OSusun S. Weed June, 2010

Menopause is Enlightenment

The energy aspects of menopause are of special interest to me. As a long-time student of yoga, I was struck by the many similarities between menopausal symptoms and the well-known esoteric goal of “awakening of the kundalini.” Though the ideas presented in this section may seem strange or difficult to comprehend, they contain powerful messages about menopause which lie at the heart of the Wise Woman approach.

“Kundalini [is] the root [of] all spiritual experiences …”¹ Kundalini is a special kind of energy known in many cultures, including Tibetan, Indian, Sumerian, Chinese, Irish, Aztec, and Greek. Kundalini is said to be hot, fast, powerful, and large. It exists within the earth, within all life, and within each person. Psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung called kundalini anima. Kundalini is usually represented as a serpent coiled at the base of the spine, but women’s mystery stories locate it in the uterus – or the area where the uterus was, if a hysterectomy has occurred. During both puberty and menopause, a woman’s kundalini is difficult to control and may cause a great number of symptoms.

East Indian yogis spend lifetimes learning to activate, or wake up, their kundalini. This is also called “achieving enlightenment.” When they succeed, a surge of super-heated energy goes up the spine, throughout the nerves, dilating blood vessels, and fueling itself with hormones. As kundalini continues to travel up the spine, it changes the functioning of the endocrine, cardiovascular, and nervous systems. Not just in yogis, but in any woman who allows herself to become aware of it. Menopause is a kind of enlightenment. Hot flashes are kundalini training sessions.

To understand the awakening of kundalini during menopause, it is necessary to look at its effects on us throughout our lives. Before puberty, kundalini is primarily outside the body. As puberty commences, a two-valved energy “gate” (imaginary opening) in the “root chakra” opens, and kundalini circulates up from the earth and into the root chakra. This allows kundalini to build up in the uterus and pelvic tissues until it is released, usually during menstruation. As much as ten days before bleeding commences, the stored kundalini can intensify emotions and sensations, expose powerful feelings, trigger creative outpourings, and generate a house-cleaning frenzy. If pregnancy occurs, kundalini is retained for the duration of the pregnancy and is used in the act of birth.

At menopause, one “valve” of the gate closes. The open valve allows kundalini to enter; the closed one prevents it from leaving. Now kundalini, unable to return to earth, builds up in the pelvic tissues leading some women to say that menopause is PMS that never stops. If this intense energy collects in the uterus for too many weeks, cramps and flooding may accompany the delayed menses. If it sits in the pelvis for many years, it can dry out the vagina, erode the integrity of the hips, contribute to bladder weakness, and depress sexual desire.

But if the kundalini is guided (by thought or by hot flashes, for instance) up the spine, then it confers enlightenment, not incontinence. But not all at once. As the kundalini rises, it must pass through six more energy gates/chakras. At each gate, symptoms relating to the chakra may occur. As may shamanic abilities that could cause the menopausal woman (or her family and friends) to think that she is going crazy. She has never been more sane. “After kundalini awakes it becomes impossible to continue believing that external reality is the sole reality.”² No wonder old women are honored and feared throughout the world!³ If the energy centers triggered by kundalini are resistant to being activated, symptoms may get worse instead of remising. Menstrual pain, bloating, indigestion, heart palpitations, thyroid malfunctions, headaches, and memory loss are all associated with resistance to the passage of kundalini.

When menopausal symptoms are understood as energy movement (or lack of it), women feel more at ease. Instead of feeling victimized by her body, the menopausal woman can use her symptoms as a way to pinpoint areas that need special nourishment. Quiet time alone in nature, or sitting in a comfortable chair listening to soothing music allows thoughts and feelings to arise and opens the way for the flow of kundalini. Specific exercises, such as those offered by energy-worker Barbara Brennan⁴, can also be used to help ease into the increased energy flow. When at last kundalini moves freely up the spine and out the crown, symptoms subside, and overall energy increases.

Handling powerful kundalini energies is easier when the nervous system is strong. Nourishing herbs such as oatstraw infusion, tincture of motherwort, cronewort (mugwort) vinegar, and the many varieties of seaweed, are excellent green allies. Hatha yoga (physical exercise), pranayama (breath exercise), and tai chi (energy exercise) help too.

Tags: menopause

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OSusun S. Weed November, 2009

Menopause Naturally

Wise Woman Ways: Pre-menopausal Years

The actual age at which menopausal Change begins varies considerably from woman to woman; the norm is 45, with a normal range of 35 to 55. During these pre-menopausal years, menstrual periods may become noticeably different (closer together, farther apart, scantier, more profuse). Night sweats or hot flashes come, if at all, only occasionally and are usually blamed on too many blankets or a rich meal.

• Nourish and tonify your entire hormonal system. Menopausal changes occur not only in the ovaries, but also in the adrenal, thyroid, pancreas, pineal, and pituitary glands. herbal allies are remarkably safe and effective glandular nourishers.

• Increase the number and amount of calcium-rich foods you consume. No single effort will repay you more richly. High levels of calcium in the diet protect you from osteoporosis, heart disease, and emotional swings. Green leafy vegetables (herbs and weeds) are exceptional sources of calcium.

• Maintain regular menses. Non-ovulatory menstrual cycles, common during the pre-menopausal years, lack a progesterone surge. Lack of progesterone contributes enormously to loss of bone mass, and vaginal atrophy. herbal allies can support progesterone production.

• Find some regular physical activity to fall in love with. Even gentle exercise, done regularly, helps maintain peak bone mass, strengthens the cardiovascular system, and insures deep sleep.

• Gain up to a pound a year for ten years. Thin women have more hot flashes and an altogether more difficult menopause than heavier women. Fat cells produce estrone, a kind of estrogen. (If you won’t let yourself gain ten pounds, at least stop trying to lose weight. Dieting decreases bone mass and weakens the heart.)

• Plan your Crone’s Time Away. The initial step of your initiation is isolation. As menopausal Change picks up speed at the end of the pre-menopausal years, many women find themselves desperate to be alone. Planning now can help make it a reality when you need it. Like an extended visit to the moonlodge (a sacred space where menstruating women can be away from daily life), Crone’s Time Away is time when the menopausal woman is freed from all social responsibility and encouraged to tend solely to herself. An extended vacation, sabbatical or Crone’s Year Away is ideal, but you can stay home and still take Crone’s Time Away.

Wise Woman Ways: Menopausal Climax Years

The menopausal climax years include the year or two before and a year or more after your very last menstruation. The average age of a woman in the midst of her Change is 51. But women come to their menopausal climax in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, as well. Some achieve menopause by surgical means, some by way of chemotherapy or radiation, and some just naturally arrive early. (Menopausal climax before the age of 40 is considered “premature.”)

During this 2-5 year climax period, the bones refuse to take in calcium and bone scans will show growing osteoporosis; flashes, flushes, and night sweats may be frequent; palpitations, emotional sensitivity, and sleeplessness are common. Depending on the individual woman and her circumstances, other physical and emotional changes may come with the Change, or she may experience next to nothing.

• Take time for solitude. Although many women feel enormous satisfaction in tending and nourishing others, as our reproductive years come to a close, it is appropriate to turn away from care-taking. Hot flashes, sleeplessness, moodiness, and the like are easier to recognize as allies of wholeness when you are free to follow your own needs without concern for others. Take one day to be totally by yourself, or a Crone’s Year Away, or anything in between.

• Experiment with eggs, meat, and butter in your diet. Some women find these foods, especially if from organic sources, decrease menopausal symptoms. Some practitioners insist they increase menopausal distress, especially when from commercial sources.

• Relax and enjoy your hot flashes. Ride them like waves, feel them in your spine, ski the edges of your flushes, honor the volcanic heat of your core. Like labor pains, hot flashes are the outward sign of metamorphosis. Like labor pains, they are worse when resisted. herbal allies help those with unrelenting flashes relax and enjoy, too.

• Spend time with a journal. Buy a blank book and write in it, draw in it, paste articles in it. Visions and dreams are particularly vivid and intense in the menopausal climax years; keep your journal handy so you can record them. Your emotional energies are readily available during the menopausal climax years; draw them in your book. Memories abound during these years; cherish them in your journal. Write your autobiography.

• Plan your Crone’s Crowning. As months pass and the moon waxes and wanes without drawing forth your menses, you pass through the second stage of initiation, death. Your identity as Mother dies. Let yourself break all the rules. Be someone totally different than you thought you could be.

Wise Woman Ways: Post-Menopausal Climax Years

The post-menopausal years symbolically begin on the 14^th new moon after your final menstruation. (And continue, of course, for the rest of your life.) Hot flashes, aching joints, heart disease, incontinence, vaginal atrophy, and broken hips may diminish the quality and quantity of these years. Use of Wise Woman ways in the post-menopausal years can halt and reverse osteoporosis (the bones accept calcium once again), keep estrogen- and progesterone-sensitive tissues in the vagina and bladder from weakening and drying out, and maintain a healthy, vigorous heart and circulatory system.

• Eat vegetables, fruits, and grains instead of meat. Eating meat and meat fat weakens your bones as well as your heart, promotes cancer, and may contribute to post-menopausal hot flashes.

• Move, dance, walk, stretch, go, inquire, keep active. The essence of vitality is change. Now that you’ve been through the Change, don’t stop, keep changing. Break the rules and the taboos. Become an expert on pelvic floor exercises. Take up belly dancing. Pump iron. Wear purple.

• Write a legal will. And revise it every ten years. Face your own death. Plan for your own death. This completes the second stage of your initiation.

• Nourish yourself with every bite. Aging increases our needs for many nutrients while reducing our digestive ability. Make every bite count toward optimum vitality and step up digestive efficiency by using dandelion root tincture before meals. Discover new ways to serve yourself calcium-rich foods at every meal. Use herbal vinegars regularly. Gradually replace bone-depleting white flour products (bread, pasta, pretzels) with fiber-rich whole grains and whole grain products. Drink vitamin- and mineral-rich herbal infusions instead of mineral-depleting coffee, tea, and soft drinks. Try yogurt and fresh fruit instead of ice cream for stronger bones and fewer vaginal infections.

• Plan your Crone’s Ceremony of Commitment to Her Community. Any time after your second Saturn return (age 57-61), you are ready for the third stage of your menopausal initiation: rebirth. You are She-Who-Holds-the-Wise-Blood-Inside. You are newly crowned, newly born, baby Crone. After isolation, after death, you rejoin the community. In your isolation, you revisioned yourself. By giving death to yourself as Mother, you claimed all of yourself. It is time to share that vision, to name yourself publicly, Crone, woman of wholeness.

“I am the Crone. I feel my way along paths following the energy and warmth that others have placed here. Trusting the dark, I am guided not by light, but by the flowing movements I sense. I am like the water that follows, without sight or foreknowledge, the ancient river’s channel.”

My Native American teachers tell me that we are in the midst of earth changes that will culminate around the year 2013. They say the earth changes will bring heat, and floods, and upheaval on an enormous scale. I am struck by the fact that 50 million women will have achieved menopause by 2013. Since we, as women, are one with the earth, is our massive, collective Change Her Change as well? Can we moderate her hot flashes? Give her ease from flooding? Soothe her emotional uproar? Emerge transformed together after our changes? How will we do it? With drugs, against the problems? With nature, blessed by all we are given? Will it matter to the Earth, Gaia, what choices I make in my menopause? What stories I tell myself? What I tell other women?

Legal Disclaimer: This content is not intended to replace conventional medical treatment. Any suggestions made and all herbs listed are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, condition or symptom. Personal directions and use should be provided by a clinical herbalist or other qualified healthcare practitioner with a specific formula for you. All material in this article is provided for general information purposes only and should not be considered medical advice or consultation. Contact a reputable healthcare practitioner if you are in need of medical care. Exercise self-empowerment by seeking a second opinion.

Tags: herbal remedies, menopause

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