdom of our wombs and bodies, and dismantling colonial systems of oppression (such as Latham Thomas in episode 77, Asha Frost in episode 63 and Hinewai Waitoa in episode 87). With Tara, I explore how, particularly as white women of European descent, reconnecting to our ancestral lineage goes hand in hand with the journey of decolonisation.
While there are many wonderful spiritual practices available today, the one thing we are not taught is that we have our own unique way or practice encoded in our being that changes everything. In this episode we restore menstrual cycle awareness as the original spiritual practice, and how it can support each of us to evolve, every day.
This 2nd bonus episode in our Wild Power series was recorded when Red School founders, Alexandra & Sjanie first launched their Wild Power book - and have a buy one get one free offer on the Wild Power book until 21st December, if you’d like to buy one and get one for a friend or as a gift for a loved one over the holidays.
(We’re also running the offer for our menopause book, Wise Power).See below for the link to get your free copy.
At the heart of the menstruality leadership path is the power and wisdom of menstruation. Slowly over time, bleed by bleed, we have the opportunity to experience a profound kind of homecoming when we menstruate - we remember who we are and what we’re about. This sense of purpose and meaning can fuel us up for another cycle of leading with heart, power and courage in our lives.
In today’s conversation we look at three secrets for successful leadership that can emerge from conscious, rested menstruation (however much we’re able to do that within the structures of our world and the responsibilities of our lives) through our own personal stories, menstrual dreams and trying to articulate the often wordless and deeply mysterious knowings we’ve experienced during our bleed time.
For centuries we’ve been taught our menstrual cycle is a liability, something we must ignore or reject. In this special bonus episode we’re going to upend that old story and celebrate the power of loving your cycle or at least making tentative steps towards befriending it, and the inner resources you unlock when you do that.
This conversation was recorded when we first launched our Wild Power book - and have a buy one get one free offer on the Wild Power book until 21st December, if you’d like to buy one and get one for a friend or as a gift for a loved one over the holidays. (We’re also running the offer for our menopause book, Wise Power). See below for the link to get your free copy.
Today’s episode is for you if - like me - you long to feel more calm, rested, peaceful and grounded throughout your days. Both because it feels better, but also because you know the gold that lies in this state of restedness; for your health, your relationships, your worklife, and your leadership.
Our guest is Tracee Stanley, the author of the bestselling book Radiant Rest, and the recently published The Luminous Self. She is a post-lineage yoga teacher, inspired by more than 20 years of study, and she’s devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidra, rest, meditation, self-inquiry, nature as a teacher, and ancestor reverence.
We chat about how to set up a practice that allows for rest inside a mainstream culture that says we’re not worthy unless you’re pushing through; whether that’s pushing through grief, illness, exhaustion or menstruation and menopause. Through it all, Tracee illuminates how deep rest, peace and truth are our birthright.
When Alexandra began to experience monthly outrageous period pain in her 30s, she made a radical decision. She thought “my body is talking to me, and I’m going to listen”. On the podcast today she reflects on this moment as a pivotal step into leadership… one that led to the development of everything that Red School has created.
The pain forced her to give space to her bleed time, which allowed her to slowly, cycle-by-cycle discover the spiritual powers of menstruation, and cycle awareness as a pathway to
It was the starting point for many of the cycle-inspired leadership skills that we now teach on our Menstruality Leadership Programme - it’s exciting because the doors for 2024 are opening again later this month - and through our conversation, we illuminate how the menstrual cycle and menopause can awaken us to a new (timeless) kind of consciousness which inspires a way of living and leading that is life-affirming, inclusive, and rooted in belonging.
Menopause awakens us to the vulnerability of our humanity. The structures that have long held us safe begin to crack, and we lose the mechanisms we’ve used to hold ourselves in place; our bodies change, our shifting hormones rewire our psyches, our long held identities are shaken.
It’s no wonder we can start to feel that we’re “losing it” - all the layers of certainty that we’ve come to depend on are being deconstructed; from our health, to our careers, to our marriages, to even the deep meaning of our lives.
The radical idea we explore in today’s conversation, is that this process of ‘losing it’ is a necessary - albeit very challenging - part of the menopause spiritual initiation. If you’re in the middle of this messy process, may this episode offer some supportive context, meaning and even solace to you today.
Today we’re carrying on a conversation about the initiatory power of menopause which we’ve been having with Chameli Ardagh, the founder of Awakening Women, since the beginning of her menopause process.
Last year she emerged from her challenging process of descent and is sharing the fruits of her brutal, yet beautiful menopause underworld journey; which included divorce, the reshaping of her Calling, and the death of her son.Chameli Ardagh is a yogini, mystic and Goddess Wisdom Keeper. Her work is rooted in earth honoring, devotional women’s spirituality and goddess centered tantric yoga.
One of the things I most love about her is her gift for storytelling and ability to bring ancient myths alive for our modern world.
Our guest today, Lisa Schrader is the founder of Awakening Shakti and the author of Getting Started with Tantra and has impacted the lives of thousands of women for over a decade as a workshop leader, author, speaker and coach.
She joined us for our live menopause course - Menopause: The Great Awakener - last year… (the doors just opened yesterday, and the early bird is available until Oct 25th - more about that later).
Today, she shares how the course supported her through the 3-year post menopause dismantling-shedding-rebuilding re-birthing she’s currently emerging from. It’s been a deep process of dismantling old identities and recovering from a lifetime of over-achieving, pressure, performance, and people pleasing, to awaken the Queen archetype and a new kind of sovereignty.
My guest today is one of many people who felt like she was losing her mind as she entered menopause.
Dr. Arianna Sholes-Douglas is an integrative healthcare practitioner and visionary in the field of women’s health. She has practiced medicine for three decades and is the author of The Menopause Myth: What Your Mother, Doctor, and Friends Haven’t Told You about Life after 35
The menopause was intense for her, and inspired her to reassess everything in her life, including her long career in medicine, eventually making the decision to transform her work life and start a practice supporting women in menopause with an integrative, holistic approach.
- We walk through Dr Arianna's 'signs you’re healing in menopause' and how they showed up for her personally, including the patterns that she broke through menopause, how to find our way to self forgiveness, and how to set boundaries.
- How our brain chemistry changes in menopause and how this is reflected in the shift from people pleasing to ‘what do I need?’.
- Dr Arianna's 'Jewels for the Journey' and the sacred role of menopause in our lives.
There's lots of confusion about how to define menopause and the years running up to it, making it difficult for people to clarify where they're at in their menopause process.
At Red School, we stand for a reclamation of our cyclical experience in a world which denies and demonises our cyclicity. We see this menopause confusion as a symptom of the way we have been shut out of our true experience as cyclical beings. In order for us to reclaim the place we’re in, both in our menstrual cycles and the larger cycles of our lives, we need to be able to feel, name and claim our own experience, as well as having a dignified and meaningful context for it.
So, in today’s episode Alexandra and Sjanie walk through the Red School way of contextualising menopause, through the lens of the seasons of your menstruating years—including the autumn of your menstruating years (‘The Quickening’), the Menopause Hinterland in the approach to menopause, and the long inner winter of the five phases of the spiritual initiation of menopause.
Those of us who are passionate about the power of menstrual cycle awareness can feel a little crazy in our world. Not only does our culture overlook the power of the menstrual cycle, but it continues to perpetuate an atmosphere of shame around all things menstrual.
That’s why I love meeting women like Jasmine Alicia Carter.
Jasmine is a Menstrual Artist and Feminine Empowerment Mentor. She’s been painting with her period blood since 2016. It’s become a sacred art and ritual that has changed her life and the lives of thousands of women across the globe, through the budding Menstrual Art Movement!
When Lucy Pearce published her book about the power of the menstrual cycle, Moon Time: Harness the ever-changing energy of your menstrual cycle 11 years ago, she was one of very few people talking about periods, and it was one of the first books in print to speak about the Red Tent movement.
Over the past decade her loyalty to her cycle has helped her as a multi-passionate creatrix to write twelve books, found Womancraft - a paradigm-shifting publishing house, edit and publish over 50 books, teach courses, create beautiful art and parent three children.
Five years ago she received an autism diagnosis, and in our conversation today we explore how this had helped her to understand herself far better, have tools to care for herself and manage her life as a cycle-aware creative in an all-too-linear world.
Today I’m speaking with someone who knows in a very embodied way how to ride the creative waves of cyclical living… mainly because she knows how to ride actual ocean waves, and in some cases we’re talking 30 foot waves.
Easkey Britton spearheaded women’s big-wave surfing in Ireland and is a five time national champion surfer as well as being a marine scientist, holding a Doctorate in Environment and Society and an activist - she was named an ‘Agent of Change’ by Surfer magazine.
She’s the author of two beautiful books about our interconnection with water, Saltwater in the Blood and Ebb and Flow. She was writing her first book when she joined Alexandra and Sjanie for the Menstruality Leadership Programme and it is woven throughout with celebration of her own bodily cycles.
We explore how water supports Easkey through the cyclicality of her creative process, including...
What to do when you find yourself in a creative void, either because life has thrown you a curve ball, or you find yourself feeling totally uninspired? Our cycles teach us to trust the fallow times, but that’s a tall order in a world that celebrates productivity above all else.
Our guest today is author, Rebecca Campbell and she’s a great person to have this conversation for many reasons, but especially because she’s personally navigated many periods of creative void in order to bring forth creations which have touched the lives of 100s of 1000s of people, including several books, courses, a new podcast and a mystery school.
The deeper reason for the richness of this conversation is that Rebecca is a being who fully embraces the mystery. She defines herself as a mystic, and her calling is to weave the sacred back into everyday life.
As cycle-aware leaders, nurturers and creatives we have a unique opportunity at our fingertips. We have access to an amazing inner technology for managing our inner critic.
(You know… that ever-present and frankly infuriating voice inside that likes to remind you that you’re not good enough, that freezes you into analysis paralysis, and that shames you into playing small.)
In today’s podcast we explore how to restore this inner critic to its natural home in the cycle - the pre-menstruum - and work to put boundaries in place to contain it. Because, when it’s in its rightful place, the inner critic can actually become a creative ally.
Today we’re talking about womb healing and leadership with Tumelo Moreri who is a Spiritual Healer, Womb Medicine Woman and Embodied Leadership Guide based in Botswana. Her work is anchored in her training in leadership and integrative coaching as well as African Spirituality.
It’s a far-reaching conversation, rich in story and sprinkled all throughout with embodied feminine wisdom.
Today we’re picking up an important thread we’ve been weaving through the podcast since the beginning - Queer Menstruality.
I'm back with Red School Leadership Mentor, Abi Denyer-Bewick and this time we're in conversation with the brilliant Lottie Randomly who graduated from the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme in 2012.
Lottie is a facilitator, educator, activist, writer and mentor with a background in mental health work and resilience building. They’re also a ceremonialist, with a special interest in funerals, and they’re especially drawn to the inner landscapes that people often fear passing through, such as menstruation and menopause as well as death and grief.
In our conversation to day we’re looking to expand the concepts around menstruality to include all people who menstruate - as well as people who don’t - all in the name of belonging, which is at the heart of this work.
- How the practice of menstrual cycle awareness naturally brings up questions and personal exploration around the identities we hold.
- How to expand the conversation around menstruality expands to include the experiences of all people with menstrual cycles, including non-binary and gender-expansive folks.
- “Menstrunormativity” and the harmful impacts around the unsaid assumptions about the menstrual cycle and menopause.
Today we’re talking about menopause and creativity. In Alexandra and Sjanie’s menopause book, Wise Power, they speak about there being an ‘altar’ at the heart of the inner sanctum of menopause, “the point of deepest dark in which you experience the hot breath of your inner critic on the back of your neck, and you turn to fully face it.”
They go on to speak about how this powerful moment forges a new level of authority, a kind of authority that can be incredibly fertile ground for your creative process.
This has been true for my guest Elena Brower. She is prolifically creative; the author of several books, a new volume of poetry, and the creator of yoga programmes, paintings and more, alongside running a successful business.
She’s also passionate about re-writing the cultural menopause story (she recently interviewed Alexandra and Sjanie for an exciting menopause upcoming event - more about that soon…).
- How she’s experiencing a kind of creative re-birth a year and a half after her last period - a new kind of harmony happening, which is allowing her to think and make things that she’s never considered before.
- Why older women believe in themselves more and care less about what others think and how it feels to be catching glimpses of a full acceptance of herself in this phase of life.
- Her current greatest creative challenges, and how she’s navigating them.
What happens when two people go through the spiritual initiation of menopause as a couple? Today we’re exploring the challenges and power of the menopause transition through the lens of intimate relationship, with our guests, anthropologist, facilitator, writer and mother Sophia Style and meditation teacher, pilgrim, and death doula Gemma Polo.
This conversation is a precious gift - Gemma and Sophia are generous and courageous enough to invite us into some of their most intimate moments of challenge, conflict and connection from the past eight years, since they met, fell in love, and built a life together in Spain, co-parenting their children, and more recently navigating the five phases of menopause alongside each other.
What if there is a direct connection between your pleasure and your power? And what if harnessing the magic of inner summer of the menstrual cycle - the ovulation phase - is the key to unleashing a deeply pleasurable, full expression of who you are in the world?
We believe that both of these statements are true, but - as we explore in this podcast - a profound reclamation of the true power of inner summer is necessary, in a world which demands us to be in an endlessly productive summer-mode all of the time.
As a result of all the societal projections created by hustle and beauty culture, the power of summer is much misunderstood, and many people struggle with it. Today we share ideas for how we can free ourselves from the narrow band of experience within which we’re told to operate, so that our unique magnetism and authenticity can be fully inhabited.
What helps you to navigate the tender process of bringing your tender, intimate dreams and visions into reality?
In our episode today - which is the next in our creativity series - we hear from Joni, Jenny and Chloe, three of the people in our community who have shared their current greatest creative challenges. They are all currently negotiating the beginning of their creative process of birthing a new body of work, expressing big ideas through writing, and creating a community event respectively.
Alexandra and Sjanie bring wisdom from The Creative Cycle - the blueprint for creative fulfillment that they have unearthed from their decades of menstrual cycle work to explore challenges like: “I’m good at exploring but not so good at putting pen to paper.”, “I feel frustrated with myself as the ‘always dreaming big but never actually doing anything’ person.” and “The size of the vision is overwhelming and I'm not sure where to start.”
We explore:
Six years ago dedicated imperfectionist and mushroom-foraging witch of business, Lucy AitkenRead moved her family from South London, UK to a yurt in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand where they share their off grid farm with another family and are all unschooling their kids. She now writes and teaches about sustainable living, attachment parenting and living a life without school on her blog, youtube channel and in her courses.
Lucy is also passionate about cycle awareness and today we’re talking about how intimacy to our cycles is the best possible foundational for anything we’re creating, why we all need to be more mammal, and how to free ourselves from the structures that hold us back from creatively expressing ourselves - aka how we can each unschool our creativity.
(This is the second in our summer creativity series where Sophie will be interviewing Alexandra & Sjanie as well as a group of special guests about a cyclical approach to creativity, in the run up to the launch of our brand new course, Your Creative Power, starting in September. Find out more here: www.redschool.net/creativity)
Today I’m back with Alexandra & Sjanie and we’re kicking off a series which will unfold all the way through the summer - our Creativity series. Because these two powerhouse creative mavens have finally landed their teachings on creativity - born from the menstrual cycle and relevant to us all, whether you currently have a menstrual cycle or not.
They’ll be sharing these teachings around what they call ‘The Creative Cycle’ for the first time ever this September in our new creativity course, and you can join us for our free webinar on July 12th to learn all about both The Creative Cycle and the course.
In today’s conversation we explore how we’re all innately creative, how The Creative Cycle can free us up from self doubt, shame, procrastination and every other creative block we face, and how Alexandra and Sjanie have worked with these teachings to make everything they’ve created at Red School…
Join our free webinar: How menstruality can teach you to live a wildly creative life on July 12th - www.redschool.net/creativity
“You cannot say how many cubic metres make up courage, or what kind of wires you need to construct freedom. What kind of lab do you go into to measure relationships between people?” ~ Minna Salami
When Minna, my guest today, said this, I got shivers up and down my spine (as I did many times, reading her brilliant book, Sensuous Knowledge) as a deeply intuitive woman raised in a hyper-rational world… or as Minna calls it, a world rooted in euro-patriarchal knowledge.
Minna Salami is a Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish feminist author and social critic. Her research focuses on Black feminist theory, contemporary African thought, and the politics of knowledge production, and today we’re exploring Sensuous Knowledge is a model of knowledge rooted in the dynamic landscape of Black feminist thought - one that empowers, enlivens, and liberates, through embodied insight.
When I first dreamed into the Menstruality Podcast, my guest today was one of the first people I knew I wanted to interview, and it’s taken a while, but boy, is it worth the wait!
Tami Lynn Kent is the author of Wild Feminine and the creator of Holistic Pelvic Care, and I’ve been lucky to study with her several times over the past decade - the results have been transformative for me. Today's far-reaching conversation explores the power and medicine we hold in our pelvic bowls and how we can resource ourselves as we 'work on the frontlines of the feminine'.
Understanding how to dismantle racism is a charged and complex topic. So today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness can be a profound ally as we work to unravel our own unconscious bias, and find our way of deconstructing oppressive systems.
My guest is Dr Sunshine Kamaloni who has a PhD in cultural studies and a deep cycle awareness practice. She shares from her own personal journey working with her inner seasons in her equity, inclusion, diversity and belonging work to unpack how the muscles that cycle awareness grow in us can help us to uncover our own personal race story.
Kim McCabe, the founder of Rites for Girls says that without puberty rites of passage, young people self-initiate. The media tells them how they should be and our youngsters create their own ways of proving their adulthood through feats, dares, and adventures. They try to appear like adults in what they do and how they look: using clothes, make-up, drink, cigarettes, cars, and sex.
According to Kim, we grown-ups can take back the role of initiating our children into adulthood, and “the children welcome it, we are fulfilled by it, and a transition that has become defined by its difficulty can become a joyous one.”
In our conversation today we explore how to take back the role of initiating our girls and young people into their menstruating lives.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Claire Baker released her first book, and went into a hyper-productive mode, galvanised by the new world we were all suddenly pushed into.
At the end of 2020 she was depleted, suffering from critic attacks and her ambition completely dissolved. It’s only now in early 2023 that her creative energy is returning.
In our conversation today we speak about the many ways that intimacy with our cycles manage our creative flow, our energy levels, our sense of confidence and purpose and our overall health.
How has your intimacy with your cycle (or your menopause process) changed you, and your life?
It’s an important question to ask, in quiet moments, perhaps in your inner winter. Cycle awareness offers many fruits, and they can easily be missed in a linear world that rarely—if ever—shines a spotlight on your cyclicity and what it is awakening in you.
On the podcast today, the tables are turned as Sjanie asks our host, Sophie this question and they explore what menstrual cycle awareness has taught Sophie over the past decade, particularly when it comes to living her calling and creating things of beauty in the world.
Hinewai Waitoa is doing powerful work to reclaim Maori menstrual wisdom. In her words: “Colonisation took so much of what was magic about Maori culture when it came to things like menstruation practices. We are still reclaiming our sacred ways here in Aotearoa”.
Hinewai is a māmā to two unschooled mini beings and the creator of Waikuranuku Indigenous devoted to wholistic womb wellness, reclamation & womb sovereignty.
Her reclamation journey has unfolded over the past 15 years and she now lives her life purpose holding space for kōhine - girls, wāhine - women, tāne - men and whānau - families, to reconnect to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the womb, heal inter-generational trauma and create a more nourishing connected loving earth for all living beings.
- How Hinewai is currently preparing her tamahine - her daughter - for her menarche rite of passage.
- What it means to “speak aroha” - love - into the centre of our beings, and how to work with it as a powerful menstrual practice, and an act of rebellion which creates deep, inner alignment.
- What is inside Hinewai’s ‘kete ikura” - her menstrual cycle basket - and how she uses it to keep her anchored into a real, lived honouring of her cycle.
How do you experience the pre-ovulation phase of your cycle - your inner spring? Is it a time of ease and flow, or perhaps anxiety and insecurity? Maybe a mixture of both?
Whatever your experience, we hope that today's episode will shed some light on the powers of inner spring for you. It's our first Q+A episode where Red School founders Alexandra and Sjanie will answer your questions about how to work with your cycle in the pre-ovulation phase.
We explore questions like:
- What to do if your experience of inner spring is different to many people, due to health challenges, and how to handle the shame that can arise?
- How to hold yourself when emotional vulnerabilities and wounds come up in inner spring
- How to emerge tenderly from your bleed in a world that often doesn’t support that, and how to meet the rising energy of spring in a generative way, especially when it appears as anxiety and insecurity.
Today we’re welcoming back Ruby May to the podcast, who is the new community leader here at Red School. Ruby is the founder of the Know Your Flow cycle awareness course and community - she’s an earth-lover, a truth-seeker, an edge-dweller and a mischief-maker passionate about how we can each midwife a culture of deeper connection – to our bodies, each other and our planet through menstrual cycle awareness.
I’ve been loving working with Ruby lately to co-create our new MLP grads community, The Hive, we’ve been riffing a lot about the power of cycle-aware friendship and community, and today Sjanie is joining us. So, if you ever feel lonely in your cycle awareness practice, or like you’re swimming upstream and would love some like-minded allies by your side, this one’s for you. I invite you to make a cup of something lovely and nestle into this conversation with us…
Wild Power is five this month!
We love watching this book work its magic, and hearing what it’s waking up in readers across the globe. (We’re thrilled that it’s now available in 8 languages—French, Italian, Spanish, German, Korean, Dutch, Czech, Russian—with a couple more in the pipeline).
Thank you to everyone who has been writing in or tagging us with your greatest takeaway from the book.
Here is one we adored:
“My greatest learning from Wild Power has been that my intuition will always be by my side and guide me whenever I need her. She lies within and when listening, she gives me all the answers I could ever ask for. Through practising deep cycle awareness I have regained the connection with her and ability to be true to myself.”
- Luna
In today’s episode Alexandra and Sjanie share five things they learned from writing Wild Power, including:
We’re having an important, needed, hard conversation today about endometriosis. Luckily we are guided by an amazing guest who seems to be able to bring lightness and humour to even the darkest topics, author Emma Bolden. So we invite you to laugh, and cry with us.
Emma’s memoir, The Tiger and The Cage exploring her decades-long rollercoaster with endometriosis was recently featured by the brilliant production company, Shondaland who describe her as a “compelling voice” and her book as: “an outstretched hand inviting us to accompany her through the most intimate and important experiences of her life, and women’s collective experiences.”
Our guest today, Shereen Oberg draws from a unique and rich mix of influences in her women’s empowerment work.
She is the author of The Law of Positivism, she’s a yoga teacher and acupuncturist, and alongside this she holds a business and economics degree, and has recently completed a Master's degree in Global Sexual and Reproductive health and rights.
She comes from a long lineage of strong, Kurdish matriarchs and political, social rights activists who shared their natural birth stories with her, this inspired her to train both as a nurse and a doula. Today we chat about how all of these influences wove together in her recent thesis about how we need to change the way we approach infertility across the globe.
Alexandra is your host today as this is the next in our Wise Power Retreat series, where she is having conversations with thought leaders, teachers and change-makers about what menopause revealed and awakened in them.
Her guest is Lynne McTaggart - who is regularly voted in the top 100 of spiritual teachers for her work around the power of intention.
The arrival of Lynne's children birthed the first great work of her life, her magazine, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, and menopause heralded the birth of the work she is devoting the rest of her life to - exploring the human energy field and why spiritual healing works.
The menstrual cycle is encoded with wisdom that can support us through life’s greatest challenges.
Learning to read and receive this wisdom is a lifelong process - and in today’s conversation with psychotherapist and author, Carly Mountain, we explore what one of our oldest goddess myths can teach us about embodying cyclical wisdom as we face all that life throws our way.
Carly has worked in a cycle-inspired way for many years as a women’s initiatory guide. She has channelled her learnings into her new book Decent and Rising, which explores the ancient goddess myth of Innana and her descent into the underworld as a framework for how to manage grief, loss, illness and other dark night’s of the soul.
In today’s conversations we look at each part of the myth through the lens of the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle, and how each cycle phase makes us more resilient, strong and wise
What are the gifts of the inner spring? How can inner spring help us step into leadership? What is needed to access the power of the inner spring? And how can we manages the challenges of this inner season?
So many of you have asked for an episode about inner spring and how we can harness it's strengths and manage its challenges, and here it is - the first of two episodes dedicated to pre-ovulatory phase of the cycle.
Join our Menstruality Leadership Programme: www.menstrualityleadership.com
What does it really take to be a visionary leader? And how can menstrual cycle awareness support us to face the challenges and stretch that leadership always brings?
In today's episode we share excerpts from our Menstruality Leadership Lab - a free, four-day online leadership training exploring how the hidden powers of the menstrual cycle and menopause can help us lead sustainably, with heart, integrity and wisdom.
Red School co-founder Alexandra shares her biggest leadership challenge and how cycle awareness has helped her to cultivate one of many menstruality leadership skills to meet it: the art of pacing.
We also hear clips from Alexandra and Sjanie's conversations with our special guests, four women who have boldly stepped forward to live their Calling; medicine woman Asha Frost, author and activist Amisha Ghadiali, folk singer and period preacher Lucy Peach and School of Movement Medicine co-founder Susannah Darling Khan.
- How Asha handled critical feedback when her work went viral.
- How Amisha faces the faces the challenge of making a steady living as a visionary.
- What made Lucy become a period preacher
- How Susannah handled an embarrassing moment in her leadership journey.
Register for the Menstruality Leadership lab for free at: www.redschool.net/lab
Registration is now open for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can take your seat here: www.menstrualityleadership.com
After giving birth to her son Fulano in 2003, Latham Thomas set out on a mission to help women reclaim birth. A graduate of Columbia University & The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Latham is a maternity lifestyle maven, world renown wellness leader and master birth doula on the vanguard of transforming the wellness movement. She has been named one of Oprah’s Super Soul 100.
I experienced Latham as a weaver of profound threads of wisdom… we journeyed from her sacred menstrual practices, to exploring radical self care as a cultural act of resistance in a world that aims to turn us away from our bodies, to how she is supporting her doula students to reclaim their ancient, ancestral technologies and birth wisdom, and so much more.
In today's episode Red School's founders, Sjanie and Alexandra reveal intimate stories about their current leadership edges and how their menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause is skilling them up to face them in a sustainable way.
How to manage a sensitive nervous system when you have a demanding to do list.
How to navigate the inner critic attacks that inevitable come when you have both big visions and human limitations.
We also share about our upcoming free, online Menstruality Leadership Lab from March 7-10 - join us at: www.redschool.net/lab
We’re welcoming back Bethany Webster, the author of “Discovering The Inner Mother”. She’s considered to be the global expert on healing the “Mother Wound” - something we all inherit to varying degrees living in a patriarchal society.
Bethany was a guest at our Wise Power Retreat, where she spoke about healing the Mother Wound during menopause.
In our conversation today, we look at the Mother Wound through a menstrual cycle awareness lens, exploring how it shows up throughout our inner seasons, and how each phase of the cycle can support specific aspects of healing.
Menstruation and menopause awaken us to our deep selves, but to do that, they ask that we pull away from the world, stop and rest. The trouble is that rest can be a great challenge for most if us given the momentum at work in our world today.
If you struggle to ‘just let go’ and rest when you bleed, or during the unfolding of your menopause process, this episode is for you.
This conversation moved me deeply. Teacher and writer Krista O’Reilly Davi-Digui explores what it is to be a brave and beautiful human in progress, particularly in the messy middle of life, and especially living inside a grief and trauma illiterate culture.
In 2019, when Krista was in the midst of menopause she lost her son Jairus to suicide.
In this conversation, she shares generously about the inner winter of her grief journey, how it intersected with her menopause experience, and how she is now moving into the second spring of menopause, choosing to say yes to life in it’s fullness, not knowing what tomorrow holds…
This bonus episode is the next in our ‘Wise Power Retreat’ series where Alexandra is interviewing people about what menopause revealed and awakened in them.
Alexandra and Lara have been working alongside each other in this field for over 30 years. Lara is an author, teacher, researcher, consultant, mentor and an expert on the culture, politics and organisation of the menstrual cycle and menopause.
She wrote one of the first books to be published about the power of the menstrual cycle, Her Blood is Gold, and is one of the leading lights in the field of menstrual and menopause education, sharing from an incredible wealth of personal experience, as well as academic research.
Lara Owen: www.laraowen.com
Sjanie’s period came very early last month. She suddenly found herself bleeding on day 12 and the experience was akin to a zen meditation master slapping their student on the back when they’ve momentarily gone unconscious.
She was reminded that there is a wild intelligence within her that was outside of her control, and was invited to dance with the mystery and yield to something bigger.
This is one way that the menstrual cycle offers us a way into a radical kind of leadership. The reality that we don’t control it reminds us that we belong to something greater. If we can receive this belonging, our bleed can fill us with goodness, love, and rightness - a source of great power.
That’s why giving time to yourself at menstruation is positively dangerous! It will change your consciousness. It will awaken you to what life wants from you…
Our guest today is someone we’ve been wanting to interview for a while. She has inspired 1000s of people to find their way of doing less inside a culture that so often pushes us to do more.
Kate Northrup is an entrepreneur, mother and bestselling author of Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time Management for Ambitious Women. Her book centers menstrual cycle awareness as a secret productivity superpower that’s always been there, but you just didn’t know you had...
After giving birth to her first child, Kate felt profoundly out of control for the first time in her life. Her period came back when she was 13 months old and she felt safe for the first time since her birth. It held her through post-partum anxiety and insomnia and her menstrual cycle served her as a life-raft that healed her in a profound way.
For many years Karen, the founder of ‘Daring to Rest’ had many years of severe panic attacks. It wasn’t until she started a deep rest practice that she learned how to meet her anxiety with grace and she hasn’t had a panic attack since.
During her menopause process, this devoted practice of rest enabled her to clearly feel her ‘no’ and ‘yes’ in her body, process the rage arising and listen for what she needed to navigate this almighty transition.
As we enter 2023, we explore what menstrual cycle awareness can teach us about how to begin things well. We each share a bumpy beginning that we’re currently navigating, and how the deep intelligence within the cycle is guiding us through the highs and lows.
Whether you’re wanting to start the year with intention and a clear vision, you’re in the midst of a new beginning such as a new job, a new relationship or creative project or you’d like to learn how to work with your cycle as an ally for all the beginnings of your life, this episode has both deep insight and practical advice.
Today we explore how menstrual cycle awareness schools us in endings.
Each month we have an opportunity to practice ending the cycle well, aligning with the deep intelligences at work within us. ..
In this episode we break down the different processes at work as we descend towards menstruation and what they can teach us about how to navigate all of life’s endings; the smaller, more surface level ones like the end of the year we have coming up, and the bigger more profound ones, like ending relationships, moving house, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones or miscarriage.
Today we’re continuing our inner autumn premenstrual theme by sharing the last in a three-part series exploring the powers of the premenstruum, how to awaken these powers, and now a conversation about what this looks like in real life.
(And we’re excited to be trying something new today - weaving in comments and insights from you, he community of podcast listeners about your premenstrual experiences.)
Our guest Natalie K Martin is a Menstrual Cycle and Feminine Embodiment Coach and author who made a powerful transition from corporate career in London to a career in yoga and now menstruality.
Natalie graduated from our Menstruality Leadership Programme this year and is now contributing to the global menstruality movement with her FemmePowered podcast which she hosts alongside Guilietta Durante.
In this electrifying conversation, visionary activist and author Lynne Twist tells a new story about the potency and power we can hold in post-menopause life.
Lynne shares the story of how, when she was 50, she received a series of visions which profoundly altered the direction of her career - ultimately inspiring her transition from her life work of ending world hunger, to a new calling to steward the health of the rainforests alongside indigenous people.
She hadn’t realised, until we did this interview for our Wise Power series, that she was in menopause at this time and that it was the menopause process that opened her up to receive these visions!
Have you ever “lost it” in the days running up to your bleed? Of course you have! We all have. Today we break down Sophie’s latest premenstrual losing it episode to find the gold inside it - the power that the premenstruum is awakening within us.
’With awareness, the autumn alchemises powerlessness, victimhood, unconsciousness into responsibility, self awareness, self discipline and the ability to really stand in your authority and be wise with your power, with how you use it.‘
- Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer and Alexandra Pope, Wild Power.
Asha Frost is an indigenous healer and author. She is an Anishinaabe, Ojibwe woman who was raised in a menstrually positive culture and in today’s episode we explore how her menstrual cycle inspires her work, her new book, ‘You are The Medicine: 13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Ancestral Connection, and Animal Spirit Guidance’, and the connection she sees between cycle wisdom and the unique medicine we each hold.
‘You are The Medicine’ explores a lunar year of the 13 moons of the Ojibwe people, each moon aligned to particular powers and animal wisdom, and each one has profound and practical keys about how we can work to access more of a medicine.
Clare Dubois has given her life to reforesting the topics as the founder of the not-for-profit, TreeSisters, but her menopause experience is demanding that she take a profound pause.
In this conversation Clare breaks down her real-time death and rebirth initiatory process of menopause, from the place she is currently in - the deeply uncomfortable, uncompromisingly thorough, ‘ego-death’ part of the initiation.
She likens it to being carried downstream very fast - you either struggle against the flow or you let go and trust that the river knows where it’s taking you. She’s choosing trust, and hard as it may be, she is loving the ride.
Trigger warning: Clare talks in-depth about healing her childhood physical and sexual abuse.
We explore:
Our menstrual cycles can be a profound ally in work and leadership. Today we do a deep dive on how to channel our cyclical wisdom as it shifts and changes throughout the cycle month, with someone who has an extraordinary amount of personal and professional experience in this realm.
Dr Joanna Martin is a renowned visionary, coach and catalyst. As the founder of One of many, her organisation has supported over 60,000 women leaders to greater impact without burnout. grassroots women leaders is a force of nature - massively positive impact for me personally… Personally, she’s widely recognized as the secret weapon advisor behind the success of hundreds of change makers and entrepreneurial leaders…
The cycle is at the centre of her life and work, she’s overlaid the five archetypes over the phases of the cycle to harness their power and meet the challenges they present: The Lover, The Queen, The Warrioress, The Sorceress, The Mother.
Today’s episode is about what it’s like when our experience is actually supported, honoured and dignified through menopause, and it’s also about relationship, and how to take care of ourselves through - and make sense of - times of great transformation.
Alexandra is your host today, because this is a continuation of our Wise Power Retreat series, which was an incredible journey, over 3500 of us gathered to explore the power of menopause. If you didn’t tune in, you can find all the episodes at wisepowerretreat.com… and we’re going to continue this conversation on the podcast, over the coming year.
She's talking with Susannah Darling Khan, a teacher, dancer, music maker, trainee pony whisperer, the co-director of The School of Movement Medicine, alongside her husband Ya'Acov Darling Khan.
Dr Sonia Wright - aka The Midlife Sex Coach for Women - combines her natural ability to talk about uncomfortable topics with her medical knowledge, sexual counseling skills and life coaching tools to create a unique brand of sex coaching. In this conversation about sex in midlife and during menopause, we discuss sensitive issues with humour and heart.
The premenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle - or ‘inner autumn’ as we lovingly call it - is often the most uncomfortable phase emotionally, and it is definitely the most misunderstood. The symptoms that show up for many in this phase and the critical, disruptive fire that burns through us premenstrually are demonised in our world and inside ourselves.
In this conversation we want to deshame and dignify the gifts of the premenstruum; the heightened sensitivity, the permeability, the way we show up as a disruptor of the peace. We want to transform the premenstrual script which so often makes us question “what’s wrong with me?” to “how can I hold myself through this?” and “what’s powers are at work here?”.
Once you’re in menopause, you appear to be off all the usual maps. You're cast off from a familiar shoreline onto a dark ocean of unknownness, with only the stars and the moon – your instincts, feelings and intuitions – to guide you.
However, there is a map of sorts for the menopausal journey, a timeless archetypal pattern for transitioning this world between worlds, and it has an implicit order in five phases: Betrayal, Repair, Revelation, Visioning and Emergence.
In today's episode, we look at the meaning and purpose of each phase, including all that you may experience and what it means, as well as stories from some of the many people we’ve worked with over the years (and a good dose of humour to see you through).
Today we’re talking about a much misunderstood part of the body… the cervix.
Olivia Bryant is the founder of Self:Cervix, an organisation dedicated to revolutionising the way the cervix is viewed by the medical profession, by science and sex educators. She says:
“As a sexologist and sex nerd, I know the cervix to be a powerful place of pleasure… For us, cervical orgasm is a thing worth exploring, just like Mars is for NASA”
Today’s conversation follows a powerful idea that woke Alexandra up in the early hours a few days ago. It’s the idea that drives our new menopause book, Wise Power, and it’s an idea that’s almost totally missing in the global menopause conversation: we need to dignify menopause as a process of spiritual awakening.
And it’s a very special episode, because it also marks the official release of Wise Power, which is now available wherever books are sold - you can get your copy at wisepowerbook.com.
If you’d like to explore menopause as a process of homecoming and awakening, in this episode we share some of the ways we’re expanding this conversation at Red School, firstly, with our upcoming, free ‘Wise Power Retreat’ in October, where we’ll share conversations with incredible people such as Lynne Twist, the founder of the Pachamama Alliance, and Sharon Blackie, the author of Hagitude, and secondly with our live menopause online course, Menopause: The Great Awakener, starting on Nov 2nd.
The menstruality journey begins at menarche with our first bleed, and ends as we go through the great initiation of menopause. For some, pregnancy, birth, and motherhood are a key part of their menstruating years, but for some people, parenting doesn’t happen, despite a deep desire to have children.
It's World Childless Week this week, and we've invited the brilliant Jody Day to share about the challenges of involuntary childlessness, her work to honour and dignify childless women, and explore how to how to find meaning and hope when looking towards a future without children.
Jody Day is the founder of Gateway Women, the support & advocacy network for childless women. She’s a psychotherapist, a global thought leader on female involuntary childlessness, and the author of what many professionals consider to be the ‘go-to’ book on the topic, ‘Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children’.
When teacher and activist Jewels Wingfield felt menopause calling, through intense physical symptoms, she knew she needed to take a deep retreat. In this conversation, we explore her 13 moon ‘conscious menopause sabbatical’ and how it transformed her health, her relationship to herself, her work in the world, and even her sex life.
Jewels is the founder of the EarthHeart project and on the other side of her sabbatical she is focusing on guiding women to explore their ‘nature-based feminine leadership’, with a particular focus on an ancient, Celtic approach to menstruality, and how the natural world can support our menopause death-and-rebirth process.
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.
When you explore old European myths, it’s the elder women and grandmothers who run the world. In Greek mythology, there are the Fates - three elder women who make the world go round. In Easterm European mythology, the crone Baba Yaga initiates young people and facilitates transformation. In ancient Gallic mythology it is the Cailleach who created and shaped the land, from the beginning of time.
In today’s episode we explore the gold that these myths and archetypes hold for us as we navigate the initiation of menopause and enter the second half of our lives as elders, with the brilliant writer, psychologist and mythologist, Dr Sharon Blackie.
Sharon illuminates the magic and potential of menopause as a shape-shifting crucible, which strips away all that isn’t essential - so we may know ourselves, and our Calling in a new way. She shares how she envisioned herself inside an alchemical process at menopause, how the natural world served as an ally through this initiatory time, and why the world needs more feisty, older women now more than ever…
We want to create a world where everyone is in love with the menstrual cycle - not a perfect version of the cycle - but exactly the cycle you have. Because this love affair revolutionises our lives (and the world!).
That’s why we’ve created our new free online course: Love Your Cycle: Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life where we explore the four phases or inner seasons of your cycle as a gateway to vitality, creativity, power and purpose.
Love Your Cycle is our invitation to you to get to know your cycle in more depth, to fall in love with your cycle, and to grow an intimacy with it that will transform your life - by amplifying your vitality, enhancing your creativity and activating your leadership.
In our 40s, many women and people with periods begin to experience a variety of health symptoms and challenges, as well as emotional and psychological shifts. Some call this perimenopause. At Red School we like to call it, The Quickening
In this episode - which is the fourth in our menopause summer series - we look at how this life phase in the run up to our menopause process is slowly awakening new levels of power within us, and how to navigate this and Sjanie shares how she is negotiating this transition personally.
Across the ages women and birthing people have been invited by midwives and doulas to relax their jaw and throat to support the opening of the cervix in labour.
In today’s conversation we explore why this is so important, we explore the connection between our throats, our voices, and the emotional and physical health of our wombs.
I’m talking with Shakirah Sabira who is a doula, African womb healing practitioner, and the founder of Barakha’s Doula. Shakirah began her career as a doula serving women in the Middle East and West Africa, including seven months working in a rural clinic supporting the local midwife in the Mauritanian desert, a trip which profoundly changed her life, and guided her to her calling.
Through Shakirah’s story, and the experiences with her teachers and clients, as well as Sophie's own womb healing experience, we look at what it means to give your womb a voice, how release stagnant energy, express yourself and find a profound source of healing within us.
In today’s conversation, we get practical, down-to-earth and real about the initiation of menopause and how on earth do we actually get through to the other side. Though, as we explore, it’s much less about doing and much more about being. And we have five alchemical powers that can help us along the way.
This is the in third our Wise Power series where Alexandra and Sjanie have been waxing lyrical, sometimes crying, and often laughing their way through the teachings of their new book Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging, coming out on September 20th.
There’s a line in our new book, Wise Power: “Remember, it’s your birthright to have a dignifying and empowering menopause. Let’s begin to make that so.”
Let’s begin to make it so, together, here, right now…
Do you suffer from menstrual pain, or other cycle challenges such as PMS, PMDD or managing irregular cycles?
In this episode we explore how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness creates a ground for healing, helps us to take stand for what we need, and supports us to create a new relationship with the challenges we face, and to trust that something meaningful is at work.
Alexandra shares her personal story with a decade of menstrual pain, and what supported her to heal and eventually become pain-free. Sophie describes what supported her to transform chronic pain and pre-menstrual rage into a new relationship with her power.
When you find yourself in the thick of the menopause transition, there’s no maintaining life as normal. How can we support ourselves to manage the day to day realities of life amidst the huge initiation of menopause?
In this episode we explore the six steps of our ‘menopause triage’ and how they help you to dignify and honour what you’re experiencing.
Pre-order your copy of Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com
One of the big initiatory moments along the menstruality journey from menarche (our first period) to menopause is pregnancy and childbirth, if that is our path in life.
In a world which has a lot to learn about how to support mothers and birthing people through this profound initiation, we need all the help we can get to prepare for and create a positive birth, or heal from a challenging or traumatic one. Enter menstrual cycle awareness - as a powerful tool to cultivate body sovereignty, guide us in the art of surrender, and teach us how to advocate for our needs.
Our guest today is pregnancy yoga teacher and mother of two, Tessa Sanderson. She’s a graduate of the Menstruality Leadership programme, as well as our Menstruality Medicine Circle training, and her insights today are based on hundreds of birth stories that she has received from her clients.
This is a big conversation, with lots of potentially triggering or stirring topics, so we invite you to take care of yourself as you listen, especially if you’re currently pregnant.
It’s time to re-write the story of menopause.
What if the critical, provocative energy of menopause is actually a sign that you’re coming to your senses?
What if menopause isn’t a health condition we suffer from, but that people in menopause you’re actually suffering from is a lack of recognition, respect and support for the profound initiation you’re going through.
What if, post-menopause, you are more needed than ever.
This is the first of our menopause summer series, in the run up to the launch of our new book, Wise Power.
One of the beautifully challenging things about cultivating an intimacy with our menstrual cycles, or menopause process, is that it opens us up to the world.
To the beauty of life, and to the pain.
This quality of tender, unarmoured presence is real medicine for a world that can feel full of conflict, pretense, injustice and a lack of capacity to be with difference.
A devoted practice of cycle awareness helps us to see that we all belong; to ourselves, to the rhythm and flow of the natural world, and to each other.
Today we’re marking Pride Month, with a podcast episode about how menstrual cycle awareness can help us to be with difference, and create true cultures of belonging.
Our guest is Abi Denyer-Bewick, a queer menstuality educator and member of the Red School faculty. We chat about the menstruality learning session she recently offered our Menstruality Leadership Programme graduates on 'Inclusive menstruality', including:
How to create a culture of belonging for women and everyone who menstruates.
What life might look like for a trans, non-binary or gender expansive menstruator.
How to work with the fear, trauma or other big emotions that may arise as we explore how to be with difference, together.
We also share some guidance for how to take this belonging and inclusion work deeper, from a range of brilliant LGBTQ+ educators.
Have you ever wondered what foods can support your cycle health as you move through the different inner seasons of the cycle month?
In this interview with menstrual Cycle Coach, and food-lover Naam Bachmeyer, we explore her ‘Cyclical Nourishment Principles’ and how they help us to welcome in hormonal health, more pleasure, less stress and a deeper intimacy with our cycle process.
This isn’t a ‘how-to’ episode or a set of rules. Naam is very aware of how food can be complex for many of us, as well as the harm that diet culture causes. Instead, Naam shares a wealth of ideas which you can adapt for you and your body, including a delicious recipe for each inner season. Bon appetit!
Menopause is an immense life event, a great initiation. Not only is it a complete hormonal shift in the landscape of your overall health, it’s also a psychological and emotional transformation.
In today’s episode, we explore this incredible, initiatory power of menopause, and the great potential it awakens in us.
This power has been an obsession for Alexandra and Sjanie for most of the past couple of years as they wrote their long-awaited menopause book, and today we have an exciting announcement - we’re revealing the title of the book!
Today, we’re looking at menstrual cycle awareness through a different lens… we’re exploring 10 surprising reasons to practice fertility awareness.
I’m talking with Health Coach and Natural Family Planning (NFP) teacher, Jaspreet Kaur who is a fresh, passionate voice in this field - she brings it down to earth and makes it accessible to everyone. We explore…
The hidden agenda of the menstrual cycle is to help us become more fully ourselves. As we deepen our cycle awareness practice, it plugs us into our calling, our vision, our unique way of expressing our genius. The realising of this calling often requires an our structure, which often looks like a business. The beautiful thing is that the menstrual cycle can resource us along the way.
We’re in the middle of launching our brand new programme, Your Cyclical Business which is designed to support you if you’re a teacher, healer or creative, a freelancer, or a purpose-led entrepreneur to channel the wisdom of your menstrual cycle to create a thriving business.
So in our conversation today we want to invite you behind-the-scenes of Red School to see how we work with our cycles (and for Alexandra her post-menopause process) to run our cycle-aware business.
Are you currently working on a creative project that you’d love to infuse with your cyclical wisdom? Whether you’re writing a book, growing a garden, launching a business or making art, your cycle can be a profound anchor and resource.
In today’s episode, we talk with someone who knows a thing or two about the menstrual cycles and creativity. Lucy Peach is a period preacher, author, and folksinger. She’s a graduate of the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme and she has written a book, created songs, produced an award-winning theatre show, delivered educational programmes for teens and even created a TED talk, all about the menstrual cycle.
We explore how she has worked with her cycle to cultivate this epic creativity and shift the period narrative in our culture from one of shame to one of pride, including:
Why do we need to adapt the way we move and exercise throughout the menstrual cycle? In today’s conversation we explore the physical and mental health benefits of cycle-aware movement, and how to adjust the way we exercise throughout the cycle month.
Our guest, Le’Nise Brothers shares her own experience of using diet, exercise and lifestyle changes to improve painful and heavy periods, anxiety, depression and irritable bowel syndrome.
Le’Nise is a yoga teacher, and Nutritionist, specialising in women's health, hormones and the menstrual cycle. She’s the host of the Period Story podcast, and the author of the new book, You Can Have a Better Period which came out in March - a practical guide to understanding your cycle and balancing your hormones with nutrition and yoga, for a calm and pain-free period.
Becoming a mother is a profound initiatory journey. Journalist and coach, Amy Taylor Kabbaz remembers exactly the moment when she split in two. Fifteen minutes after her child was born, she went from independent, ambitious, ABC journalist, career woman, to completely surrendered mother who would do anything for her child.
That moment changed everything for her, and took her on her own personal pilgrimage to understand how motherhood initiates us.
She’s interviewed hundreds of authors, maternal health experts, and teachers. She’s been the anthropologist, in the trenches of early motherhood, trying to decipher why so many of us feel burnt out, overwhelmed, and addicted to being busy. And she’s emerged from that time knowing that Matrescence is the missing link for truly understanding why women feel the way they do, and how we can revolutionise the way we think about and value motherhood.
Your first period is a big event. Today we’re exploring why it’s so important to support girls and young menstruators through this transition, as well as how we can resource ourselves as parents, aunties and carers so we can meet our kids where they are at and celebrate them.
I’m talking with Emily Stewart, the founder of The Real Period Project, and a Celebration Day for Girls facilitator, and the creator of the Red School Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche programme. Her dream is to see a world where the menstrual cycle is seen as an ally and teacher, and talking about it is a normal part of life.
When author, Chloé Caldwell turned 31, her experience of her menstrual cycle changed. Her monthly outbursts of pre-menstrual rage and anxiety began to dominate her life and compromise her relationship.
Compelled to understand the truth of what was happening to her, Chloé researched menstruation throughout history, read everything she could about PMS and was eventually diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, PMDD.
In this episode Chloé shares honestly, generously and vulnerably about her journey through PMDD, and how —along with proper treatment— the medicine of self-acceptance, self-compassion, and transcending shame were the ultimate keys to relief.
Ruby May, the founder of Know Your Flow is an earth-lover, a truth-seeker, an edge-dweller and a mischief-maker passionate about how we can each midwife a culture of deeper connection – to our bodies, each other and our planet through menstrual cycle awareness.
She writes: “We’re tired of living in a culture in which our worth is measured around how productive we are and nothing ever feels like enough. Where stress, numbing ourselves and bypassing our body’s symptoms are so normalized, and creativity and play feel like elusive luxuries.
And where intelligence is seen as something abstract in our heads, removed from the deep feeling, sensitivity and wisdom of our hearts and bellies. We don’t want to be bystanders and continue the status quo. And we’re ready to be part of the solution.”
Period poverty has a huge impact on women, girls and people who menstruate all over the world. Too many people don’t have access to menstrual products, safe, hygienic spaces in which to use them. This isn’t just a potential health risk - it can also affect their education, well-being, and sometimes entire lives.
One in 10 girls in Africa miss school because they don’t have access to menstrual products, or because there aren’t safe, private toilets to use at school. In India, approximately 12 percent of its 355 million menstruating women cannot afford menstrual products. In the US 23% of college students can’t afford to buy period products.
Thankfully, brilliant, passionate people like Chelsea Von Chaz, the founder of Happy Period are working to end period Poverty. Happy Periods distributes free period products to support 100,000 periods a year, through over 40 cities in the US.
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.
It’s incredible to witness the stigma around menstruation shifting in our world, with period policies in workplaces, powerful work happening to alleviate period poverty and more and more people practising menstrual cycle awareness.
This de-shaming of the cycle, and especially our bleed, is opening up a gateway for an appreciation of the power of menstruation.
In this episode, Alexandra and Sjanie share stories, insight and teachings drawn from their map of the five chambers of menstruation, which are a kind of guidebook for people wanting to access and discover and embody the power of our period.
Menopause is often portrayed as a disaster waiting to happen. Omisade Burney-Scott is a leading voice in the movement to change the conversation about this powerful initiatory phase of life.
Omisade is the creator of the Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause, a multimedia project seeking to curate and share the stories and realities of Black women and femmes over 50. In today’s conversation, she discusses the menopause ‘remedies’ she’s learned through creating the guide; including the medicine of self-forgiveness, vision, self-acceptance, and living your passion.
Infertility can be heart-breaking, anxiety-inducing and full of grief. Research has shown that people experiencing infertility have the same levels of anxiety and depression as those with cancer, heart disease and HIV. In this episode, Fertility coach Jennifer Robertson offers solace and guidance drawn from her own seven-year journey to motherhood.
This episode's for you if you’re looking for support, inspiration and friendship as you navigate infertility yourself, or if you’re working with people experiencing infertility, or since 1 in 6 people experience fertility challenges, if you’d like to play a supportive role for friends or family.
In this episode, Red School founders Alexandra and Sjanie get real, honest and vulnerable about the inner critic: what it is, how it shows up, its deeper purpose, and how to handle this challenging force in our lives.
Learning how to manage and harness the power of the inner critic is almost always a real game-changer for our Menstruality Leadership Programme participants. This powerful, inevitable character has the potential to paralyse us into inaction, whilst also being a key catalyst for profound growth and transformation… if we know how to negotiate it.
And the good news is we’ve got the menstrual cycle on our side here. A key teaching we share today is how to restore your critic to its natural home - the pre menstruum, so you can get in on your side, receive it’s feedback and use it to live your calling.
What is the connection between your menstrual cycle and your purpose in life? Today we’re talking about the hidden agenda within the menstrual cycle. Each cycle month - if we’re paying attention - our cycles are bringing each of us home to our uniqueness, to our genius, to a life full of meaning.
Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer
"Think of Wild Power as a living presence that’s seeking expression through you. It’s your Calling, and it longs to be embodied and expressed through the singularity of who you are. It’s an unnameable, unknowable mystery at the heart of your being. It’s on your side; it’s your individual way in the ocean of possibility."
What if we already know what will help us through menopause? What if it’s the self care we overlook, or don’t do enough off? What if we don’t need an expert to give us a top ten list to surviving menopause?
Instead of perpetuating the myth that we need to give our power to an outside authority in order to feel better, author Kate Codrington, wants to place the power firmly back in our hands as we enter the often disorientating, challenging menopause journey.
Kate is a menopause mentor, facilitator and writer and has been a therapist for almost 30 years. A pioneering spirit, Kate was the first to graduate as a Red School Menstruality Medicine Circle facilitator, and in this liberating, culture-shifting conversation we explore her first book Second Spring: the guide to self-care for menopause is being published by HarperCollins, today, February 17th 2022!
to develop a radical new approach to health, creativity, leadership and spiritual life. And the best bit? It’s rooted in the bloody, wild, radical power of the menstrual cycle.
For this podcast, we’ve sought out the ground-breaking pioneers and creatives who are changing the conversation about the menstrual cycle and menopause, and modelling a new way that is cyclical, relational and organic.
We’ll also be joined often by Red School’s founders, and the authors of Wild Power, Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer.
Together we’ll 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.
has been in love with her cycle since her inner critic guided her to change country, relationship and career a decade ago. She’s currently channelling her cycle wisdom into the white-knuckle ride of new motherhood.
Sophie is the Communications Director at Red School brings a decade of experience in the field of women’s activism and leadership to her podcast conversations with Alexandra, Sjanie and our incredible guests.
Subscribe today!