Unlike our menstrual cycling years, I feel like menopause is more of a spiral. There’s no regular rhythm, but you can travel up – and down – the spiral.
Spiralling upwards makes me think of hope, optimism and fun. Opening up to life’s possibilities, and embracing the change.
In contrast, spiralling downwards has completely the opposite connotations. I think of heaviness, tiredness, and lacking drive and motivation.
It’s amazing that even as I just wrote those words, I could feel a small difference in outlook, and even in my body, between writing about spiralling upwards and spiralling downwards. Did you notice any difference as you read them? We all hear a lot about the power of future affirmations, which can be hard work, but it’s a really good idea to remember that we can generate positive feelings in the present, rather than hoping for good feelings in the future.
One way to do this is think about good times in our past – not to grieve over their loss, but to remember the feeling associated with them, and give our nervous system a little boost. Last year on my women's radio show, life coach Jules Baker took me through an exercise to help generate good feelings from a great memory, and associate them with pressing on part of the body. The idea is that anytime you need an uplift, you can re-experience the same good feelings by touching the same part of your body – what they call embodying your feelings.
When I was in my slump phase, it was great to know that there were really simple things like this I could do that required very little effort!
If you’d like to find out how to do that exercise, you can hear Jules explaining it here. (Scroll down to Episode 7, 8 September 2022.)
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