For this month’s column, Menopause Yoga Teacher Michelle Howard explains how menopause can be linked to the season of winter – a time to lay down the roots for a healthy and happy post menopause
When you think of winter what comes to mind? Close your eyes and evoke a feeling of winter: maybe it is that cosy, curled-up-on-the-sofa-with-a-Christmas-movie feeling, or walking through the silence of snow. If you have a moment, stay with your eyes closed for longer, be comfortable and relax those shoulders away from the ears a little. Take a breath in and, as you exhale, feel as if you have taken off a heavy backpack or undone a bra that’s a bit tight…feel a sense of letting go and come back to that feeling of winter.
Menopause can be linked to the season of winter. Menopause is the second phase of ‘The Menopause’ when menstruating ceases. The transition from perimenopause to menopause can take many years for those having a natural transition.
For those who have a surgical or medical menopause, winter/menopause can arrive suddenly with ferocity. We can draw on the wisdom of nature during this phase and take rest, finding some stillness away from the turbulence of autumn.
Winter is the time to reflect, reprioritise, conserve energy and take time for some self-care. It’s a time to begin to lay down the roots for what you would like to grow in post menopause.
Maybe those roots bring you deeper into the knowledge that you already have everything you need or maybe you have a goal or a plan that you would like to expedite.
It’s important to know that you can take as long as you need to plant those roots and to emerge into second spring/post menopause when you feel ready.
There is so much talk about entering the second spring with a reawakened passion for life. That reawakened passion may also be a light shining on everything you are and already have – which is already enough.
In Denmark the word ‘Hygge’ means creating a sense of wellbeing and contentment. We can draw on that in our own winter of menopause.
Snowflakes fall from clouds of cotton,
The concretes darkness is now forgotten,
Footprints to my destination,
The silence is my meditation,
Fresh snow shimmers in the night,
When the snow is gone
it’s in the sky
and all the whiteness in my sight
Will flash upon my inward eye.
The ice like thin crystal sheets
are placed atop the pond
the sparkling dust
that sweeps across
you’ll see the best at dawn.
Sometimes life plays hard and fast
and it leaves you with nowhere to go,
But nothing seems more calming
than the booming silence of snow.
Silence of the Snow poem by Arrianna Prentiss
Join Michelle Howard for the last menopause yoga event of the year: The Wintering – A menopause workshop with Michelle Howard at Yantra Studio on Saturday December 14, 2024, from 2-4pm, and find some of that winter stillness and rest. Visit yantrastudio.co.uk
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