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THE PLACE WITHIN

Tag Archives: menopause


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The Omega – Nourishment to the End

Omega – The Great End

In my 49 life I am stressed and overwhelmed by the to-do-list, sometimes it is triggering. I am a carer, a wife, a sister, a friend, a holistic health practitioner and sometimes a spiritual artist. If I could spend my days meditating, crafting and napping oh I would! but this earthly existence has other ideas.

Wellbeing and Menopause Symptoms

I consider my wellbeing to be an internal garden, this requires nurturing, tending and not to be left un-managed. I am intuitive and seem to be crafting my way through this life so why wouldn’t menopause be any different. I have entered this mid-life phase feeling like my years of PMS have become the signs of my menopause. The fatigue, the overwhelm at the tasks for the day seem to make me sigh with heavy eylashes. I often wonder if the menstrual cycle of my earlier, maiden years was a signal to what I would be experiencing through menopause. What if PMS was “pre-menopause signalling”?

The fatigue seems to be the essential point of my feelings throughout my cycling years so no surprise it is the signal in my menopause. This fatigue seems to be the domino effect for the overwhelm and the stress. So I am looking deeper into this as my stating point, or my trigger point.

Menopause and Sleep Quality

Hormonal cycling expert Marilyn Glenville asks us to consider if sleep or lack of it is the cause, to look at our quality of sleep. If we have night sweats, are we waking up feeling hot and sweaty or waking up then getting hot and sweaty, the later relating to glucose dips in the night and so having more carbohydrates before bed. Another consideration is how nourished am I at the end of the day? Am I worried about the lists before bed or satisfied I have completed enough for one day to have a quiet mind to sleep?

Nourishment and Nutrition through the Menopause

When I think about how nourished and fulfilled I am in my day to day existence, my work, my responsibilities I am considering what really am I doing here on earth. Nourishment goes right to the root of the physical aspects and to the higher perspectives, (yes we are talking Maslow here!) I am asking myself if I am nutritionally nourished and soulfully nourished.

This week I have found that fatigue can be a lack of essential fatty acids, the Omegas. I can hear my mind re-routing right through the mackerel fish and seeds to the seeds within the mind (I am so esothetically focused!). It is like the universe is playing upon the need for the physical as well as the spiritual and this is where I am in menopause. We are talking duality between the form and the formless, I don’t think we can separate the physical from the spiritual as we go through menopause! And that is where the root of this thing called menopause comes thundering in. There is no ignoring this shake up in the midlife years, this shift needs and wants to be noticed, nourished even.

Omega, the Greek word for gender neutral has great significance when we speak about the menopause and the fact that the hormones that are essentially feminine and create a cyclical being within us are coming to an end. The Omega also means “the End”. It also has meaning in the word Roots, associated with fulfilment, death and personality traits for introverts, rooting downwards. You see you can’t make this up! Just look up the word Omega and you can see where this goes.

So this week I am considering my fatigue as the root of my overwhelm, and a need for some quiet time and some introverted nourishment of the senses. I have a need to feed my body with the omegas and to have some nourishment for my mind as well as my soul. As the night sky sets with softer hues, I need to prepare for sleep, no screens no tv, to nourish myself with introverted ways. A routine made up of soul nourishment for the end of the day, with meditation, prayer, movement, music and contemplation. And if fatigue arises by day, maybe I could respect the need and still opt for a nap too.


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Sacral Centre, My Sweet Abode

Today I am sitting within my 2nd house, my sacral chakra and it feels good to be connecting here at this point in my 49 life. I am reminded of my time, this time and of course, no time. When we put a structure on our time, doesn’t it soon feel restricted? Soon I will be in my 50th year, my 5th decade, a miracle in my ancient ancestry and a mile stone in my modern life. As I contemplate what this means to me, I am contemplating within my “own sweet abode”, the Svadhisthana, the sacral. Known in many traditions as the Dan Tien, the life force energy centre, the womb space, the void, the bowl, the ruler of water, the feminine aspect, the Empress archetype, the emotional and the creatrix centre.

As I sit within my sacral home it feels ripe and energetic. In the past when I have experienced a sense of fullness it was bloatedness, uncomfortable trousers and a reoccupation of the period about to come. I have a sensation of full bloom than boom! And it feels powerful. As I prepared to menstruate in my younger years I was conflicted with prementrual stress. I had a sense of urgency to prepare myself for some time with less and in the process I created greater stress to the point of manic cleaning house, arranging a just-so for others in my care. In the days leading to menstruation instead of winding down I got wound up! Over this last year my cycles have been slowing down, I bleed less, I miss some, and now I sometimes miss having the cycles, the pattern. Is that crazy to you? that I miss them? Now I have a sense of what I want to do, of where my focus is heading. I can see how far I wish to be filled to my edge, my boundary, rather than how far I can push to my limit!

The sacral is the centre of pleasure, of feeling nourished and fulfilled. It encompasses my need for creation and desires. Not just in the sexual sense, as it is most commonly portrayed, but as a desire to create all manner of things. It is where my personal desires feel connected in health, in abundance, to my heart desires. This is where creativity meets focus, in service to others as a Doula, or spiritual health with Reiki to reading of the women of sacral energies, the ancient texts.

The shadow side of the sacral energy is martyrdom. It is the feeling of deprivation, lack of joy, lack of creativity and ultimately lack of time. Time I create and time I can allow. Sometimes in this 49 life timing seems to be my main issue. Time is a luxury. It is no coincidence that sacrifice, to surrender, dates back to the Latin word, sacer, Holy. So just for today I will remain in gratitude and give thanks for this day of surrender and into the “sweet abode” of holy creativity. I will honour this fullness as a feeling for as long as I can.

Bless’d be the sacral bowl of life energy that I find today.


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Solar heat at 49

In my 49 life I am I am experiencing anxiety. This anxiety and me have a history coupled with PTSD. Recently I don’t always know what my physical body is telling me. A mix of anxiety, grief, overwhelm and menopause. This is my story from this week.

I was setting off in the car to visit a relative in hospital. I got into the car, the temperature read 38 degrees, I felt sick, hot, was it just heat? was it a hot flush? or was it anxiety! My thoughts jumped from one to the other, the truth of it ( which came later) was that my body had remembered something.

I needed to get out of the car and feeling like a failure and disappointed at letting others down I had to just stop and “Get out of the car”! Soon after as I cooled down I realised that I know this feeling, this reaction, it is when the body remembers. It is remembering a date, a past situation or a trauma. My body was not only messaging me to take a break but signalling patterns into my awareness. The body remembers dates, places, and the places can reignite triggers and the triggers can “fire up” to remind us that something from the past needs attention. Just like a fire starting in the shadows of our internal cave growing stronger so we go back, look, witness that situation again. The “issue” is that it comes up uninvited, unawares but the body has this internal storage that seems to just remember without the mind being involved.

As I uncoiled just enough for me to remember and figure this all out. I can give myself a break.  At this time of 49 I am considering that these “anxious” remembrances or triggers are relating to the menopausal symptom called hot flushes. They are literally fired up in my face. The date of my “heatwave anxiety” corresponded to a past trauma that my mind had not acknowledged. My mind hadn’t connected to the date and place but the body did.

So what is a hot flush? At the time of a surge, are we actually in the spiritual sense going through a fiery upgrade?  Are we actually re-membering ourselves? By that I do mean collecting our bones, our divided parts, which have been lost over time. Are we pulling ourselves back together in a newly fashioned way, a mature way?

To me this was a good reminder that my mind may think it is taking the lead with the logical stuff but my body is attuned to all that has been and will continue to message me from spiritual to physical body as I go forwards. In the wise words of Caroline Myss, the greatest power we have within us is the position we energetically hold as our power station, the solar plexus. This is the intuitive energy centre that messages us from “gut instinct”, or intuitiveness. We all have the ability to connect to the gut instinct and sometimes this power centre messages us in stronger ways. Is the menopause really a firing up of the solar plexus, our solar energy? Is the gut instinct being attuned? This chakra centre as it is known is after all the centre of our personal power, the seat of our inner compass. If I am actually having a solar upgrade then surely this is a positive thing for my mature years ahead!

Maybe, just maybe what is occurring in my menopause years is a gathering of my inner ability to discern all around me to assert my personal power. If this is the metaphysical change to the wise elder, then baptism by heat to burn away the old and transition into a new relationship with selfhood is what is occurring. The soul lesson is forging our life force, literally by forge or force, or both, a consolidating of past and present as our personal identity in full acceptance. Maybe I need to remember that it is my shadow and my light that make Gold.


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Mature 49

49 is not what I expected. I started my working life as a medical professional then turned holistic and spiritual practitioner and so far this week my practice has been my saving grace.  I have navigated my own selfcare treatments from Reiki to calm my nervous system to Reflexology to regulate the endocrine. It is a rollercoaster of a role to witness our elder’s needs from lightbulb changes, medication dosette boxes, emergency calls and missing wheelchairs.

I have called upon my spiritual allies to help in many varying degrees from negotiating contracts and holding space for my Mother as she feels she is losing her friends to dementia. Then there’s my Fathers loss of mobility and fragility. My faith in the wise and well ancestors have been my allies in the subtle realms only too willing to be called upon.

I lean to the ancestors, after all I am them, my bones and facial features are theirs, from them I am born. The role of the carer is a difficult one to navigate. It arrives at a time when I myself am changing. I go through a multitude of transitions being a 49 year old woman, self employed spiritual business practitioner, a wife, a friend, a listener and a menopausal shifter.

Whilst navigating the elder’s care needs in an ever-shifting NHS and social care system I am trying to figure out the menopausal fatigue and wonder if my symptoms are from too much or too little evening primrose right now. I am pulled to “clean house” of the unfinished business I have stacked up. The courses, submissions, assessments and the continuing professional development that is a feature of all our professional pursuits these days. I am always reading 4 books and far too tired to complete any. Then there is the cleaning out of the emotional and energetic baggage of old worn out perspective and my inner archetypes all shouting for some deep witnessing.

This thing they call menopause is a maturing of the old ways, the inner pathways, a realisation of what has worked well and what has not. Call it menopause, call it a life review if you dare! It is the wise one willing me to tune inwards and not be so outwards when the world is wanting me to be all things. This crone inside is trying to be birthed into a new way of navigating the here and now. So while we nurture those around us, the message deep within is “Who is nurturing you?” Birthing is painful and changeful. It can’t be pushed down or ignored. So no wonder I am feeling the fatigue of this gestation from menstruation.

It is the big gardening of mature life. Call it weeding for now, it is asking what am I keeping up and what do I need to let go? What is right for me and what is right now for me? 49 is full of loose ends, never-ends and the inevitable end. Right now the weeding is all important as I take this time to nurture the garden within.  As the elders take an afternoon nap, the cat does too and the 49 year olds are discerning, weeding and regulating their nervous system with left-right eye movements in the mid-day sun. One day I will be through the change, transformed and the ancestor of my family tree.

The red tent to women like me in the middle of life, becomes a life tent. It is the anchor that sits you down and holds you in.  It is a place remembered for birth and death, but it is also for the mid shifters,  for transformation. It is the place to go to in pain, in need, knee deep with the earth and discerning cries, “help me transform, shift through it all”. If you have never been inside a red tent, create one, create if just for yourself! It is the resting place and the place to let it all flow.

Here in the middle we are asked to change, do work differently,  parenting and elder care differently. Our loved ones change, societies views and expectations change, my hair colour has changed….and everyday the needs of those and ourselves change.  My own requirements move and new boundaries need to be created, what once was ok is now far from acceptable. They call this growth in the spiritual community, with grow there can also be pain. So the message for now is take it slowly, even when there are urgent moments, walk the earth with every step at a slower pace because everything is changing.


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The Menopause, the Matrix and the Moon

For Christmas I gave myself adrenal fatigue. This feeling of minimal activity and maximum fatigue is not a new thing for me. I am well versed in how this goes. I am also well attuned to deep rest, hydration and good food to begin with, from a well oiled radar to the early signs. The “Holiday” in deep winter has me thinking that I am not as attuned to the seasons as I thought. My preparation for Christmas was not at all prepped appropriately. My inner vision was covered. I did not see the wood, literally, for the trees and here is why.

I got swept into the tangibility of it all. The Matrix was there with its all seeing eyes and I was lost to it. I got moved along with the to-do-lists, helped my elders with their food preparation, the lights and the tinsel. I colluded to buy and messy wrap the presents and all the time my energy levels waned and I knew it. I felt it, I recognised my bodily signs saying, slow down. I went out again and again when the fire side was calling with its soft golden glow and its warming invites. I left for one last trip with the Christmas cards.

All this was done out of love, but was it love for myself! And where do you draw the line with your loved ones at Christmas to say, I am done! I am menopausal, my instincts are saying I need to go inside and withdraw not do more. I am listening to my body and my answer is just one more thing! But the body knows the limits and has no cajoling from the mind, the body doesn’t say ok, let’s finish all this and high five. No, the body has a limit and when the limit is overstepped it shouts now, now is the time for rest and no more.

All this came home to me yesterday as we sorted, cut and piled the wood from the pruned trees in our garden. Here I was again, but this time the realisation was of my sacred rhythms with the trees and the land. As I over stretched once again I had this vision that my ancestors worked with the rhythms of the seasons. I thought I was doing so well with my menstrual practice cycling like the earth with my inner landscape then it occurred to me, what do we do when the cyclicity is gone.

Here I was without the clock, without the dial, the rhythms all gone. I was chopping wood in winter when this could have been done in preparation. My ancestors would have prepared for winter, just as I had prepared in the autumn of my cycle, my premenstrual phases, listing and smoothing things over so I rested in winter. My inner cyclicity had been musical even, never mind rhythmical…..and now as I arrive in this space of no cyclicity it began to look more like no-womans-land.

My world was not prepared for the winter. If I had looked, really looked at myself and my nature this would have been all in good timing. The cutting, pruning and gardening would have been put to bed weeks ago. If my body had been in a menstrual cycle I would have been prepared for this! But is it just me, or is the outer world out of sync? As I sit here typing, the window is open the hedges are green and it seems the earth herself is in a great flux of menopausal seasonal crisis of no-womans-land too!

When I close my eyes and think of my ancestry I see the high stocked wood stores, the jars of pickled fruits and veg, the importance of the harvest festival and the fire flickering and tended to day and night. Frosty mornings and sleet showers with streets of leaves piling up the brick walls. Houses with the lights on early and no more to do about the gardens but witness and welcome the returning of the light in weeks to come. Nothing kept for keeping sake and nothing needed but stillness and the flame.

My awareness is bringing up that familiar nervousness that all is not right with the world. I am aware of what has occurred on the inner landscape and I can accept that and find my path again. But what can be done about the outer landscapes, how do we assist the cycles of the season of this planet? Is this a greater task that we have as a collective? Is this a task for all women at menopause, as we sit in nature to nurture ourselves can we be in reciprocity at this time? Is it time to nourish both? If the earth is also out of cyclicity do we now look to the moon for our rhythms and reflect deep into our old ways, the wise and the well, the ancient and ancestral knowing once more?


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May’s discoveries for health and wellbeing  

I have been reading Code Red by Lisa Lister. In this book the author creates a
simple way to view the menstrual cycle. The rhythms of pre-ovulation, ovulation, pre-menstrual and menstrual perceived as the seasons, spring, summer autumn and winter brings about a new found understanding for how to plan activities and self-care. Just thinking of  diary commitments and the seasons of the cycle has brought about a new respect for scheduling. Not only that, there ARE benefits to autumn and winter days that I am just discovering and bringing into being. There is a new found creativity “period” to be welcomed in at this time. If you need some ideas birthing projects or working events then working with the flow of our cycle instead of pushing against it is the message. Lisa has a friendly writing style and introduces elements of feminine history and uterine health than make you spark off on your own research trails to see what deeper understanding can be found outside of the book as well.

There are links to her website for charting and getting a little geeky as she says, with understanding the individuality of the cycle. The website has downloads to print out guidance, charts and picture wheels. Well worth taking
a look as well as the resources section at the back of the book.

 

The crystal for this month is the lovely peach moonstone, a gentle energy for the sacral chakra. It has a soothing property and is emotionally supportive. It is said to alleviate worries and bring a lift to positive vibrations, and of course, a balance to the feminine energies.

Instead of clary sage, I have been using rosemary oil mixed with lavender in fractionated cocunut oil carrier oil (safe blending). It has brought me a lift in my energy giving me a gentle wake-up on those tired days.

I have invested in the Soulful Woman Affirmation cards. These bring about a lift of positivity for the day. The artwork is bright and colourful and the words on the cards are comforting. I find there is little need for the guide book due to a good explanation on the bottom of the cards as well as the eye being drawn to the intricate artwork.

That’s my monthly round up, so what has inspired you in the health and wellbeing section this month?

Much Love,

Janice x