Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m pretty sure I first discovered today’s guest, Lisa Lister, last year when someone mentioned her to me. Since then, I’ve been following her online. I love how she makes talking about your “lady landscape” fun and funny, and not boring and scientific. I’d read books on the subject of tracking your cycle to make the most out of each phase, and I found it really hard to get into. I’m so excited to introduce today’s guest, because I know you’ll find her super interesting and loads of fun.

About Lisa Lister

Lisa Lister is a author of Code Red: Know Your Flow, Unlock Your Monthly Super Powers + Create a Bloody Amazing Life. Period. a menstrual maven and creatrix of the SHE Flow protocol – yogic feminine movement, body stories and ancient menstrual health practices – dedicated to helping women crack their lady code and love their lady parts.

What You’ll Learn

How contraception can silence our inner wisdom
The four superpowers you have as a woman
Which part of your cycle is your “get shit done” phase
How to know your flow and chart your cycle (and how long you need to do this)
The best time of the month for public speaking and expressing yourself

Things We Discussed

Cycle Repair Kit
Code Red

Inspiring Women

SHE (you’ll understand when you listen to the episode)

Connect With Lisa

Related episodes

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

How Tracking Your Cycle Can Help Your Business

HW: Hello and welcome to the Ready to Bloom podcast episode 91. This is your host Holly Worton and I am here with today’s special guest, Lisa Lister, from The Sassy She. Lisa is an author of Code Red, ‘know your flow, unlock your monthly superpowers and create a bloody amazing life, period’; is a menstrual maven and creator of the SHE Flow Protocol, Yogic feminine movement, body stories and ancient menstrual health practices. And she is dedicated to helping women crack their lady code and love their lady parts. I love that! Welcome Lisa!

LL: Ah, thank you so much for having me Holly I am really excited to be here, thank you.

HW: I am so excited to have you here today. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and your business journey and how you got to where you are today with helping women love their lady parts?

LL: Haha, ok, so… I was a freelance journalist for a lot of the teen magazines here in the UK and some in the US, when I was a bit younger. So, like Just Seventeen, Seventeen in the US, Mizz, Sugar, magazines like that. So, I spent a lot of time meeting popstars, you know, I was an agony aunt for Mizz for eight years. And my life was just really goal-orientated, this was exactly what I had wanted to do as a kid, I was living my dream, it felt amazing. And, you know, on the surface my life was really, pretty awesome, I was engaged to this great writer, I had got my own publishing contract with Harper Collins, we had bought a house.

Yet, whilst all that was happening there was this really, kind of… I was getting really, crazy, painful bleeds each month, period pains. And they got so debilitating that I would have to take entire days off work, sex got really painful, and I was forever cancelling meetings and social events, which, you know, got me a bit of a reputation as a flake because there was no way that I was willing…because of how I had been brought up, because of our society kind of, deems menstruation and talking about it, there was no way I was actually going to tell them what was happening because that would have been embarrassing. So, anyway, after a few months of complete misdiagnosis and going to the doctors and: ‘No, I don’t know what this is’, ‘I don’t know what this’, ‘You are just going to have change this, you are going to have change that’, ‘you are going to have to do this’, I had lots of tests. I was told I had endometriosis. So, I was glad, in a way, that I had finally got a name for it you know. That the doctors, had, I was like ‘right ok’. But when give something a name we also give it power, and I think for me at that moment I left the hospital…sorry, so I went to one more appointment, and at the second appointment they were like, ‘do you know what, Lisa, I think the best thing for us to do would be for us to whip it out’. And I was like ‘whip what out!’.

HW: What?

LL: I was 26 at the time right. So, they were like ‘yes we think it is best that we whip it out’. There was this real part of me, the career part of me, that was like ‘you know, he’s right, let’s just get it out, let’s just get cracking, let’s move on, perhaps kids are not for me’ – it was not something that was on the horizon at the time – perhaps this isn’t for me – ‘get it out and we can move on’.

HW: So, a hysterectomy, and just move on with life?

LL: Yeah, basically. So, that was my option. That was the only option that modern medicine could give me. So, I left that appointment and on leaving that appointment there was this like real fiery rage in my belly, like a real pain. And it wasn’t like the pain I experienced on my period, this was a different pain. This was like a pain from my womb, my ovaries, my vagina, that was saying ‘do you know what, that’s not going to happen’. You know she was pissed, she was pissed that that was the option and I am really glad in that moment I was able to tell the difference as well. Now, I am much more spiritually aware than I was then, but there must have been a little something in me that was kind of like ‘right’. Now I know that it was my first encounter with SHE, with the spiritual universe or energy that I call ‘SHE’. But at that time, I just knew that that wasn’t going to be the option, so that was not the option for me. So, I never went back, I never went to any follow up appointments, and instead I went on this ten-year adventure, really, which has been spent exploring my lady parts. And now, I help women to do the same. You know, I want them to access, because we have this innate feminine wisdom in our womb, and, you know, by using ancient practices, knowing our menstrual cycle and understanding our bodies as women, and that they are very, very different, to dude kind, yet we try and work in exactly the same way.

HW: That’s something… The example that we have for how we are supposed to live and it is so much stronger I think.

LL: Absolutely! Absolutely! And that’s why this is so important that we actually start talking about it, that we actually start having a vocabulary for it. You know we haven’t even got a name for down there, you know like?.

HW: Laughing

LL: You know we say vagina, vagina is like a passage!

HW: That’s true it is just like one part of the whole region, hahaha!

LL: Exactly, exactly! So, I want to help women. So now my business is helping women to create a bloody amazing life, knowing their flow, and working with, you know, working in tune with their rhythms, and the rhythms of mother nature, you know, because that’s what I do myself.

HW: Mm that’s excellent. So how has your life changed as a result of paying attention and living in tune with these cycles?

LL: Ooh, so, my life is so different, and I am so grateful, I think, because I am aware, I am so aware of the body that I am in. I am aware of my own boundaries. I set clear, clear boundaries now. There is so much more clarity now that I am fully aware that each month I have access to four freaking superpowers, that I… as women we work on the first two elements, two phases of our cycle. You know, which is the pre-ovulation and the ovulation; because that is very masculine, and that works with today’s society, you know. We can function in that space.

HW: It’s got a purpose. laughing

LL: Exactly. It is very doer and we do, and we can be, and that fits. We fit then. But when we move into the second part of our cycle not so much! {laughing}

That is the pre-menstruation and the menstruation phases and that’s where most women will suffer, because we are surviving in that part of our cycle, we are not using it to thrive, which is what we need to be doing. And there is so much juice in those two parts of the cycle, that we have never been taught, we just don’t understand. We see it as a freaking curse when that comes around, when actually there are so many gems and golden nuggets that we can use in that. So, now, now that I access my entire cycle, now that I base my, you know my business is obviously is about that, but the way that I work, how I take on clients, how I schedule appointments, like today, I knew I would be day 6 of my own cycle, which means that I have stopped bleeding, which means that I have actually got a vocabulary. Which means that I am able to speak mildly articulately to you and, um, and so I know now that…and that’s how I live my life. And I know that is not easy for everyone at first to even contemplate that maybe my period is not regular, but it is not regular for a reason. So, if we get to know our cycle we can work out why it is not regular and we can then start to use different methods, different ways in which we…, you know, different practices, to regulate them.

HW: Umm, I think it is so easy for women to completely ignore that natural cycle, because so many of us have been on the pill for years, and of course that just changes everything. Birth control, most options out there, just completely alter your natural cycle, so do you find it really challenging to work with women who are still using those methods? And perhaps aren’t in touch with their natural cycle, because they just can’t be?

LL: Well and this is the thing right, so, I am no Judge Judy in response to how women use contraception. I get that it is a necessity for some women it is a necessity to kind of fit with their lifestyle. For me though, what it’s doing is silencing our body’s wisdom. We are literally medicating ourselves and we are silencing our own inner wisdom by taking it. Because we think that we are controlling our cycle when actually we are not even having a cycle; you know, that’s a hormone induced cycle. So, our body hasn’t got an opportunity to… so, any feminine wisdom you may have, you are not able to access whilst using the pill. Of course I still work with women who do take the pill, and we use the rhythms of the seasons and the rhythms of the moon, because the lunar cycle is roughly translatable to that of our menstrual cycle. It is just that happens outside, you know, that’s an external, and it’s great for working with women who have reached menopause and then find this information out and go ‘why did I not know this!’. And the moon is a great way to do that. But for women that are on the pill or using any kind of hormonal inducing contraception, you know, it is, you know possible, but if you could… I work with women who want to come off the pill, or have come off the pill and maybe want to look into that, so that they can understand their own rhythms their own cycles much more prominently. And hear their own wisdom. For me that’s the most important. That we are hearing what our body wants to tell us. Because it is all there, there’s a map, our menstrual cycle is a map to ourselves. You would never need another self-help book again if you just took a bit of time to know your flow.

HW: Wow, I love that. Now do you find it challenging to attract clients to you and readers to your books? Because as you say in the beginning, women aren’t used to talking about this stuff?

Both: Laughing

LL: It is so funny. So, I have always done work with women. So, I have always, you know I was an agony aunt for a teen girl magazine and then I have worked with teen girls through to womanhood. So, it has mainly been around self-esteem and you know well-being. And I was like… you know this is the crux of everything for me, this is the most important part, this menstrual work; it is the key to unlocking, you know, all of our super powers. So, when I realised that, and I started to talk about it out loud, in blog posts, and in programmes, I got such a backlash. People were like “ah Lisa, when are you going to start talking about the self-esteem again, you know I love that…” I was like, this is self-esteem, you know. This is about our self-worth as women. We silence our self-worth, our stories have all been silenced, because we are told that bleeding and all of these things are bad. It is why we keep quiet during menstruation, it is why when people say we are moody, it is because we are about to bleed. Like it is a bad thing. Like “yeah, we are moody, that’s because we are women” and we are a contradiction, we are not consistent, that is the joy of being a woman, that’s the blood and guts of being a woman, you know, literally; and yet we um, we shy away from it. So, yeah, it has been an interesting part of the journey. But, actually, I think, it was definitely a fear for me in the first place. I tried to find different ways of… and different languages to use, to make it a little bit more accessible, um to women. And, so my signature programme is called “explore your lady landscape”, so I try to be a bit tongue in cheek about it so it is not a super serious thing, you know; there are so many programmes and things that talk about the hormonal, the science-y side of it, that is all totally necessary. And there’s lots that talk about the deeply spiritual side of it, which I also dig immensely. But, there is nothing in the middle which is kind of saying, “do you know what, this can really help you, to run a business” “this can help you to have better sex” “this can help you to have, like, just a really nice relationship with your family, because you understand that there are going to be some days when you want to stay in bed and someone needs to chuck you chocolate, and actually, that’s ok”.

And it is the ok-ness; we are so not ok with being ok. We are not ok with resting. We are not ok with that slowing down; with that second half of the cycle. And that I feel is like the biggest work that I am kind of here to do and that I am sharing, really. Most people have got the first half of this cycle, but they just try and carry it on through, which is why we suffer so much pain. So, I think now that women are really starting to understand, um, there is definitely a shift; there has been a shift in the last year, I felt, definitely; of people talking about awakening their feminine wisdom and all of that stuff. Which is great. But there has also been a shift in women thinking, ‘do you know what? there must be something to this’. I have noticed that I have got more clients, that women are saying “I am not putting up with this anymore” “Lisa tell me how I can get off the pill and still not get pregnant.” You know… so there’s lots of… there is definitely a shift, I can feel that energy moving, and that feels great for me.

HW: Excellent. So, can you tell us a little bit about what your top tips are for how to start tracking your cycle and how that can help your business? Because I think, you know, a lot of our listeners probably haven’t, they are probably not even sure where the heck they are in their cycle at this point in the month {laughing}. And how tracking that cycle can help them in their business and in their life. I know that is a big question… but? {laughing}

LL: I will try and keep it as short as possible. So yeah, knowing your flow for me, would be like for me, the top tip for any woman. And the easiest way to do that is to chart your cycle which I have, in my new book, you can access this cycle repair kit which is for anybody who has never even looked at their cycle before. So, if you get Code Red, there is just like a downloadable programme, a free downloadable programme, which you can just have and there are charts and it is not… you know I have made it super fun; it is not like “oh my goodness”. You know, if you are planning to get pregnant you have to chart, and so if you are planning not to get pregnant, I have to chart? What’s with that? But, really it is super fun because it really is the most amazing way to get to know yourself. So, I suggest that women do that for three months and really, yeah, just every day. So, day one is the first day you bleed. So, the day you bleed is your day one. And then you see how long your cycle is. And you can just journal it, you don’t even have to have a chart; you know so each day, just write down some thoughts and feelings that come up for you in that day. And over the three months, and you know you can really, anything shorter than that you don’t start to see any patterns; but on the third month, you can start to see that there are certain days, there are certain power points for you. There are super power days, where, you know, you can get stuff done.

So, the first part of our cycle is the “Spring”, the pre-ovulation stage. That’s your ‘get shit done’ stage, that’s where you can, you know, schedule meetings, you can have great ideas. Then we have ovulation, that’s your expressive stage, that’s where you can be out there, this is when you can do public speaking really well. And then we come into the pre-menstrual phase, and that’s a time for us to get really, like an editor; so, it is great time if you are writing a book, or if you are writing web copy, that you can really edit work, because we get super critical around that time. You know one of the hot spots in that time, is also that we can get super critical of ourselves, but that is a whole another thing entirely. So you have to really… there is a refinement that needs to happen once we start to learn about ourselves. But in that initial process, just knowing that in your pre-menstrual stage is actually a really good time to really cut loose anything you don’t need.

And then… that’s getting ready for our menstruation which is you know our time of bleed, which is actually just a great time to release, but is also great time for downloads. It is when you will get amazing ideas, if you slow down, if you stop. And I really encourage women to, really if you can, especially if you are working for yourself, on your bleed day, preferably day-one or day-two, to really try and schedule that as, either a day off, or a day when you can read, or a day when you can just be with yourself. If it is not a day, make it half a day. If it can’t be half a day, make it an hour. You know, if you can’t do an hour, take 15 minutes, just to be aware of your bleed for that moment, just to kind of connect in and go “do you know what I am pretty amazing, I bleed for five days and I don’t die!” {HW: laughing} That is a pretty amazing thing, to really have that acknowledgement, that that’s something that happens and it is actually an amazing process that allows us to kind of renew and let go, renew and let go, every month.

It is incredible, this is happening in our body. So, connecting with your body, but also being able to know that each phase has a super power that you can access, that will be great for your business, it will be great for your relationship, and just great for your life.

HW: Do you know, I love your description of all that. Because I want read a book, I think it was last year, I forgot what it was, but it was the whole thing about tracking your cycle, and knowing what to do when, and it was so damn boring, and I never implemented it. I read it, and I was like “oh this is really good, I can really apply this in my life”, and then I did nothing with it. And it is sitting on my shelf, and I am like, “do I get rid of it? because I am obviously not going to do anything with it” {laughing}

LL: For sure. And I think that is the biggest driver for me as well, as I love the spiritual stuff, I love the hormonal stuff, but I am also a girl in this world, who loves shoes, and lipstick, and loves to work and loves to do well, as well. If you are an achiever, which a lot of women have been programmed to be, it is like “how do I still get to do those things?”.

You can achieve more if you know when to rest.

HW: Yes!

LL: And it is just understanding those…I just want to make it more fun. I don’t want to do anything that is not fun! {HW: laughing} So, why would I expect other women to?

HW: Exactly. And I think a lot of times, I beat myself up, because there are some days where I just don’t get stuff done and I think “damn it, I started out with my three most important actions for today, and I did like, one of them, kind of, and the other two…I didn’t even look at.” And I just feel awful about myself! But now I am thinking, like, maybe it is just the wrong part of cycle to be doing that stuff?

LL: Exactly.

HW: And maybe I need to be paying attention to when I need to be scheduling what.

LL: Exactly. And I think as well it is another thing that society has given us to beat ourselves up with. You know, it is like that whole, dude kind are linear, it is really easy for them to set themselves three important tasks each day, and then get those three important tasks done. You know, that’s how my husband works. It is very easy to work that way. And so then, for us we are like ‘yeah’ and that kind work for us, and it is the same with an exercise regime, it is the same with a diet, the same with anything you know. And you guarantee that that energy, that initiation to start anything new, would have come at the beginning of our cycle. If you were to track it, I would pretty much guarantee that.

But then come the second half of our cycle, that is not going to roll the same way. Because we are not linear. You know we are liminal, and that means we live from moment to moment and experience to experience. So, there are going to be some days where like going for a ten-mile run feels amazing, and then there are going to be other parts of our cycle where that’s just not going to roll for us. And when we know that, it is like ahhh, you can breathe a sigh of relief.

HW: It all makes sense. And like you said that the potent moments when you are critical of yourself and it is good for editing, but then you can also be critical of yourself; if you know that, if you are aware of that, then you can go “oh my god, that’s why I am beating myself today, it is just that part of the cycle” and I can just channel that energy towards something else that I can be critical of, that is more useful.

LL: Absolutely, and it is just like, [sighing noise] and you realise just how much we do beat ourselves for, that for me was the biggest part. When I discovered this for the first time, it was like wow, and I still do it, I am not saying I am perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and actually it is my husband that will pull me up on um things and go “whoa, whoa, where are you at in your cycle? You must be at day 24, because you are super critical and there is no need for that.” And it is just like, “weigh it up he is totally right, that’s annoying”, and um, but yeah it is great, and it really helps if you can get your family on board. For me that’s the most important bit, it is *you* having that awareness, because then everybody else around you will benefit from that, as well.

HW: Um. Yeah. I think that’s really, really, important. Just becoming aware of what happens at each point in the cycle and understanding how that affects you, that’s huge.

LL: Yeah!

HW: So, Lisa, how can other women in business or just women in general benefit from working with you, because you have got your book ‘Code Red’ which just came out this month, didn’t it?

LL: Yes. April. Yay!

HW: Excellent! Yay! And, also, you have got a number of programmes; so tell us a little bit about how people can work with you and benefit from your wisdom.

LL: So, the SHE Flow protocol involves, and so SHE is you but SHE is me, and SHE is also the divine wisdom that we find in our womb, and she is the bigger source too, and if we can align all of those, then we can kind of connect with ourselves and with her. And that’s where the flow comes in, so that we are no longer stuck in a kind of habitual beating of ourselves up because we are not good enough. We are actually creating flow in our lives and in our body. So, a big part of that for me is through movement, so I do SHE flows yoga classes and they will be online as well as in person. I do SHE flow massage, which is a real like abdominal, and it is old, it is sacred, it gets right down into your womb, and so if you suffer from any kind of menstrual health dis-ease in your body, or if there are any kind of menstrual health issues for you, then that’s beautiful and beneficial, and can really start to shift. So, there is movement and massage and there are practices which I share in my online programme which is ‘explore your lady landscape’; and that’s my signature programme which women seem to really love, because, again, I keep it fun. But it is such important integral work that it can be the foundation of your business, and of your relationship, and of your life. So, um, all that is available and it is all available on the sassyshe.com

HW: Excellent. So, tell us a little bit more about ‘explore your lady landscape’. So, does that just walk people through the process of starting to track your cycle, and get to know yourself and your rhythms?

LL: So yes. It is a 28-day programme, which has a daily email, um, and in each email, the email programme is then yours. We do it during February and we do one in September. So, we do it twice a year.

So, you get the email, daily. You can then keep that email and start it on the day of your bleed, and follow your period cycle through, so you totally understand what is happening to you, each and every day. There is also a charting programme and, yeah, and I do weekly classes where we talk and answer questions. And it is about your cycle but it is about, more importantly, being a woman and totally understanding, as much as we can understand, because the beauty of a menstrual cycle, it means that each month we are unfolding and we are unfurling and something new is available for us to be discovered about ourselves if we are tuned in; if we are aware. So, that’s what ‘explore your lady landscape’ is. And, so the book ‘Code Red’ which is just out, is all of that entwined into a nice, easy to read, you know it is not super, like super science-y, not super deep, it is just really accessible. I want to make these practices, I want to make this knowledge as accessible as possible for modern day women who are juggling families, doing business, you know, setting up their own businesses, and just doing life really.

HW: Yeah. So where can people find ‘Code Red’, is that on your website, or at Amazon?

LL: Yes, it is um, it is available through Amazon, but you can find out all about it over at sassyshe.com and the same with the programme. But if you sign up for the, I do a weekly newsletter where I share, discounts and all good stuff as well, so make sure you sign up for that.

HW: Ok, good. Excellent. So, Lisa, do you have any women business mentors, or are there any women in business who inspire you?

LL: Hmmm. So, my business mentor is SHE. I think I spent so much, when I was starting out as a business women, I started out, I was forever looking around. You know like looking at other people, comparing myself, competing. And I did feel like competing, you know, because I was so unaware of this way of working in my cycle.

And so now I realise that actually as women we should be supported each other and we should be really… there is a lot of competing and I think sometimes when we put people on a pedestal that can really encourage that competition to come up in us and to come up as fire and not as a sisterhood. Yeah, for me, I realised as I started to do this work, that actually I can look around me, I can really appreciate what other people are doing and see that there are amazing women doing amazing things but, actually, if I get stuck in business now, or, every launch I do, every book I write, every programme I create, is done on the mat. You know I get on the mat and I meditate and I clear some space and then I download. So, I wait until I bleed and I kind of take a whole cycle with it, so, you know, there is real process that I work with her now in order to create and do. So, yeah, SHE’s my kind of mentor, she’s my business partner, my adviser, and if I need guidance that’s how: I will get on the mat, I will meditate, I will move, until I have an answer. I will miss this body in order to get that answer and know that I have got that in me.

HW: Oh, I love that. Thank you. {laughing}

Thank you Lisa. So, can you tell us a little bit, I know you have mentioned it, but where can people find you online, on your website and your social media stuff?

LL: All at: https://www.thesassyshe.com/

HW: Perfect. And are you also on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter as well.

LL: Instagram is my total favourite. I am on there. I am @sassylisalister and Instagram is my total favourite but I am on Facebook too.

HW: Good, good. Well thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to talk to you and realise that this whole cycle tracking thing can be fun, and not just this boring “oh my god, I am never going to do it” thing.

Both: laughing

LL: Total pleasure, total pleasure, I hope it helps.

HW: Oh, definitely; and I am definitely going to be checking out your books. So, thank you very much.

LL: Thank you, thank you thank you.

HW: And thank you for listening and remember to visit ready2bloom/91 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.

[R2B 91] How Tracking Your Cycle Can Help Your Business, with Lisa Lister