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.

Force versus joyful challenge

A little backstory

You know I started going to Orange Theory because I needed a serious kick in the ass when it came to my commitment/devotion to movement. I needed something outside my usual box. I needed an environment that helped me to do the thing, and Orange Theory covered all the bases.

If I signed up for a class and missed it, it cost me money, so I was always motivated to get out of bed and freaking go. When I got there, the music was fun and I didn’t need to think about anything because the coaches just tell you want to do. It was the perfect blend to keep me working harder than I had in a couple of years.

Let me emphasize this: I did need this to get me moving in the right direction.

And enter: Force

But one of my defaults is to push too hard. I have to watch for it, because it can happen so easily and so suddenly and I can justify it to the moon and back.

Eventually I was going to Orange Theory four times a week. On top of teaching a lot and doing other classes for my Yoga Teacher Training and playing tennis.

I was exhausted all of the time and “couldn’t figure out why.” ((hahahahaha))

I can be slow. ((even bigger laughter))

Eventually I figured it out. I cut my Orange Theory back to twice (and often once) a week. I almost quit altogether but I really do like the community there and have made some friends, and I figure in the winter, I’ll go more.

But that’s not the point of this post.

What’s wrong with force?

Isn’t force just big willpower? Lots of trying? It can be… I guess.

I think force comes into positive play when, for example, I’m deep in depression. If I can manage to force myself to do the things I do not want to do, well, it’s really a sign of hope, right? That kind of force shows that my willpower brain isn’t totally broken yet by the depression and that I am going to be able to drag my ass out of it (yet again).

But often force is just a sort of self inflicted violence.

When we work with force in our bodies, we’re definitely (most often) disconnected from our bodies. They’re a thing that we’re trying to change or contort. A lot of times, movement in this context is pure punishment.

This creates a toxic internal environment on the chemical level.

When we approach change from this kind of force, we’re stressing the nervous system, releasing cortisol, and keeping the body in a dysregulated state.

Change will not come in this state.

Your body is going to work against you, mistaking you for the enemy. Or not mistaking you… because when you’re treating yourself like this, you actually kinda are the enemy.

So what about joyful challenge?

The body knows the difference. Period. Your state of mind is different and so you’re more likely to create the joyful chemical stew in the brain that your body needs for healthy change.

If you approach your movement from a place of play and curiosity and experimentation, you are not working from punishment.

This is the state that regulates the nervous system. It’s from this state, that you’re clear on your motivations and they’re of the healthy variety.

When I’m working with force, my motivations are definitely aesthetic. That’s poison for me.

When I’m working from joy, my motivations are all about my mental health. That is my sweet spot. And most humans’, for that matter.

When we work from joy, compassion, and care, we’re not not challenging ourselves. It just is healthy challenge. It’s sustainable challenge.

The results

Since I’ve recalibrated my movement practices back to joyful and devoted, I already have noticed the kinds of changes I really need:

• I have more energy, of course. Because I’m not killing myself in the name of, again, aesthetics.

• I am getting stronger and more balanced by the day because I have more energy to work harder when I am working. I’m not just dragging myself through my practices and hoping for the end.

• I am happier. This is the big one. This is why I do the work I do — for myself and for others. It’s always been about mental health for me.

I’ve worked really hard to overcome disordered eating and body hatred from my youth but they can still pop up. It takes constant vigilance, and even then, it can be so easy to slip back into old habits.

We teach what we need. I learn that over and over and over.

Peony Somatic Dance: the basic parts of a class

I’ve put together all the shorts that Linda Soto, Jillian Hynes, and I made to demonstrate the first half of a Peony Somatic Dance class. They’re all in one 5 minute video now on my YouTube channel.

You will also see that I’m building new playlists of free material. Soon there will be an entire playlist of shorts demonstrating basic somatic movements. It would be awesome if you would subscribe. (Thank you!)

And here’s the new complete video:

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.

Three more somatic techniques for nervous system regulation

(You can review the first three somatic techniques of spinning, jumping, and shaking.)

As I wrote about before, somatic healing techniques are embedded in a Peony Somatic Dance class from the first breath to the last bit of movement. We aren’t always doing them in a strict “here is this somatic move” way.

So for this series, I’m breaking them down and talking about the effectiveness of each.

Slow Walking

Slow walking comes directly out of my Butoh studies and practices, and I think it is one of the most important fundamentals in all of the methods of Peony Somatic Dance. There are so many variables that we can play with here. It’s really never-ending.

Out of the all of the practices, the widest range of humans declare this to be their favorite — from the kids I taught in residential schools to elder dancers and everyone in between.

Pushing

If you’re feeling frustrated in particular, there’s nothing quite like pushing. Approach the wall in all its metaphorical glory and imagine you truly can push it down or push through it.

Wrapping

If you are feeling overstimulated or having some issues with dissociation, wrapping is so freaking helpful. Like I say here, it’s more than just a weighted blanket or a good firm hug. And one of the best things about it, of course, is that you’re totally in control of pressure and tightness.

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.)

Three basic somatic techniques for nervous system regulation

In a Peony Somatic Dance class, as many of you know from direct experience, the “somatic” aspects are deeply embedded. They’re in the very foundations of the practice. You could say that somatic principles and theories are the very DNA of the work.

You could break down a Peony class into dozens upon dozens of somatic specific techniques, all meant to increase our capacity to hold the reality of our life internally and express that through the body externally.

But there are definitely some basic somatic “exercises” (for lack of a better word) that I include in a variety of ways in almost every class.

And really? We should be doing all three of these every day for even just a minute or so.

Spinning

First up, spinning. Which children are constantly doing. For the pure joy of it. When was the last time you twirled?

If your first response to me is to say that it makes you too dizzy, then you really need it.

You can start by simply walking around ever-tightening circles. You can then progress to super slow spinning and over time increase your speed.

Jumping

This one is always a favorite. And it has so many benefits that the two slides listing the benefits don’t even cover it all.

Again, you don’t have to be able to jump high, and at first, you don’t even have to totally leave the floor.

Shaking

We often combine the shaking with the jumping and together they are exponentially more beneficial in terms of their efficacy to release pent up anger, frustration, fear, and sadness. Add in some yelling and you’e got a potent prescription for freedom

I’ll be covering more and more of these “basics,” and please, feel free to snag the images and share and use them.

(And be sure to follow my Instagram. It’s where I put this stuff first.)

No mirrors

When I was getting ready to start to teach here in Columbus, the studio owner I work for asked which of his studios I wanted to teach out of. He has three and two of the spaces would have worked. But one space has mirrors so it was an absolute no-brainer. The yoga space it was/is.

Not working with mirrors and often having our eyes closed helps with entering into a nonjudgmental playful space in our bodies. It also adds to the meditative aspects of Peony Somatic Dance... a sort of meditation for those of us who don't tolerate seated meditation well.

(Seated meditation is not great for depression, anxiety, and a variety of mental illnesses. If it makes you feel worse, don't do it. I’ve written about how it’s okay if you can’t meditate and why that might be the case here.)

For so many of us, the mind feels like a constant tornado of activity and words and images and ideas and stories. It’s constant and it can seem like there’s never any relief.

Sitting in meditation can exacerbate all of that. (Again, see what I already wrote about this.)

But when we work with somatic dance, we become so focused on the prompt and the body and the music that it is like being in the eye of the tornado.

Suddenly we have peace and calm and quiet.

The body is truly the gateway to this.

The body and the mind are one, and when we try to … tame the mind via the body, we are working against our very nature.

When we enter into fully embodied and moving joy, then we are using ourselves as we are built to be used.

Movement is life. And movement is the tool the mind will respond to most easily, most naturally, and most joyfully.

No exertion, frustration, or extreme effort needed. Just be in play.

Not having mirrors in our space removes the temptation to turn toward ideas of perfection and “prettiness” that get in the way of this bodymind-ness that we are seeking.

(Side note: sometimes I work with mirrors very intentionally to work on issues around invisibility. I consider this advanced work that the student enters into when they are ready.)

Here’s some movement to be inspired by.