Red School.

“Imagine that knowledge of the full spectrum and power of the menstrual cycle is commonplace, and we all feel the utter rightness of having this experience within us. Imagine a world in which the menstrual cycle is respected as our spiritual practice. Imagine young people growing up in this menstrual-affirming world.

Imagine a world in which menopause is recognized as a healthy, organic step in one's evolutionary journey stepping into the vital and powerful role of serving your community and the world. Imagine knowing that you’ll be profoundly met in the dignity and power of this new place you stand in post menopause.

May we all trust our menstrual cycle and reclaim the spiritual significance of Menopause as the path to instate our full sovereignty. May we all recognise and relish our entitlement, dignity and authority to be channels for Menstruality and the Divine Feminine on the planet.”

By Lara Owen. “Menstrual taboos in patriarchal societies have been a core method for diminishing women through the shaming of a fundamental female-only experience, with corresponding prohibitive and limiting behaviours. This taboo is gradually changing as our world becomes more equal in gender terms, but there is still much work to be done. Centuries of shaming have left a legacy of inhibition and silence that impacts women’s health today…

The stigma associated with menstruation in patriarchal societies has also had a major influence on how women behave during menstruation. From childhood on, women absorb a powerful social message to ‘grin and bear it’ during menstruation, and to carry on ‘as normal’.

Yet anecdotally, many women report feeling better in body and mind when they adjust their activity to the cycle. Most significantly, they report enhanced wellbeing in general when they have some time for rest and relaxation during the heavy bleeding part of their period….”

By Artist Jamie McCartney. “Female genitalia have long been a source of fascination but also of confusion.

In 2006, British artist Jamie McCartney set out to end the confusion, at a scale that could not be ignored: The original vulva diversity project that has inspired so many more.

The 8 metre (26 feet) long wall sculpture consists of four hundred plaster casts of vulvas, all of them unique, arranged into ten large panels. …The age range of the women is from 18 to 76. Included are mothers and daughters, identical twins, trans men and women as well as a woman pre and post natal and another pre and post labiaplasty and many others.

Vulvas are as different as faces and many people, particularly women, don’t realise that….”

By Uma-Dinsmore Tuli. “Most of the people on this planet who practise and teach yoga are women. Most of these women have wombs. And many of these women have little clear understanding about the effects of yoga practice upon their wombs. This is because yoga was originally developed by men for men’s bodies, and has been, until only very recently, transmitted through exclusively male lineages. Traditional forms of teaching yoga are thus likely to have zero womb awareness, so there is much ignorance and confusion in the yoga world about what happens to our wombs when we practise yoga.

The information provided overleaf sets out the aims and effects of certain yoga techniques and outlines the effects of these practices on the womb.

Why bother?

The healthful energies of a woman’s womb are key to her lifelong wellbeing and vitality. In the yogic anatomy of the energy body, the womb is the seat of creativity, fertility and capacity to nurture and grow new life, new ideas—to manifest. It is literally the cosmic gateway for śakti (power) within. Yoga is all about refining awareness, of body, mind, breath, emotions and energies: it is about ‘union’ or re-connection with the source of all life.

To pay no attention to the changing needs of womb cycles is to neglect the very place within that is the source of vitality and well being. Respect for womb cycles is the foundation of a refined and sensitive yoga practice for women….”

By Lara Owen. “The value we place on menstruation has a direct correlation with the value we place on ourselves as women….”

By Emma Balnaves. “A practical guide for women in the three important stages of her life - menstruation, pregnancy & menopause.”

Joanna Macy, On Being interview with Krista Tippett.

“We’ve been treating the Earth as if it were a supply house and a sewer. We’ve been grabbing, extracting resources from it for our cars and our hairdryers and our bombs. And we’ve been pouring waste into it until it’s overflowing. But our Earth is not a supply house and sewer; it is our larger body. We breathe it, we taste it, we ARE it. And it is time now that we venerate that incredible flowering of life…”

By O’Nell. “The Beautiful Cervix Project encourages people with cervices to learn cervical self-exam and fertility awareness as a revolutionary path of promoting respect, confidence, and health. We believe that this form of self-empowerment and education will help contradict shame and misinformation around our reproductive health and choices, affecting positive change from the personal to global levels.”