Advertise on podcast: The Menstruality Podcast

After being guided by her doctor to take the pill for twenty years to manage painful periods, breathwork practitioner Harriette Wight was still dealing with challenging bleeds and decided to try something different. She was guided by a friend to try seed cycling, then learned how to track her menstrual cycle and then - via her Yoga teacher - she discovered breathwork. The combination of breathwork and cycle awareness changed everything for her.  Breathwork, as Harriette defines it, is the practice of using the breath to consciously change how we feel physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. And today in our conversation we explore the ancient roots of breathwork and the modern day expression, and why it is such a powerful tool for health and wellbeing, particularly when it’s used in combination with menstrual cycle awareness.  Harriette is a graduate of Red School’s Menstruality Leadership Programme, and through her own intimacy with her cycle, she’s created a body of work designed around specific breathwork practices to support each of the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle. In our chat today, she shares her MLP experience including how it changed how she sees herself, how she wants to show up in the world, and how she delivers her work.  We explore: How the inhale and exhale correspond to the two movements of energy within the menstrual cycle, which Alexandra and Sjanie have named: the via positiva and the via negativa. Simple breathwork practices to support you to rest when you bleed, manage the rising energy in your inner spring, to help you feel confident in your inner summerA ‘recovery breath’ practice to manage premenstrual emotional reactivity.--- 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 Harriette Wight: @yourfriendlybreathingcoach - https://www.instagram.com/yourfriendlybreathingcoach/

One of the most beautiful and practical gifts of menstrual cycle awareness is how it awakens a newfound capacity to know and assert our boundaries.  As we track our shifting emotions, mental state and energy levels through the cycle month, we get to know our unique strengths and our limits. This helps to build confidence in ourselves and our nature, so that when we become aware of a boundary that has been crossed, we’re more able to find a skillful way to use the power of NO.  So today we’re exploring the power of menstrual cycle awareness for setting boundaries, especially when you’re highly sensitive, in the premenstrual phase of your cycle, and in the years running up to and during menopause, and how this is potentially a life-changing and even world-changing act. We explore: How to work with the inner critic voice that invariably wakes up when we decide to claim a boundary and take care of ourselves. How the initiatory times in our menstruality life arc; like matressense, perimenopause, menopause, illness, loss require even stronger boundaries to hold ourselves through liminal times.Why we all need to re-write the story of the emotional messages of inner autumn as boundary signals rather than irrational outbursts.--- 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

To help you ease into 2026 purposefully, we’re talking about how the cycle helps you to live in your zone of genius today, which is to say, how practising menstrual cycle awareness helps you to know your own nature and stay close to what you’re really great at.  We go through the inner seasons of the cycle one by one, sharing how each one can help us to do the courageous, radical act of claiming ourselves and what we love in a world that celebrates constant productivity over joy. We get practical too by sharing a specific zone of genius practice to each cycle phase - enjoy! We explore:  The power of doing absolutely nothing in your inner winter at menstruation, or the dark moon, and how it anchors you into connection to your purpose. Why it’s so vital to have periods of time where you can experiment in inner spring, to be messy with no inner critic allowed. How to work with your premenstrual discerning energy to take stock and to reflect on what is working and what isn't in your life, so you can stay close to yourself and your zone of genius. --- 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

Happy New Year! We have a gift for you to help you start your 2026 infused in cyclical wisdom. Everything that Alexandra and Sjanie create at Red School is focused on inspiring us to connect to the power that lives within our cyclical nature, so that we can know and claim our own leadership roles in our lives. So, in service of this, today Alexandra and Sjanie do a power card reading with the Red School power cards, to help you choose a menstrual cycle power to guide your leadership this year. And by leadership they mean what you’re built for, your gift for the world. And as Sjanie says in this conversation - your unique way of leading in your life is sourced in your connection to your menstrual cycle. Alexandra added a beautiful visual, saying that it’s like an umbilical chord to the source of your being, to the mothership of you.  We had so much fun doing this, and our hope is that you feel like we’re all sitting together round the kitchen table playing! There are three cards to choose from… which one will be your menstrual cycle power ally for the year to come?  We explore: How the menstrual cycle helps us to live our own unique leadership (including Sjanie’s latest premenstrual example of how her cycle is helping to grow her up through her journey with self-responsibility). How the menstrual cycle holds us in a sustainable rhythm of self-care, particularly through inviting us to stop and drop our bundles The Red School power cards as a tool for understanding the different menstrual cycle powers that live inside the four inner seasons of the cycle - and you’ll have an opportunity to choose one to guide your year ahead.--- 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 moon is a big topic of conversation within the Red School community. Many who aren’t menstruating practice lunar tracking in place of menstrual cycle awareness, and those who have a menstrual cycle often bring moon-inspired questions, such as: ‘should I bleed on the full moon or the new moon?’ And ‘what to do when I’m bleeding but the moon is full and I feel pulled in two directions?’.  So today we’re exploring how cultivating a connection with the moon can support us to enter circular and cyclical time. Our guest today is visual artist and mother April McMurtry. April has been lunar tracking for twelve years, and describes herself as a guide for repairing our relationship with the cyclical nature of time by attuning to the moon. In today’s conversation we explore how following the ebb and flow of the moon can help us to transform our habits of overriding of our cyclical nature, as well as break free from the myth and tyranny of consistency. We explore: April's fascinating response to the question of whether we should bleed on the full moon or the new moon (and it might be different to what you think). How motherhood brought April to burnout, which led her to step back from teaching and lean into the wisdom of the moon as a way to get grounded in rhythms, rest and stillness. The beauty that can be found in darkness, and how the end of all cycles deconstructs, dissolves and empties us out in preparation for the new. --- 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 April McMurtry: @themoonismycalendar - https://www.instagram.com/themoonismycalendar

When you practice menstrual cycle awareness, you start to feel more connected to yourself. This process of remembering and embodying more of who you truly are means that you may come into contact with parts of yourself that have been disowned, or that you’ve been shamed out of claiming. Our conversation today is especially designed to support you if you’ve been encountering or unearthing memories or experiences related to trauma as you track your emotional, physical and spiritual ebb and flow throughout the cycle month.  Whether you’ve experienced acute trauma, developmental trauma, ancestral trauma or collective trauma caused by sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism and other forms of othering, discrimination or prejudice, Alexandra and Sjanie explore how cycle awareness can create a grounding of presence and self care to support trauma healing, through the lens of Sjanie’s trauma healing journey, as well as stories from the Red School community, We explore: How the dismissal, suppression and denial of the menstrual cycle, and our cyclical nature is a form of subtle gaslighting that in itself is a form of trauma.  Why certain phases of the cycle, such as the premenstrual phase, as well as perimenopause and menopause, open you to your shadow side and your trauma. Some practical steps to get started with working with your cycle to support 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

Whether it’s at work, in our relationships, as parents or carers, or in our interaction with our community, life regularly invites us to summon up the courage to have difficult conversations. Today we’re chatting about how cultivating an intimacy with our cyclical nature can support us to show up with skillful expression and heart. Our guest today is Sarah Rozenthuler is a world-renowned speaker, chartered psychologist, leadership coach, and the author of many books, including ‘Now We’re Talking‘. Sarah first discovered menstrual cycle awareness over two decades ago when she read Alexandra’s first book, The Wild Genie about the healing power of menstruation. She shares her journey with irregular menstrual cycles, her experience of running her own business in the world of leadership development as a cyclical being, and how her cycle awareness practice has supported her in some of her recent tough conversations. We explore: How menstrual cycle awareness can help you attune to your inner energetic state, which means you can pick your moment to talk, or stay silent so that conversation flows rather than derails.How the premenstrual phase and menopause helps us to set boundaries effectively in difficult conversations, and the importance of knowing your red lines.Why Sarah feels like she’s driving a Ferrari in the premenstrual phase of her cycle, and what this means for her capacity to have big, meaningful conversation. --- 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 Sarah Rosenthuler: https://sarahrozenthuler.com/

One of the questions that comes up again and again in the Red School community is this: how can I free up my voice and share my truth? So many of us, particularly women and those socialised as female feel stuck, silenced or disconnected from our true expression, so today we’re exploring how the practice of checking in every day with your menstrual cycle and how it’s influencing your energy and mood can support you on this quest.  Through our personal stories as well as stories from the community, we explore how menstrual cycle awareness is a discipline that keeps you close to yourself, and how this practice organically awakens an inner warmth, connection and confidence which lines you up to receive inspiration about what it is that you’re here to express and share with the world. We explore: How menstruation cocoons you so that you can step away from the noise of the world and rest into a sanctuary of connection with your voice - the inner winter silences the world so that you can finally hear yourself. Tools for working with your inner critic and self expression - such as containing the critic in the premenstrual phase of the cycle - so that you can practice experimenting and paying with sharing your voice in the preovulatory phase, your inner spring. How to support ourselves when the holding back of our voice comes out as premenstrual rage or implodes inside as depressive cycles. --- 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

For many of us menopause announces itself in our lives through some kind of betrayal. For today’s podcast guest, that betrayal came in the form of a dismantling of identity that provoked one particular emotion on a whole new level - rage.  Our guest today is the brilliant trauma-informed embodiment guide, facilitator, and heart activist Tanya Forgan. She explores menopause as a series of portals which show us where we’re holding power and where we’re not. Her initial ‘betrayal’ phase of menopause rocked her to her core, coinciding with the pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and catalysing a dark night of the soul where she faced the harm she has experienced as a dual heritage woman in the UK.  She goes on to illuminate the healing power of the repair phase of menopause, describing the rituals and community support that helped her to find the grace in the raging fire of the initiatory process. She shares what supported her to alchemise her anger and understand grief as the most exquisite expression of love in the revelation phase, and all she’s discovering in the visioning and emergence portals where she is exploring the kind of grandmother she now wants to become.  We explore: - How cycle awareness helped to prepare Tanya for the dismantling of menopause.  - What helped Tanya when she lost her trust in her body and in society, including her amazing nervous-system-regulating yoga bath ritual! - What menopause taught Tanya about the power of circles for creating belonging, especially when it comes to race, gender, sexual experience, ability in body, power and oppression. --- Join our menopause online course: Menopause: The Great Awakener --- 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 Tanya Forgan: @tanyaforgan - https://www.instagram.com/tanyaforgan

As we enter our forties, many of us start to experience signals from our body that show us that we can’t override ourselves anymore. We become more permeable, our energy levels shift, and we tend to have less capacity. If we don’t clock these changes and find ways to adapt our lives, we’ll start to experience trouble inside ourselves often in the form of stress, overwhelm and other physical, emotional and mental symptoms.  Alexandra and Sjanie call these years the “autumn” of our menstruating years, or the Quickening, and in the collective conversation many refer to these years in the run up to menopause as perimenopause. Today we’re exploring these perimenopause years and challenges as a kind of sacred preparation or apprenticeship for the great initiation of menopause - a series of unveilings that allow us to see what has been unconscious within us.  Through stories from the community we explore why many of us feel scared of and unprepared for menopause, how the forties are preparing our psyches for the massive spiritual awakening ahead and why menstrual cycle awareness is our greatest ally through the twists and turns of perimenopause We explore: The importance of relishing your forties, and the authority and sense of self-knowledge that can come with this decade.How menstrual cycle awareness, and particularly paying attention to your premenstrual phase - the inner autumn of the cycle - can prepare us for the autumn challenges of the forties and perimenopause. How old trauma can resurface in perimenopause, and how to deeply meet what is arising and support yourself to encounter the big emotions  so that healing can take place. --- Register for our menopause online course: Menopause: The Great Awakener - Starts October 31st --- 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

Our guest today is Tamu Mosley, who is a student of Alexandra and Sjanie’s Menopause: The Great Awakener course, and is an initiated Sacred Woman, wholistic wellness facilitator, teacher, and mama. Tamu was guided by her mum to track her cycles from her very first bleed, and now, a few years post menopause, she sees how cycle awareness guided her through her menopause initiation. When Tamu was entering perimenopause she was studying with the world renowned spiritual teacher from Burkina Faso, Sobonfu Some, who said that when a woman enters menopause, she becomes the carrier of the water of life for the community. In our conversation Tamu shares about the water medicines that supported her through the fire and heat of the five phases of her menopause process, and have become core to her life purpose in her third act.  Tamu is the founder of Wholistic Shine and Uchū Botanical and is a kitchen alchemist, a home herbalist, a flower essence practitioner and a student of cha dao (the way of tea). Tamu is guided by a deepening relationship with and devotion to the sacred element water through daily practice, prayer and intention. We explore: Hot flashes as an invitation to burn away self-defeating thoughts. How Tamu honours the anniversary of her final menstrual bleed each year with a water and tea ceremony, and how sitting with tea for over 300 days in a row has supported her relationship with her partner. What it has meant for Tamu to move from her earth body as a mother, to her water body during menopause, and how it has helped her to slowly and steadily create a new creative and work life, post-menopause.--- Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd --- 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 Tamu Mosley: @wholistic_shine - https://www.instagram.com/wholistic_shine

Menopause is an immense life event, a great initiation. Not only is it a complete hormonal shift in the landscape of your overall health, it’s also a psycho-spiritual transformation, which can bring with it a huge emotional rollercoaster. Rage, grief, emptiness, exposure, hurt, anxiety - they can all create a sense of groundlessness in menopause, to the extent that many of us feel that we simply don’t know ourselves any more. This emotional heat can include a sense of despair - you had a sense of what you were about, who you were, what was important to you, and suddenly it all fell away, leaving you questioning the meaning of pretty much everything. Today we’re exploring how to navigate the emotional heat of menopause through the lens of honest and vulnerable stories from the Red School community and Sjanie’s own personal emotional rollercoaster in the run up to menopause. We explore: Alexandra’s personal experience of moments of existential terror that can arise in menopause.How trauma can show up in menopause, and a reframe for when you feel like you’re unravelling and it feels like you’re going mad. What happened when Alexandra experienced her most vivid memory of incandescent menopause rage in the car park under the library. --- Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd --- 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

It’s world menopause day later this month, and throughout October we’ll be sharing on social media about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. On October 21st - 23rd, Alexandra and Sjanie would like to invite you to join them for their free three-day online menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And their online course, menopause the Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.com Today’s bonus episode is a replay of a delicious conversation I had with Chameli Gad, mystic and Goddess Wisdom Keeper and the founder of Awakening Women, who has been a teacher for me for the past fifteen years. Chameli’s menopause initiatory process unfolded throughout the pandemic and included the death of her son, and her divorce.  She’s been generously sharing her menopause process with us here on the podcast over the past three years, and in our chat today, she explores the fruits of her menopause process, from the other side, and she is as honest about her current peace, ease and ecstasy as she was with her mid-initiation pain and suffering. We explore: What it means to ensure that your inner “mama is in the house” in menopause, in three different aspects: the witnessing mother, the nurturing mother and the guardian mother.Chameli’s ‘baby dolphin’ menopause dream and how it has radically transformed her capacity for self-compassion.What Chameli learned about boundaries in menopause, and how she moved from using boundaries as a way to control others, and instead as an act of leadership that arises from within us. --- Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd --- 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 Chameli Gad: @chameligad - https://www.instagram.com/chameligad Awakening Women: @awakeningwomen - https://www.instagram.com/awakeningwomen

It’s world menopause day later this month, and throughout October we’ll be sharing on social media about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. On October 21st - 23rd, Alexandra and Sjanie would like to invite you to join them for their free three-day online menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And their online course, menopause the Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.com Today’s bonus episode is for you if - like me - you long to feel more calm, rested, peaceful and grounded. Both because it feels better, but also because you know the gold that lies in this state of restedness; for your health, your relationships, your worklife, and your journey through menopause. Our guest is Tracee Stanley, the author of the bestselling book Radiant Rest, and the recently published The Luminous Self. She is a post-lineage yoga teacher, inspired by more than twenty years of study, and she’s devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidra, rest, meditation, self-inquiry, nature as a teacher, and ancestor reverence. We chat about how to set up a practice that allows for rest inside a mainstream culture that says we’re not worthy unless you’re pushing through; whether that’s pushing through grief, illness, exhaustion or menopause. Through it all, Tracee illuminates how deep rest, peace and truth are our birthright. We explore: The importance of unveiling the messages we received about the value of rest from our parents and ancestral lineage; particularly for Black, Brown and Indigenous people.How the practice of Yoga Nidra is a way to know our true self, as well as a powerful act of rebellion in a culture that wants us to keep endlessly grindingThe story of Mataji - a female yoga teacher in her 90s, who was famous for never sleeping, and became one of the first people to teach the wisdom of yoga nidra. --- Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd --- 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 Tracee Stanley: @tracee_stanley - https://www.instagram.com/tracee_stanley

It’s world menopause day later this month, and throughout October we’ll be sharing on social media about how we can rewrite the cultural narrative of menopause. On October 21st - 23rd, Alexandra and Sjanie would like to invite you to join them for their free three-day online menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power. And their online course, menopause the Great Awakener starts on October 31st - you can register for the free event and find out more about the course at redschoolmenopause.com In today’s bonus episode, we’re exploring the immense capacities that open up to us as we move through menopause, and Alexandra is your host. Her guest is Prune Harris, an energy expert, a consciousness educator, and soul activist, who has trained with healers, elders, and wisdom holders throughout the world.  Prune shares her personal experience of navigating the great threshold of menopause, and how it can collectively awaken a new, immense capacity to reclaim our deep worth as human beings, beyond concepts of gender and status, but as a lifeforce that is part of the great web of life. They explore: The different cycles that Prune is tracking now post-menopause, and how our life force moves into different expressions of wisdom once we’re no longer being held in monthly cycles. Menopause as an identity death process which brings us face to face with our inner soothsayer, to hear deep truths about ourselves, our relationships and the world, so we can choose the new identities we want to embody in our third act. How menopause is helping to meet the modern day crisis of separation and call us home to our essential place of belonging, so we can radiate it into our lives and into the world. --- Register for our free three-day menopause event: How Menopause Awakens Your Power on October 21st-23rd --- 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 Prune Harris: @pruneharris - https://www.instagram.com/pruneharris