The Menstruality Podcast

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...

Today we’re tackling two taboo topics at once. Firstly, sex - an area which many people find charged, challenging, confusing and sometimes shameful and we’re pairing it with menstrual cycle awareness - another topic so often shrouded in shame. Our guest and brilliant guide is Alexa Bowditch - the founder of sexandlove.co and a cycle aware woman who has a gift for welcoming people into their sexual...

Our first period - or our ‘menarche’ - is a big initiatory moment, which sets us on the path of menstruality - the path of awakening to our Calling. During menarche we are each birthed from the ‘womb of our family’, into the womb of our menstruating years. We’re coming into the holding, guidance and wisdom of our menstrual cycle, month after month. In today’s conversation we unpack what menarche m...

When Dr Cre Dye was in her early 20s, she began to feel called to explore the power of her cycle - or as she describes it, her moon, flowers and power. Over our series of two conversations, we’re exploring the cycle wisdom she has learned, unearthed and received over the last three decades through the lens of her relationships with her two Grandmothers; today her Granny of hidden First Nations des...

We’re thrilled to be welcoming mythologist and author, Dr Sharon Blackie back to the podcast today, to take another journey into the mythic imagination together. We explore how the ancient myths of our land weave us into connection with ourselves as natural, cyclical creatures, to our place in the world, and to the wisdom of our ancestral lineage. Many of you will have read and loved Sharon’s 2016...

Today we're having 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 dest...

Today we’re actually replaying Dr Lara Briden's first episode with us, How to Feel Better in Perimenopause, because it’s the most popular episode we’ve ever shared, listened over 3500 times, and shared widely, and because we receive more questions about perimenopause than anything else. In the conversation Lara demystifies this major transition that happens in our bodies in the years that lea...

What causes menstrual pain? Why do periods go missing? Why do we get PMS and how can we treat it naturally? What is happening in our bodies when we're on the pill? What is a good alternative to the pill? We hear questions like these all the time from our community, and in today’s episode we’re talking with a great ally of Red School, Dr Lara Briden who answers all of these questions and more....

Around 20 years ago, in London, Sjanie was living her life with great abandon. Bold, confident and out there…she was invulnerable. But she had no menstrual cycle - she had been on the contraceptive injection for seven years. It was only when she started to have intense pain after orgasm that she suddenly sensed something was missing and that she needed to get her cycle back… and today we hear the...

Today's episode is for you if you’re curious about how to maintain healthy boundaries when you are working to create change for a cause that you deeply care about. It’s especially for you if you self-identify as a highly sensitive person. Many people come to cycle awareness because they are feeling burnt out from a system that pushes them beyond their natural limits. Our guest today, Dorcas C...

From finding oneself again through perimenopause, to helping to move through depression, to transforming communication with loved ones, today we’re exploring real life stories of how menstrual cycle awareness has changed the lives of our listeners. We explore: How discovering cycle awareness supported Melanie to move through a bout of severe depression to a sense of deep alignment with her true se...

It walks us home to our own natural rhythms. It keeps us close to what truly matters to us. It’s a innate self esteem builder. It even prepares us for menopause… Menstrual (and lunar) cycle awareness are a huge game-changer, and powerful spiritual practices for our wild times. But the truth is that most of us live in cultures that value productivity over rest and profit over health - so we all nee...

Welcome to the final episode in our Wild Power Bonus series - today we're creating a new life-affirming menstrual story. It’s time now for each of us to fully reclaim the power of our menstrual cycle. To do that we have to get smart in a world that doesn’t yet recognise or celebrate it. In this episode we share some of our key Red School cycle savvy tips and strategies for restoring the cycle...

Our guest today, Lazola MaDuka lives a homesteading life on a biodynamic farm amongst giant mountains and trees in South Africa. Her life is utterly wedded to the land, the weather and the seasons - her land tells her what it needs and when.  Lazola is also a Period + Menstrual Cycle Embodiment Coach, a Red Tent Facilitator and a certified Menstruality Mentor  - she’s a graduate of the Red School...

Welcome to our penultimate Wild Power conversation series. These ‘round-the-kitchen-table’ chats with Alexandra and Sjanie were first released when we published Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power . They unpack the book’s teachings through powerful, practical and funny real-life stories and examples.  Episode seven is about how to enter what...