Menstrual Cycle Self-Care and Body Awareness (Episode 348)

Full Transcript: Episode 348

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Welcome to the Fertility Friday podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of the fifth vital sign and the fertility awareness mastery charting journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with us today. I’m excited to share today’s episode with you. Today I am welcoming back one of my past clients and past reality series episode participants onto the show and my past client Taqdir has released a book called Self Care Down There. So today’s episode is all about self care and self care was certainly one of my prime topics in 2020 in my client work and I’m sure here and there it came out on the podcast. And I think it’s always a really good reminder how important it is for us to, you know, place the oxygen mask on ourselves first. And I feel that this really comes apparent when you’re charting your menstrual cycles. And so one of the perpetual conversations that I have in all the work that I do is that when you track your cycles and you pay attention to your fifth vital sign, You really do get those reminders. Sometimes they’re nudges, sometimes they’re giant pushes or shoves, but you get these reminders to take care of yourself because when you stop taking care of yourself, when the sleep goes out the window, you’re not eating, you’re eating all the garbage, you know, air quotes, eating all the things that don’t make you feel good is probably a better way to say it. But when you do all those things and you’re charting, charting, you do get feedback. So that’s one of the things I love about charting because it always helps us to stay on track. So if any of you needed a reminder about how important self-care is, then you’ll really appreciate today’s episode with Taqdir. And I’ll just take a moment to read Taqdir’s bio. Taqdir Kaur Bhandal is the CEO of I’m With Periods. She runs her small business and think tank and spends most of her days doing research and teaching at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She also gets to nerd out with fellow scholars as a member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, and when she’s not engaging in period research and writing, she spends her days trying to follow the rays of the sun with her dog. She is trained as a human developmental biologist, health policy analyst, and herbalist, and she is now physically based in Halifax Nova Scotia. So without further ado, let’s jump right in. And I’m really excited to have Taqdir on the show today. Welcome to the show, Taqdir.

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Thanks for having me, Lisa. You’ve been on the show before, you were on the show as a client and now you’re on the show as an author. So congratulations on your relatively new book, Self-Care Down There. Yeah, I can’t even believe the amount of change that we’ve all gone through and that I’ve gone through since we were talking. I think it was just after I’d come off the pill and maybe we were talking about thyroid health because I was convinced.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: That’s right. Things was going on. So I can update you on that and also talk about the book, yeah, self-care down there, which is truly built on a lot of the work that you’ve pioneered and the research that you’ve been doing with the fifth vital sign. So it’s truly a continuation of the learning that I’ve gone from you. Well, that’s amazing. So before we get into all of that, maybe let us know a little bit about yourself. So your background, what prompted you to write self-care down there, and also what inspired you to be, and so I think it’s obvious to all of our listeners, but obviously we’re talking about self-care within the menstrual realm, within the feminine kind of realm, I guess you could say, and I’m sure you’ll clarify or correct me if I misspoke there, but what inspired you to really focus on this area and actually write a whole book about it? –

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Mm-hmm, yeah, great questions. So a little bit about me. I am a health researcher also based in Canada, and totally separate from menstrual cycles and sex and all of that. I’ve been doing research on medical and nursing schools and how they teach and the ways that colonialism operates. So that’s sort of my day job. I work for UBC a teach on this topic. And then while I’m still doing my PhD right now, but partway through, I started to notice my mental health really taking a nose dive. Like it wasn’t all the childhood trauma. It wasn’t like moving across the country. It wasn’t even any of that stuff until I started to notice my sex drive just totally go away. And I was talking to my therapist and she recommended the book taking charge of your fertility and I’d been reading or listening to podcasts about the impact of the pill on Health and sex drives in general. And so that was in 2017 So I actually stopped taking my last pill in November and then went on a year -long trip to my homelands of India for the first time in 17 years. And I think it was all of that transformation happening at one time where the importance of menstruation and in Punjabi we say mawadi, the importance of mawadi just became so apparent and it truly just became the foundational point of starting the journey of self-care down there, I started an Instagram page just documenting my own experience of learning fertility awareness method and how after all these years of working in health, like literally doing a biology degree, nobody had ever said the word cervical fluid or cervical mucous to me before, and it was just so shocking. And so that’s essentially When people ask me what’s my kind of one liner about self-care down there, it’s honestly making sure every single human on this planet or at least the three billion of us who get our periods to know what the word cervical fluid means in English or in our own ancestral language and what it means in our actual bodies, no matter what, whether people menstruate naturally or with medical intervention or whatever just knowing what it is knowing what the cycle is and then I yeah basically I just started writing about it for my own. Knowledge and publisher reached out wanted an author to write the book self care down there and here we are. In twenty twenty and the book came out in February this year I’m super excited to share it with the world.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, so as you were talking, I was thinking, what is missing? So, you know, when you write a book, you, there’s obviously information that you feel needs to be in the world. And so when you were writing this book, I mean, what, so I am holding a copy right now for all the listeners and it’s great. It goes through, I mean, this is such a handy resource and such an important resource just for women of all ages, but I think a lot of women who come into this knowledge about menstrual cycles, we always kind of thinking like, this would have been so useful, this teenager. This would have been so useful when I started menstruating or before I started menstruating or around the time I was transitioning or beginning to be sexually active. And so what would you say is the kind of the sole message or the overarching message or the information that is missing.

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Yeah, that’s missing. That kind of led me to write the book. Yeah. Oh, just so, so much, so much. But in terms of overarching, I think it’s, we’re, as a society, maybe in general, but also just as, as women, we are very much always feeling like disconnected from our bodies. A lot of the time, especially now, we all spend a lot of time in our mind thinking, thinking about our bodies, thinking about what other people have said, thinking about what’s going on in the world, but we don’t get very much time to actually feel around, see what’s going on, be aware, and notice how our emotional health, our spiritual health, our mental health are all actually connected to our physical body. And that’s the overarching message of the book, I think, is to be able to start with the basics, to be able to integrate body, mind, and spirit. Because for me, that’s the main thing about self-care right now in 2020, is I’ve been referring to 2020 as the mental health Olympics. And if we don’t have that rootedness in our own body, like everything else is out that window, we won’t be able to look for jobs, do well in the job that we have right now, show up as parents, show up as caretakers, and as just like amazing beings who can be happy and joyous in the world, if we Yeah, engage in an embodied practice and for me menstruation and my body cycles as a whole season all four seasons of it is like the perfect reminder every day and Tracking our cycles every day is like that is an embodied practice and it’s connected to The thing that provides life. So yeah, As you can tell, I’m just so passionate about people getting to know our bodies and being embodied because I think that’s truly where everything else comes from.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, so I happened to know a little bit about your journey because I was part of it and meaning that, you know, at some point you had the most amazing therapist who suggested taking charge of your fertility to help you sort out what was happening with your cycles. And then of course that led you to the fertility awareness method. So when it comes to self-care and that concept of really paying attention, focusing on what’s happening in your body and starting to understand those connections, you know, how did fertility awareness, learning the method, applying it, using it, how did that affect your, I guess you could say, understanding of self-care or how did that change the way that you took care of yourself?

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so for me, the big piece, I know for some of your listeners and for other folks that work with you, their main goal is to get pregnant or just understand their fertility and in service of that intention and goal, which is so amazing. And for me, it was very much the birth control piece and being able to not get pregnant until the season arrived or if I ever wanted to. And so it wasn’t necessarily that. It was more so the emotional health piece. I come from a family, I mean, we’ve all experienced like crazy, crazy intergenerational trauma like every single person on the earth. And then with my family in particular, there was just like a lot going on. So as a result, we know that trauma is a very embodied practice or process, sorry. So trauma lives in our body, it shows up. And then we also have emotional health and mental health as a result of that experience that very much is living in our body. So for me, it was all about the emotional health piece. and I think fertility awareness method not only obviously helped me with being a form of birth control but it really helped me manage my emotional health and realize that everything is cyclical and seasonal so knowing autumn and PMS is going to happen and I’m going to go through it and making those connections between EMS and autumn as a season on the earth, so letting things compose, doing sort of a reflective practice and then knowing ovulation is going to come up and that’s going to be a time where I’m just like psyched and pumped about the world and want to do everything. And sometimes that used to get me into trouble because I would commit to too much and then be burnt out. So for me, fertility awareness and it’s been really, really important for emotional health and also just almost like mapping my life using a menstrual cycle. Like my to -do list changes based on what season of the cycle that I’m in. And that’s been honestly revolutionary beyond the birth control piece.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: – Well, let’s expand on that a little bit more. I’ve recently recently had a couple interesting interviews. I interviewed Elisa Vidi and she talked about her new book in the flow. And at the time that we’re recording this, it hasn’t been released yet, or maybe by the time it’s released, it will be recorded anyways. But as we’re recording this, you haven’t heard that episode yet. But anyways, the reason I bring that up is because it was a really interesting conversation about the power of adjusting our schedule. First of all, acknowledging that we have a cycle. Step two, understanding that it’s not just about having babies and it affects all of the different aspects of our life and our health, but also the importance of actually aligning our behaviors and our lives in that way. And I feel sometimes a bit of, I guess you could say, resistance to the idea that we are just ruled by our hormones and we it’s like this time of the cycle you for me I’ve been cycling for uh you know off hormones for about 20 years or so give or take a couple years there and it’s really consistent in my experience that these emotional changes do take place these energetic changes do take place and sometimes you think oh it’d be easier if I just felt great all the time and I didn’t have to have a couple of days where I did need to rest. So how do you reconcile that and how do you find that, you know, being aware of those things and making certain changes can help you to cope with those very real shifts that happen in the cycle?

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Yeah, totally. That’s such a great point that you bring up because I think, yeah, the like standard norm of the world that we live in, that’s shifting for sure. Like, 2020 is an evolutionary leap, in my opinion, but pretty in 2020, there was a lot of focus on, yeah, just everyone working a lot, not taking a lot of rest, especially in North America. It’s taking vacation time or even taking sick days. Every person I talk to is like, “Oh, I feel so guilty. Oh, I didn’t show up at work. I feel so bad.” And I think that rest is just a revolutionary and it needs to happen. I think we need to take rest so that we can reflect on how the last cycle went and has gone so that we can just continue to evolve and improve and adapt as humans and as institutions and communities. So in terms of reconciling, feeling like we’re ruled by our emotions or our hormones or whether those are even the same thing. I feel like it’s so different for each person. Somebody might not, somebody might find autumn to be like the best season for them and find winter periods really, really, really hard. So I think just acknowledging first of all, there’s different, there’s so much diversity within people’s experience of menstrual cycles as a whole and then Yeah, just knowing that it’s literally what the entire rest of the earth does So I think as we can just be okay with that like, okay this is just a thing that like every mid like the every other being also goes through and there’s a reason why they exist and it’s the reason that we’re all here in the first place on the earth because we wouldn’t all be here if somebody didn’t get their period for nine months and had all the ovulations before then in preparation for it so I think just radical acceptance of that and every day honestly like guilt and shame just come up for all of us I think guilty for not showing up with our families enough, guilty for not showing up to work enough, whether, no matter what season we’re in. So I think that just of itself is like a separate thing that we can all work on. Yeah, realizing that in the 21st century, we do all need to live more sustainable lives. We all do need to incorporate the idea that things are cyclical rather than this upward trajectory where we’re just gonna do more and more and more and more and we don’t even need to buy a new thing or do anything to realize that our menstrual cycles are just a natural way to show us how to do that. Yeah, so maybe embracing that aspect of it. I feel like it’s one of those lessons where it may not seem as apparent the concept of working with it and You know what difference could that make right taking more time off? I need to work I have things to do but I feel like it really shows its importance when you Resist it and when you act as though you don’t have this Monthly cycle I feel like that’s when you really see the importance of paying attention to it and acknowledging it and honoring it Because if you just continue to push through every single day as if it’s always the same and you don’t acknowledge the shift in energy and emotion, emotionality or however you feel during that time, it just makes it worse. And so I really like the analogy of whether it’s like an alarm or whatever it is, but some things going off. And if you’re in balance and you kind of, you know, take the appropriate rest when you feel to And be more exuberant, like you said, take on more things on your calendar and those types of things when you feel the energy to do so. If you really just work in rhythm with it, then you may find that the changes are more subtle. I was speaking with a woman yesterday who mentioned that she said, I used to have really significant PMS so that I would really know when my period was coming. I would know when it was The week before it was like it’s coming. I feel like kind of freaking out at everybody and she said as I move towards You know knowing more about my body and supporting my hormones and taking care of myself and resting when I need to and etc She’s like now I have to look at the calendar You know, she’s not necessarily actively charting, but she’s like now I have to look at the calendar because you know It’s so subtle the emotional shift is still there, but it’s so much more subtle than I as opposed to how it was before.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: So I mean in the book you talk about a variety of different things. So some of the things are kind of like that overarching cycle, doing things kind of specific to where you are in the cycle. So you could, if you want to touch on that, absolutely. But you also talk about a lot of useful kind of pieces of information. The book is a really interesting read because it’s, it’s divided into like all these different topics and it just, you pick a page or you pick a section and it just gives you some useful information in a very accessible way. So maybe share with us a few things we can do. So for the listener who’s like, this sounds really great, what do you think I should be doing throughout or different times in my cycle or what are some useful pieces of information that you put in there that you feel like many of us don’t know?

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: – Mm-hmm, yeah, that’s so wonderful. So one page that I love is it folds out, and I think it’s page 86 and 87, where it basically breaks down what we were just talking about, the kind of positive aspects of the four seasons of menstrual cycles, so winter period, spring pre -ovulation, summer ovulation, and PMS autumn. And we just talked about some of the challenging aspects. But in the book, I tried to lay out some of the positive things that we can kind of incorporate into that seasonal outlook, just in a really straightforward, fun way. So that was really, I loved putting that together because I’m somebody who loves checklists and having just a reference guide to go back to, to be like, okay, I probably should not make friends with my plans because every time I do, I’m going to bail. And I’ll just do it here instead. And so just getting to know our bodies in that way. And then some fun pieces, let me get my copy so I can take a look and see what comes to me. Oh, it was so fun to write. So supporting your vagina in the digital world is one piece that I think is a little bit conscious that we don’t always think about. So one of the self-care tips is to go through your social media, notably Instagram, because that seems to be the one that a lot of people are using in the specific age range of like 25 to 35. And go through and see which accounts make you feel really, really shitty about yourself, like just notice in your body. Because there are some, everybody has some. Notice that and just unfollow or mute. So thinking about it as a digital declutter, because we get as much as work we can do on our inside doing meditation. So I share a lot of guided meditations in the book, because I think we all really need to do a lot of inner work. But as with the digital world, that’s very much external so that’s one way that we can engage in self-care that just will help all that inner work rather than you’re like doing this inner work you wake up you’ve meditated you turn on your Instagram and the the feed is like feel shitty about yourself feel shitty about yourself feel shitty about yourself and for every single person it’s going to be different so that’s one that’s uh that I can share And then the big, another one is vaginal toxin exposure, which was really big for me, learning fertility awareness method for you. I remember finding out like the laundry soap, the dish soap, the bromide and the mattresses, if that’s the correct chemical, I can’t remember, but literally everything in our world is so toxic. We live in a very, very toxic world in the 20th century and I think we can evolve and adapt. So in that section, which is in part five, which is all about evolving and adapting in the coming decades, I basically just in a little short way introduce some of the basic things that people can start to switch out every once in a while to limit our toxin exposure, because as much as we can create little bubbles within our own home and now everyone’s wearing masks and we live in this very increasingly sterile world I think that so much of it is also like that mental aspect of knowing that what we’re putting in our bodies and around our bodies we’re not only supporting our health the health of our families but or also just saying, like giving a message every day to the earth to be like, I see you, I know you support us. So I’m gonna do this one small act to be able to be in right relation with you as well. So that’s really important for me, I think. And why fertility awareness method is even so great is it’s all about reducing toxicity in all its forms. And whether people are on the pill or taking another form of synthetic hormone, I think it’s important to still incorporate those principles as well. I think it’s,

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I mean, for, for long time listeners of the podcast, I can imagine like, yeah, you know, I think when you, when you learn something new and then you incorporate it into your life and you start reducing your toxin exposure, and you start to, from a social media perspective, follow individuals who are really the kind of common, a lot of the great authors who’ve been writing books recently about periods and the menstrual cycle and all of those great things. And so one of the things that I wonder, I mean, I grew up without a You know, I bought my first computer with a scholarship like after high school. So when I was 17, I had my first computer and meaning I did not have one. And I did not have a cell phone until I was probably 18 years old. So I’m, you know, to me, that’s like whatever. But I recognize like this is, I’m old now. Like I’m of a different tack. You and I are different. And I’m not that much older than you. I don’t think, but I’m, I feel like I’m just of a different generation. And so one of the things that I wonder, because I mean, I had a childhood with no social media and no cell phone. Everyone didn’t have a cell phone. And now it’s really interesting. So if you were to live in my Instagram feed, you would see all kinds of stuff that you probably don’t see in your feed, similarly to if I lived in your Instagram feed. And so when you mentioned that concept of being aware of what you’re, I don’t know, do younger individuals realize that, so when I was growing up, there was, I mean, there were lots of sources of information, but it was different. There was more of a centralized source of, and there still is, obviously, but there’s, there was more of a centralized source of information. And now, I don’t know if people realize that every individual person chooses whatever their stream of information is. And so when it comes to the menstrual cycle, there are, you know, and I’ve talked about this on the podcast, there’s a lot of information about how to live your life, how to eat, how to exercise, how to move. A lot of it is based on the male body, I’m not in alignment with the female rhythms. And so one of the benefits of actually starting to chart your cycle, starting to pay attention to your feelings, starting to pay attention to your energy levels is hopefully getting connected enough to the way that your body works and aware enough of how different things are affecting you that you can start to be aware of whether or not something is working for you. So whether that is that influencer that’s telling you to skip meals and eat once a day, the intermittent fasting protocols that work really, really well for the male body, less well for the female body. That’s just an example. There’s many more of those things or whether it is the common culture world that we live in that tells you to surround yourself with all kinds of fragrances and makeups and all the things that you don’t realize until you, until it’s pointed out to you that are fully disrupting your hormonal system. So Maybe share your thoughts on that and some of the ways in the book that you encourage us to Overcome those challenges. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Oh So much ton pack there so Yeah, we definitely grew up in a different time. I remember writing my friend’s phone numbers and like pasting it underneath our home phone and it taking Probably a day to download one song and nobody could use the telephone line the entire time because it was on dial -up. And there’s people who are listening right now that they’re like, “What’s dial -up?” I know. That was the internet before Wi -Fi. I know. And we say this not because it’s like dial -up was cool or anything. It’s just like that. That’s how far we’ve come. A picture would take like an image would take like 10 minutes to download or more. Yeah, it’s like so miraculous the amount of change that has happened in the last 10 years around the advent of technology so in terms of like that aspect of it how do we balance what this massive force that’s just has and introduced into our lives, almost without us even knowing. You know, it all started with us maybe downloading music and now all of a sudden it’s our entire world, it’s how we do our work, it’s how we communicate with our family and friends during this time, it’s how we find pleasure and joy and all of that stuff. So in terms of navigating self-care in the digital world and what I’m trying to do with self-care down there is to be able to support people to see where the boundaries are and Notice be embodied see what’s going on with our body using the menstrual cycle and just hormones in general because you know every single person in the world has the ability to make estrogen progesterone testosterone it’s not like this binary that we think that it is. It’s very, everyone’s period and menstrual cycle, it’s different. And similarly, for folks who identify as male, like there’s so much diversity within that as well. So all that to say that knowing for our own individual body experience. And I think the great thing about the centralized learning was the library, like picking up analog books. And that was such an important part of my ability to even be able to be focused as a researcher and do this work. And what I think the digital world also though brings is so many different perspectives. Like I would have never found out about Fertility Friday from my local library, just wouldn’t exist. Even, Yeah, even what we’re taught in school, the sex education that we received. So I think there are definitely pluses to the digital world in terms of gaining more knowledge about menstrual cycles. However, it’s shocking to me that still there are sources where fertility awareness method is entirely misunderstood and /or the impact and how the pill and the IUD work are, like people just are literally not writing the correct thing, it’s so shocking to me. So that’s part of the challenge of digital life and why you’re saying that we should just be really aware of the fact of how, like what our body is telling us, because their bodies are the sense of intuition. So I’ll read something that talks about how the pill is totally fine and there are no side effects. And fertility awareness method, it’s like hardly described in very much detail or at all. And in my body, I feel, and so I can realize that that’s my intuition. But if we’re not aware of what’s going on, we could just easily be like, yeah, maybe I’ll try this thing or maybe I’ll give my power over to this person to tell me what I should be doing with my body rather than knowing where we’re at and being our own kind of agents or our own body’s doctors and going from there. – I think one of my favorite things about self-care down there is that it’s essentially a collection of different pieces of wisdom, different nuggets of information, things that you wouldn’t necessarily find all in one place that really orient you to your cycle, to your vagina, to periods, to sex, to a variety of different issues around just our body parts and our menstrual cycle and all of these different aspects of ourself. And it just kind of, it puts it together in a way that causes you to, I mean, I think that exposing women to this knowledge and information, things that we don’t necessarily talk about. I spend my days creating these environments and having these conversations. And so, for me, it’s very normal to be talking about vaginas and cervical fluid and the menstrual cycle and sex and all of these different things all the time. But I’m very aware that when I create these spaces and I’m, you know, working with women as, you know, we did in our group program, that it’s not like you have these conversations anywhere else to this depth. And even when you are really connected, you’ve got a group of girlfriends, and it’s not to say that you have, that you’re nervous to talk about these things. It’s just not part of our culture to just go in such depth in this way. So I think that the More information like this can be put into women’s hands, and the more awareness that can be brought to these topics, the more it empowers us even just to look. Because your experience when you said that if you were to read something that says the pill is totally safe and there’s no side effects at all, really. Many side effects are really minimal and all of those types of things. I mean, you have a different perception of that because you have been exposed to a lot of there’s a lot of research that shows a lot of women do experience side effects and it’s a pretty significant number of women who actually either change their hormonal contraceptive method or come off of it entirely even within the first year. It’s a significant percentage of women that end up switching from pill to pill because they’re not sad. So, we can, you can look at data like that, but you have the the knowledge based on your research and all of the things that you’ve been exposed to to kind of question that. Whereas another woman who hasn’t been exposed to that information, when she reads that, and potentially she didn’t really have any egregious side effects that she was aware of when she took it. So when she reads that same document, her intuition, if you want to call it that, or her feeling is going to be, yeah, obviously, Obviously.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And so resources like yours, and I think we’re in a really amazing, I feel like it’s the time of the period. I’m sure you see that. It’s so, so different. I mean, when I, yeah, when I was growing up, you really did have to go to the library and hope that they had this type of a section or go to, I used to go to the bookstore and go to like the small women’s study section and like see what they had in there. But you really had to look for it back then. And so I think it’s, we still have such a long way to go, but resources like yours and all these great resources that are coming out, it’s really just, I think opening the mind, it’s like we all have tunnel vision because we’re exposed to so little because so few resources focus on the experience of living in a female body. And so these resources kind of like, okay, let’s dial it back, let’s open up the perspective, open the mind, look around and wow, there’s a lot more here than what they told us in junior high sex ed.

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Yeah, definitely. and getting to that point of not only learning what we haven’t been exposed to that’s already been well documented and fertility awareness method has been around for like thousands and thousands of years but also taking that information and applying it to our everyday life and also how the world is evolving. So another I’ll just share one last story and section from the book, which is around consent and taking consent in fantasy land. So a funny, it’s not even funny, it’s kind of great. The Canadian government, the CDC, I think, they just released a statement that solo sex is the most appropriate type of sex to be having during COVID. So they basically come out to say that we should all be having more solo sex. and that’s great and knowing that how do we like obviously fantasy is a big aspect of engaging in that and it’s connected to our menstrual cycles in that how our own experience growing up of starting to get our periods experiencing our sex drive all the exposure that we had leading up to that influences what our fantasy world looks like today and I think that as we’re evolving as a society we can begin to take things like consent really seriously even in our fantasy world. So there’s one of the pages is about basically how to do that and walks you through some of the steps for how we can engage those sorts of practices in our everyday life that ultimately are just going to benefit our own health and well -being and then also bonus support the health of the collective as well

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, and just to clarify when you say consent with regards to so when I hear consent because I used to work in sexual assault Education so I used to be a public educator for sexual assault center of Edmonton actually and we would go to high schools And so like for me I hear the word consent and it conjures up the Canadian criminal code, I can probably still rattle it off for you. So when you are referring to consent, are you referring to those types of issues of actually, you know, permitting who has access to your body and things of that nature?

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Yeah, exactly. And so when I say that’s amazing also, by the way, thank you for sharing that by yourself. I’m so, yeah, just thankful for all the people who do work around, yeah, just experiences of sexualized violence. And so taking, so that’s like the unconscious, subconscious side. And so how do we become in our journey of like being more conscious of our bodies? How do we also reclaim this piece that’s often, yeah, associated with the criminal code, associated with like the pain and hard suffering aspect of it. And how do we sort of shed light on the conscious part of it as well. And so when I say taking consent and fantasy, so when everyone’s, if you want to choose to engage in solo sex, maybe folks are running through some things in their mind that are in their fantasy world. And so in our fantasy world, we can even start to literally think the idea of like, Do you want this? Do you want this? And see if the other people in our fantasy world are saying yes and making sure that that’s the case. Because through things like imagination and fiction, that’s how we, as humans, have been able to even actualize ourselves in the society that we are now. So I think it’s a really powerful way to start to use our knowledge of our menstrual cycles, knowing we’re going to have higher sex drive at certain times, knowing we’re going to be doing some daydreaming and applying some of the adaptations that are just going to support everyone’s health and well -being in the future into that as well. So not just learning from our ancestors, learning fertility awareness method, but also adapting it for the 21st Mm-hmm.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, I remember seeing a few pop culture references in the book and I mean, that’s its own topic. I actually, for anyone who’s interested, I actually did a full -on nod to my previous life as a sexual assault educator. So I will link. I did a two -part episode series very early on in the podcast. So we’re talking five and a half years ago. And I did an episode with Dr. Erica Berman, I believe her name is, and she talked about the impact of sexual violence on intimacy, and that was fascinating. And I teamed up with one of my previous colleagues, and we did a quite a long episode where we went through the most common myths about sexualized violence. So I’ll put the links to those two previous episodes there. in terms of like the nod to popular culture. So this is its own topic, but I’m going on a tangent for a minute because I could imagine that part of the reason why, is it correct me if I’m wrong, that you’re calling, bringing attention to that in terms of the way that we’re thinking about sexual fantasy and things like that. It’s ’cause we have a huge problem in our culture with regards to how sex is portrayed. So a lot of the images, a lot of the movies. And I’m not talking about porn, but we could go, you know what I mean? I’m even just talking about movies and how it’s portrayed. And some of what we see isn’t consensual. And what I learned, I’m so going on a tangent, what I learned when I was working in that area was that, because I was going to schools and providing the criminal code definition. And there were a lot of parts of that where people didn’t know that like this is like this is not good like there’s so many things people see and they accept but they don’t know that actually like what you saw does not that’s not consent and it’s actually legal and it’s actually like so there’s you know I won’t go into all that that you know the previous episode goes through all of it from the Canadian law legal perspective but yeah so just to kind of highlight that where We live in a world where we’ve got some issues related to how we relate to each other sexually There’s huge issues with abuse against women. So many women have Experienced sexualized violence and all that and so certainly that can interplay and just a side note as well Because you mentioned that the government weighed in on how we should make love and for me I’m like, oh, no, you didn’t you can’t tell me how to interact sexually in my own personal life I’m gonna Like we need to have a boundary here, government. Sit down, know your role. So ask me what I really feel.

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: – Yeah, oh my gosh, I love it. No, this is why we have these conversations, right? It’s so, yeah, I 100 % agree with you that we’re, we like, as much as I try and stay on the positive side of things, like we’re truly at a crisis point at this moment, like so much is shifting. There’s a great book called Pleasure Activism that came out recently about finding pleasure in our lives in terms of realizing our own embodied practices and figuring out what is enough, like what feels like enough pleasure because I think where so much struggle happens is people not being able to self -regulate and be embodied and be able to move through those experiences in a way that’s safe. And similarly, we don’t really get a lot of role models on what people consume for information a lot, which is, yeah, Netflix. Netflix is our relationship coach these days. You’re not the best source of information about consent and proper sexual, I’ve seen some, yeah, all of these, I feel like we’re going into tangent land, but coming from the perspective of like a former sexual assault educator, yeah, people don’t realize that coercion isn’t consent, you know, when someone is just really persistent and won’t let it drop, and will continue, and I remember going into classrooms. So there’s this idea that’s put forth in movies that children fall in love with their teachers and I’m using the word children. I’m going to use the word children for anyone under age 17, like moving forward. So there’s an idea that we get in movies, for example, that, you know, teenage boys fall in love with their teachers. And I’m not trying to say what can or can’t happen. But in Canada, we actually have a law It says that children cannot consent. So under age 17 cannot consent to anybody in a position of power over them. So just to be clear, what I’m saying is, for example, in Canada, even if you were 17 and you fell in love with your mad teacher, it’s still illegal. And the like would be ideally, if everything was about bored, would be put in jail for engaging. Regardless of your feelings, your feelings don’t matter because it’s illegal. And I remember, because it’s illegal ’cause you can’t consent. There’s no consent. Like when you’re an adult, you can consent to a person in authority over you. So there’s rules about the abuse of power when you’re an adult. So just to give you You know, I would go to high schools and we’d be you know, we’d be sharing this and it’s like we can pull like I have the criminal code Somewhere still you could like open the page. So it’s not like I saw my opinion It’s what it says and the law and the kids would just be like because they didn’t know so What yes, why is it so it similarly you can tell I’m just this is the type of thing that I’ve been engaged in my whole life Which is essentially there’s a lot of important information in life that we need to have. So obviously I focused a lot of my attention on the menstrual cycle because I really feel how deeply this impacts women, you know, throughout the world. So I’ve certainly focused on this area. But in my previous life, there’s some parallels there. There’s some specific information that we are not aware of given the just the prevalence of abuse in our society. And we don’t even know certain things like that. I’m sure some of the listeners heard that and didn’t know that that’s actually the law because you were never told. And similarly, coercion was a big one as well. Like if you say yes after two hours, like yes, meaning like whatever fine, after two hours of someone harassing you, – That’s not consent. Consent is happy, joyous, like absolutely. Like if someone asks, see if you’re really, if you’re into like, I don’t know, swimming and someone asks you to go to a water park and you’re like, yes, like this is awesome. That is consent. – Not like, I don’t really want to. – Not like two hours after you not letting up and me being like fine, just wear them. Yeah. So I apologize for anyone who I triggered because you know, when I used to do this work, you always trigger because there’s it’s so prevalent. Yeah. So I encourage you if this talk like it’s fully a tangent, but we needed to go. Yeah. And we can put like a little we’ll put it in the podcast notes, but I think it’s a it’s not even a tangent because it’s what we’re getting to like sexualized violence or even sexual pleasure and sexuality is one intersection of this whole big picture of our bodies, right? And it’s such an important one because where we can show up even in our own mind and feel safe to engage in pleasure by ourselves in our own room to being able to feel like we can go out in the world and also feel that same sense of safety like those are all just like with the toxins piece like the inside world and the outside world are not separate no matter how much we try to create places within our own homes of safety and belonging in our own bodies it’s all a projection of the same thing and again in the age of the internet We were just absolutely every day exposed to all these images language from other people Even I was reading a rom -com book that just came out recently and now got turned into a TV series And I had that same moment where I was like wait a minute that whole thing was entirely there was no nobody Consented to that. There was no explicit Statement of it. And so that’s the same thing with the pill, like showing up in a doctor’s office and explaining your story and then that being the thing that’s given to us. Is that really consent or is that just another form of not giving people information specifically women? So I absolutely don’t think it’s a tangent. That’s a big part of self-care down there. One of the entire sections is about sex and sexuality and being able to, despite all the like shitty, shitty shit that everyone is going through with our bodies and things that we’ve experienced, I firmly believe that we can all get to the point of being able to love our periods and be able to be in self -love in our bodies. It’s a challenge every single day, but we can get there. And so part of it is knowing the impact of all of that on our bodies and then learning the tools to do the healing. And I think that’s where folks like you and I as authors and just nerds in general step in is we’re interested in how do we do the actual healing and fertility awareness is like an amazing tool for that because it gets you to just be in our body, even though sometimes that feels really, really scary because we’re worried, as you said, of what those triggers are gonna be. It’s gonna come up and where things like meditation and some of the tools that I present in self care down there are able to, when we’re in that trigger point or even before to be able to build up the resilience to bring ourselves, like bring ourselves back into our safe space of our body. So it’s really complementary. Getting our body for using fertility awareness to get our body in the space where we can, where it’s safe, we’re not like totally out of control, our body is ours in whatever way that you possibly can, and then using the tools in a book like self-care down there to be able to grow that resilience despite whatever is going on outside, you know, because there’s a lot and inside on our phones and all of that.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, and I think one last point that we may we may end up and ending on or we may end up talking more about is that by bringing attention to these different aspects of our body by openly talking about sexuality and how you’re interacting with yourself sexually with other sexually. It really, I think especially for women, it really opens up an important conversation that isn’t always had. And so the best example I can give of that, you know, I was talking, I’ve shared this on the podcast, I think a couple of times, but I was talking with one of my best friends. And she kind of, I’m always talking about stuff like this. So she kind of mentioned, she’s like, well, you know, if you think about sex ed class, boys and girls are separated. Boys are talking about orgasms and girls are talking about how to keep themselves clean. And I never thought of it that way, but obviously when boys are taught about puberty, they’re taught about wet dreams and what to do when they have an erection, you know? And so literally they’re learning about orgasm and we, what is a wet dream? You can order for it to have an ejaculation. Often, almost always, you have to have an orgasm and whereas where’s the conversation, when does a teenage girl have the conversation about orgasm and about pleasure, but that’s okay and that’s a normal part of being a human being. When does anybody have the sex positive conversation that people have sex because it feels good and there’s all these other reasons, a connection and love and you know all these, but when do we have this open conversation about it, right? The talk that we get is largely like, well, for me, it was in the late 90s, it was like, if you have sex, you’ll get AIDS and die. So it’s very like fear based. You’ll get pregnant, you can get pregnant every day. Get AIDS and die, we’re on them, right? Like it was very, that was literally my sex education. This is like why I do what I do to this day. And I don’t know how much that’s changed. I mean, now it’s, it’s very much focused on the fear, pregnancy, angle. Every woman needs to be on birth control. Like this is, it’s all fear based. Where’s, when do we get to talk about love? When do we get to talk about the fact that this is fun, that this is a natural human expression, that this is how we show love for each other? Like when do we get to talk about that part of it? And I think your book highlights some of those important aspects by just putting it out there and having these Conversations about what is this really about? You know, welcome to your body. Here’s it’s not a manual, but in a sense It’s like kind of is

Taqdir Kaur Bhandal: Yeah, oh my gosh. I love that analysis and experience. Yeah for me. I can definitely echo the Sex said it was very much penis centric Sex education which is fine and also there’s like an entire binary to deconstruct there and everything that you just described and one I love how you describe self-care down there as a manual because it’s very much a way to start the conversations in our own head like our mind as I mentioned very powerful tool our thoughts create our actions and I think it’s a prompt to be able to have those conversations, even with ourselves, you know, we don’t have to go talk to our parents about our orgasms or anything like that, or even, I mean, yeah, or even sometimes distant friends and all of that. I think it’s important to at least have them with ourselves and start to be really truthful with our own self, because one of the studies that I came across in researching the book was about fake orgasms and how it was something ridiculous, like 50 % of the study participants said that they have faked an orgasm. A female study participant. A female study participant. I didn’t even have to read the study to suggest that. Yes. And what male fakes orgasm. Like, I’m sure it happens. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s significantly smaller percentage. Very, I can, I think will pull up the study and be able to say it’s a very small percentage. So it’s 50 % of female participants engaging in a heterosexual relationship. So that was the study parameters. And it just shocked me because I’ve definitely been one of those people because we’re not, as you said, we’re not taught about how to be in pleasure and engage in sex with another person that isn’t serving the other person. Like it’s not a job that we’re trying to do for the other person. And yet that’s what mainstream messaging tells us, especially for those of us who identify as being in a heterosexual partnership. Like that definitely is, especially as women. It’s just the messaging that we’ve gone. So I’m so freaking psyched that in 2020 we are writing these books that both of our books have come out and we’re starting and continuing the conversation that’s been happening for a long time but it’s really starting to gain a critical mass and I hope that the next time we talk that percentage goes down to zero and that there is no more faking orgasms. So even just something simple like that, like how absurd, how freaking absurd is that? But it’s even not because we’ve all been there. And we know that mental process of why, why it’s there. And so if we can just slowly, slowly over time do the work on ourselves to be able to show up for ourselves at least, and show up for the ancestors who came before us who have paved the way and the ones that were leaving behind as well.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: – Well, I will resist the urge to going into that tangent, but I will link several podcast interviews. So if the topic of sex and orgasm and even just the difference between the male and female arousal cycles and how those things are different, and how we live in a very male /penis -oriented way of looking at things. A lot of, again, going back to the popular culture, and what do we see? My example that comes to mind, so one of the shows I used to watch a lot was Scandal, and it’s just so unrealistic. It’s like she looks at him, and then immediately they’re like thrusting, and then two seconds later, she’s orgasming, And I’m like, “Okay, are you even a human being?” That’s not how this works, but if you don’t, if you’re not necessarily aware of that and necessarily in tune with your own body and what is pleasurable for you and how your pleasure cycle unfolds, then you may feel that if you don’t respond in those ways when you’re with a partner, that there’s something wrong with you. And obviously there isn’t anything wrong with you. There’s something wrong with the world that we live in, but told you that that’s how you’re supposed to experience sexual pleasure. But anyways, if those topics are something you wanna delve in deeper, I’ll certainly incorporate those links in the show notes page. Taqdir, we could have talked all day. Thank you so much for coming to the show. I feel like we really went through a lot of important topics. So share any last thoughts that you have with the listeners as well as where they can go to get self-care down there and how they can connect with you. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It’s been such a pleasure. As you say, there’s, I mean, we have these conversations maybe with our close family members who will always hear us rant about period. Oh yeah. All the time. And then with each other in rare moments, I know we’re both busy doing our own thing, so it’s so lovely to come together and have just a bringing together of ideas and perspectives about such an important topic as administration and ovulation. So I can direct readers and listeners to our Instagram page, which is I’m with periods. That’s the letter I, the letter M with periods, and it links you to our bio and it links to a bunch of free posts where I share self-care tips and knowledge that I’m uncovering along my own research journey and I’m really excited because this last year I’ve been going deep into the archives of my own homelands in South Asia to come up with some practices that my ancestors have passed down that just haven’t made it to the internet sphere beyond these really old books and studies that people have written many, many years ago. So I’m always posting about those and doing a lot of giveaways. So please again, reach out to me. I’m happy to talk anytime as with Lisa as well. I love the emails. I love the messages. That’s what keeps this work going and keeps my interest and passion alive. So I’ll hope to hear from some folks. And again, our Instagram pages, I’m with period. So that’s the letter I, the letter M with periods. Well, thank you so much, Taqdir. It’s been so nice connecting with you again. And again, congratulations on your book. It’s a fantastic resource. And certainly we’ll share all the links in the show notes page for the listeners. So with that, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday .com /348. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Taqdir. It’s always a pleasure to chat with her and of course big congratulations on her book, Self-Care Down There. You’ll find details about Taqdir and her work and her book on the show notes page that I mentioned before, sofertilityfriday .com /348, and I just want to thank all of you for taking the time to tune into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.