In this episode, I sit down with poet, essayist and academic Natalie Rose Dyer to explore the ideas behind her groundbreaking book The Menstrual Imaginary in Literature: Notes on a Wild Fluidity.

We begin with Natalie's own journey into this work - what drew her to menstruation as a site of philosophical, political, and creative inquiry, and how her doctoral research evolved into a call to reimagine menstrual experience beyond pathology, shame, and silence.

Together we explore the menstrual imaginary as a "wild zone of unacknowledged creativity," discussing menstrual knowledge, embodied knowing, feminist writing, and the cyclical body as a source of softly rebellious wisdom. We linger with writers such as Hélène Cixous and the tradition of women writing through and from the body, tracing how poetry, blood, creativity, and sexual difference intertwine.

The conversation then turns toward Natalie's more recent work and the posthuman horizons emerging from her thinking. We explore what becomes possible when menstruation is understood not only as a bodily process, but as a site of connection with matter, ecosystems, non-human life, and new forms of becoming.

A rich conversation on embodiment, creativity, feminist resistance, wildness, and the futures that become imaginable when we learn to listen to the wisdom of cyclical life.

More about Natalie: Natalie teaches into the Creative Writing Program at The University of Melbourne where she is Honorary Research Fellow. Natalie is the recipient of The Peter Steele Poetry Award 2021, and was highly commended for the 2024 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. She is presently completing work on her first collection towards publication this year. Natalie’s poetry is widely published in literary journals including Meanjin Quarterly, Australian Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review. Her book Notes on a Wild Fluidity was published with Palgrave (2020). Nothing But a Fine Nerve Meter; New Maps at the Planetary Turn was recently published (2025) with Revolutionaries Press. Natalie issues a call to re-write ourselves as planetary players, tethered to place yet attuned to fault lines of poetic rupture, care, and resistance.

Enjoy!

---

🌟 Join my softly rebellious on Substack - subscribe here.

🌟 Sign up here to receive a copy of my free workshop about The wild and poetic anatomy of the female body.

🌟 Book a Holistic Pelvic Care session with me in person in London or online, find out more here.

---

💛 The Soft Rebellion Podcast is created and hosted by Flurina Dominique Thali. I love hearing from you. To contact me, email softrebellion@flurinathali.com.

---

Find out more about Natalia:

- Follow her on Instagram @natalierosedyer

- Visit her webpage here.

Credits:

- Intro/outro music – ‘Hymn for Jim’ by Aspyrian: Robin Porter –saxophone, Jack Gillen – guitar, Matt Parkinson – drums, composed by Robin Porter, listen to the full track here, graphic: Annina Thali, for more information click here

Have you ever wondered if your body is speaking a language you’ve just never been taught how to understand? And what if your hormonal or pelvic health challenges were actually an invitation into deeper alignment with yourself?

In today’s conversation - the final round of the Healthy Vagina Project - I am sitting down with Claire Dabreo. Claire is a Five Element acupuncturist and women’s health specialist with over 15 years of experience supporting fertility, hormonal balance, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and intimate wellbeing. Through the lens of Chinese medicine, she helps women better understand the rhythms of their bodies and restore balance with practical, holistic care.

In this conversation we talked about:

💫 What led Claire to become the women’s health practitioner she is today; her first experience of Chinese Medicine when she experienced premenstrual tension as a teenager, and how acupuncture found her at a “transitioning threshold moment” in her life, supported her to “step out of the mess” and to unravel and find closer to her soul`s purpose and her creative flow.

💫 Chinese medicine and its map and principles “meridians”, what 5-Element Acupuncture is - which is Claire`s practice - and why it is such a potent holistic approach for vaginal and pelvic health.

💫 How physical symptoms are signals for something which is “disrupted” on deeper levels and how in acupuncture those symptoms can be seen as codes to find out where the energetic workings of the body need support - as ultimately this way of working is about creating conditions for the body to heal itself, not about fixing, it allows “everything to come into balance”, treating the whole person not just the symptoms.

💫 The importance to name the emotional aspect of health challenges, especially pelvic health, as much as the physical. Claire calls the the pelvic bowl and womb our “sacred witchy space”, which I love :-), and we talked about how pelvicchealth is about stepping into our creativity and yes to ourself and our soul s alignment.

Enjoy!

---

🌟 Join my softly rebellious on Substack - subscribe here.

🌟 Sign up here to receive a copy of my free workshop about The wild and poetic anatomy of the female body.

🌟 Book a Holistic Pelvic Care session with me in person in London or online, find out more here.

---

💛 The Soft Rebellion Podcast is created and hosted by Flurina Dominique Thali. I love hearing from you. To contact me, email softrebellion@flurinathali.com.

---

Links:

- Flurina Dominique Thali & The Soft Rebellion: @flurina.thali / www.flurinathali.com

- My guest, Claire Dabreo, you can find her webpage here and here, follow her on Instagram and Facebook @thelondonacupuncturist and @TheHarmonyPrinciple