Dearest Listener,

I hope this message finds you well - in good health and spirit and that you are able to enjoy this gorgeous and heart-warming autumn sun today!

I am sending you a new podcast episode. In this conversation, I’m joined by Dr Bee Hughes (they/them), an interdisciplinary artist and researcher and Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture, Communication at Liverpool John Moores University, to explore how art can make visible the diverse, complex, and often overlooked experiences of menstruation.

Bee shares the unexpected journey that led from a PhD in illustration education to menstrual art, including their durational artwork Cycles, and reflects on how working with their menstrual body shaped their understanding of gender and non-binary identity. Together, we explore embodied knowledge, the power of creative practice, and how menstrual art can challenge stigma, question social norms, and open up new possibilities for understanding menstruation beyond conventional narratives.

A conversation about staying curious, embracing complexity, and allowing our bodies and creative practices to change us.

In this episode, we explore:

* What menstrual art is and why it matters

* The relationship between the menstrual cycle, creativity, and embodied knowledge

* Menstruation, gender identity, and living beyond binaries

* Why unfinished, cyclical creative practices can challenge ideas of productivity and success

I hope you enjoy this conversation and I am looking forward hearing from you!

BIG LOVE,

Flurina

In this conversation, we follow loops and cycles: menstrual cycles, breath cycles, artistic processes, patterns we inherit, and the things that begin to unravel when we stay with discomfort rather than rushing to resolve it.

I’m joined by scholar, artist, musician and dancer Franziska Böhm, whose practice moves between sound, movement, somatics and embodied knowledge. To record this episode with Franzi felt like a dance – between inner relating and outer responding – instantly and continuously diving deeper into what it means to linger with what cannot yet be explained, and how the body can become a site of listening, knowing and creating.

Together we explored:

- Franzi’s story from studying classical music and music pedagogy in Germany, the latter which opened a world of new possibilities, and eventually led her to the UK to study an MA in Creative Practice, where she encountered movement practices that have continued to reshape how she understands making, knowing, and being.

- We spend time diving into Franzi`s recent doctoral research all about loops and looping: not simply as repetition, but as a phenomenon and a way of generating knowledge.

- Franzi speaks about her relationship to the menstrual cycle and cycles more broadly within her artistic practice, and about Skinner Releasing Technique – “a rigorous yet playful practice” that taught her to let processes unfold in their own way and to practice being with that wordless territory where something can be sensed before it can be named.

- We continue exploring (my favourite) question - what does it mean to know through the body? And what might embodied knowledge-making ask of us when we recognise the fact that our bodies are always already racialised and politicised?

- And then there is the breath: its constant filling and emptying, its cycles, its relationship to voice. We explore why breath and voice cannot be separated, how the voice can become a way of accessing movement, and how Franzi approaches “the voice as connective tissue”.

- We invite you to lean back, sense of your weight, notice your own breath and enjoy this conversation about cycles, stigma, discomfort and what we internalise - and about what can begin to move when we give ourselves permission to stay with what we don't yet have words for.

More about Franziska:

Franziska (she/her) is a German-born, London-based artist and researcher working across dance, music, academia and hospitality. Continuously saying no to prescribed capitalist pathways of life has made her realise her values around slowing down, sensing, trusting and collaboration. This has led her to study and investigate modalities such as Skinner Releasing Technique and other movement practices for their capacity to help us sense into ourselves, each other, the environment and beyond. She is particularly interested in politicised somatics, exploring how we can apply these modalities to intentionally cultivate power in ourselves, in our communities and how doing the repair work can allow us to choose living our lives soulfully and experience collective transformation.

Her methodology is collaborative, intuition based and about giving space to each other and to how the work unfolds. Her work often takes the form of interconnected pieces – albums, performances, and installations. Themes of lament run through her work, exploring vulnerability, connection, and the experience of breath and voice. More recently her research extends into the shared ground between pre-semantic bodily knowledge and machine learning, currently developing through a workshop series and new work with technologist Fiona Thendean as part of her fellowship at machinaloci space, London UK.

Webpage: https://boehmfranziska.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/franziskaboehm__/

What if sexual freedom isn't about becoming someone new, but remembering who we've always been?

In this episode, I sit down with author, activist, and cultural visionary Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah to explore pleasure as a form of resistance. Together, we discuss African wisdom traditions, the cyclical nature of women's bodies, decolonizing sexuality, and why reclaiming pleasure may be one of the most radical acts available to us today.

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a groundbreaking voice and advocate for African and Afro descendant women's experiences of sex, sexuality, and pleasure. Her debut, The Sex Lives of African Women, was an instant classic, lauded by Publishers Weekly as "an astonishing report on the quest for sexual liberation" and named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist.

Sekyiamah is the celebrated co-founder of the popular website Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. She is a renowned podcaster, a festival co-curator, and the Co-Founder of the Institute of Journalism and Social Change.

Her transformative work has earned her international recognition, including a spot on the BBC's 100 inspirational and influential women list and New Africa magazine's list of 100 inspirational Africans.

In this episode we explore:

- Nana shared from her story and story behind her book “Sexual Freedom” and why so many women are longing to come home to their bodies and their pleasure.

- The African traditions and rites that honour sexuality as a source of wisdom, the meaning of “Sankofa”, why remembering the past can create a freer future the role of elders, guides, and "wise sex aunties" in women's lives.

- What it means to decolonize sexuality, how colonialism continues to live in our bodies and what we're really becoming free from when we talk about sexual freedom.

- The cyclical body and sexual freedom; we explored the seasons of sexuality as expressed through the lifespan and the menstrual cycle.

- Why pleasure isn't self-indulgence but a profound act of resistance!

Enjoy!

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

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Find out more about Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah:

- Follow her on Instagram @dfordarkoa

- 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