S2 Episode 6: Understanding Your Body's Signals Through Perimenopause with Melissa Ayres

Ever felt overwhelmed dealing with the discomforts of perimenopause or menopause? Is it possible that your body is communicating with you through these symptoms? How can natural remedies and the balance of masculine and feminine energies aid in this journey? Melissa Ayres, an expert menopause coach, homeopath, and theta healing practitioner holding over 15 years of experience, graces our podcast today to explore these engrossing topics.

Melissa Ayres guides us through her personal journey, opening up about how she managed her perimenopausal symptoms that began when she was 47. She outlines her experience using natural remedies and delves into the connection between physical and emotional discomforts. Melissa, with her wealth of knowledge in homeopathy and theta healing, helps us understand how our bodies communicate and heal through symptoms. She further explains how theta healing can be harnessed to manage hormonal imbalances, release deeply held emotional issues, and relieve the effects of childhood traumas.

The discussion transitions to the fascinating world of balancing masculine and feminine energies and the importance of acknowledging our feminine wisdom. Melissa wraps up by offering her insights on managing perimenopause and menopause naturally, shedding light on the crucial practice of hormone tracking. She offers her free masterclass to those interested in embracing this essential transition in life. Join us as we unravel a new perspective on navigating perimenopause and menopause.

ABOUT Melissa:
Melissa is a Menopause Coach, Homeopath and Theta Healing Practitioner with over 15 years of experience of working in natural health care. After healing her own perimenopausal symptoms naturally, Melissa developed the 'Menopause Revolution Programme' where she supports women by combining all of her knowledge and wisdom in managing hormonal symptoms naturally, with powerful intuitive healing to provide the emotional support required at this important life stage.

FREE GIFT from Melissa:
Melissa's FREE 30 minute Masterclass, 'Managing Perimenopause and Menopause Naturally'. Tune in now to learn more!

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Transcript

Christina Smith: 1:01

Welcome shifters. Today we are going to talk about perimenopause and menopause and all the things that make us really uncomfortable at least me, and I know that when I'm physically uncomfortable, I can get mentally and emotionally uncomfortable too, and so today we have Melissa Ayres, who's going to help us really start looking at all of these discomforts and how we can manage them better. Melissa is a menopause coach, a homeopath and a theta healing practitioner. She has over 15 years of experience, so this is what she focuses on, and I think it's really important that we have people who have lots of experience in this, and Melissa is going to be able to help us. So, melissa, thank you so much for being on the Inviting Shif podcast. I appreciate you being there.

Melissa Ayres: 1:50

Hi, christina, thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited to talk to you and hello to everybody that's listening. So, yeah, thank you for that lovely introduction. I should probably start with my story actually. So, as you said, I've been working in natural health care for over 15 years now. This is my absolute passion. I absolutely love what I'm doing. I feel I'm on my path and fulfilling my purpose, which is so lovely.

Melissa Ayres: 2:18

So, with my background, I've always taken really good care of my health I have to walk the talk, being a homeopath and a theta healing practitioner as well. So I've always had regular cycle. As I said, I've always exercised well, I've always eaten well, make sure I'm well hydrated, I try and sleep as well as I can. And when I got to the age of 47, it was really interesting. I had kind of perimenopausal symptoms hit me Like a ton of bricks, like something I'd never experienced before Having had a regular cycle for many years, never suffered with painful periods, heavy periods, never really had PMT either and all of a sudden I started to get like a whole host of symptoms, so hot flushes and night sweats, which were quite incredible.

Melissa Ayres: 3:11

I've always been a chilly person and suddenly it's like this. I know you've experienced this as well, christina. It's like this heat that comes up inside of you like nothing else. It's like quite incredible. It's like your own interior boiler going off.

Melissa Ayres: 3:29

I suffered with migraines Again, something I could maybe count on one hand. I might have had in my life in times of real stress, but suddenly they were quite frequent and would enable me not even to be able to finish day. You know simple daily tasks. They would have me bedridden, bladder irritability, which is really interesting, because this is the reason I became a homeopath, because I have an amazing cure for chronic UTIs Gosh 20, 30 years ago now from homeopathy, which is what inspired me to become a homeopath. So that all started again, which was really interesting. And just this real feeling of what's going on in my body. I'm too young for this. Average age of menopause is 51 here in the UK, so 47 to start having all of these symptoms was quite unsettling, and all of them out of the blue in a one go as well. So I turned to my toolkit, my natural toolkit. So I use homeopathy supplements. I'm quite well versed in supplements as well nutrition, and I also work with some herbs homeopathically prepared as well. So I manage the physical things Within a couple of weeks, I have to say, physical things are quite settled. But there was still this oh my goodness, what's going on? And I'm not ready for this and this sort of anxiety about it for me. So when I really tuned in with that, it was really interesting.

Melissa Ayres: 4:55

So at the time that this all started, I was single. So I've been divorced for around I think it's coming up for around seven years now and I spent four and a half five years on my own just me and my children. And this new man had come into my life and you know this was a big change for me and this relationship was starting to develop into more serious one and I kind of connected the dots. It was about four months after we began dating each other that all these symptoms suddenly appeared and when I really tuned in with it, it was all about all these fears about a new relationship that were coming up for me. You know, am I ready to let someone else into my life? You know, I don't want my heart broken again. What are my children going to think? How is this going to work? You know, I've been this single, independent woman, good on my own for so long. Am I really wanting this? Once I dealt with all of those kind of fears and anxieties. Really interesting that all of my hormones settled as well and all of the symptoms just gradually went away. So I was like, wow, this is really really interesting.

Melissa Ayres: 6:09

And in homeopathy I've mainly worked with women. Over my years over 12 and a half years now as a professional homeopath I've mainly worked with women and lots of hormonal issues. So I thought I have to bring this to the ladies I'm working with who are in perimenopause or menopause. So as well as supporting them with homeopathy which is really highly individualized medicine we can talk about that a little bit more later if you would like I started to support them on the emotional level with what they were going through, using the theta healing, the intuitive energy healing, and the results were just amazing, absolutely incredible. So you know I've had women move from quite crippling anxiety. So suddenly you found confidence from real relationship difficulties which can come up at menopause as well, you know, especially with intimacy issues, with our bodies changing to, you know, reigniting their love lives and their passion with their husband, which is just so wonderful.

Melissa Ayres: 7:07

And when we cured these emotional stuff, the physical things also settled, and with the assistance of the homeopathy as well, but a lot, a lot more quickly, because we're kind of removing like the underlying reasons as to why hormones have become imbalanced. And that's like my superpower, if you like. I'm a clair sentient so I can tune in intuitively with someone's body and read them energetically and really get to the root causes of why the body is presenting these hormonal symptoms. So for me I like to describe it as like a hormonal hissy fit my body was having. It was kind of showing me how unsettled I was really feeling. You know, on the inside, despite everything being, you know on the surface. Okay, if that makes sense.

Melissa Ayres: 7:54

So what I've also realized with myself and the women I've worked with is that when we get to perimenopause and menopause, a lot of our unhealed emotional trauma whether that's present stuff as what was happening with me, or past stuff or childhood or things, can also come up on their genetic, ancestral level. So you know how our mothers went through manopause. All of these things will come up to be healed because we're going into a new phase of life as women. I believe we have three life stages of women, so we have the, the virgin, the maiden stage. We have the mother stage, whether we've actually had children or not. That mother stage is a time when we would have been creating things in our life if even if it wasn't actually having children.

Melissa Ayres: 8:41

And then we go into the wise woman phase, which is our most powerful phase of womanhood. So this is a time when we are not wanting to carry or any accumulated emotional baggage into that next phase. So that's what I believe a lot of the physical symptoms and comfortable physical symptoms around perimenopause and menopause actually are. It's like messages from the body is what needs to be healed, so that we're not carrying this into this next life phase, which is when we're almost powerful as women. The wise woman is highly intuitive. It's her time you know she's raised her children and now it's you know women do amazing things new careers, you life path past, new partners in my case, all of these things. So it's wanting to kind of shed that old emotional load and I found as well, the more emotional baggage we have, it's like the worst hormonal symptoms will be and I love yeah, and I love so much that you just said so.

Christina Smith: 9:48

This month, as this podcast is published, I'm actually turning 47 and I've had menopausal symptoms for like the last year. They really started creeping in serious time. Like I have more anxiety than I ever had before. So all of this is making sense and it really makes sense to me because about 15 years ago I was getting sick often and I couldn't figure out why, right, and what I realized was that that was my body telling me that there was stuff that needed to be figured out. Like I feel like I was holding so much emotional and trauma baggage that I just kept stuffing down going no, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. And my body was telling me all kinds of crazy things, like first I started with migraines in my 20s and I took a pill and they went away, so I ignored them, right, and then my joints got really inflamed and I like I, so I could barely walk and I would take a pill and the pain, the symptoms, would go away, and then I would ignore it. And then in my 30s I got really, really sick, where I was like going to the ER few times a year, not being able to get out of bed for a month or two and they couldn't find anything. So they just kept giving me pills, different pills, to figure out what it was, and what I realized was that I actually needed to go to therapy. And after two years of therapy a lot of those problems changed. Now did I also change my diet? I did. I actually went to health coaching school because I thought it must be my food, right, that's where we all go, it's like it must be my food. But what I really found out was that it was all of the stress, all of that other stuff, the emotional baggage, the amount of pressure I was putting on myself, always being in that.

Christina Smith: 11:49

So I talk about archetypes and for women, they put the mother stage at the same stage as where men would have their warrior stage. Right, because it's the same thing. That's our job during the middle of our life, right, that's the thing that we're doing and again, like you said, it doesn't mean that we're birthing children. It could be that we're birthing ideas, we're birthing businesses, we're being creative, whatever that thing is that we're doing in our lives, right? And I put so much pressure on that part of me that it was like I was always in that warrior stage where I was just always like let's go, let's go, let's go, and I realized that the way I was living my life was having a huge impact on my health and by me taking all those pills, I was just kind of ignoring the symptoms. Basically, I was just putting that bandage on the symptom and saying, no, that's OK.

Christina Smith: 12:48

So we think that our bodies really are informing and I think what happens for a lot of women at least my clients in midlife is that they never had the problems that I had, where they had to start listening to their body earlier in their life, and now it's all coming to fruition at once because, like you said, there's so much change going on in our bodies and, with all this extra gunk, I guess, and this previous stuff that we've been holding on to, there are symptoms and instead of just numbing the symptoms, one of the things that we can do is start actually listening to them and going, wow, what is it that my body needs? How do I need to move forward and start giving it a little bit of attention rather than? I know so many women and myself at times included, where I just get really frustrated and I want to dislike my body because it's like my body is I hear this all the time that my body is betraying me. And it's like it's not betraying you, it's doing this normal cycle that it's supposed to do. Is it completely physically uncomfortable At times?

Christina Smith: 13:59

Yes, I had this huge hot flash last week when I was making macaroni and cheese and my warrior inside was going you just finish it, it's going to take you five more minutes, and this hot flash was like you need to go sit down and I didn't really want to take advice and so I made quite a mess out of the kitchen. I felt like throwing the pot across the kitchen. I didn't do that, but I know that when I get physically uncomfortable and I can't stay focused, I can get completely emotionally and mentally uncomfortable as well. And when I go there, that's what shifts that mood that I'm having and almost makes me feel like an out of control teenager. I mean, that's really, and they say, like menopause is like the second adolescence and that's what it makes me feel like right. But yes, if you've never experienced a hot flash before, whoo, holy cow, it's like you're burning from the inside out.

Melissa Ayres: 15:05

Yeah, oh, that's so interesting and how amazing that your intuition and your body led you to that. And so many interesting things you said there that I want to kind of pick up on. But absolutely, symptoms are our body's way to heal itself. That's one of the fundamental principles of homeopathy. The body would never do anything to its detriment. And suppressing symptoms, like you say, as you said, with the painkillers and the pill for your stomach and the pill for your migraines, it's really just dealing with it on a very superficial level. It's not getting to the deep, deep root. So I like to use the analogy that your car and your dashboard. You have a warning light coming up, just taking a pill to suppress that symptom, which is helpful in the moment. Sometimes we do need that, that's OK, but it's almost like smashing out that warning light, whereas what we do with homeopathy and veta is we kind of lift up the bonnet and we have a look at really what's going on underneath that's causing those symptoms. And the body is so clever, it's so clever. We're born with highly, highly sophisticated immune systems. Our bodies are always performing thousands of functions, millions of functions every day, just to keep us alive. We're walking miracles and in homeopathy we're very much trained to look at why someone's body is perhaps stuck in a symptom or keep presenting a symptom. Because it's just trying to solve something. It's trying to bring the body back into balance homeostasis. So fever, for example, is wonderful because it's the body burning off virus and bacteria. So by raising our body's temperatures, our white blood cells, our natural killer cells, can work more effectively against virus and bacteria who can't survive at that high temperature. Any kind of discharge in the body is the body clearing something out In theta healing. We look at where a symptom is located and the body can be really interesting as well. So anything left-sided with the body is often to do with the future, right-sided can be to do with the past. Symptoms in the bladder are often old resentment and anger what's pissing you off, for want of a better expression. Symptoms in the lungs or the chest are to do with grief. So very much if we and this is what we're great at as women and certainly coming into this wise woman we get even better at is tuning into that intuition and what we really need. It's very easy, like you talked about.

Melissa Ayres: 17:40

One of the other things you said, christina, was about not listening to your body taking the pill, trying to carry on In the West Western lifestyles. We've become very disconnected from that. We are not separate from nature. We're part of it and as women, we're very much part of nature's cycles. Our menstrual cycle is 28 days, like the moon cycle, and we can actually follow the moon cycle with our periods as well, because we menstruate at the new moon and we ovulate at the filming. So when we've become really disconnected from that, it's like our bodies will shout together our attention and just coming back into that, as you said, once you slow down and you listen and you sit down rather than trying to keep on with cooking the macaroni cheese, it's like OK, the body, you know things will actually calm down because we've listened and then we can tune in and see what it is that's really going on and that really needs our attention and support.

Christina Smith: 18:39

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that. And for me one of the hardest things is to give myself permission just to slow down, like it's OK, like this rest of the stuff can get done later, which I think is really one of those huge lessons for us as we're moving into this wise woman stage that you were talking about, because we have this idea that everything needs to be done now and it really doesn't Like. I think that wise woman stage kind of feels more into our intuition and like is this right? For me, right now I can change my mind, which I think is like a big thing people don't want to do.

Christina Smith: 19:23

But there's this other piece like you were saying, in our culture the way that we treat our bodies is more like treating them like their machines. Oh, if there is a problem, put a little oil on it, you know, as if we can just go get new parts or something somewhere, and instead of really sitting down and going, wow, what is my gut trying to tell me if I'm in pain right now? What sure it could be that I ate something. But it could be telling me something deeper.

Christina Smith: 19:54

And I think that when we talk about the wise women, we call her the crone in archetypes is like she's the intuitive one. But the reason she's so intuitive is because she's taken time to really honor her body rather than treat it like it's like our car, where okay, well, what needs to be fixed? And just fix it and let's go, you know, and because that's just not how we are. But we do treat our bodies as if it's an object and not part of nature like you're talking about. So I want to hear more about theta healing, because I don't think enough people know about that and what that actually does, and so I know that you can tell us all about it. So tell us a little bit more about that and when it might be the right time for some data healing.

Melissa Ayres: 20:44

Sure. Yes, I just want to pick up on something as well. You just said, christina, that kind of taking the pill and carrying on and plowing on through. That's the very masculine way to do things, and you know, it's Western society. Again. It's, you know, push, push, push, strive, strive, strive for the results, and that masculine model. What that does is that imbalances are masculine and feminine energies which need to be in balance. And what's really interesting as well I'm going to go on to talk about theta but if we're too much in our masculine, that can mean that estrogen levels can be low. Sometimes, if we're too much in our feminine, that can mean estrogen levels can be too high. So it's about having that balance you know of. Yes, we do need to take action and be busy and do things, but at the same time is having that time to slow down, as you say, to listen, to be receptive and intuitive. It's not about one or the other, it's about finding that balance. So it's a great point.

Christina Smith: 23:14

It's a great point. Yes, that's a great point.

Melissa Ayres: 23:17

And then with beta healing. Again, my story with beta healing, how I came to it, is a little bit like homeopathy. So with homeopathy I struggled with these terrible chronic UTIs for years and years, since a child. And I met someone when I started working and I haven't always worked in health care, I worked in television many years ago and when I started working I made new friends and someone said to me why haven't you seen a homeopath? Well, what's that? Within three months complete, your never again actually till those perimenopause symptoms, have I suffered with any kind of bladder irritability at all. So, beta how I came to that was I. My marriage fell apart about just over seven years ago now and I turned to someone for a reading because I needed some advice and support from someone who just didn't know me and could see the situation objectively and connect with their guides and give me the best course of action to take. And she said to me you could do with some beta healing. And I thought again a bit like, have you ever? Well, what's that? I've never heard of it. And I found this wonderful lady and I had a tea-ling session with her. And a bit like homeopathy, it just absolutely blew me away and I thought I have to go and train in this. It absolutely got me through what was a really, really difficult time in my life. I thought marriage was for life and sadly it fell apart and I had two children and I had to make things work on my own as well as go through Divorce is never the easiest of life situations to deal with. But I have to say, hand on heart, that theta really got me through that.

Melissa Ayres: 25:00

Theta is a brainwave that we go into when we're in a very relaxed state. So that's, we go into the theta brainwave when we're in sleep and when we're over a very deep state of meditation. And when we're in that energy we can literally change feelings, we can heal trauma very, very quickly and easily. So in the face of healing so in a session with a client, what I would do is I can scan their body energetically, I go into the theta brainwave and I naturally who I'm working with comes into that lovely, relaxed, it's like the energy of all, that is the energy of pure love. They come into that brainwave as well with me and I'm shown blocks to emotional health which, as we've talked about, have a huge impact on physical health as well and in theta healing, this can be on four different levels. So the core level, which we've talked a little bit about, and if I'm not sure, if there's anything in this lifetime, so you know with myself, that was divorce. That could be childhood traumas that come up, it could be birth trauma, it could be something from school time, something from friendships all sorts of things can come up and we hold this emotional trauma within the cells of our body and if they're not properly addressed and dealt with, that's when they will kind of cry out for attention. We also have symptoms on the genetic, ancestral level. So you might have something going on which actually are not even sort of consciously aware of.

Melissa Ayres: 26:34

Theta is very much about working with the subconscious. So in theta we believe that our beliefs, our subconscious beliefs, create our reality. So, for example, if someone believes that they're going to have a bad menopause, we are so powerful on our subconscious that we could go on to create that in the body and ancestrally, genetically, we might not even be aware of this. So when I've worked with women, I've gone up to eight generations back that we can be carrying things from our ancestors. If you think about it as women, we were once an egg in our grandmother's womb because we were once in our mother's womb. So we carry not any physical traits from our relatives and ancestors, we can carry energetic threads of belief systems as well. So if our ancestors, as women, went through very difficult times maybe they didn't even live to a very good age because we didn't have the level of health care and hygiene and nutrition that we have these days Then we're carrying all of that kind of subconscious belief system that can have an impact on us now and I'm able to tune in with that and see where that's coming in. The other two levels we deal with with theta is past life and soul level as well. These tend not to come up so much at peremenopause and menopause, but then again I have worked with women whereas these things have come up.

Melissa Ayres: 28:00

So what we do is I identify these limiting beliefs, things that are holding us back. We get right to the root of what it is. It's a little bit like a house of cards. If we pull the root belief, then everything goes and we get the learnings, because every subconscious belief is serving us in some way. So I'll give you another example. If someone believes that they will always be ill, I would have a look at how is that serving them.

Melissa Ayres: 28:26

And that might sound strange but, for example, I worked with someone who keeps getting symptoms all the time colds and viruses and all kinds of things and when we dug into that, when she was ill, when she was a little girl, that was the time she got most attention from her mother. Her mother was really busy, a career woman, and didn't have a huge amount of time to spend with her children. But when she was unwell, all of a sudden her mother took the time off work and spent lots and lots of time with her. So she's running that subconscious program of when I'm unwell, I get attention and I get love. So by bringing in the learnings, what I mean is we teach her and in the theta brain, maybe we can just change things instantly that she can have love and attention without her body having to have symptoms, and we just heal it. And it's instant and it's permanent and it's it changes our energy. When we change our energy as women, our vibration, it's wonderful because we that healing automatically happens for our children and those around us as well. So what can happen when I'm working with women is relationships and things will change and improve, because people in our lives are a little bit like mirrors, especially people that are very, very close to us. They're showing us within ourselves what needs to be healed, and if we've healed that within ourselves, then that removes the lesson. So, in a long-winded way, I hope that explains what theta is.

Melissa Ayres: 29:51

I think you can use theta at any time of life. It's an incredibly powerful modality that gets to the root of emotional issues incredibly quickly, and I mean right to the root of them. It's not a grueling. You know painful experience. Okay, we find we dig up what the emotion is and that might be a little bit. There might be a little bit of emotional charge there, but I'm very quickly able to release that and most women will say, even after an hour, they just feel so much better. A lighter is a subject is a comment. I hear quite a lot from women. I just feel lighter. I think that we've shifted a load and then, once we've shifted that load, we can allow more of the good to come in.

Christina Smith: 30:36

I love this because, like a lot of people are like, oh, how could my childhood trauma be still affecting me today? And it's like it is whatever it is. It's impacting you today because I mean, I even went to my therapist when I was going to my therapist for a few years and she was like, oh, but you know, you mentioned that you were sexually abused when you were young. I mean like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's not no problem, I just dealt with that. And it's like, no, I didn't, it was still in my body. It may have been like a few layers down from where I was at the time that I needed to work on in order to get there, but these things stay trapped in our bodies is what I believe is like all that emotion that we don't have that chance to feel into. Or maybe, like I grew up with a parent who is like that's nothing to be sad about, that's nothing to be angry about. So I started learning that my feelings were really like this inconvenience that just came into life because they didn't really matter. Really right, at least. Maybe that's just me, or maybe that's just growing up in the 80s, I don't know. But my mother was pretty much like, yeah, your feelings don't matter, put on your big girl pants and let's go.

Christina Smith: 31:51

And so I got really good at that masculine side of like. We don't worry about that, we just keep moving, we keep doing the thing, we keep being in that warrior energy, and that's what really hurt me in my physical health later. Was that not listening to my body? And it was just getting worse and worse and worse. And no matter what I did, I just looked at my body as an inconvenience, rather than this, really like you said, this really clever being that was telling me what it could in its way of communicating. You know, it's not like my body is going to go hey, christina, might be time for a break, right, but there's other ways that we start learning that we need to break these hot flashes, the migraines that we get, right. This is all I believe, at least for me, the message that I get from all these things is like okay, you got a lot going on. It's time to slow down and really tune into what's going on.

Christina Smith: 32:56

And I think it's such a shame because, as you were talking about the masculine and the feminine, it's like the feminine has been devalued, at least in our society, at least here, where it's like nobody cares what your body is saying to you. It's just about productivity and getting stuff done Instead of like. Really, this is like a beautiful temple that we have, this beautiful temple of a body that we have, but we don't treat it that way. We treat it as if it should just work. We should just get an oil change every few years and it should be fine. And I think that that's the part that we really struggle with.

Christina Smith: 33:41

And what I really struggled with was I was telling you this earlier is when I'm physically uncomfortable, and I say this to my clients all the time if you're in hulks hungry, angry, lonely, tired, sick, pms, menopause, peremonopause any of these things that are going to make you feel uncomfortable your emotional and your mental body is going to suffer as well. It doesn't go any other way. It means that we're feeling stressed, we're not feeling excited about life anymore. There's a lot of things that can be taken away, and I think it's a really huge block for people who have never listened to their bodies that all of a sudden, their body is like throwing fireworks and stuff and you're like what is going on with all of this? So I think that that is so what a great perspective to say.

Christina Smith: 34:36

This part is where our body is really asking ourselves to clear a lot of things, clear them out of our way, clear a lot of our blocks so that we can step into this really beautiful, intuitive, wise woman, which obviously is not valued enough in our culture, but I think it is the ultimate.

Christina Smith: 34:58

I think the reason why it's a patriarchy is that wise women were too powerful, almost they felt like they were too powerful, and that's why we've had this real negative skew towards aging and women that were not allowed to age or we should stay young, because we can get too powerful as we age. Right, because this is a true power is like being able to step into your body. I get more confidence, I feel. I feel proud to like speak my mind and my truth as I age. So all of these things we can't get comfortable with until we get really comfortable with ourselves. What I'm hearing from you is that part of that is physical, part of that is emotional and part of that is mental and they all work together because those are the message coming from this beautiful, clever temple that we have. I love that you say that Our body is so clever?

Melissa Ayres: 35:58

I think that that's absolutely true, and that's a whole huge conversation, isn't it? The patriarchy and the suppression of the feminine. But again, as women, all of us are carrying that collective feminine wounding as well. And it's interesting what you were saying about your own childhood. A lot of us now, myself included, coming into perimenopause and up to menopause we were 70s babies and that was so different to how I brought my children up, for example. So with my children, you know, children are very much, you know, the center of our world and they're given a lot of attention and at school especially, everyone's a winner, everyone's got a gift, everyone's special. Well, when we were at school, that was very, very different. Like you say that don't cry, it's weak to cry. Quite harsh judgments from teachers. There was no beating about the bush. All those things we form in childhood, all these beliefs about ourselves. I remember in school well, your average, you know. Well you'll do okay.

Christina Smith: 37:09

No one was special in the 80s.

Melissa Ayres: 37:11

I mean I had this conversation the other day with a friend, I mean seeing other children. Physical punishment was even there still when we were at school. So we've grown up with all of that. So, as I talked about, all of these things then come up for us to heal. It's kind of no wonder, I think, women of our generation are now having to resolve all of this because we are coming back to more of a time of the feminine and more of a balance. There's nothing wrong with the masculine energy the patriarchy is such. It's just that we need to come back to balance.

Melissa Ayres: 37:43

And what's really interesting as well is how this has an impact directly on hormones of women. So any stress emotional, physical has a real biochemical effect on the body and our stress hormones caught us on the adrenaline. Adrenaline. The body priorities, prioritizes those over the production of all other hormones, including our reproductive ones, because there are basic survival mechanisms. So for our ancestors, many years ago, we needed that in order to maybe run from an invading tribe or a predator.

Melissa Ayres: 38:23

What's happening now is is we're in this state of fight or flight and adrenal a lot of the time. Our bodies can't directly interact with the outside world. They respond to our thoughts and feelings. And now we're going into that adrenaline rush, huge cortisol overload. You know, from things like a traffic jam or a large bill that comes in Nothing, that's actually a direct threat to our lives, but that's the way our body perceives it. So, as I talked about we are walking miracles. Our bodies are amazing. We have, above our kidneys, we have our adrenal glands that create all of these stress hormones.

Melissa Ayres: 39:04

And what's designed.

Melissa Ayres: 39:05

What happens for women is, you know, I firmly believe we're born with all the hormones we need to sustain us right throughout life. So what happens at perimenopause and menopause is where the production of estrogen and progesterone, which are the main reproductive hormones that we produce, where that's naturally declining in the ovaries at perimenopause and menopause, because we're no longer going to be able to be physically reproductive, the adrenal glands will pick up that where it's declining in the ovaries. You know, nature doesn't get it wrong. It's all designed to work perfectly.

Melissa Ayres: 39:43

But when we're in that really high adrenaline state, our other hormones don't really have a hope of becoming balanced. As I talked about, it's going to prioritise those hormones that are about our basic survival. So that's why it is important not just to go on this deep healing journey to heal all of the emotional baggage. But actually for our hormonal health this can have a big difference as well, because if we are less stressed internally and it's bringing down all of the cortisol, adrenaline or the spike in those stress hormones, then the other hormones can start to rebalance themselves as well, which leads to a more, a smoother, easier transition into menopause.

Christina Smith: 40:29

Yeah, I love that.

Christina Smith: 40:30

Yeah, I love that, and I talk about that with my clients too. I always ask them is this unsafe or is this unconservable? Because, like you said, we can get our brains have that way of like trying to find any type of threat, and in this world, where we're a lot safer, safer we can confuse things that are uncomfortable, like a traffic jam, with things that are actually unsafe, like like a lion chasing us, and those are not the same right, but our body can treat them the same if we give them the same value, and so I think that that's really, really important. I want to just sum this up by by. What are some steps that we could be taking is and Whoo, what I'm hearing is there was Balancing the masculine and the feminine.

Christina Smith: 41:26

Again, we're not, we don't need to be all of one or the other. In fact, I I have found it's really great when I'm in between the two, like I want to get stuff done and I want to give myself Time to go within as well. So creating that balance instead of just allowing my to-do list To overrun my life, because I can always come up with more tasks that can possibly be done in a day right, but, but learning how to take breaks was a big part for me of being like it's okay for me to relax and just receive, rather than constantly push, push, pushing, which is what the masculine energy always feels like to me like there is like a force to it, like I have to go do the thing, I have to go put it out rather than the feminine is very about receiving for me. So that's one that we talked about was balancing that. I love the idea. I wish people will go out now.

Christina Smith: 42:31

Theta healing Can you also do that virtually, or is that something that has to be done in person, just so people know Okay, awesome, yeah. So anybody listening, if you're interested in learning more, make sure that you go to Melissa's links below, because she's going to. She'll be able to have a chat with you and see if what she has to offer Fits for what you need, and I think that that's really important that you can do that from anywhere. That's very exciting, so that's another option that we could take. I Really just want to encourage women to give themselves permission To step back. Stop what you're doing. Even if you're in the middle of finishing your macaroni and cheese, just take a breath and say what is it that I actually need now. That's like one of the first questions that we can start tuning into our body so that we can be this really beautiful. Why is woman that we want to step into that stage? What else might you say? I may have missed some things. What else can we do?

Melissa Ayres: 43:49

a really lovely way to do that, christina, is to tune back into our natural cycle as women. You know our periods. They are a gift. Our periods are more than a Release of blood. We as women, we store up a lot of emotions in that sacral chakra, a pelvic region. It's a release of emotions as well. So we've actually got this a neat way to tune in and understand our bodies and when to slow down.

Melissa Ayres: 44:15

So If you are having a regular cycle, once your period is finished you're going into that estrogen Phase where we can actually be more productive, we have a little more energy. It's a great time to socialize, start a project, you know, be active and do those things. After ovulation we go into that butyl progesterone phase and that is when we need to slow down more. You know, withdraw, be with self, perhaps don't do quite as much socializing and and recognize that. You know we're always told PMT is wrong or it's undesirable. That about. Actually it's a time you know our ancestors would have gone off to bleed together. That's where the term the red tent comes from. So just following your own natural cycle, it's a really good way to understand where your body is. So if you're in that first two weeks in that estrogen phase. That's okay to be doing lots of things and be busy and be creative.

Melissa Ayres: 45:14

But if you're in that progesterone phase, take the time to slow down a little bit more. You know, perhaps do more yoga or pilates instead of I don't know if you do a lot of cardio or running around and what you'll find is is Coming back to your body. Your body really likes you to be in tune with it, and that's a really lovely way to know as a woman. Okay, can I? Is this a good time for me to go and be doing I don't know, running a half marathon or something, or Taking on a huge project at the school? Or is this a time when I need to slow down? And if you're not having a regular cycle, what you can do is just follow the moon cycle, which is what I do.

Melissa Ayres: 45:51

My periods, I just accept where my body is. My periods are irregular, they're slowing down. That's fine. I I understand that, but what I will do is follow the moon cycle and I just think bringing it's a very easy, simple way to come back into, into balance and harmony with our bodies. It's known as menstrual cycle awareness, mca, and there's lots of information. There's a lovely book called and wild power, written by the two ladies at the.

Christina Smith: 46:16

Red.

Melissa Ayres: 46:16

School, which is really lovely, about coming into tune and awareness with our, with our cycles, which is just a lovely way to know when we can be doing lots and when actually we should be pulling back.

Christina Smith: 46:27

Yeah, and the last yeah, in the last two years, when the perimenopause symptoms started, I started tracking my like it's actually on my calendar now because it's like okay, when I get my period, I know that there's like two or three days where my brain is like not functioning the right way, and so I know that that is not a time for big projects.

Christina Smith: 46:50

That is not a time for a lot of deep thinking. That's more of a time of me just Kind of tuning into my body and being okay with where it is like I just know that I'm gonna have to. It would behoove me to slow down and really tune in. And and then there is that period, like right after my period, where, after I've gotten enough sleep because I get really tired during my period but after that, like there's like a good five days where I can like whip some stuff out like really well, it's, I'm very clear, stuff just gets done. I'm a lot more focused and so this is really really impacted the way that I run my business, the way that I plan my trips, like Everything so that I can make sure that I am in the right space for that. So that is beautiful, and I know that you have a free gift for our listeners?

Melissa Ayres: 47:47

Tell us about that, I do so I have a free 30-minute masterclass called managing Paramanipause and menopause, naturally, where I talk about all of these things we've talked about and more. I talk about what I think of the Five key disruptors to hormonal health, how you can manage those, how, again, I go into a bit more detail of how I managed my Paramanipausal symptoms as well, so it's full of lots of lovely wisdom Around. Yeah, managing this, this life stage you know, which is a natural life transition, it's not an illness, it's not a deficiency, and you know your body, you're equipped to get through this. So I hope that it brings women some some confidence about this stage of life as well, because there's a lot of negativity around menopause and you know the symptoms and a lot of fear generated around it as well, and actually it's coming back to that. Your body knows what it's doing. Trust your body, it's working with you, it's working for you, it's not working against you. And actually just a few little tweaks in mindset and and health-wise and you can Transition through this.

Melissa Ayres: 48:53

Like the 20%, the 20% of women worldwide actually go through Menopause without any symptoms at all. They sail through relatively symptom-free. So it it is possible, and you know, remember that every woman's experience Will be completely unique, so it your experience is not going to be necessarily about on all the same as anyone else is. So, yeah, my masterclass is talking about all of those things and, yeah, sharing my nuggets of wisdom and Hopefully restoring some confidence about what is largely seen as quite a negative life stage in a woman's life, which is sad.

Christina Smith: 49:30

Yeah, and there's other ways yeah and there's other ways to look at it, because I'm really excited about midlife. I think it's great. Like I, I look forward to leaving the menstruation cycle behind at some point. It's the getting there. But we do hear like terrible stories, and it doesn't have to be terrible, it could also be.

Christina Smith: 49:49

For me, it's been a time of like really Getting those wise, intuitive powers, like really being able to start tuning into my body and just knowing what it needs, rather than like what are these feelings mean and what does it mean. I like it used to be so confusing and now I feel like it's become a lot clearer, but that's because I gave myself time and permission to slow down and be like what's really going on, rather than my body is Betraying me or, you know, acting wrong. It's not, and I love that. You say that this is completely natural and we can get through it. We just have to, like you said, just little tweaks to our perspective of how we're treating ourselves and how we're looking at the situation. Thank you so much, melissa, for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Melissa Ayres: 50:39

I just want to finish by saying you know, tuning into that real feminine wisdom which we're so blessed to have as women. That's where the magic happens.

Christina Smith: 50:49

I love that. Yes, tune into your feminine wisdom. It's so powerful. Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you, melissa for being here. Go check out Melissa's links below so that you can learn more and get that master class, and we will all see you soon.