In many indigenous communities across the world, people have long honoured menstruation as a sacred time. Today we’re lucky to be exploring the beauty and wisdom of the ancestral moontime medicine of the Andean people, and our guest is Dr Cynthia Ingar, who is an anthropologist and Andean keeper of Woman Medicine wisdom living in the Sacred Valley in Peru. 

In her late twenties, Cynthia was guided by a mentor to do thirteen traditional Andean moontime retreats where she was in silence and eating a special diet for four days and four nights while she menstruated.

Cynthia has dedicated her life to teaching a woman-centered approach to women's health, to traditional midwifery and to revitalizing Andean Woman Medicine including menstrual cycle and the Andean Moontime traditional practices. In this rich, magical conversation, we explore how her moontime retreats prepared her to live her calling, both as a keeper of this Woman Medicine and as a mother to her children.

We explore:

• How we travel to the ‘Ukupacha’ when we bleed, which is the realm related to the Feminine, where we perceive life differently, experience altered states of consciousness, and receive insights and wisdom.
  
  
• How Cynthia works with the ancestral Andean practice of praying with her menstrual blood, as an offering to Pachamama, to mother earth.
  
  
• What she has learned from grandmother mentors about how they worked with the ancient menstrual practices to give them inspiration and guidance in their work as the keepers of ceremony and the rituals of life for the community.  

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The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

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Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Dr Cynthia Ingar: @hampiwarmi - https://www.instagram.com/hampiwarmi