The Menstruality Podcast

Historically, trauma research has been done primarily on men, and then applied to women’s bodies as if it’s going to work in the same way. But as our guest today, Somatic Emotional Processing facilitator Veronica Rottman, shares, women currently suffer from twice the rate of anxiety and depression, make up 80% of the population with autoimmune disease and are much more likely to experience burnout. 
Veronica is the founder of Soma School and has devoted over 40,000 hours over the past seventeen years to trauma resolution. In the conversation today she explores the female nervous systems; including how women and those socialised as female experience trauma differently inside a patriarchal culture, why the female nervous system is more prone to the freeze response and and why it’s important to think carefully about how we use the term ‘regulation’ when it comes to trauma resolution and our nervous systems. 
Veronica also has her own personal trauma healing journey from complex post-traumatic stress and in her earlier life, she experienced PMDD, menstrual pain and other symptoms, which she describes as her body revolting against the patriarchy. After practicing menstrual cycle awareness for many years, she now no longer has pelvic pain and today she shares how the practice has helped her to have a more embodied relationship to her pelvis, and to understand her cycle through sensations.

We explore:
The fact that Veronica hasn’t encountered a woman or person experiencing PMDD who doesn’t have a history of trauma whether it’s more subtle, low-level and chronic, or more extreme experiences.

Why somatics and wellness need to be less focused on regulation for women, and more about being with and softening into what’s happening in our cyclical bodies.

The role of oxytocin in the trauma response, why women experience trauma relationally, and the importance of cuddle puddles. 
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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
Veronica Rottman: @wakingwomb - https://www.instagram.com/wakingwomb

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 summer
A ‘recovery breath’ practice to manage premenstrual emotional reactivity.
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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
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.
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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

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. 
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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

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.
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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