The Inviting Shift Podcast
Embrace the authentic, confident you so you can feel good in your skin and have deeper relationships. The Inviting Shift Podcast focuses on how we step through this messy journey of life confidently so we can feel good about how we show up, have more connected relationships and connect to purpose and meaning. Or in short, how we manifest the lives we crave in practical, tangible ways.
The Inviting Shift Podcast
S3E6: From Hot Flashes to Calm Waters: Tackling Menopause Challenges
Ever wondered how to confidently navigate the often-overwhelming world of menopause? Join us on this empowering episode of the Inviting Shift podcast as midlife coaches Maryam Solhjou, Melissa Rohlfs, and Dana Lawson break the silence surrounding this crucial life stage. Learn about the physical and emotional changes like hot flashes, weight gain, and depression, and discover tailored solutions to manage them effectively. We promise you'll walk away with practical advice on stress management, nutrition, exercise, and sleep, all designed to help you embrace midlife with confidence.
OUR GUESTS:
Maryam Solhjou supports mid-lifers to cultivate intention and wisdom in their relationships so they feel connected and nourished in life's second half.
Connect: Facebook | Instagram | Website
Melissa Rohlfs is a certified holistic health and life coach helping busy moms and teen girls find freedom from the struggle with food, so they can be at peace with food, their bodies and their lives. She is committed to helping teen girls and women cultivate a healthy body image & relationship with food. Her mission is to help others walk in health conscious food freedom.
Connect: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Dana Lawson is a Certified Health Coach and Menopause Expert. She spent 15 years in the health and wellness industry and understood the importance of maintaining optimal health. Dana's mission is to help all women and especially women of color, to understand what's happening to their hormones during the
menopause transition and why. Dana also helps these women create mindset shifts in order to develop a positive relationship with their bodies so that they can confidently embrace midlife and be the happiest, healthiest version of
themselves during the menopausal transition and beyond.
Connect: Website | Email | The 'Skinny' On Menopause | Free Menopause Success Call
THE HOST:
Connect with Christina Smith & Inviting Shift on Social: Instagram | Facebook
Free Gift: The Confidence Tool Kit is here to help you walk into the second half like a queen (because you are one already). Get it here.
Email me and tell me what you think: christina@christina-smith.com
Tune In:
Welcome back to the Inviting Shift podcast. I am here with some really beautiful women that are going to talk about health and menopause, and this is something that I don't think you know most of us didn't learn about. Maybe we had some great, great moms and grandmoms that talked to us about it, but a lot of us it was just kind of something that women keep to themselves, and so this is to talk about, like, what is it that we can do and what is it that's changing and in our midlife that is different. You know, what kinds of things do we have to do differently? That may be the same old, same old health stuff isn't working for us.
Christina Smith:So I'm your host, Christina Smith. I'm a midlife coach. I want women all over the world to be really confident so that their second half can be the more confident half of their life, and I'm going to introduce some of our guests. Miriam is one of my favorite people. We connect every week for accountability and I love that about us. Miriam, can you tell us a little bit more about what it is that you do? And here you are, Thanks.
Maryam Solhjou:Christina for having me on. Yeah, I'm Maryam Solhjou. I am a midlife coach and I help midlifers cultivate more intention and wisdom in their relationships, the relationships they have with themselves, the people in their lives. So the second half of their life they feel nurtured in those relationships.
Christina Smith:Beautiful. Thank you, Miriam and Melissa, tell us a little bit about you. You're pretty new to me, but I'm really excited to get to know you and have this conversation.
Melissa Rohlfs:Well, thank you for having me in for the conversation. I'm excited to be here. My name is Melissa Rohlfs. I'm a holistic health and life coach and I help women and teen girls cultivate a healthy relationship with food and a positive body image. So hormones, menopause all plays a part in that, for sure.
Christina Smith:Sure, absolutely, and as we're getting to menopause, sometimes we have bodies that we didn't have before. We're getting used to them all over again, and so what a perfect place for you to have that conversation. And Dana I have had Dana on the Inviting Shift podcast before and she's been on the summit and we just love her for all things health and menopause.
Dana Lawson:Thank you and thanks for having me, and, yes, we have had a little bit of a love affair for the past year or so, right? But I'm Dana Lawson, I'm a certified health coach and menopause coach, and so I help women to understand what's happening to their bodies as they're going through this process and help them to find solutions that will align with them, and I use four pillars of stress management sleep, getting good sleep, nutrition and exercise, as well as other holistic means to really dial in what their body needs at this time so they can really be happy.
Christina Smith:I love that, because every woman's body is different. I have clients who, like, they're through menopause and they're like, yeah, I didn't even know what was happening, it was just done and it was like, whew, blessings to you. Cause that has not been my experience whatsoever and I just want to. I, just before we start talking, I just want to let everybody know none of us are medical doctors, so what we're going to be talking about today is, from our experiences, our clients' experiences, this you should still go see a medical professional that you are. You know that you trust in um to get the right solutions for you or like right Um, but these are going to be some ways in which we have helped ourselves or helped clients, or even, you know, got from Auntie Maisie that she told us what we might try.
Christina Smith:You know, but this is not medical advice. I just want to clarify that before we go on. We're just a bunch of midlife women having a conversation about what it's like to go through life and so, with that, what's menopause like for y'all? I'm curious Anybody can jump in here because I got to tell you it's been a roller coaster for me and I'm not sure if it's like all the transitions in my life, but it's like there's a lot going on with my body and we were just talking about that before we started. But what are these things that are going on in our body? I'll go first.
Maryam Solhjou:Go ahead.
Dana Lawson:I am about five years post-menopausal, so things have calmed down quite a bit. For me, the perimenopausal years were absolutely horrendous, but part of it was because I just didn't know what was going on. And I didn't. I had no knowledge of this stage called perimenopause. So it was pretty, it was pretty horrible.
Dana Lawson:Lots of the classic symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, depression, like emotional. I'm a very, very positive, upbeat person. I love being around people. People give me energy. So when I started to retreat from people, I didn't. I wanted to be alone more. I was depressed and cried a lot. That was really unusual for me.
Dana Lawson:So the hot flashes and night sweats were another you know one piece of it. That was uncomfortable during the day, kept me up at night, obviously. But what really made me want to look into this a little bit more was the emotional piece. I said to myself I can't live like this. I don't want to live like this. And the little bit that I did know was that it could last up to 10 years and I was like, oh no, absolutely not, absolutely not.
Dana Lawson:So that's when I started my own personal journey to try to find first find out what in the world just happened. It felt like somebody flipped a switch and then all of a sudden, these things were happening. Now I know that's not the truth, but it just felt that way. So I needed to know what was my body doing, what was going on and how I could best support myself so that I wouldn't I can decrease the discomfort, feel more like myself, be that happy, energetic person that I always was. And so that was my experience. And it started probably. You know, as I look back. You know you learn so many things when you look backwards, don't you, christina? Yeah, I was probably in my late 30s when I started having the emotional changes and then came the night sweats and the hot flashes in my early 40s.
Christina Smith:I love that you say that, cause I mean, maybe that's where we started. It's like, where are we on our journey? And for me it's like I feel like I'm four or five years into perimenopause, um, because and I didn't notice it as much before, because we were in a really cozy spot in our lives, so like every time the emotions came up I was like I'm just feeling emotional, I'm just not going to make any major decisions today. I could use all my life coaching tools and be like, oh yeah, I'm going to get through this, but for me it really has tuned up in the last like six months as we've been going through a lot of like moving across the country again, living with family, doing all kinds of interesting things that I never saw in my future, you know, and now trying to adjust to all that.
Christina Smith:The point where lately I'm like I don't know if the life coaching tools are helping me, because it's like really physiology right, like I can use those coaching tools as much as possible, but it doesn't make me not feel like I want to tear my skin off sometimes or I get itchy and and all these like weird things that people have told me, like I didn't know that there was such a thing as the period flu until I had perimenopause, and so learning to like cut down on my alcohol the week before my period or making sure that you know, I just watch all of that during the entire month is changes the way that I experience it as well. So there's a lot of things that we don't control, but there are some things that we can influence is what I've learned. How about anybody else? Where's everybody else in their little cycle of their natural cycle of menstruation or menopause?
Maryam Solhjou:You know, I'm just glad there's so much media attention going to menopause. It feels like that in the last couple of years and it's not something that I learned about a long time ago and, as Dana was saying, in retrospect, now that I'm learning more, things are starting to make sense on how everything has unfolded. Like a couple of years ago I started having these joint pains and I just thought I had overworked myself through these major hikes that I had gone through like eight, eight hour hikes a day that we had done, you know, overseas. And then I'm like, oh my God, I messed up my own body. But now I'm, I'm finding out, oh, that's part of like the whole perimenopause journey. I'm like, okay, well, at least now I have a reason that it happened. It makes sense. You know, I just saw my doctor recently and she's in the same age group and going through the same thing and she's like, yeah, menopause sucks. I'm like, yeah, you're telling me. So I'm just starting to learn a lot.
Maryam Solhjou:Read a little bit more, figure out. You know what. You know what I need to do going forward. You know how much protein I should be. I used to be vegetarian. Now they're saying you know when you're in this stage, you have to have more protein. Well, figuring out how much protein I need to eat, and now I'm walking around with a weighted vest because I have to make sure that my muscles are are staying strong, so doing, I guess, uh, learning more and self-educating myself on the steps that I need to take to just help myself through this phase. I'm glad we're talking about that. I have two daughters and I think it's great that they see me going through it, because it was not really something that was even talked about when I was growing up. I never heard anybody mention it really talked about.
Christina Smith:When I was growing up. I never heard anybody mention it. Really, I love that because my mom was thin, but when she was like, I remember her starting to get all the VHS tapes of like cardio exercise because her body was changing and she was getting the stomach and she was getting the curves that she never had before and she really thought that cardio was going to be the way that she was just going to burn that belly off, right. And that's what they told you in the eighties and nineties anyways, like cut your fat and get your, get your, you know your skinny on.
Christina Smith:And I think, now that it's being talked about more, there is a part of me that accepts more the, the bigger belly that I'm having and the bigger hips and the romp that I never had before, um, which is nice, and it gets to be a bit much and a lot different. So with that I mean I really want to turn it to like Melissa, because it's like our bodies are changing and I know that body acceptance is one of the things that you work usually with mom and teenagers. But there's a whole new body acceptance when you come into menopause because, like, things are different than they'd ever been before.
Melissa Rohlfs:For sure, and it's so funny because that's the thing like our bodies are always changing and I think the disconnect is a lot of us haven't been taught how to listen to them or what they're saying to us, so like we'll maybe recognize we have a craving, and so we're in the pantry eating the chips or the ice cream, and it's like we don't even ask what we're craving. Maybe we are craving more alone time, maybe we're craving more sleep, maybe we're craving more creativity or social connection, and so I think you know kind of deciphering and getting curious and saying what do I need? What does my body need right now, at this stage of this season? Not where I was, not where I want to be, but like where I am right now. I think there's a lot of benefit to that, because it's a totally different season and stage of life that we're in, and you can't really blame it on your kids, because you guys were talking.
Dana Lawson:I was like, oh OK, I thought maybe this was part of having two teenagers, but no, I think it's better menopause.
Christina Smith:You just thought it was all the snacks that you had around for the teenager. Yeah, the body changes. I was always like underweight, like to the point where people would be asking me like how much do you weigh? Because I was so thin. And now, like a few years ago, I was telling a doctor about some gut issues I had and he was just like. I was just like, oh well, I had a hard time gaining weight when I was younger and he looked at me and he goes doesn't look like you have a problem now. And I was like, oh, wow.
Christina Smith:Maybe blunts sir.
Dana Lawson:The rudeness, the rudeness.
Christina Smith:Exactly so. If it's not cardio and like fats and oils, what is it that we need to be changing? And, like I said, one of the things that I noticed was alcohol has a huge impact on how I experienced menopause. Um, and, I love a cocktail, don't get me wrong. However, I now have to be careful when I'm having those cocktails and really being conscious of uh, to what Melissa said. You know, what am I actually craving, you know, and I think sometimes we can be quick to pick up I can be quick when we speak for myself to pick up a, you know, a drink, because it's a. It's an easy way to relax, right, like, instead of doing the meditation or the breathing or the whatever the mindfulness stuff, like it's just an easy way, at the end of the day, to relax, but there's other ways to do it. What are some of the other things that are impacting us in menopause and perimenopause?
Dana Lawson:You know, um, one thing, that thing that I remember coming across as I was going through my process, was that I didn't associate the changes that I was experiencing with my health.
Dana Lawson:I just thought that they were isolated things that were making me uncomfortable in my body, but I didn't realize the impact on my health. That was such a brain blow for me because now I don't. When a woman comes to me and she says, oh, these hot flashes are just relentless, and you know it's like, well, they're really not just you know, a bothersome nuisance. It actually has an effect on your heart, your brain, and that's where the hot flashes start. It's the temperature regulation in the brain that that's being affected, and it's not a little thing that you can just blow off or just say, well, I'll fan myself, drink some ice water. No, that it really, you know, affects a major system in the body and and it needs to be addressed. And you know the weight gain is not just uncomfortable. And I wanted to make a little joke, christina, because you know women are buying these parts of the body these days, right, I know.
Christina Smith:I know Good thing, kim Kardashian made my butt in style, right yeah.
Dana Lawson:So, you know, what we thought was, you know, not attractive, is actually, you know, more attractive these days. But I mean, we're not trying to live up to any societal standards, of course, but you know it's, it's, it's those, those changes that are affecting your metabolism. So you know then, then it's like, ok, well, if I'm not hungry, I think, like Melissa mentioned, what do I really need? Is it sleep? Yeah, we've gone decades, by the time menopause comes, without getting good sleep. Our sleep is interrupted, either because of a racing brain or night sweats or what have you. So these are our life and body processes that support good health and so when they start to fall apart and things start changing, it is going to affect our health.
Dana Lawson:I think, miriam, you mentioned the joint pain. It's like, well, you know, you start to blame yourself. You're like, oh no, all that good hiking I did, I might've hurt myself, I might have ruined it for myself. Actually, you did a really good thing for yourself, you know, to keep your body strong. But those pains, if we don't address them and, you know, do the other lifestyle things and maybe some other supportive measures that we take to strengthen our bones, you know, strengthen our muscles then we could be at risk for things that shorten our life and affect the quality of our lives.
Christina Smith:Yeah, sleep is so important. It's so important and I even feel like I read somewhere that in midlife women should actually have nine to like our body is going through it and when I'm going through a hot flash, like I can feel it in my heart, like I actually have to go lay down, like I can't breathe, I start getting really weird in my head, where I can't hear things properly. Like this is all connected and I didn't know this because, as I was going into perimenopause, only a couple of these things would pop up at first and, like Dana was saying, I was like, oh, this is just. You know, I'm just having anxiety, it must be anxiety, or oh, yeah, I'm a little warm, but then they start coming heavier together and it's like, oh, I see, this is actually all connected. This actually has so much to do with everything that's going on Down to.
Christina Smith:Like I heard the other day that itchy ears can be a part of menopause and I was like that makes so much sense. I'm in the middle of the night and I'm just like, why are my ears itchy? What are going on here? I actually have Q-tips next to my bed now because I can't stand it. I would have looked at any old lady and been like I don't know what you're doing with the Q-tips next to your bed. But today I'm just like that was helpful yes, q-tips next to the beds that I can sleep at night.
Christina Smith:And I think it's just crazy how many things can be connected to it. And it's also, you know, sad to say that there's six times as many people who study erectile dysfunction than they study periods alone, let alone menopause and what we go through. And so this is why we don't talk about it, because we don't know enough about it, right, like it's like this big mystery that women have been going through for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, which just seems so crazy and it can show up differently for different people, which I I also think is amazing, cause I feel like I'm like every time I find a box, I'm like yep, check that one too. Yep, that one too, like they're all of them. And so, with that, like what is it? What kind of exercises have we all been doing in order to?
Christina Smith:I heard Miriam say she's doing strength training, that she has a weighted vest, so when she's walking she's getting that extra strength training. Because what I've heard and you know anybody can correct me is that we're starting to lose muscle, and it's a lot harder to build muscle once you start losing it than to maintain what we have Anybody experiencing?
Melissa Rohlfs:that I don't know about experiencing it, but that's the same thing that I've read and heard as well. So I'm doing strength training. I never did strength training. I was like your mom, like I had to do the cardio and sweat it off and I'm like. Nope, I'm lifting. Did strength training, I was like your mom, like I had to do the cardio and sweat it off, and now I'm like nope, I'm lifting, I'm doing pushups, I'm like doing all the things with weights.
Dana Lawson:Yeah, so true. I mean, I think one of the sad realities about you know, our society is that they promote exercise solely for weight loss. How about we exercise just so that we can feel good, that we can protect our bodies? How about it be prevention instead of you know there's something wrong with you, so now you need to exercise because you don't look like you should look, and, and that, I think, is a really, really huge mind shift and a society shift that that needs to happen. But the more that you know we have conversations like this one, christina, we can really address that. That's.
Dana Lawson:That's a misnomer. In fact, I read a study where younger women who in that are you know that, are you know, just like, at that 35 year age where you know you know, progesterone starts to go down. Estrogen kind of fluctuates a little bit, but it's very slight, so we can miss it at that age. But because they did not put enough effort into exercise in their early age, they're starting to lose a bone early. So so you have an earlier onset of osteoporosis because of now you're losing your hormones and so it's affecting your bone mineral density. But if you didn't do that early on and and and work out when you're young, then you really now you're really going to lose it.
Dana Lawson:So so I think that's where we have to start is exercise is not just for weight loss. That that's a side benefit. The exercise really makes you feel good, you're being you're, you're growing stronger in your, in your mind and in your body. It makes you feel good. And then the other part yeah, aesthetically it makes you look good too. But the other pieces should really really be more important because, as we reach midlife, if we, if we haven't put that effort in early in our, in our twenties, and then to then make that change because the body responds so well, we're just designed so well. So you know, I think that's really huge for me and, yes, I have a weighted vest. I do lots and lots of walking. I have a nice gym that my husband bought, a nice bench with incremental weights and, you know, like the old time, barbell weights. So those are, those are really really helpful.
Christina Smith:I love that you say that about weight, because so we just had the Olympics and they lined up all the Olympian women and it was like sure some of them have the ideal. You know, whatever we think ideal model body is, but most of them don't. I mean, they come in all shapes and sizes and you know tallness and whatever Like. It's just, it's all, you know, different. Some are curvy, some are boxy, some like, and so just because your body doesn't look like it did 20 years ago it's not supposed to it doesn't mean that we can't be strong and healthy because, like you said, it's about prevention or even lengthening the quality of our life. Right, it's okay if we live a long life, but I sure would appreciate the quality of life, of being able to move and be active, and as long as possible, not just that. So I love that you know we can start to look at what does healthy look like? Not just not just the girls in the magazines, cause that's not really.
Christina Smith:I got to tell you, when I was underweight I felt sicker than I did when I'm, when I gained the weight Like I would rather be a few pounds over than pounds under, because I just I have more energy. That way I feel, um, I just feel healthier and I can do more than, and I don't have to keep eating like a rabbit all day because my body, my body, couldn't contain calories for very long because I'd be burning them off and it was just terrible. So I don't think, I think that you know, like what Melissa does about body, body acceptance right is really like, and I always love the quote that says radical transformation starts with the radical acceptance of what is. It's Daniel report, um quote, because if we can accept where we are, then we can say great, I love you body, I love where we are. And do I want to change some things? Do I want to be stronger? Do I want to have more energy? Sure, but starting with acceptance first, is that what you would work with, melissa, with your clients?
Melissa Rohlfs:Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's accepting and acknowledging like everything your body does for you, everything it's done for you, because our bodies are amazing. I mean think of like everything that your body enables you to do, it enables you to live the life that you have, and I think really focusing on that is powerful. But I think too to Dana's point like it's life and body and those two are so interconnected. Like our lives affect our bodies, they affect our health. Like you can't, you can't separate the two, regardless how hard you try. So, absolutely, I think, starting there is a great place with the acceptance.
Christina Smith:Beautiful. And, miriam, I heard you say that you're eating more protein than ever before, which is like something that is just like. And. And when you say, like there's more media on menopause, I'm just like is that because it's in my timeline, or is there really a lot more out there? I'm not sure, but I do. I do hear a lot about like. As we age, protein becomes really important, so tell us a little bit about how your diet may have changed.
Maryam Solhjou:Um with the protein um, you know I was thinking is is it me that I'm in menopause, that I'm hearing more about it, or is there really more? I don't feel there's more about it than me. I believe over did this whole thing on on menopause. And then you have all these experts now, like dr mary claire ca, who's like promoting, like the weighted best, and things to do like that. But you know, the higher protein also leads to higher cholesterol, right, so and? But then, like right now, I've changed my diet a little bit. I used to be a vegetarian, so now I'm having more protein, but I'm also seeing in my blood work that my cholesterol has has gone up a little bit. But that can also come with, you know, when you're in perimenopause as well. So it's like what do I attribute this to? And you know, what am I going to do about it. So that's something I'm still learning and playing with.
Maryam Solhjou:I wanted to just go back to something that Dana said. One thing that I'm really focusing on is, you know, I mean, my middle has gotten bigger. Last year, I think, I gained like 12 pounds. It felt like overnight that my middle section got bigger. Um, but what I'm learning is how I maintain my body right now will determine when I'm in my 70s what's going to happen. Because we hear a lot of people when they get older they have a fall and they break something and then that makes them have to lie in bed and then they can't move and it just becomes this spiral they go down. So what we do right now really impacts um, how that, um how how well we recover from whatever, you know, uh, falls or something that we may have in the future.
Christina Smith:I love that too, because my parents and my husband's parents are like five years apart, but you would believe that they were like 20 years apart, cause my mom. So she's still a nurse in her seventies. She works 12 hour days, she's running around floors, but that's how she's been her entire life. So her health is so much greater, it seems, than his parents because because she's just always been active and busy and doing things, you know, and I mean she does eat pretty healthy as well. She's a nurse, so all of those things, those 12 hour days she's been working and she enjoys it.
Christina Smith:She wouldn't know what to do without a job. She'd be confused what am I supposed to do? All day? So she enjoys it. But it's also kept her really healthy by keeping her active. And that's not to say that people shouldn't retire, it's just to say that she, you know, was kind of forced to do that physical labor every day, and so it really makes a difference, you know, and they do this all the time on social media. They put people up against each other and they're like, wow, they're the same age, like that's pretty amazing. Like some of the golden girls were younger than some of us when they started the golden girls and we don't look like no golden girls yet.
Dana Lawson:I don't believe you know I'm sorry to make to Miriam's point about the protein I was a vegetarian for many years in my um, in my early, early thirties, through my forties. But I did it because of weight loss I mean, it was it was. I thought it would also help me be healthier. You know, as those changes started to happen in my, my late thirties, early forties, I lost so much hair, my hair was coming out all over the place and sadly I didn't make the connection that my body was saying I need more protein, I don't have enough to keep up with your declining muscle and keep your hair in your head. So, um, once I learned why and I and truly it didn't begin until I was in my, my fifties, my early fifties that I, that I made that change and, um, it was a, it was a huge difference and I felt better, I had more energy, my workouts were better.
Dana Lawson:So there is a lot of research that's been done and evidence that we can. You know that backs up the fact that we need the protein to maintain the muscle and everything else that protein does. And while we don't want the unhealthy cholesterol to go up, cholesterol is one of the building blocks of hormones, so we need to have the healthy cholesterol in adequate amounts and I think there's a really great solution and a healthy and happy balance between consuming animal protein and still keeping your your cholesterol levels, you know, in a healthy range. And it's it's all about, you know, really getting into your body and seeing what, what works best for you, because each person, you know dna, their lifestyle, all those things genetics have have a lot to do with. You know, whether our cholesterol is going to be higher or not, um, you know in in this, in this midlife stage, but all women will experience it because of the loss of estrogen that controls how our HDL cholesterol and that's why the LDL climbs so much.
Christina Smith:And this is. You know, vegans and vegetarians, don't come at us, we're just giving you our experience. I'm sure that there are healthy ways to get enough protein as a vegetarian or a vegan, and for me it just would take a lot more effort, like we do meatless meals Absolutely, we don't do meat all the time but at the same time, um, you know, it would take a lot more focus from me and with my food issues. This is the best I'm doing. So we're not against vegans or vegetarians. If you have a way of doing it, tell us about it.
Christina Smith:Come, come on the show and tell us about how you're getting enough protein, cause I don't doubt that it can be done. It's just it's just a little bit harder. It's like just easy to do that. Um, hey, high protein, gobble gobble. Hey, high protein, gobble gobble.
Christina Smith:All right, so one of the pillars that we haven't mentioned yet that you were talking about, dana was stress management. Oh boy, because that's the one that's been messing me up, because I can do the other three as long as I don't have that fourth one like looming over me with like transitions and changes and discomfort and all of that other stuff that goes on in midlife, cause it's not just me moving across the country or changing up my lifestyle, it happens to everybody. We're losing kids because they're going off into the world, which is a good thing, but it's also a hard thing for many of us. We might be starting to care for aging parents, we might be having career shifts or career thoughts that are different, we might be in and out of friendships and wondering what that's about. There's so many changes that can happen in midlife. So how do we? What are some of your great tips for stress management? What do we do about it?
Dana Lawson:Well, um, for and and I don't. I don't practice what I don't preach, so I'm definitely doing these things myself. One of the things that I absolutely love to do is um EFT tapping. So it's emotional freedom technique and that's a cognitive, behavioral, you know, method of managing your stress. But it's not only stress that it helps with, but it actually it calms the nervous system. Like you have a direct line to your you know, using these meridian points to almost communicate with your nervous system to let your brain know that there's nothing to fear, there's no danger, you're safe, and that will help lower your cortisol levels. It's excellent for helping to deal with trauma, heal from traumatic experiences. So that I love. That's my favorite.
Dana Lawson:My next favorite is journaling, because I've always loved to write and when I write down my feelings and how I've resolved them. One thing about keeping notes is that I can look back at my journal and say, wow, look how far you've come, you know, and, and really celebrate that win and be happy. You know about where I am now. So those are my two favorite ways of managing stress.
Dana Lawson:Um, and and I think Miriam you were talking about you know, like your, your like you help women to thrive in their relationships and we have less reserve, I'll say, when it comes to the challenges, and that's why stress hits us so hard in perimenopause. We don't have what we used to have in our bodies. You know these hormones that are that support us when we go through stressful times, and so now we could be hit with the same stress as we did when we were 20, but now we're crumbling at 40. And and and it's because and that's, I think, to your point, miriam, about relationships why they're so difficult, because of you know what we are experiencing, what we're going through.
Maryam Solhjou:I work with men and women, so for my male clients out there, just so. So for stress, you know it might be because of my background in coaching Stress Now I you know it might be because of my background in coaching I have a lot of tools that I use for stress. Like some of them, journaling is one of them. Right, I have a couple of prompts that I do in the evening and a couple of prompts in the morning before I start my day. I love Tai Chi. That's been very helpful. I started doing Tai Chi mainly for you know the breathing techniques. I had a hard time like doing meditation, just sitting and breathing. So Tai Chi is a moving meditation and you know, as I started that I noticed, oh, this is also actually helping my bones and muscles because you have to go down really slow, get up really slow. I do that. I love spending time in nature, I love hiking, we love going to the mountains, so that's really helpful.
Maryam Solhjou:And coming back to what Christina said about acceptance, I think that that is has been my just a mental, just my automatic go to. Usually when I get there, I get there faster nowadays. Is that accepting right? So, like last year when I had. You know, all of a sudden, I had this weight gain around my middle, like my clothes weren't fitting me. And so, melissa, I'm sure you can speak to this and then so, when I would go into my closet, I would look at all of these clothes that no longer fit me. And then, after a while, I'm like look, I can't keep walking into my closet and seeing these clothes that no longer fit, because I may not immediately notice it, but my subconscious is noticing oh my God, none of this stuff fits me anymore. So I, first of all, I gave half my closet away. The things that I really loved, I put in a duffel bag, I put it in the closet. I'm giving myself like a couple of years to see if it'll fit me or not, and then I will donate those clothes as well. So, acceptance of you.
Maryam Solhjou:Know, I'm in a different stage, I'm in a different season of my life. This is what my body is going to be like, right, for right now, I'm going to do what I can for it, but I also don't want to. I don't want to keep, I don't want to fight it, because, first of all, I'm setting an example, I'm modeling for my daughters. Right. My body is going to look different. I am different than I was 10 years ago. So I think, acceptance of the changes that we go through, I think it's for me like that's like the number one thing to help me manage my stress Awesome.
Christina Smith:And I loved all that that you said. Cause EFT it helps me when I'm in a hot flash, Like, even if it's just to distract my brain and to like bring that cortisol level down so that my heart stops doing that thing. Um, like, whatever, I love that. And journaling, I mean I gotta tell you as much of a life coach and I've told people to do it I stopped doing it for a while and just in the last six months, as things have changed a lot in my life, it's really been helpful for me to like write down all these emotional thoughts that I'm having and then look at it and say, okay, I see the uncomfortable, wounded child voice in that, or some people would say victim I don't like to call it victim because then we all get defensive but that wounded child part of us, it's like I'm really uncomfortable, I don't want this to happen right now. And then being able to step in the more empowered part of me and going, okay, Christina, as an adult, you're adult. What is it that we actually need out of this situation? So both of those have been really helpful to me.
Christina Smith:For my clients, they do visualizations. They love visualizations because it helps them tap into their own wisdom, rather than like staying focused on whatever the discomfort is that's going on. And yeah, what else? What else? What do you do? What do you? How do you calm your clients down and get them into a calmer state of mind so that they can see the reality?
Melissa Rohlfs:yeah, there's two things you guys didn't mention, because everything else I'm totally on board with um. But one thing is the 557 breath, because it kind of links the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic. It calms the body and the brain down, because when we are stressed and overwhelmed our brain might be doing one thing and our body's doing another. So this kind of brings them together and helps you calm down. It's free, you can do it anywhere. You can do it at the grocery store when somebody's in the checkout, the express lane, and they have 25 items when they're only supposed to have 10.
Melissa Rohlfs:But you can do the five, five, seven breath where you breathe in for five seconds, you hold that breath for five seconds and then you exhale for seven seconds. So that's one thing I love to do. The other thing that really helps me is to make sure I have enough time, because my stressor is being rushed. So I always try to like give myself a buffer in my schedule. I get up before my family so I have alone time. Like I think it's kind of knowing what your triggers are, what makes you feel stressed, and doing things to work, what you can control in your circumstance to make it not trigger you, so those are my two.
Christina Smith:I love that. Those are both really great too. Thanks for making sure we got those in as well. So we have come to the. I mean, this has been such a lovely conversation.
Christina Smith:I could laugh with you ladies all day about, you know, the menopause, even though it's not so funny. It is kind of funny, right. We have to laugh at what we can, because what else can we do? Cry, I guess, but it's not as much fun. So now we're going to leave with one piece of wisdom and, if you know, share whatever it is that you want to share about you and your business and whatever is going on. But I guess I would leave us with. What is it I wanted to leave us with? I felt like there was something a second ago that you were talking about and I was like, ah, that's so good. See, another symptom of menopause is I can't remember the damn thing that it was just there a second ago. So with that, I'm actually going to have y'all check out first and then come back to me, and I'm sure it'll come back up. Miriam, what's one piece of wisdom you got.
Maryam Solhjou:That's so funny. I'm going through all these changes and I see, you know midlifers around me going through all these changes. I think the one piece of wisdom is knowing what I have control over and what I don't. Yeah, and just an understanding of that. There are certain things that I'm not going to be, I'm not going to have control over, and to have compassion for myself and others as we're just going through this, navigating this shifting terrain. Right, that comes with the stage.
Christina Smith:Would you like to leave us with anything around your business? All of Miriam's links are below, so if you want to get in touch with her and talk about your relationships and midlife and all of that other jazz, you can get ahold of her there. Awesome Thanks, miriam. Thanks for being here.
Melissa Rohlfs:Thanks for having me yeah, melissa. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to be curious and compassionate with yourself. It's really easy to maybe get discouraged and judge yourself and criticize yourself and think, oh my gosh, it wasn't this way and I'm changing, and that doesn't really serve anybody. So if you can kind of replace judgment with curiosity and maybe start to ask why, why is this happening?
Dana Lawson:Why am I feeling this way?
Dana Lawson:You know, do some research, really learn to connect with your body I think that's really empowering would be to get out of your head and get into your body, in our heads, worrying about this, what we did do, what we didn't do, what we should have done, feeling guilty about, you know, things that don't even have anything to do with us and, and you know, all of that creates like this swirl of things in our heads and we forget about this, this beautifully designed our bodies and how our mind and body is connected.
Dana Lawson:If we spend too much time in our heads and less time in our body, then I think we do become impatient, less compassionate, you know, not curious, right, melissa? Because we're spending too much time in here. If we could just be more with this body and I think, like all of us have mentioned, to be more compassionate, to really show appreciation for this gift and be be grateful for what the things that we can do, what the things that we can change if we want to change them, but nobody doesn't. You don't do any good hating yourself on this journey. You'll get there either way, but you'll get there a lot better and a lot faster and a lot more, a lot healthier emotionally If you love what you have and appreciate what you have, change what you can and, and you know, just be grateful for every.
Christina Smith:I love that and all your links will be down below too. Dana's really great about helping women through menopause, so if you're struggling, that's really a really great place for you to find some good resources. What I was going to say is kind of connected to all of that was permission to slow down and permission to cause. That's the hard part for me is like I know I should be doing like slowing down. I know I should like like I'm having a hot flash. Maybe I should just go lay down for 10 minutes, but it's like damn it, I'm in the middle of something. I don't want to. I want to finish this thing right.
Christina Smith:So and I actually wrote down permission to slow down and tune into your body, because I think that that's we can. We have a monkey mind and it can make us really crazy if we don't actually tune in to what it is we want and to what Melissa said earlier we just grab the carbs or for me, like the vodka, instead of going. What is it that I'm actually craving right now? What is it that I and we can't do that from our brains. We have to do that in our bodies. Thank you all for being here. This has been a lovely conversation, one of my favorites so far. Don't tell the others and thank you, audience, for all tuning in. We will see you again next week.
