Brains, Memories, Energy, and Menopause

My 40s were absolutely fab. And there are a bunch of reasons that many of us are not having great 50s, including the orange clown entering our lives in 2016 and then the pandemic and more of that circus recently. But apart from all of that, from what I’ve gathered from older women, the 50s can definitely be a rollercoaster ride.

This is your reminder that if you follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram you’ll be getting new, weekly, free experiments.

On average, it’s when full menopause starts. And I say starts because that one year mark is just the beginning. Like our teenage puberty, menopause is really years long. Things take time to settle.

I’ve been noticing energy and brain changes, but what’s really been getting to me is the pit-of-my-stomach, visceral (different than ever before) understanding that I will not, for one example, ever smell my nana’s house again. It really punches me in the gut when I think about it.

I’m not someone who has been living in de-lu-lu land about such things but my 50s have brought them into my consciousness at a new level.

It turns out there’s plenty of reasons for this.

Thank God for the wisdom of Katy Bowman, right? I was lucky enough to meet her and take a workshop with her about basic biomechanics years ago, and I feel like she will always be one of those scientists who brings us gold mined from her own life experience.

As she has been in perimenopause, then, she’s, of course, been figuring shit out.

Like the very likely reason behind our brain fog and how much it’s really about us — in this toxic productivity culture — not listening to and sinking into these new bodies and minds that want to teach us new things. Like paring down. Like cutting back. Like freaking resting now that we are where we are.

Listen to or read the whole podcast here. Really. It’s worth your time. I’m still thinking about it and hoping Katy will write a freaking book.

The reality of commitment and consistency and why most people give up

This photo is from about ten years ago (and my hair is dyed so no, I didn’t go silver that fast).

A lot has happened since I took that photo (I mean… I’m taking it from a mirror which tells you a lot has happened even just with phones… ha).

A lot has happened since I took that photo. That, my beautiful nutbags, is a huge understatement.

Even if we only look at the “pandemic years,” so much has happened.

Above it all, the thing that has stunned me the most and has had the biggest impact on this body and mind:

Deep depression like I thought I would never see again came back, and yet again, ate all of the things that are my healing.

Sure, I continued to teach movement but I wasn’t wholeheartedly engaged. I was mostly going through the motions, which you may or may not have noticed. My depression was obvious in general, but I think when I was teaching, you could almost believe I was okay.

But I wasn’t creating any new methods. I wasn’t reading about movement or watching videos or seeking new movement. Big red flag.

I wasn’t listening to my favorite music when I wasn’t teaching. Big red flag.

And biggest red flag ever: I was only dancing when I was teaching and that wasn’t a lot.

Re-enter commitment

I am not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point in the last year or so, that depression started to lift. I think it had a lot to do with returning to playing tennis.

Which makes sense. The first time I seriously kicked depression out the door was when I started to dance again at the age of 40.

It seems I need some sort of return — specifically (and totally unsurprisingly) — to something physical that I have loved in the past.

I got obsessed with tennis. OBSESSED.

And it broke something open inside of me: my body was relearning commitment.

And finally consistency

But tennis is only during the good weather. (Alas, it’s too expensive around here to belong to a club.)

So I waited for the season to start again and started pretty much from scratch at rebuilding my skills.

But my obsession with tennis eventually led to consistency.

I realized I needed to be doing something more tennis-like (as in INTENSE CARDIO and lots of fast twitch muscle stuff) during the bad weather months, which made me do something I did not want to do: join some sort of gym.

I did this thinking that I would quit once tennis season started because I was only doing it to stay ready for tennis, right?

But surprise! I found the thing that created the consistency on top of the commitment. I found the thing that I am willing to get up early for, that I am willing to push myself into discomfort for, that I will not stop now that it’s summer.

Finding Orange Theory was a literal life saver (if you understand how life threatening serious depression can be).

And not because of the Orange Theory workouts. Not at all.

Finding it was a lifesaver because it supports me to do the things that are my life saving medicines.

Not only am I already, I think, showing signs of being a better tennis player this summer than last (and we’ve only played a handful of times so far), but it’s impacting my dance. It’s given me my strong legs back and my balance and of course my stamina.

And it’s only going to get better.

But here’s what I really want to say to you:

Commitment and Consistency for the Win

It takes time.

I don’t think I’ll really start to see the depths of change I want to see for another few months, and I don’t think I’ll be back to the strength and agility I had in that photo for probably a year.

And this is where most humans fail: once they don’t see the change they want within a short period, they quit. And then they blame whatever they were doing but it’s really the lack of commitment and consistency.

This is a long game, folks. As in, for the rest of your life.

Settle into it. Give into it. It’s the only way.

Journaling, Peony Bodyparts, and When We Feel Too Much

These are two stories that are connected in ways that I could not have imagined as they were both happening, which was in about a two week time span.

Journaling

When I met Craig, I was in the middle of the biggest clearing of my life. My house was utterly empty except for things I used day to day and found enjoyment in. There was so much space and it was a beautiful thing.

But in the garage there were a few boxes that were like energy black holes. They contained about 45 full journals from over 20 years of writing. I knew they had to go. They were repetitive and I found them, frankly, embarrassing as I was moving past the need to so closely examine, over and over, the same wounds. (That work was important as I was doing it.)

I threw them out. It was too much to burn in a small city with rules about such things. When they were gone, I could feel another clear space in my life and it was good.

Fast forward and I’ve been trying to get back into journaling. I’m a writer. It’s good to brain dump.

But over the last couple of years I just can’t. No matter how I tried to approach it, it wasn’t working.

Every time I sat down to journal, thinking about how full my brain felt and how much I had to say — how much I wanted to say — I would put pen on to paper and within a few sentences feel this overwhelming bodily exhaustion. I was lucky if I filled a page.

Knowing how I do that it’s important to be writing by hand to get the full somatic/trauma-informed expressive arts therapy benefits of journaling, I kept refusing to try it a different way. (I am so freaking stubborn.)

But I finally gave in. I was desperate to start journaling once I got back into talk therapy. It is so important to have a space to track things.

So I got an app (Day One). I can use it on any of my computers or devices and it syncs across them.

And lo and behold, I have been writing like mad. I’m on day 31 of no days missed and some days I write twice.

Peony Bodyparts

My students in Columbus are, of course, very new to me and my methods, and it has been a joy to go on this journey with them. It’s like learning and understanding and really seeing my processes with new eyes.

One of my students, who is a therapist herself so she’s trauma informed, said to me one day out of the blue: Bodyparts are my favorite.

Now I love Bodyparts. I love it for the concrete way it gets you into your body and ready for more. I’ve always seen it as a logical and needed sort of “warm up.”

I don’t think anyone has ever told me it’s their favorite part of class. There’s so much to a Peony Somatic Dance class that is … well, freaking fancier or even plain old weirder.

The somatics of it all

I was talking to Deb Globus about the journaling issue because she’s the Queen of Journaling, and she said something that was such a huge wake up call.

I will paraphrase but she said, “So writing by hand was putting you into nervous system overload… thus the exhaustion, and by typing, you got rid of that aspect but you can still benefit from getting all the words out.”

MY. GOD. THAT.

THEN…

I asked my student why she loved Bodyparts so much and again paraphrasing:

“Because I can explore my physical body but not get too deeply into the emotional stuff right off the bat…”

Again… Bodyparts (like typing a journal) removes some of the somatic intensity of the work, and that allows us to get some of the best parts of these tools without dysregulating our nervous systems.

What this might mean for you

Sometimes we really can go at things too directly and too hard.

It’s truly a lot of what the Peony methods are about… I mean them to be gentle and I mean them to be modified in ways that make them appropriately gentle to each person’s needs.

But still… we think, THIS IS THE HEALING WORK! GET AT IT!

Then our bodies send us messages that it’s too much, which we often read as STOP.

But instead of stopping, we really need to just reevaluate and see how we can take things down a couple of notches.

The work is good and it deserves our best effort. But we also deserve self-compassion and patience.

(If you’re having an issue like this and need some help creating the “notches down” approach, don’t hesitate to write to me.)

Resting in Dreamland: an extended winter solstice worksho

Written in the Body: Movement, Ritual, and Writing to celebrate seasonal transitions.

Winter Solstice 2023: Resting in Dreamland

ONLINE from December 3rd through January 5th with a live event on zoom on December 10th.

DEADLINE for Registration: Wednesday, December 6th

Co-Facilitated by me and Deborah Globus (more about her below!)

PLEASE NOTE: Our number one priority as guides is accessibility. All movement prompts, as with all of my teaching, will have space in them for every single body, no matter what’s going on with you in the moment. All of Deb’s prompts, and the entirety of the workshop, will place emphasis on honoring energy levels, so there will be options for low, medium, and high energy explorations.

Online, streamed, and filmed live event: Sunday, December 10th, 5:30 to 7:30 PM, Eastern U.S. Time. (The video will be made available to the group the day after and will remain available until after the new year.)

COST (and please email me if you need a different price. No questions asked, as always): $77

Written in the Body will be a series of workshops that focus on each of the solstices and equinoxes over the next year. It seems right that we start in the winter, this time of hibernation and rest and pause.

The live event part of each of these workshops will not actually take place on the solstice or equinox. It will always take place at least a week or more before so that you can then prepare, based on all you’ve learned and practiced, your own ritual on the actual day and at the actual time.

Perhaps, for example, you’ll take what you’ve learned and practiced and run a group ritual in your area. Or perhaps you’ll take what you’ve learned and practiced and enjoy a solo ritual.

The point is that you’ll get to the solstice or equinox ready in whatever way feels right for you.

Winter Solstice: Resting in Dreamland Themes

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.”

— Margaret Atwood

It’s rather ironic that this time of year has become so typically frenetic. It’s the opposite of what’s happening with nature, right? And it’s the opposite of what’s meant for us, as we are nature.

We’re meant to come inside from the year’s hard labor and to light a fire and rest.

Rest being reinvigorating and not just the “catching up on sleep because we’re so freaking exhausted” that it’s become.

Rest is quiet time with family and friends. Sharing stories. Making good and warm and filling food. Dreaming…

And so we will be dreaming together. And we do not mean setting goals. That’s not dreaming. That’s the step after dreaming. (As Deb often has to remind me… if you know us, you understand that!)

We will be focusing on a couple of core themes:

Gathering around the fire in community is number one. Coming together to witness one another in our dreaming and to hold space for those dreams as they arise or as they pass away.

Exploring the wisdom in our bones. Another way to think about this is to ask: What is your body trying to communicate to you?

AND

Discovering what supports us in softness. This is something the larger world does not encourage, right? Hustle culture, scarcity mentality, the idea of winning are all about being less vulnerable, less open, and, well, harder. But we know that the opposite is what’s truly valuable. What do you need to really nestle in to your softness? To allow the soft that precedes growth?

The Basic Calendar

On Sunday, December 3rd, we’ll be opening a private Facebook group to which you’ll be invited. Everything pertaining to the workshop will be loaded there, including the eventual video from the live event.

It’s in this space that you can share experiences, ask questions, make connections with other human beings doing this sort of work or learning about it for the first time.

Again, community is a priority.

On Sunday, December 10th, from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, we’ll be running the live event of the workshop. This will be recorded so if something happens and you can’t make it, you’ll be able to participate and learn after the fact.

Deb and I will be adding material to the Facebook group in approximately this pattern:

Mondays: I’ll load a breath/movement/rest video so that we start the week getting into these bodies.

Wednesdays: Deb will share a writing prompt to explore our themes more deeply.

Fridays: Deb will share a wide variety of information relative to working with the energy of the four quarters. Everything from information about what crystals might work best to correspondences and pertinent lore and myth.

Live Workshop: Sunday, December 10th

This will take place on Zoom from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM Eastern time, and again, it will be recorded for you to use and refer back to as much as you want and need.

During the workshop, Deb and I will bounce back and forth.

I’ll be providing movement, breath, and body based explorations that allow you to feel your way into what you need from this time of year.

Deb will be providing short writing prompts and also clearly demonstrating the four parts of ritual.

About Deb Globus

Hi! My name is Deborah Globus and I’ve been journaling for 35 years, and working with personal ritual for almost as long, helping women create beautiful rituals and practices to navigate, articulate, and share the milestones and transitions in their lives.

I draw from many traditions - the Christianity I was raised in, the earth-based practices I believe in, the Judaism I take part in, and the many other faiths and belief sets in which I find inspiration, and I use all that to support others who walk their own spiritual paths.

Oh, and I wrote a book! Which you can find right here.

REGISTER HERE