Although the inner summer of the menstrual cycle has a reputation for being easy-breezy, for some of us, this can be a real hotspot in the cycle month. 

So, this episode is for you if the ovulatory cycle phase is intense or overwhelming, or you feel a sense of pressure to show up and ‘get shit done’ inside an already over-full life. It’s also for you if inner summer brings a sense of being all dressed up for the party, with nowhere to go if you have lots of creative, sexual or social energy but you don’t know where to direct it, or if ovulation brings disconnection and grief due to challenges with trying to conceive.

Through our personal stories as well as generous shares from the Red School community, we explore the challenges of inner summer, and how to reframe them as meaningful limits that support us to access the power of the ovulatory phase. We also explore the cyclical self care practice which can support us to claim and show ourselves exactly as we are in inner summer. 

We explore:

• Sjanie’s ongoing journey with visibility in inner summer
• What Alexandra has discovered about the libratory power of limits, as a post-menopausal women.
• How to grow the emotional muscles of allowing more and more of yourself to exist and be seen in the world, as you truely are.
  
  

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

The spiritual power of the cycle and the womb is core to Red School’s teachings and offerings, and we’ve explored this topic on the podcast through the lens of many different faith, spiritual, traditional and indigenous traditions including; Maori womb wisdom with Hinewai Waitoa, Andean womb wisdom teachings with Dr Cynthia Ingar, Anishinabe cyclical wisdom with Asha Frost, and ancient African womb and birth technologies with Latham Thomas, as well as a conversation with Meggan Watterson about relevant mystical christian texts. 

Today we’re exploring how the Islamic faith reveres the womb, with Holistic Menstrual Health Educator, Womb Steaming Therapist, and author of ‘Peaceful Periods: Holistic Womb Care for Teens’, Chantal Blake.

Chantal recently gave a learning session in Red School’s graduate community, The Hive, and at the start of this session, she asked a question which moved me deeply; “how does your womb impact your spiritual reality and practice?” Many of the community said that no one had ever asked them that before, and perhaps the same is true for you? So, as an extension of Chantal’s beautiful question, this conversation is an invitation to you and participants of all faith and cultural backgrounds to contemplate the wisdom of the womb as sacred. 

We explore: 

• The ancient, worldwide history of womb steaming and how it can support womb and pelvic health. 
  
  
• The Arabic word raḥim—meaning womb—shares its root with raḥma, or mercy, and in Islam, the womb is honored not only as a physical center of creation, but as a symbol of divine compassion and relationality and a vessel of divine mystery. 
  
  
• How our wombs support us to gestate our creative ideas, and Chantal’s experience of working with her womb to birth her work projects, including her book. 

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Chantal Blake: @honouredwomb - https://www.instagram.com/honoredwomb

The Menstruality podcast is devoted to restoring cyclical intelligence at the heart of our world, and we center our conversation on the menstrual cycle as a teacher, guide and ally in this quest. But what do you do if you encounter this work after you’ve been through menopause and no longer have a menstrual cycle? 

We receive many questions from post-menopause women and folks in our community who are curious about how to practice cycle awareness, such as; what cycles should I track now? Should I track with the moon, and how do I do that? And importantly, what do I do with the regret, grief and anger I feel at missing out on menstrual cycle awareness earlier? 

So, in today’s conversation, we weave stories from some of the post-menopause women in the Red School community with Alexandra’s personal experience from many years of tracking with the lunar cycle to share practical guidance and inspiration for how you can bring cyclical wisdom into your life in your third act. 

We explore:

• What to do when you feel grief and / or rage about not having had access to the wisdom and power of the menstrual cycle during your menstruating years.
  
  
• How to work with the lunar cycle phases to recover menstrual cycle wisdom and embody it, and especially how the new moon can give you permission to rest when you no longer bleed.
  
  
• The ‘quiet medicine’ of post-menopause cycle awareness, and how it can support your healing processes and repair work, particularly trauma healing. 

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Today we’re exploring how to bring cycle awareness to psychotherapy and mental healthcare. 

Our guest is MaryClaire Decker (known as MC) who is a Registered Psychologist. MC created Mindful Cycles after seeing a gap in mental health care, and after her own struggles with chronic menstrual migraines reinforced the need for an approach that works with our cycles, not against them. 

At Mindful Cycles, she combines evidence-based therapy with an understanding of cyclical health to help women and people with menstrual cycles navigate their mental well-being with greater self-awareness and resilience.

We talk about how menstrual health symptoms change across the cycle, the neurological and hormonal shifts that cause mental health symptoms to worsen in the second half of the cycle, how to adapt therapeutic approaches based on the phases of the menstrual cycle, and the incredible impact of cycle-informed trauma therapy.

We explore:

• Three reasons why mental health care hasn’t been cycle-informed so far; menstrual stigma, the patriarchal, colonial historical context of psychotherapy and the huge gap in research when it comes to women and people with menstrual cycles.
• Why we risk pathologising people’s experiences, or even misdiagnosing them when we don’t take the fluctuations of the menstrual cycle into account, for example; 25% of people who eventually get diagnosed with PMDD are misdiagnosed with bi-polar disorder first. 
• The beneficial impact of cycle-informed therapy for anxiety, depression, PTSD and trauma, addictions and other mental health challenges. 

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
MC Decker: @themenstrualpsych - https://www.instagram.com/themenstrualpsych

1 in 2 girls in the U.S. say they feel embarrassed or ashamed about their period and only 22% of U.S parents feel “very comfortable” talking to their kids about puberty. We need to rewrite this script, and our guest today, menstrual educator Amy Wilding, has written a book to do just that. 

Amy has supported hundreds of families through her Period of Change programs, helping them reclaim menarche as a sacred and empowered transition. She’s also a queer and inclusive author, and today we’re chatting about her latest book, Period Of Change: Welcoming Your Daughter’s Period with Care and Confidence. 

As Amy says, this is not just a practical guide to puberty and periods. It is a call to reclaim what is our birthright: an understanding of our bodies and the framework for seeing the power and wisdom of our cyclical nature. 

Our chat today is full of practical guidance and tips to support the teens and tweens in your life through their menarche and beyond - my favourite were the conversation starters, especially when Amy shared the most important thing to say (and not say) to your child when they get their period for the first time. 

We explore:

• How to throw a Red Party for your child, and all kinds of ideas for how to celebrate together in big and small ways.
• The importance of how we speak about our bodies in front of our kids, and affirmations to help your daughter move through generations of cultural shame, silence and discomfort, and model how to honour our bodies and cycles.
• Amy’s journey supporting her trans kid and guidance for how to show up as a supportive parent and maintain a connection of trust with trans kids when they’re starting their periods.

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Amy Wilding: @amywildingofficial - https://www.instagram.com/amywildingofficial/

Today we’re sharing a replay of one of our most listened to podcasts ever - and it’s all about how getting to know your cycle can be a vital foundation for mental and emotional health.

Alexandra and Sjanie, the co-founders of Red School are both retired therapists, and today they share their learnings from their own personal cycle awareness practice (as well as working with thousands of students over several decades) about how mental and emotional health rests on us knowing ourselves, feeling our value and worth, and understanding the nature of cyclicity. All of which are skills we learn from connecting to our cycles. 

We also explore how the root of much of our collective menstrual and emotional turmoil as women and people who have, or have had cycles is the cultural denial, shutting down, ignoring, belittling, and suppression of our cyclical nature.

We explore:

• Alexandra’s personal journey with dissolving the shame of her early years and claiming her worth through cycle awareness and menopause, so that now she is emotionally resilient to the extent that she is immune to toxic shame.
  
  
• The two stable poles of the menstrual cycle, and the two transitional phases and how to work with them all to understand ourselves better and create emotional and psychological wellbeing.
  
  
• How following the call to stop and rest at menstruation is medicinal for us emotionally and psychologically. 

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Today it’s our great pleasure to be joined by Chloé Zhao. Chloé is an academy award winning filmmaker, and amongst many accolades, Chloé is the first Woman of Colour to have won an academy award for best director for her film Nomadland.

In this conversation, Chloé chats with Alexandra and Sjanie about how menstrual cycle awareness has shaped her creative process, including how she worked with the wisdom of her menstrual cycle to create and direct her most recent film, Hamnet, which received eight Oscar nominations.

When Chloé turned thirty seven years old, she started to get menstrual cramps for the first time. Although it wasn’t comfortable, she felt something important was coming to life within her. This coincided with what she lovingly calls a ‘midlife crisis’ that ultimately led her to discover the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, which she says helped her to learn a language that her body had forgotten to speak.

We explore:

• Intuition as our greatest currency, and how becoming more aware of our menstrual cycles prepares the body to be a vessel to receive deep intuitive knowing. 
• The cyclical advice that Chloe has for all young filmmakers about the importance of wintering, and the power of seemingly non-productive work of rest, tending to your inner soil, and composting (even in the middle of a film set!).
• How the premenstrual and menstrual phases of the cycle have taught Chloe to embody creative death and rebirth, and how this played out in the creation of Hamnet.

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Chloé Zhao: @chloezhao - https://www.instagram.com/chloezhao

As we enter our early forties, we step into a new life phase with a very different atmosphere and tone. We’re shifting into a new paradigm, often accompanied by changes in our menstrual cycles and ourselves, some of which may be startling or very tricky to manage.

Brain fog, memory issues, irregular cycles, heavy periods - the list goes on. You might notice that you have less tolerance for stress, tire more easily, and that your trusty sleep pattern isn’t quite so trusty anymore.

Today I’m chatting with Alexandra and Sjanie about how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can be a vital source of support as we navigate these challenging years. 

Sjanie shares generously about her own experience of perimenopause, or as she calls it, the autumn of the menstruating years; from experiencing new levels of love, to reckoning with childhood trauma, and how her recommitment to the fundamentals of cycle awareness has supported her. 

Whether you’re experiencing the psycho‐spiritual shift in the years running up to menopause, or you’re supporting women and folks in the thick of it - perhaps your clients, family members. friends or colleagues - we hope this conversation helps to plug you into the practice of menstrual cycle awareness as a vital perimenopause resource.

We explore:

• How to practice menstrual cycle awareness when your cycle is very irregular and how to claim your rest, even when you don’t know when your next period is coming.
• What is at work on the psycho-spiritual level in the forties, and how the lens of the ‘quickening’ can help to make sense of the challenges of these years. 
• How Sjanie has navigated her trauma healing process in perimenopause, and the importance of community support in this life phase. 

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Today we’re replaying one of our most popular episodes -  a frank and feisty chat about one of the hot topics in our community - premenstrual and menopausal RAGE.

Have you ever been driving in your car and felt compelled to wind the windows up and actually roar because you felt so wildly angry on day 24? 

Or, if you’re navigating menopause, have you experienced your own ‘burn-the-house-down’ moment when your fury threatened to destroy everything you’ve built so far in your life?

What is going on with this rage? Why are so many of us feeling it? And what is it trying to tell us? 

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

This episode is the first of a four-part series exploring the common challenges of each of the four cycle phases or inner seasons of the menstrual cycle, and Alexandra and Sjanie are going to reframe these challenges as meaningful limits that support us to access the power of each phase.

This first episode in the series is the inner spring, preovulation cycle phase and we’re looking at the challenge of anxiety, overwhelm, and scattered focus. And as the outer seasons unfold here in the UK, we’ll we continue with an exploration of the limits and challenges of the inner summer, autumn and winter. 

Through our personal challenges, and stories from the community, we explore how the limits of inner spring help you to access the big powers of this cycle phase, including play, innocence and enthusiasm. 

Above all, this series is an exploration of how the challenges you experience in your menstrual cycle aren't necessarily problems to fix, but can also be seen as meaningful boundaries that actually enable the transformative work of each cycle phase.

We explore:

• The key practice to support inner spring challenges: making space and time when you’re coming out of menstruation to cherish your sensitive nature. 
• The deep river at work in the menstrual cycle each month as our energy rises towards ovulation and descends as we head towards menstruation, and how this gives rise to the limits of each cycle phase.
  
  
• What the challenges and limits of inner spring can teach us about what we need at the beginning of everything; relationships, jobs, creative projects and anything new we’re embarking on.

---

Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love

---

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

---

Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy