The Menstruality Podcast

Over the past week, I’ve been sitting with women going through or on the other side of menopause hearing their profound insights about the spiritual gifts of their menopause process for our Spiritual Power of Menopause series.

And today we’re sharing one of our conversations here on the podcast - with internationally-acclaimed yoga teacher, author, and public speaker, Seane Corn. Seane has been at the forefront of yoga, activism, and community service for over thirty years. She’s now dedicated to challenging cultural narratives about menopause, reframing it from a physical decline to a sacred spiritual initiation and rebirth.

We explore:

• How Seane confronted internalised misogyny around midlife and aging
  
  
• How her Yoga practice supported her to do the menopause shadow work of releasing outgrown identities
  
  
• How the alchemy of the menopause process awakens our intuition so that we can step into new levels of leadership.

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

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

It’s world menopause awareness month and today we’re sharing a conversation that Alexandra and Sjanie had with the brilliant writer, international speaker and transformational coach Bethany Webster a couple of Octobers ago for the Wise Power retreat, all about healing the ‘Motherwound’ in menopause. 

At Red School we’re busy preparing our Spiritual Power of Menopause conversation series which is starting next week, as well as Alexandra and Sjanie’s popular free three-day menopause event: How to Awaken The Power of Menopause, which will also serve as an introduction to the Menopause: The Great Awakener course. It all starts on October 12th and you can register for free at redschoolmenopause.com.

Bethany sat down with me and very generously shared her story of perimenopause healing and transformation for the upcoming Spiritual Power of Menopause series, and her conversation is coming up on day five, called: Perimenopause - A Defiance in Service to Love… 

But for now, let’s hear from her about how her personal understanding of the Motherwound impacted her in the approach to menopause, how menopause can help us to make peace with our mothers, and how to cultivate a meaningful inner mothering practice.

We explore:

• How Bethany's personal understanding of the Motherwound is impacting her in the approach to menopause, inspiring her to negotiate a new relationship with power and truth. 
  
  
• How menopause can help us to make peace with our mothers and release the residues of the messages we unconsciously received from them.
  
  
• How to start the work of healing the Motherwound at menopause, and cultivate a meaningful inner mothering practice.

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

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

It’s the first day of world menopause month, and we’re continuing to re-write the cultural narrative around menopause, by exploring the connection between psycho-spiritual initiation of menopause and leadership. Especially the kind of emergent, relational, responsive leadership that is needed in our world today. 

In Alexandra and Sjanie’s book, Wise Power, they share that menopause is a training ground in power, where we can learn how to lead from a place of vulnerable humility, holding the tension with complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. What could be more needed in the coming decade which will demand new levels of creativity, courage and leadership from us all? 

We explore:

• The menopause shadow work that enables us to fully face our inner critics, so that we can own our strengths and our blind spots. 
  
  
• How to navigate the dark night of the soul that can come in menopause without getting lost to bitterness and resentment, and whilst staying open to life in all it’s messy fullness.
  
  
• How menopause ultimately helps us to unashamedly love what we’re good at, recognize our limits and blind spots and liberate ourselves to live and share our unique gifts

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

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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 flipping the script and replaying an interview from a couple of years ago where Sjanie interviewed Sophie about her experience of bringing cycle awareness to the world of business. 

When she’s not hosting this podcast, Sophie is a business coach and strategist. She brings two decades of business experience as a Yoga teacher, filmmaker, non-profit communications director and women’s network founder to support business leaders to thrive. 

Today she shares how her own menstrual cycle awareness practice transformed all aspects of her life, including her approach to work, and how she weaves cyclical wisdom into her strategy work. She shares the three core challenges that she sees entrepreneurs facing, and cyclical approaches to experiencing more ease, confidence, creativity and aligned expansion in business.

We explore:

• The wild night of pre-menstrual rage that changed everything for Sophie; her career, her country of residence and her relationship.
• What late night breast-feeding dreaming taught Sophie about how to run a thriving, sustainable, impactful business.
• Why we all need to connect more to the 99.9% of life on earth that is cyclical, rather than the 0.01% of human culture that is largely governed by an all-too-linear and rational  linear obsession with non-stop productivity. 

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

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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

Last week we gathered in person with twenty-eight of the graduates of the Menstruality Leadership Programme for an in-person retreat, where we focused on healing our experiences of menarche - our first periods. 

In today’s conversation I asked Alexandra and Sjanie to share one of the powerful teachings from the retreat, which is a new way of understanding menstrual cycle awareness as a spiritual life path, by seeing the different key experiences in the menstruality life arc as sacred sites.

We explore how the key initiatory experiences of menstruality - menarche, menstruation, matrescence (if we’re able to or choose to have children) and menopause - as sacred sites which have been desecrated by hundreds of years of the menstrual cycle being denigrated, ignored, dismissed and shamed. And we take a metaphorical walk through each site, dreaming into how we can each re-sanctify them in our own lives, and how this ripples out into the world.

We explore:

• Menstrual cycle awareness as the key way to resanctify the sacred site of menstruation.
• The conversation that each of us must have with our wise selves in menopause, as a way to declare the sacredness and meaning within our experience.
• Healing your menarche experience, by finding the grit in the oyster shell of your experience around your first period, and tracking how it has become the pearl of your calling. 

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

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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

When Lella Sá was seven years old, she learned to meditate with her grandmother, which was the beginning of a spiritual journey that has guided her through multiple expressions of her calling; from modeling, to event management, to biographical counselling, to motherhood, to running a Waldorf school. She now serves  as a culture change and productivity consultant focused on what she calls Matrifocial Leadership. 

Today we explore how Lella’s in-depth practice of menstrual cycle awareness influences and inspires her work supporting women to lead through Maitrifocal practices that honour life. We chat about what could become possible if we all embodied this life-affirming form of leadership, personally and collectively, as well as some of the obstacles that get in the way. 

We explore:

• How to work in sync with our biology, our biography and our responsibility as humans living in this epoch, by embodying the wisdom of ‘life before performance’.
• How cycle awareness and aligning with natural rhythms helps us to cultivate a new, healthy relationship with time, by using our bodies as leadership infrastructure.
• How indigenous cyclical wisdom can teach us about the practice of sufficiency, which is vital to putting life at the centre of our work, and to work through stewardship and collaboration instead of domination and competition. 

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

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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
Lella Sà: @lellasa - https://www.instagram.com/lellasa

Today we’re welcoming back our most popular guest on the Menstruality podcast, naturopathic doctor, Lara Briden, who has previously offered holistic health guidance for menstrual, perimenopause and menopause health challenges which has helped thousands of our listeners. Today we’re geeking out about a vitally important, but often misunderstood aspect of our physical and mental health.

As Lara describes, we’re experiencing a global crisis in metabolic health on the planet today, with over 40% of people in many countries living with insulin resistance, which has serious health implications throughout the body. In our conversation today we explore what’s at the root of these metabolic challenges, how they are impacting us - particularly when it comes to menstrual challenges and menopause - and most importantly, why it’s not our fault.

Lara speaks to the systemic issues that have given birth to this health crisis, and some practical ways to create lifestyle shifts to move towards better metabolic health, as well as turn the ship around collectively when it comes to our food systems, endocrine disrupting ‘forever’ chemicals and ultra-processed food. These shifts are especially important for those dealing with menstrual health challenges, or navigating the life transitions of perimenopause and menopause, as well as pregnancy and post-partum if they are part of our path.

We explore:

• The complex interplay of insulin resistance and women’s health, particularly for those experiencing PMOS (previously known as PCOS), PMDD and other premenstrual mood challenges, and perimenopause.
  
  
• We break down terms like metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, as well as defining ultra-processed food, and how it’s contributing to menstrual and menopausal health challenges.
  
  
• Disconnecting metabolic health from body shape and size, and the importance of not comparing yourself to others when it comes to reversing insulin resistance and moving towards metabolic health.

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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
Lara Briden - @larabriden - https://www.instagram.com/larabriden/

Today we’re continuing our journey into traditional and indigenous womb wisdom, by exploring African earth-based teachings about the womb as a temple. Our guest and guide is Chanana McGarry, who is a Medicine Woman as well as a certified Fertility Awareness & Sexual Health Educator. She’s been exploring how to bridge ancient wisdom and modern science for two decades, helping people to navigate their sexual health with clarity, sovereignty, and reverence for their body’s innate wisdom and power.

Chanana is a direct descendant of South African Mujaji Rain Queens, and her ground-breaking work is also inspired by her paternal lineage of medicine women in Botswana. In our conversation she shares what she has learned from sitting with her elders, tracing her lineage back over hundreds of years to matrilineal communities who understood women’s bodies as holders of magic.

The womb wisdom teachings that have long existed across the globe, transcending culture and location, including the traditional feminine wisdom technology of mothers giving their daughters river stones, when they came of age, so they could track their own fertility.

We explore:

• How two unplanned pregnancies initiated Chanana into fertility awareness and connecting to ancestral womb wisdom. 
• Cervical fluid as the secret language of your womb and the importance of learning your own patterns.
• The womb as a portal - the place where invisible things come into existence; ideas, desires, and visions; the place where we create everything, from babies, to businesses to the lives we dream of. 

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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
Chanana McGarry: @wombliteracynow - https://www.instagram.com/wombliteracynow/

Just like our physical, emotional and mental energy, our erotic energy also ebbs and flows through the menstrual cycle month. Today we’ve invited the brilliant psychotherapist and somatic sex therapist Carly Mountain back to the podcast to explore the connection between the womb and our erotic cycles. Today Carly guides us on a journey through the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle to explore the erotic challenges and gifts of each phase. 

Carly has recently released a new book called Untamed Pleasure, which is a treasure trove for anyone wanting to experience more sexual freedom and pleasure. 

We chat about many of the beautiful teachings from the book, including; how to manage protective parts that come up around around sex, how we can’t produce sex hormones and stress hormones at the same time, the power and sensitivity of the cervix, perimenopause sex, untamed aging and how to access more pleasure in every stage of life.

We explore:

• Why it can really help to take orgasm off the table, and focus instead on sensation and pleasure to relieve pressure and change the erotic landscape we’re exploring.
• How to cultivate your connection to your cervix, to deepen the sensation, move through numbness, and awaken more pleasure, and why it’s vital to move slowly and take our time.
• How the experience of eros can shift as we enter midlife.

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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
Carly Mountain: @carly_mountain - https://www.instagram.com/carly_mountain

Today we’re having a fascinating conversation with the woman who pioneered the role of intimacy co-ordinator in TV, film, opera and theatre. Ita O’Brien has worked on numerous high-profile productions including Sex Education on Netflix, and I May Destroy You on the BBC, and is the founder of the Intimacy on Set guidelines which have been widely adopted across the industry, advocating for safe, fair and dignified work.

Ita recently took all of her learnings and experience, and she’s shared them in her brilliant book, Intimacy: A field guide to finding connection and feeling your deep desires. Today we explore the vital role that an intimacy co-ordinator plays, and why safe, honouring and real-life depictions of sex on screen are so vital. 

We also draw on Ita’s wisdom around listening to our bodies in order to create deeper intimacy with ourselves and others, the need for all of us to understand the cyclical anatomy of female arousal and why we need more women writers creating truthful intimate scenes for women and people who menstruate.

We explore:

• Ita’s experience of being an intimacy co-ordinator on trailblazing scenes involving period sex in Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You.
  
  
• The importance of true consent, and how to access the power of no in intimacy, so that we can find our true yes.
  
  
• The archetype of the enchantress and how she can support our intimacy explorations as we approach, move through and enter our third act post menopause.

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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
Ita O’Brien: @itaobrien_intimacycoordinator: https://www.instagram.com/itaobrien_intimacycoordinator/