The Menstruality Podcast

What do you do when you’ve discovered the incredible power of menstrual cycle awareness, and you’re keen to share it with your loved ones, colleagues and community, but whenever you try to talk about it, you receive reactions that range from disinterest to disgust? The truth is that menstrual shame is real, it is pervasive and overcoming it is a key part of restoring the power, beauty and magic of...

Menstrual Cycle Awareness gives us a direct line to our deep selves, to what we’re here for and what we most deeply love.  As Alexandra and Sjanie say in Wild Power: “The journey to realizing your Calling, or purpose, is made possible by the process of initiation, which is encoded in your menstrual cycle. Initiatory change happens through the archetypal pattern of death and rebirth – which is exac...

Have you ever had to show up in a big way on day one of your cycle and felt exposed, then - like me - totally exhausted afterwards? Today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness can help you step up when you’re on your period; whether you have to do a big presentation at work, a speech at your best friend’s wedding, host a PTA meeting, or be visible in another way.  A few days before we reco...

Are you (or your friends or the people you work with) struggling with menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, spotting or heavy bleeding, menstrual pain, PCOS and intense mood changes in the premenstrual phase? Would you love to understand how you could work with food and dietary shifts to create menstrual health? Our guest today is Lisa Hendrickson-Jack, the author of The Fifth Vital S...

Have you ever noticed that your intuitive sense of knowing is heightened when you are premenstrual? Today we’re exploring the radical honesty that can be invoked in inner autumn, asking the question: what if our unadulterated, fierce, premenstrual truth speaking is actually exactly the medicine our world needs at this time?  My guest is Maya Luna, an artist, channel and creator of The Venus Path™,...

Today we’re exploring Black cyclical wisdom through the lens of the life story of an extraordinary woman who left a profound legacy of cyclical heart and body intelligence, with Dr Cre Dye, who serves as the Menstruality Justice and Inclusion Educator at Red School.   Dr. Cre has served her local, national, and international communities with heart, mind and body activism for over 25 years as a men...

How do you feel about inner summer, or the ovulatory phase of the cycle? For many in our community, it’s the easiest and most joyful part of the cycle, but many also find it to be challenging and confronting.   Today Alexandra and Sjnaie respond to your questions about inner summer and ovulation, including; how to approach physical symptoms around ovulation, such as headaches / migraines, acne and...

For a decade, our guest, birth doula, menstrual coach Jules Alma has been mapping her Yoni. It’s soothed and regulated her nervous system, healed her pain during sex and brings her back to her centre. She even uses it after she has attended a birth to regulate after all the beauty and intensity of the experience.  Yoni is the sanskrit word referring to our vaginas and vulvas, and in our conversati...

As you may know, we often talk about the amazing powers available to us when we’re able to rest at menstruation. But in a world that likes to see us active 24/7, how do we create the time and space to truly fulfill this glorious potential?  Well, Alexandra and Sjanie have a remedy they call The Big Bleed. Essentially, this means giving yourself a one-off ultimate menstrual experience. Because this...

How can you practice cycle awareness in your relationship? We get asked this question all the time, so we’re especially grateful to our guests today, Lucy Peach and Richard Berney for being willing to invite us right into the heart of their cycle-aware relationship. Lucy Peach is a period preacher, author, and folksinger. She’s a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme, the author of Per...

24% of women and people who bleed in the UK suffer from chronic pelvic pain, it’s 1 in 5 in Australia where our guest today, gynecologist Dr Peta Wright lives and works.  Dr Peta wrote her book Healing Pelvic Pain: transforming the trauma of period pain, endometriosis and chronic pelvic distress to explore a wide range of treatments which often aren’t prescribed, including lifestyle changes, stres...

For many of us, the inner autumn can be a provocative, messy and painful part of the menstrual cycle, where old traumas and wounds can surface, and for some this becomes deeply debilitating and disruptive. Our guest today, Menstrual Cycle Support founder Kate Shepherd Cohen, shares generously about her personal experience of PMDD (Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and how menstrual cycle awareness...

Speaking about the menstrual cycle and menopause is becoming less and less taboo. You can see it everywhere you look; Instagram is wonderfully full of women teaching cycle tracking for health and fertility. Our recent podcast guest Dr Lara Owen is busy co-creating international menstrual and workplace policies. You can buy menstrual cups in supermarkets. This podcast has been listened to 246,235 t...

Today we’re delighted to welcome one of the original menstruality trailblazers, Dr Lara Owen back to the podcast. We’re exploring a topic which comes up regularly in the Red School community - how to practice menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause at work, and how to create workplaces which honour our cyclical needs, particularly during menstruation and menopause. Dr. Lara Owen is recog...

In February 2016 our guest today, author and teacher Sara Avant Stover was coming out of a season of intense creativity and output and was preparing to enter into a cycle of rest and recovery, when one evening she received shattering news. Her former fiance came home one evening and confessed that he had been cheating on her, with many people, for many years.  This turned out to be the first of ma...

As with your early years of cycling, your later years of cycling are a transitional time. Your 20s and 30s are all about discovering your rhythm and firming up your sense of self. But from your 40s onwards, the focus begins to shift. Subtly, you start to feel that you're stepping up to a bigger game. It's as though the clock on your life is now ticking. That's why Alexandra and Sjan...

Do you catch yourself measuring your worth by how much you do, and how much what you do benefits others? If you do, you’re not alone. And, as our guest today, Tamu Thomas, says - it’s not your fault.  In her groundbreaking new book, Women Who Work Too Much: Break Free from Toxic Productivity , Tamu challenges the societal norms that glorify relentless productivity and burnout, shedding light on th...

Is there a particular point of your menstrual (or lunar) cycle where you tend to fall into a metaphorical ‘hole’? For many it’s day 5/6, coming out of the bleed or day 19/20 as you transition to inner autumn. These are two of the four ‘crossover days’ of the cycle . We like to think of these days as mini gaps in the fabric of life, or the ground giving way under you. Whatever metaphor works for yo...

Many of us in the Red School community have an intuitive longing to connect to the wild Feminine within us. As our guest today Michaela Boehm says in her book, The Wild Woman’s Way, we’re longing to connect to “the ancient part of us that knows the rising of the moon, and the movement of the tides. The instinctual, deeply connected aspects in each of us that has survived and thrived in the wildern...

Today we’re talking about power, and it’s a word that comes up a lot at Red School. It features in both of Alexandra and Sjanie’s book titles, as well as the title of our new course coming up in June - Cycle Power. But what exactly do we mean by power? In our conversation, we explore how Alexandra and Sjanie define and understand power, why so many of us feel scared, confused or suspicious about p...

The deeper we go with our menstrual cycle awareness practice, the more it can resource us as we heal our deepest wounds. Cycle by cycle, we step into deeper intimacy with our needs, which in turn enables us to take clumsy steps towards clarifying healthy boundaries. Today we’re speaking about a core wound which effects all of us, with the woman who first comprehensively defined the term a decade a...

Today we’re exploring a vital topic to all of us who are looking to evolve, wake up and live in a way which is honouring and life-affirming - decolonisation. When you look at the modern wellness industry in western countries, you can see that it borrows heavily from the ancient traditions of cultures from around the globe - from turmeric lattes, to cacao ceremonies, to yoga classes, to burning sag...

Do you have a menstrual cycle that doesn’t fit within the archetypal menstrual cycle maps? And are you - or someone you know - wondering how to practice cycle awareness when you have unpredictable, irregular cycles and are never sure when your period is going to arrive? When cycles become unpredictable it’s natural to feel uprooted, frustrated, powerless, confused, and even experience a sense of b...

How easy do you find it to express your truth? On the podcast today, we’re exploring the connection between the womb and the voice, why so many of us feel blocked in our expression, and how we can literally talk and sing our way back to our power, so that we can use our voices to create the world we want for ourselves and future generations. Our guest is Alycia Camacho - a spoken word artist who i...

We’ve all been there at some point. A shocking challenge disrupts our lives - a loss, a health crisis, a great disappointment - and we become the caterpillar in the cocoon (ie: we turn to mush).  But - as those of you who have been through it may well attest to (!) - nothing turns us into primordial goop like the initiation of menopause. Today I have the rare honour of speaking with a guest who is...