The Menstruality Podcast

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
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The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email info@redschool.net
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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
Ita O’Brien: @itaobrien_intimacycoordinator: https://www.instagram.com/itaobrien_intimacycoordinator/

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.

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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 info@redschool.net
---
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. 
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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 info@redschool.net
---
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. 
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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 info@redschool.net
---
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. 
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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 info@redschool.net
---
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