The Inviting Shift Podcast
Embrace the authentic, confident you so you can feel good in your skin and have deeper relationships. The Inviting Shift Podcast focuses on how we step through this messy journey of life confidently so we can feel good about how we show up, have more connected relationships and connect to purpose and meaning. Or in short, how we manifest the lives we crave in practical, tangible ways.
The Inviting Shift Podcast
S3E3: Embracing Change: Navigating Menopause Through Knowledge and Support
Welcome to our cozy corner where we dive into all things perimenopause and menopause with a mix of honesty, humor, and heart! In this chat, we’re sharing our own journeys through the ups and downs of menopause, from the surprising symptoms to the lifestyle tweaks that help us feel our best. We know firsthand how little info is out there, so we’re shining a light on what we’ve learned—especially the importance of talking openly with our partners and each other.
We’ll cover everything from hot flashes to the magic of self-care, and we’re not shying away from the real stuff like how exercise, diet, and even that glass of wine can play a role in how we feel. Plus, Jenny and Christina are here to share why open conversations about women’s health are a game-changer, along with some breathwork tips to help keep calm during those intense moments.
So grab your favorite drink, get comfy, and join us as we explore this transformative stage of life with a little laughter and a lot of love. We’re in this together!
Our Guests:
Peach Grayson is a seasoned writer and dedicated healthcare researcher with over 30 years of experience. Known for her witty and informative series of books titled Let’s Talk Menopause. Peach has managed to strike a perfect balance between humor and education.
Connect with Peach:
Instagram | TikTok | Facebook | Website
Jamie Bessler is a retired educator. Empty nester. Seeker of personal enrichment. You can find more about Woman Within here.
Jenny Cheifetz is a life and breathwork coach at Jentle Coaching. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two teenage children, and two dogs.
She energizes busy, no-bullsh*t women to take back their power, reignite their passions, and step off the sidelines. Her clients want to feel calm, confident, free, and excited about life.
Connect with Jenny:
Instagram | Facebook | Website | Podcast
Host:
Christina Smith is a life coach specializing in confidence and self-love in midlife so that women can finally truly like themselves and how they show up for themselves and their relationships.
CONNECT with Inviting Shift & Christina on Social:
Instagram | Facebook
FREE GIFT: The Confidence Tool Kit is here to help you walk into the second half like a queen (because you are one already). Get it here.
Email me and tell me what you think: christina@christina-smith.com
TUNE IN wherever you listen to podcasts:
This week's circle we're going to talk about some things that some of us know, things about some of us don't know, so much about, and I love that that's our conversation in this group, because I think that we're learning off of each other from different things and we're just having conversations. So today we're going to talk a lot about perimenopause and menopause and what we can expect if we haven't been through it or other people's experiences from being through it and they're not always a nightmare, although they're not always pleasant. So we're going to get an array of views today and I'm really excited about that. Before we go on, I just want to have our guests introduce themselves so we know a little bit about who they are. So Peach Grayson has written some books about menopause. Do you want to introduce yourself? I'd love to hear.
Speaker 2:Sure. So, like you said, I'm Peach Grayson. I am your typical middle-aged woman, and recently I have published three books on menopause and communication with your partners. And I did that really with the idea that I couldn't find what I was looking for when I finally realized I was going through menopause, and so, after searching for a couple of years, not really seeing what was on the market that gave me the information I wanted, I decided I'd write it myself.
Speaker 1:I think that's lovely, because there definitely is not enough information out there on menopause for sure. Thanks so much, peach Jamie, welcome to the podcast again.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I'm Jamie Bessler. I am an empty nester, a retired educator, and I spend a fair amount of my time volunteering with Women Within International, which is an organization it's a nonprofit whose goal is to empower women. Thanks, Jamie.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 4:Jenny, welcome, thank you. My name is Jenny Chaffetz and I have two teens. One is headed off to college, one is about to finish high school. That's exciting, and I am a life and breathwork coach for midlife women. So I aim to support midlife women on the journey, like myself, who just experience all the feels of what it's like to be in this time of life of sometimes feeling stuck, sometimes feeling overwhelmed, confused, happy, resentful, joyful, excited, confident, doldrums all the things sometimes all in one day, and just how to navigate that.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Yeah yeah, mood swings right. So what a great entry. And talking about perimenopause, it's so funny because it reminds me of my mother said to me I don't, I didn't have any problem going through menopause. And I was like, well, the rest of us had a problem with you going through menopause. Maybe you didn't notice, but we all knew what was going on, or we suspected anyway. So I think it's interesting, um, how some women are not impacted as heavily by menopause or perimenopause, which is that period before which I I'm in.
Speaker 1:I get the hot flashes already. I can feel it right now. I was just telling these lovely women before we got on, like I'm already having one right now. I had to turn the AC up or down, I guess, and and I can feel my heart just like pounding away.
Speaker 1:And I've had a lot of other experiences. Luckily, I've had people on my podcast in the past who have explained to me what's going on for me, because I was never taught about menopause. In fact, until I asked my mom about it just this past year, she'd never mentioned it to me, nobody had ever mentioned it to me or what would happen. It really was. It's like this unknown thing and it was really hard for me, as like it's not like one day, like perimenopause just shows up and goes, hey, I'm here now, like you just have to go through and experience all these things, or we're going to a doctor and get some testing done, or whatever. But what I'm really excited to hear is, peach, what did you learn in your exploration of menopause, since you wanted to write the book and I think it's really. I think it's awesome, because there's definitely not enough information out there for women.
Speaker 2:My books are really almost a layman style. There's a lot of medical jargon out there that's published and originally, when I was realized that I was probably in a perimenopausal phase, I bet I had been going and having symptoms for five years and I lost my mom when I was 18. So I didn't have an older person to go and talk to and ask questions and I just didn't realize it. I had depression, I had hot flashes, I had night sweats, I was moody, I mean, I was everything. I just thought you know I'm stressed, my children are just leaving home, you know work is difficult, and so I chalked it all up to that and eventually the light bulb kind of went off and I thought, huh, you know, maybe all this time I've been going through menopause. So I started doing a little digging, looking at everything. I could talk to every doctor because I work in the medical field. So I talked to every doctor underneath the sun, even those that don't even specialize in women's health or menopause or general practitioner anything. Anybody that would listen to me I talked to, I asked questions and I just honestly didn't get a whole lot of information out of physicians like I had hoped and everything that I found online or written, even some verbal things, was just medical jargon and it's like and I get the medical aspect of it, but I just kind of wanted to know the nitty gritty on what the heck is happening to my body and and how do I fix this? Um, so I learned that one. There's not a whole lot of fixing. There's a lot of things that I figured and figured out how to do to make my symptoms less severe.
Speaker 2:Um, and unfortunately, time, time was probably the biggest asset for me. The farther I went along, the less symptoms were there. But I learned things like sugar. Sugar was a horrible trigger for my hot flashes and my night sweats. And I love sugar. You know, I enjoy my sweets. That's just me. I've always had a bowl of ice cream every night and never realized that that was a major trigger for some of these symptoms that we go through during menopause. So once I cut out sugar, man, I mean, I was like a new person.
Speaker 2:And alcohol when I stopped alcohol which I thought, oh, a glass of wine, it's relaxing no, it literally made my night sweats 10 times worse. Of course, I didn't know it until I stopped. Once I stopped having a glass of wine at night. All of a sudden I'm sleeping, and once I start sleeping then I'm not so grumpy during the day, and once I'm not so grumpy during the day, my relationships improved. I mean, it was just the snowball effect and it was some very simple things. I never used any hormone replacement therapy. It wasn't something that I was interested in. So I kind of went all natural and I found that there were a lot of lifestyle changes that I could make that really did have a big impact on my signs and symptoms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can tell you that that's true, because even though I have not given up drinking, I know that I cannot drink the week before my period because anytime I have I get something that somebody else told me was called the period flu. And I was like, why is it? When I get my period I feel like I feel like I'm dying, like I have the flu. I mean I can't tell you how many periods I was testing myself for COVID because I was like something has got to be wrong with me. And finally I talked to somebody who knew more like yourself and she was like, oh, that's called the period flu. She's like, yeah, menopausal, perimenopausal menopausal and adolescence.
Speaker 1:They get it because of the flux of the hormone change and your liver gets overwhelmed because I guess apparently hormones need to be processed through the liver to rich yourself of them. But I would have the sweats, the shakes, the hot, cold fever, my whole body would ache. It was crazy town and now that I don't drink as much during that week or the week before, so there's like half the month is like alcohol free. But since I did that it's been a lot better in the other ways and I'm sure that maybe I'd get less night sweats if I didn't have my vodka, but I'm in a really weird place in my life where I like my vodka, so I'm not ready to give it up yet, and I do know that that's one thing that we could be doing.
Speaker 1:So what I'm hearing is like it's almost like perimenopause is a calling for us to take better care of ourselves and, um, you know, for me it's like the exercise. I really need to keep up my exercise or else I can gain weight easily, which was never the truth in my life. I always used to be so thin that people would ask me how much I weighed because I was so thin, and now it's easy. I could watch somebody else eat ice cream. And as we talk about all this, I just want Jamie to chime in, because Jamie had a different experience with menopause, where a lot of stuff didn't come up for you. Jamie, tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 3:So, I consider myself very I'm going to use the word just blessed that my mom discussed her menopausal symptoms. She went through menopause, her late fees, early fees, and it was an open topic. She would come to the dinner table and say she was, I just had a hot flash and could ask whatever questions that I wanted to, and then um and and mood swings like she would like, she goes. I'm telling you I'm having having a menopausal kind of day.
Speaker 3:I'm totally grouchy today and I think that kind of set the stage for what I thought I might have when I went through and I had my blood checked when I was in my late forties and I was perimenopausal, then symptoms and my period was still regular until I hit almost late.
Speaker 3:I still had a period, was very regular, and then all of a sudden it was irregular for maybe three months and then I was done and I went, I had my blood drawn again and he goes you're done, menopausal is you're, you're done. And I know I'm maybe an exception because my friends around me had the hot flashes and just not feeling well in general and I'm going to chop part of maybe lesser symptoms or no symptoms in is just, I've watched my sugar intake and I don't drink and I've always exercised and I do think that it helps, especially with bone density and everything, as, as I'm aging, I was going to ask you about that Cause I know that you take really good care of yourself now and I was wondering if, while you were going through that, if you were taking good care of yourself.
Speaker 1:So that goes back to what Peach was saying, that like once she had like some better habits, it really had this like ripple effect on her life where it was like of course I'm grouchy if I'm not sleeping at night, of course I'm grouchy if I'm like having these hot sweats and so uncomfortable, right, like all of those things, and so taking really good care of yourself seems to be the dealio. Now, jenny, tell us a little bit about your experience or non-experience.
Speaker 4:So far, non-experience. Awesome, yeah, similar to Peach, I also lost my mother when I was 18. I was 18 and probably I'm assuming, like peach then our mothers probably hadn't gone through menopause, so I didn't have an example of what that looked like. So, yeah, I didn't have a model for what. I have friends that have that are currently going through that. I certainly hear stories and I've listened to enough podcasts at this point to understand what to expect. So I kind of have that on my radar.
Speaker 4:But again, similar to what you ladies are expressing, take or try my best to take good care of myself. I try to exercise. That seems to be the harder of the things for me to get in Somehow. Before COVID, that was much easier for me. Once the gyms closed, I don't know. Then then you know, then all of a sudden being home and I've never seemed to get back out there. But, um, but yeah, I do, I do struggle with that fitness, fitness and fitness taco and it's easy.
Speaker 4:But I'm sorry, I'm trying to, I'm trying to make jokes, but no, but fitness has always been a love-hate struggle with me, just for the history of disordered eating, disordered fitness. But walking is very easy for me, but the more rigorous stuff is a little more challenging, but I know that the weight bearing is much more important as we get older, so I'm working on bringing more of that. I've reduced dramatically the sugar intake of late. I have tried to go whole foods, plant-based. I've been a vegan for a long time but I've done it kind of quote dirty for a while. So I am trying to reduce the processed foods almost entirely, and that includes alcohol. So I'm hoping that that, based on what Peach is saying, will maybe ease my transition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that because I was lucky enough to have a lot of gut problems in my thirties. So I don't do sugar because my gut doesn't like it at all. So I mean I shouldn't say I don't do it completely. It's very rare, do I often buy sweets? I do, cause when I'm at the store I'm like I'll be so good, I'm just going to have one. And then in my house they're gone before I even get to them anyway, because I'll like my husband's like they were there for a week.
Speaker 1:I had to eat them, and so I get away with not eating any sugar, and they're like, how can you just see this stuff sitting here and not eat it?
Speaker 1:I'm like, cause every time I look at it my gut goes this isn't the right time. And so at least the food thing I am really good at as well, it is the exercise for me, and I know how good I feel when I go for like a more rigorous hike. I love walking too and I can get myself to walk, but like going, like committing to like a five mile hike is like a lot more than just walking around the neighborhood, you know, five mile hike is like a lot more than just walking around the neighborhood, you know, especially when it's like warm out or up up a mountain, um, which is where I live in mountains. So, um, but the exercise, definitely I am. I am trying to get some strength training and now, because I'm hearing that that's really really important, um, and I can feel it in my muscles and my joints that I really need that strength training. And maybe, peach, you got more to say about exercise.
Speaker 2:Well, I definitely have struggled with the exercise, part of everything and I do think weight training and strength training because we lose a lot of muscle mass during menopause and if you can kind of ward it off before it happens, it's a lot easier to maintain your muscle mass than it is to build it back up. Because I'm kind of at a point now where I'm trying to build up muscle mass. You know, I hold my arms out and I find my little bat wings hanging there, going what is that? And even if I do all kinds of strength training and weight training, I think I'm never going to fill up all the skin. I don't know what to do about it. But yeah, if there's anything you can do to maintain it, it's a lot easier than trying to repair it after the fact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I fear that I've waited a little too long to really get into it as well. So if you're listening to this and you're like I'm not menopausal or very menopausal, Well great, Get on the strength training now, because you could use it. You build those muscles. Listen to Peach, to build those muscles.
Speaker 1:Before I want to go back to Jamie was saying how her mom actually was really out loud about it. You know she spoke about it not in a complaining way, but in a hey, warning mom's feeling a little, you know, off kilter today, and so that's what's going on for me, and I know that there's so many people that don't talk about it. I know this because if people were really talking about it, wouldn't we have heard about it. I mean, even even if we didn't have a mother as we were growing up, like there would have been aunties or friends or coworkers or somebody like talking about it. But it seems to be a thing that women don't bring up, Um, and so I know, Peach, you wrote some information about how we can talk to our partner and I'm like I'm way too vocal, Like I don't have this problem.
Speaker 1:If there's something going on with me, I will tell him and he knows, like, all of the things that are going on with me because, well, we work and live together in the same house all the time, so you know whatever's going on for me. He pretty much knows and we've had lots of conversations about my podcast, but I'm assuming in the average house or in many other homes that we don't talk to our spouses about what's going on. How can we do that?
Speaker 2:our spouses about what's going on. How can we do that? Well, one of the books that I wrote really is about that communication with your partner, and it's a comical book, you know. It's meant to be very lighthearted, so that the goal was men would be interested in reading it, because they have no desire to read anything about menopause. But it's written in a way that is a Wednesday night beer drinking in the neighborhood, and I thought that that might encourage men to consider reading it.
Speaker 2:But having those conversations with your partner is it's hard, and I'm very open with my husband, but it still was very difficult for me to say things like look, if I have hairs coming out of my chin and my lip, you're going to have to tell me, because, one, I can't see him anymore. Two, they show up overnight and they look like whiskers and it's like I want him to see me as a beautiful person, you know, and in my best light. And it was hard to have those conversations. It was hard to have conversations about intimacy and maybe changes that I needed because of menopause, and so I really had hoped that this book would just spark communication so that people would feel comfortable telling their partners the hard things, the things that are happening to their body, that really aren't always necessarily so pleasant. But at least if our partners hear us and understand, then they'll be a little bit more empathetic. Because you know, sometimes I am just hormonal and I know it and I tell everybody now I'm menopausal, you know, you just don't even listen to me, because I'm having a menopausal moment and I've gotten to where, even at work, I will say to my boss look, I'm having a menopausal moment. I can't think of a word, I can't make a complete sentence, whatever it might be, because the reality is that's what's happening to me, that's what's happening to my cognition and my inability to think straight and my inability to kind of control my emotions sometimes. And so I try to just be very frank. But it's hard, it's hard to say those things to people that we love or even people that we don't even know that well. And the more that we can share with one another, the easier it is to get through this time, and then people can kind of understand what you're going through.
Speaker 2:You know, you go to a business meeting and everybody's sitting around a table and all of a sudden you've got beads of sweat on your top lip and you're embarrassed. You know you don't. All these men in the room, they don't have any clue what's going on and you're fanning yourself and you're thinking. You know, I hope nobody thinks I'm having a heart attack right here in the middle of our, of our conference, and it's just, it's just hard. They're hard conversations but they really do need to be had, whether it's with your mom or your friend or your boss or your husband, whoever it is. I think we we just have to literally speak up and say this is what's happening to me right now and deal with it. Other people have to learn to deal with it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think in the past we you know it was a taboo topic, because we just don't talk about women's issues and mixed company Do we like? That just wouldn't be acceptable. In the past times it just, and so I think women have always at least I feel like, yeah, I feel like for me it's like I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to hide that stuff, like there's something wrong or dirty or tainted about it, rather than it just this is the way it goes. And when we talk about menopause and about the forgetting, the words and the sweating and the shaking and the hot flashes and the discomfort, first thing that comes to mind is my adolescence. Every time I think about my adolescence I start sweating in my armpits a little bit because it was so uncomfortable and such an uncomfortable time. But it's really kind of. Menopause is like the second adolescence, because we have this huge flush of emotion or hormones that are shifting in a completely different direction, just like they were when we were adolescents, just kind of undoing themselves. But it's not always the smoothest time and I know that I can tend to be really hard on myself, especially if I'm like guesting on a podcast and suddenly I'm like what's that word?
Speaker 1:You know the word and like the word you know, with the thing and the thing, and that can be so frustrating at the time and I've learned how to laugh at myself about it instead of getting really hard on myself, and that's really made it a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:It was making me think of your book and how you wrote it in a very light kind of tone, to make it fun, you know, and make lightness out of some subjects that are really serious and really uncomfortable and really hard. And so I try to be really light with myself around these things and be like oh, here comes that hot flash again. I've even given myself like now you get to go lay down for 15 minutes until your heart comes back to a normal you know beat and you cool your butt down and and so you know, I try to make it seem like oh well, it's very exciting, I get to go lay down now instead of before. It was like what an interruption in my day. I can't focus. I am trying to get stuff done so for me. I am trying to get stuff done so for me.
Speaker 1:Perimenopause has been like this journey of listening to my body a little bit more and really honoring it and whatever it is that it needs at the moment, which was not something I would have done before, because we're all too busy to do this. Jamie was your dad in the house when your mom was going through menopause.
Speaker 3:Did she have a partner my stepdad absolutely and there was a lot of humor around her menopausal symptoms even way back then, and I do think that it I'm going to say it normalized it. It was just, I mean, my brother was just 20 months younger than me and was like I don't really want to hear about this, but it, it helped me and it also it showed a lot of communication between them and respect. And I know that like when, actually when my period got a little irregular, like right before it completely stopped, I used to do this thing. My husband would travel for work and I. We started this thing off like years ago, where I would stick a Tampax in his suitcase when he left on a business trip and he would find it He'd be off in some other state and there was always a random Tampax in his suitcase.
Speaker 3:And when my period stopped, he actually was back then intuitive enough and said back then intuitive enough and said why weren't there any TAMPACs in here? And I said there's no more, it's all there, it's all done. And so again, I do think that it was how it was, how I, how I, what I saw and what was modeled for me, beautiful, and I mean now, like when I went through, my daughters were like seven years younger, but I do remember like having a discussion with them when they were like 12 and 13 years old about what you know.
Speaker 3:Here they are. They're not even, they hadn't even had their first period yet, and I'm discussing menopause with them, and my older daughter actually, like, googled it to see what it meant, and so they're already, even as young adults, they're aware of what is to come.
Speaker 1:That's lovely, yeah, so challenging. I mean, some of us weren't even told about our periods. We sure as heck weren't going to hear about menopause. Jenny, I'm curious about you Do you have a partner at the time, right now? Yeah, yeah. So how do you feel about talking to your partner about potential, um, you know, menopausal issues and challenges?
Speaker 4:you know menopausal issues and challenges. Good, fine, I mean, luckily. It's kind of kind of humorous that my husband is one of three boys and his mother was still around. She's a hoot and she is, and always has been, very open about everything. So she, you know, he tells me stories about how she would just undress in front of them. You know, get home from work and just need to take off her bra after a long day of work, and I mean not completely naked in front of them, but you know, do that sort of like take off the bra yeah, take off the bra thing and comment on how she needed to take off her, like, let the girls loose and just, was very just open about her bodily discomfort, sort of things.
Speaker 4:Despite having boys in the house she had no girls to talk to, so, uh, so she had to say whatever she was going to say in front of her sons. She had no other options and so whatever I might say has sort of been said to him before. So if I had, you know, period cramps or you know, my daughter is actually incredibly open, isn't the right word? Vulgar might be more appropriate Descriptive, descriptive. She might talk about her flow and he's just like do I need to know all the details? So he's sort of primed it for whatever I might need to share. He's just ready for it.
Speaker 4:More from my daughter than probably his mother. So yeah, we're, we're, we're pretty open household.
Speaker 1:That is awesome and I think that there, I mean, I think it's great that she chose to talk about these things in front of um her voice, because that's what makes them better partners later in life.
Speaker 1:Should they be a heterosexual Right? Um, so, but it helps them understand even having women friends. You know, and I know, I know that there's a couple of teenagers one day, uh, that were over talking to my son, his friends, and when my son was a teenager and he said he had a tampon with him and I was like what are you doing? He's like my mom told me always carry one with me, just in case somebody needs one. And I was like what? I'm like, I don't know that I even carry an extra one during the weeks that I'm not, you know, bleeding, and so it was a funny.
Speaker 1:So they had a really open household too, and I think that we're going towards more open households, but we can also see that there's definitely a lot of households where, like my, my ex-husband had a friend who he went to go get something out of my car and he was like I can't get it, and I was like what do you mean? It's just in the back seat. He's like there's a box of tampons back there and I was like they're not going to bite you.
Speaker 3:They're not alive anymore.
Speaker 1:You're going to be fine. I promise nothing will happen. But like he couldn't even like look at the Tampax kind of name, like it just freaked him out. It was. It was crazy. And I'm thinking how can you get that freaked out by something that is completely freaking natural, like there's. We're not going out of our way to be gross or disgusting, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like this is all just natural body things, and one day you might have a daughter and you might need to go get, you know, a tampon or a pad for her. You're going to have to figure that out. Yeah, she's just going to be stuck. We're just gonna have to wait till your mother gets home. Yeah, it's insane to me that that's. It's very interesting how some people are really open about those things and other people are not. Yeah, so we lost Peach.
Speaker 1:I think the storm in Montana must've taken over, so what we'll do is I would like you to close out, but I would love, even though neither of you had struggled in menopause, so you still have a lot of wisdom, and so I'd like you to check out with one thing. Oh, actually, before we go there, I did want to ask you, jenny, what about breath work? What kind of breath work do you think that we could be doing to get through some of some of the hot flashes? Or because for me, it's like I know I need to stop when I'm having a hot flash, because I've tried to like move through them and it makes me feel like I'm having a heart attack, almost like my heart goes so fast. So I bet that there's something, some kind of breath work that we could be doing to make that a little bit easier?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, what I find interesting is, when we were speaking at the beginning about the emotional fluctuations that surround this time, this midlife time, that it's almost like the Venn diagram of this period of our lives, of of this period of our lives of is it menopause, perimenopause or is it midlife, and what's the difference? And that's kind of the part that I address with women, and it almost doesn't matter, because we're emotional and I shouldn't even say that because I feel like that's the label that society might put on us.
Speaker 1:Everybody's emotional. Men are allowed to go straight to anger and women are just too messy emotional, so it'd be okay if we went straight to like fighting.
Speaker 4:But I think everybody's emotional. We'll just agree that Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 1:But I think everybody's emotional.
Speaker 4:We'll just agree that Right. So we're having these confusing emotions, or this, the variety of emotions, and what I like about breathwork is that we have this tool that allows us to shift from one to another or choose a different emotion. So if we are experiencing sadness, we can sit in the sadness and then process it and choose not bypass it, not ignore it, but process it and then choose to move into calm or joy or gratitude, something that's more positive, something that would allow us to feel more enjoyment in the day. So, but but to address what you were just saying, if you're in an anxious state or going through a hot flash, maybe that wouldn't be the best time to do a specific high intensity pattern. I have yet to work with someone who hasn't found slow, deep breathing soothing. I mean, I have yet to to find that. So, even just for a short period of time maybe not for extended it's not going to solve the problem You're still going to have, whatever it is that you're reacting to.
Speaker 4:No, no, and I haven't found that to harm anyone. So, even if it's three to five, slow, deep inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth and having that exhale be extended, and making sure that your body is fully relaxed and that you've dropped the shoulders and unclenched your jaw and softened your brow and sat into, you know, relax the hips and the soften the belly, and really felt into whatever that desired intention is. So, if it's to you know, if you're, if you're really frustrated with your ex or your high MX bill or the traffic that you're sitting in, or being in menopause or you know whatever it is that might be going on for you, trying to release the irritation or the anger about that thing and then feeling what could I be more at peace with? What could I feel?
Speaker 1:Whatever your happy is. So with my clients, we work with intentions, which is exactly what I was successful. You know I would feel open and loving and you know whatever those things are. So how can we use those intentions? Is like this is the perfect combination is to do some breathing. Let go of whatever we're going through.
Speaker 4:Breathing, let go of whatever we're going through, yeah, and sometimes the intention is just to, to bring more energy into this moment, you know, to feel more energized, to feel more connected, to fit whatever the exactly, whatever the intention is, and then to just drop into the moment and breathe in, breathe out, breathe in and certainly I have more involved breath patterns. Sure, that's the easiest is just in and out, and sometimes the in and out is just with the nose, but the most common people do is in through the nose, out through the mouth and even, just, like I said, doing that for three or five cycles can usually allow someone to okay, okay, I have a grasp on the moment. If I I was ready to, you know, kick down my neighbor's door because they, you know like, drove over my rosebush, okay, I can, I can release a little of that rage and now I'm not about to commit a crime.
Speaker 1:Just to become more grounded and so that, because I think what happens, at least for me, is when I'm feeling feelings and I'm stuck in my brain, that's when, like Ooh, I'm creating stories, I'm getting more fueled up, I want to like, I do want to kick down that door. It sounds so good Like. I want to smash things against it. But if we can breathe, what happens for me is I get back into my body and when I'm in my body.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh right, that's just an anger sensation. I feel that anger and that's okay. That's okay. Then I'm feeling anger. Now how do I want to move forward? It gives us a moment to at least for me, it gives me a moment to pause and get a little bit more grounded. Okay, how is it that I actually want to show up Like, yes, I'm angry and it's okay to express that anger, but we can do it in a way in which I'm not going to have to apologize or go to jail for later.
Speaker 4:Right, we humans love our stories. I mean we take the story so far. I mean I love that Peach wrote the books. But we all love our stories. We all love to say OK, they drove over the rosebush, that must mean I'm a terrible human and they're a jerk and we're going to go to bed.
Speaker 1:They don't even care. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Like right right.
Speaker 4:They hate me and they think I'm a terrible person. Well, I am a terrible person because remember that time in third grade when I didn't do well on the spelling test and then my father, you know, took the belt out, and I mean, it's just. We go on and on and on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so breathing helps us get back into our body, and what I love about like that more in-depth breath work that you do is I think midlife, especially for midlife women, is like it's so needed because I believe that, like at midlife, when we're starting to let go of our kids, we have a little bit more time to ourselves, our careers or whatever it is that we do Um, it's a little bit more settled. Then we can really start looking at what are all these challenges that I have had in the last 20 years when I was too busy to deal with them, Cause they all come. Like anything that we haven't healed by midlife it'll show up right around 50 and you're going to have to deal with. At least for me, like it was like 45 to and I'm not 50 yet, but I'm still going through it but there's a lot of things that I was like. I'm looking back at them now and I'm like I told my therapist that was not a problem, like 15 years ago, and I'm like, oh, that's a problem, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and when the house gets a little quieter you're like Jew, like all of a sudden the noise in your head gets a little bit louder as the house gets quieter and and, like you said, you thought you dealt with that a few years ago or 10 years ago why is that still there?
Speaker 4:Oh, because you didn't. And I'm not knocking therapy, because I have a therapist too but talking about it, talking, talking, talking, talking. You could talk yourself in circles for years. We often have to process it out. And if it's not breathwork because breathwork isn't for everyone and I'm not suggesting that everyone has to breathe I mean, it's my modality of choice, but it doesn't have to be for everyone Maybe it's tapping, maybe it's hypnotherapy, maybe it's yoga. There's a lot of different modalities out there. I suggest people try everything. Try all the different things that are available. Find the thing that works for you, but you might need something other than talk. That do do. Talk therapy, yeah something therapists.
Speaker 1:I've learned that there's some therapists that are really great for hearing me and then there's other ones that are really great for calling me out on my shit which are two different things yeah, mine's, mine's awesome at he.
Speaker 4:He doesn't listen, he's like he yells at me and that's great, that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need that kind of kick in the butt too. I think anybody who's a life coach needs somebody who can fish out the bullshit, because we're really good at knowing what we're supposed to say and not necessarily you know being there completely so lovely, lovely conversation, okay. So, as we exit, we're going to um one piece of wisdom, and if you want people to know where to find you, share that. If you don't, don't, jamie, do you want to check out with one piece of wisdom?
Speaker 3:or I will check out with my wisdom has been to like, as menopause actually happens and I exit out of menopause, I found that that was a perfect time to really like ground, my like self, self-care, self-love and that being there. You know, I had several friends who went through menopause and they were like, oh my God, I feel so old and it was like you know what it's actually. I mean my take on it as it's just, it's another chapter, it's another rebirth and, in fact, a lot of ways, it's wonderful when it's done and over with and um, so much freedom, so much, um, so much time to learn about yourself and um. I actually, if somebody has any questions, can reach out to me through the woman within Western USA website.
Speaker 1:Awesome, or they can message me and I will pass that on. Well, um, I love that rebirthing of yourself because I think that there's like so many, we have so many new eras. Like, if Taylor Swift has taught us nothing else, then we can build a brand new us every few years. I think that that's really amazing, and midlife is really just one of those, and what I love about it is there is a lot more freedom, because when I had little, when I had kids, it was more challenging, right, it was like always how much am I giving to them? How much am I giving to them? And now I have lots and lots of space. So I love midlife. Anyway, I'm not going to say I love menopause. I can also not wait till that's over. And where's my damn switch Cause I'm complete. I'm complete with my cycle, experienced it. I'm good, jenny, how about you?
Speaker 4:I love that. Well, jamie took the word self-care out of my mouth, so I just I love to say that self-care is not a luxury, it is a priority, priority, and I believe breathwork is a type of self-care. So if anyone would like to play with breathwork, they can contact me. They can try it out. I'd be happy to gift breathwork. There is, I have, a a sample session on my website, but I can certainly do a one-on-one trial with anyone who would like to try it. Uh, my website is gentle coaching gentle with a j for jenny and all the different offers are available on the offers page.
Speaker 1:There's a bunch of freebies there and my instagram is gentle coaching and you can all those links will be in the show notes so that they can just clickety, click it, right. Yeah, very easily. So go get those freebies. They sound really good. I might go download it myself in a second, because we can all use a little bit more breath work, and really, I think you know, self-care was the thing that we talked about today.
Speaker 1:I think for me, perimenopause has really made me have to it's kind of forced my hand at being like okay, how am I taking care of myself? Because that whole period flu that I was getting and then having to relearn how to take care of my body with all this freedom, I should have plenty of space to do it, though, right? Thank you, women for being on here. Thanks to Peach, her information is below. She did drop off during a storm, but her information is below, so go check out her books and make light of what we have to go through, if we're going to go through it. Anyway, it might as well be a little funny, right? And thank you all for tuning in. We'll see you next week.
