This episode is centred around the menstrual cycle, but please don’t let that stop you if that’s not where you are in life. Because at its core, this conversation is about something much bigger. It’s about how we orient our lives. And when we’ve spent decades orienting ourselves around everyone and everything else (our work, our families, what the world expects of us) we can lose the thread back to ourselves entirely. So that question of how we orient our lives becomes inseparable from the deeper one - who am I, really?

I’m joined by Astrid Serpentine, a menstrual educator who offers workshops and women’s circles to help women embody the fullness of themselves. Astrid trained at the School of Shamanic Womancraft and brings a rare combination of wisdom, warmth and radical honesty to everything she shares. She is also a writer, singer and actress and at the end of our conversation we talk about how all of that is coming together in her upcoming musical, Blood.

Astrid introduces us to the idea of the menstrual map, the way our cycle mirrors the four seasons, and how living in rhythm with that map can bring us back to ourselves in the most profound and unexpected ways.

In this episode, we discuss:

* The four phases of the menstrual cycle and what each season is asking of us emotionally, physically and spiritually

* Why the linear model of life as we know it goes against our very nature

* How our period is a readout of how we treat ourselves and how we allow others to treat us

* What perimenopause is here to teach us

* How honoring our cycle within our families creates a ripple effect of respect and compassion

* The maiden, mother, crown and crone, and how the cycle of womanhood mirrors the monthly cycle

This conversation cracked something open in me. I actually practiced what Astrid taught and followed my own cycle with intention, and what came up genuinely surprised me. I share that in the outro, so please stay until the end.

My hope is that this conversation opens up the possibility that when we begin to live in harmony with our cycle, we aren’t just syncing with nature, we are actually starting to reclaim ourselves. To come home to who we truly are.

This is a conversation for any woman who has ever felt lost, depleted or disconnected from herself and wondered why. It’s for any man who suspects the world we’ve built isn’t working, and wonders if there’s another way. The answer, it turns out, might be closer than we think.

Love Lara x

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Follow Astrid on socials: Instragram

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless: https://laracharles.com/joy-regardless/

Almost one year to the day since publishing Joy, Regardless, I’m sitting down alone with the microphone to share what this year has actually been. This episode may just be the most honest thing I’ve said out loud!

Everyone talks about launching a book, but nobody talks about what comes after. In this episode I name the post-publication crash - the disorienting gap between the dream and the reality - and trace it back to something I didn’t expect to find: a lifelong fear of disappointment so deeply buried I had simply mistaken it for drive and ambition.

In this episode I cover:

* The elation of publishing, and the crash that followed

* The pattern I thought I’d evolved past, but hadn’t

* The fear of disappointment that had been running my life from behind a curtain

* What happened when I finally said out loud: I am disappointed

* The difference between knowing the path and walking it

* Where wholeness actually lives

* The tools that have helped me this year

This one is for anyone who has done the brave thing - published something, started something, risked something - and then found themselves wondering why it didn’t look the way they imagined. It’s about the groove we wear into ourselves through years of running from feeling. The sirens of the mind calling us back to control. And what happens when we finally stop running and agree to feel it instead.

I also read the moment in the book when the part of me that is already enough begins, for the first time, to stir.

It’s an honest and deep reflection so i’d love to know if it resonates, please let me know in the comments.

Happy first birthday, Joy, Regardless! And if you’re listening on the 10th from down under - Happy Mother’s Day to all the women and mamas here! I see you. The ache you carry, the love you pour, and the quiet wondering if there is more to you than all of this. There is. There always was. And my greatest hope is that this podcast and this book walk alongside you on the journey home to yourself.

I am still walking that path home. But one thing is for sure - I am very glad you’re walking it with me.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Follow me on socials: https://www.instagram.com/laracharleswrites

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless: https://laracharles.com/joy-regardless/

🔗 My favourite podcast this month: Gangaji - listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

What pulls a good man into the manosphere, and what helps him find his way back?

After Louis Theroux’s documentary, I’ve been sitting with that question a lot. And if I’m honest, there was a time I would have rolled my eyes at it.

But that, my judging, only built a wall.

This conversation is a bridge.

I sit down with my cousin Patrick - a bodybuilder, an ex-soldier - who shares his experience of being drawn into the manosphere and, more importantly, what helped him step away.

In this episode, we talk about:

* How the voices of the manosphere can become appealing to good men

* How blame and feminism can be a pathway in

* The role of tech platforms and patriarchal systems in shaping behaviour

* How parenting and role models influence young boys and men

* Inner reckoning and therapy as tools for change

* How we help our young men choose a different path

* What healthier, more grounded masculinity can look like

Pat speaks so openly about his willingness to face the parts of himself that needed to change. And in doing so, he offers something powerful: an alternative to the manosphere, a masculinity rooted in both strength and humility.

If you’re raising boys, supporting young men, or simply trying to make sense of the world we’re living in, I think this conversation will speak to you. And if you’re grappling with the same question I have - what pulls a good man into the manosphere - this one’s for you.

More than anything, this conversation reminded me how important it is that we hear each other. And, yes, I consider myself a feminist, so there were a few moments where I could feel the part of me that judges wanting to perk up. But I put her aside so I could hear, truly hear, the humanity behind Pat’s story. And in setting aside my judgement, I felt nothing but compassion.

That’s why I really admire my cousin Pat for sharing his story, especially knowing it may be heard by people who may judge him.

But this is what he said: “If it helps even one man or young boy choose a different path, then I’m all in.”

So let’s jump in and build a bridge.

Heads-up: we do drop an F-bomb or two, so headphones are recommended if you’re listening near kids.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Follow Patrick on socials: Instragram

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless: https://laracharles.com/joy-regardless/

What if your body isn’t something to fix, push or perfect but something to listen to?

In this episode, I’m joined by Mark Moon, Sydney-based breathwork practitioner and founder of The X-Breath. We first connected at Billabong Retreat and his grounded, deeply embodied way of teaching stayed with me long after the retreat ended.

Mark’s journey began in the high-performance fitness world. After hitting burnout and experiencing depression in his late thirties, he began a gradual shift - from achievement to awareness, from controlling the body to inhabiting it.

This conversation isn’t about dramatic awakenings. It’s about the power of returning again and again to breath, sensation and feeling. It’s a power I think we are all craving.

In this episode, we explore:

* TThe difference between top-down (mind-first) and bottom-up (body-first) therapy, and why the body must be involved for true release

* Emotional armouring in the body and how tension in the jaw, shoulders, chest or pelvis may reflect deeper emotional patterns

* The five developmental themes - connection, attunement, trust, autonomy and intimacy - and how they quietly shape us

* Why breath is the true foundation of yoga and how holding positions while breathing can discharge stored emotion

* What becomes possible when we begin to release what is stored in the body - more clarity, compassion, patience, strength and a softer way of living

This episode is an invitation to live from the inside out. To trust that clarity doesn’t come from thinking harder but from feeling the body more honestly.

If you’ve been longing to feel at home in your own skin, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Read my blog about the power of Mark’s breathwork sessions here.

🔗 Visit Mark Moon’s website: thexbreath.com.au

🔗 Follow Mark on socials: Instragram or Facebook

🔗 Watch Mark’s exercises on his YouTube channel here.

🔗 Mark’s recommended resources referenced in the episode: Healing Developmental Trauma by Laurence Heller, Break Through With Breathwork by Jim Morningstar, Bioenergetics by Alexander Lowen

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless - a deeply personal reflection on motherhood, identity and healing: https://laracharles.com/joy-regardless/

In this final episode of Deeper Threads for 2025, I sit down with the extraordinary body-based healing practitioner Jade Stewart of Aurore Holistic Health. With 22 years of training - and almost 70,000 clinical sessions - across global healing lineages from India to Egypt, the South of France to the UK, Jade has arrived at a profound truth: the cosmic mother pulses through all of life, and is the very thing we’re longing for.

We dive deep into the sacred feminine, exploring what it really means to awaken, remember and enliven the feminine energy that has been hidden, suppressed and misunderstood for centuries, with a special focus on womb healing. We learn that the womb is so much more than a vessel for life - it is a centre of energy, creativity, intuition and deep inner power.

In this episode, we explore:

* How the womb is not just a biological organ, but a powerful energetic centre

* Why womb awareness can deepen your connection to your yourself and others

* Why healing the womb - and the feminine - holds the key to individual and collective healing

* Practical ways to reconnect to your womb and the feminine

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body, your intuition or your own sense of flow, this conversation will help you see your womb not just as a reproductive organ, but as a doorway home to yourself, and to the wisdom within. And for the men listening, this is a powerful chance to understand the women you love on a deeper level, and to reflect on your own relationship with the feminine energy that also lives within you.

I hope you enjoy it!

This is the last Deeper Threads episode of the year, and I’m so grateful to everyone who has tuned in. They say anything you create is something you’re creating for yourself, and I reckon there’s some truth in that. I wrote my book so my heart could speak. I started this podcast so I could keep diving deeper and learning from people who inspire me. And honestly, on the days when I’m stuck in my own head, I’ll listen back to an episode or reread something I’ve written - not to high five myself, but because the mind is so good at pulling us away from truth. And it takes knowledge, tools and practice to return.

But as Jade reminds us in this episode, anything we do for the self is ultimately for the we. So I hope this space has become one of those tools for you, the way it has for me. And if it has, please let me know in the Substack comments or on Facebook or Instagram. Your feedback really does help keep this whole thing going. It’s nice to know I’m not just speaking into some big ole internet void!

Deeper Threads will be back in March, after a short hiatus while the kids are on summer holidays. I look forward to sharing more conversations with you in the new year. I’ve already recorded two and they are really inspiring.

Thank you again to the guests who have sat with me this year. You are all so bloody awesome. And thanks again to you for being here. Truly.

Happy, happy holidays, everyone. Wishing you all the health, love and happiness you deserve.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Contact Jade via the Aurore Holistic Health website (https://www.auroreenergeticshh.com/) or SMS her on +61 405 626 325

🔗 Follow Jade on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auroreholistichealth

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless - a deeply personal reflection on motherhood, identity and healing: available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon or eBook.

This episode is called The Two Powers You Need to Know Your Purpose - a deep and profound conversation with the wonderful Shikhaa.

Shikhaa spent forty years in India, living in an ashram and studying the ancient Vedic tradition with a living master. Her wisdom is drawn from lived experience - not theory, not concept - embodied truth.

You’ll hear us explore the big questions: what is oneness, what is God, and what is actually real beneath the noise of the mind. We talk about purpose, not as an achievement, but as a truth.

In this episode we explore:

* How meditation + satsang are the two great powers to return us home to purpose and clarity

* Why true happiness never comes from external achievement

* How oneness is unconditional and ever-present

* Why thoughts are waves, but we are the ocean

* How awakening happens quietly, in tiny micro realisations

If you’ve ever felt the ache for purpose, clarity, peace or an inner sanctuary you can return to - this one is for you.

I hope this conversation helps you on the road home to yourself.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Visit the Wisdom of Meditation Centre website for Shikhaa’s audio teachings, guided meditations and more: https://www.wisdomofmeditation.com/

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless - a deeply personal reflection on motherhood, identity and healing: https://laracharles.com/joy-regardless/

This episode is about raising our children, but it’s also about raising ourselves.

So even if you don’t have kids, please stay with us - the wisdom shared goes beyond parenting and speaks to the journey of understanding ourselves.

I’m joined by Mary Willow, a renowned parent educator and international speaker who has spent almost 50 years working with children and families. Through her private practice, Plum Parenting, she has supported nearly a thousand families with her unique and compassionate approach. My husband and I have worked with Mary, and the tools she shares have been invaluable in raising our four kids.

Mary introduces us to the idea of the guard dog brain - the fight-or-flight, reactive, impulsive part of a child (and ourselves) that is wired for self-protection.

She also reminds us that behind the guard dog - behind every outburst, tantrum or slammed door - sits the true child or true self, waiting to be seen and set free. Mary shares practical tools to help us do just that.

In this episode, we discuss:

* The power of observing our children’s behaviour

* The guard dog brain and why it often takes the driver’s seat

* How healthy household rhythms give children a sense of security and make daily transitions smoother

* How to hold a loving boundary

* How conscious parenting begins with our own willingness to be fully present

Mary brings her gentle wisdom to some of the most common struggles parents face, showing that our own awareness is often the solution.

This conversation is for anyone wanting to move beyond daily battles and into a deeper, more conscious connection - not just with their children, but with themselves. Parenting isn’t easy, but it helps to know the struggles are universal, and so are the antidotes.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Follow Mary’s Facebook page, Plum Parenting: https://www.facebook.com/PlumParenting

📖 Mary's book will be released in June 2026. Join my Substack for release details. I'll also have two signed copies to give away!

🔗 Join Mary’s waitlist: https://www.plumparenting.com/

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless - a deeply personal reflection on motherhood, identity and healing: https://amzn.to/4jXdYiy

If you’ve been looking around at the world lately and wondering, What on earth is going on? you’re not alone.

That’s why I’m so excited to share this month’s Deeper Threads episode with you because it's about reclaiming our power amid it all.

Full disclosure: It’s not your usual conversation! In fact, today’s guest isn’t even a person. He’s an Irish angel named Jimmy, channelled through a lovely Kiwi man called Clint.

Now, if that sounds too woo-woo, stay with me. I was sceptical at first too. But Jimmy’s wisdom is both deeply practical and profoundly heart-opening so please stick around.

In this episode, we explore:

* Why many of our global challenges stem from ego and control

* How heart energy is evolving and shifting human consciousness

* Tools like meditation, mantras, and conscious breathwork that help us live from the heart

* Why building a relationship with the body is essential for healing

* And how passion and purpose reveal themselves when we connect with our true selves

More than anything, this conversation is a reminder that moving from head to heart isn’t just a personal journey - it’s part of a collective shift we’re all being called into. And the tools Jimmy shares are simple but powerful ways to help us navigate it.

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Connect with Clint and book a session with Jimmy via WhatsApp: +64 27 247 4325

⭐ Jimmy has a range of healing and manifestation meditations available for purchase. Email Lisa at [email protected] for details.

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless - a deeply personal reflection on motherhood, identity and healing: https://amzn.to/4jXdYiy

I’m kicking off with an inspiring conversation with Australian Brad Twynham – global technology and leadership expert and proud First Nations man. We explore how ancient wisdom can guide and ground us in today’s fast-changing world.

We talk about:

• Tech and Tradition – Indigenous knowledge in the age of AI

• Welcome to Country – and its deep spiritual roots

• The Five-Brain Principle – and how it shapes our humanity

• Oursness – a powerful perspective on interconnectedness and shared responsibility

…and much more.

Brad’s insights give me hope. They’re practical and deeply human, reminding us that even in our often-chaotic, tech-driven world, we can reclaim and stay true to our whole selves

🔗 Subscribe to Deeper Threads for more conversations, reflections, and to ask questions: laracharles.substack.com

🔗 Connect with Brad Twynham and invite him to speak: https://www.bradtwynham.com/ or https://odemanagement.com/speakers/brad-twynham or https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradtwynham-speaker

🔗 Get my memoir, Joy, Regardless – a deeply personal reflection on motherhood, identity, and healing: https://amzn.to/4jXdYiy

Welcome to Deeper Threads, a podcast where we explore what lies beneath the surface - both in ourselves and in the world.

Alongside wise and inspiring guests, I explore life's big questions, the inner landscapes we often ignore, the outdated scripts we’ve inherited, and what they’re costing us. Because every time I dig a little deeper, I’m reminded that the answers we seek are often waiting quietly in our very own hearts.

Episodes drop the 10th of every month, starting August 2025. I’m so excited to share these conversations with you!

Sound Effect by JoshMusic from Pixabay.

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