The Emotional Heat of Menopause - Why We Turn Into Hot Messes🥵 And How Yoga Can Help 🥒
While menopause is a universal experience, our culture rarely honours it as the psycho-spiritual life transition that it is.
Through the lens of yoga, menopause is a period of purification and transformation.
In yoga philosophy, this heat is known as tapas - inner fire of transformation - to burn away what is no longer needed. The emotional intensity that we can experience is the “fire of awakening” doing its work.
Menopause is a call inward.
It’s not just about managing our hormones, exercise, diet and bodies but is a deep undoing on every level - physical, emotional and spiritual.
During menopause all the unresolved emotional stuff that we have stored in our bodies begins to surface and it can feel overwhelming, much like we are a hot mess 🥵
The emotional heat - anger, irritability, anxiety, impatience - are all symptoms of this process - and absolutely necessary.
Menopause insists that we attend to our unresolved inner business and stop compromising who we truly are.
It is a dark night of the soul that every woman must traverse in her own way.
No part of our lives will remain untouched by menopause, including our relationships with our partners, our children, our friends and our parents. Some relationships will deepen through truth-telling, and others will fall away because they are no longer in alignment with who we are becoming. This can be painful and confusing, but it is a necessary part of the passage as we claim greater self-sovereignty.
For me, personally, on my own path, I have felt a sense of groundlessness, increased anxiety and a sensitivity that feels quite raw and untethered. Some days it has felt like a roller coaster ride - unpredictable, intense, and sometimes even exhausting.
And it’s also been bloody hot 🔥
As I get more real and honest with myself, everything is up for questioning.
How we tend to ourselves during this time, matters deeply.
Menopause is an invitation to do less not more. We must give ourselves space to slow down so that we can soothe, balance and cool our fire. This is not the time to be striving or exerting ourselves in extremes.
The emotional heat of menopause can overwhelm the nervous system, creating feelings of reactivity, anxiety and even rage 😡
Grounding and cooling practices - gentle nourishing yoga, breathwork, time in nature, nourishing foods and meaningful connections - are absolutely essential for our physical, mental and emotional health during this passage.
We also need people and spaces that hold us, without judgement, and with gentleness, to remind us that we are not alone in this journey, where we can often feel lost and disorientated for a while. It is important that we are a part of communities or have friends or mentors that we can talk to about our own unique experience on this path.
Menopause is not the end of our vitality or relevance; it’s the beginning of a wiser, truer chapter.
An initiation into authenticity, sovereignty and the profound reclamation of our truest, deepest selves.
We are not just “hot messes” we are liquid molten gold shaping ourselves into wise, radiant women.
See you on the other side🥵