I’m obsessed with menopause.
Hot flashes, cataclysmic hormonal shifts, wonky sleep patterns, periods run amok before periods gone altogether – I feel I’m on the verge of something spectacular.
My cycles became iffy for a time in my early 30s and I thought, “This is it! Here it comes! I am entering the Wise Woman phase of my life!” I bought books, questioned older friends and strangers. I anticipated great things.
15 years later I’m still waiting.
A woman had a hot flash in my clinic today. I asked her if I could feel her skin.
She said, “Sure, feel the inside of my elbows, feel my kneecaps. Sweat just pours from places that have no sweat glands as far as I know.”
Another woman in my clinic calls them power surges. She looks like she’s about to give birth to the sun when she’s surging. How could I not be enthralled?
This transition is seen by so many women as a negative thing. I keep wondering why it’s so different than what we feel as we progress in yoga. Some days are great, some awful. There are months when my hamstrings have tight flashes every single day. Days when I can’t breathe properly, days when I can’t focus to save my life. And still I love yoga.
I hope to love my body enough to experience menopause with wonder and admiration.
What are your thoughts? Did you love it? Not? Do you look forward to it? Not? Has yoga changed the way you experience menopause? Are you a man? In which case, are you still reading this? (In which case, speaking for all women, we love you.)
Thanks to our bodies for growth and (sometimes) wild transitions. Thanks to yoga for the same thing, and thanks to you, as always, for the conversation,
kristin