3 Reasons You Want to Understand your Menstrual Cycle in your 40 & 50's

So often when I am speaking on podcasts or teaching workshops, I hear from majority of the women, "how did I not know this?" and "how am I just learning about this at this age?"

The thing I want to reassure you of tonight is that regardless of your age, this information is still of service to you.

I think when we hit our 40's we feel this ticking clock towards the end of being a cyclical woman or a menstruating women. That some how menopause is this passage that ends who we are.

THIS IS NOT THE CASE ❤️ and here is why...

1. Our menstrual bleed is a physical symptom of being cyclical, just like our uterus is a physical body part. Our womb is the energetic container that houses the experience that is initiated during our first bleed and then is further primed through monthly cycles. All this to say, you are cyclical until the day you die. This experience of the seasons has been felt cycle after cycle for years and your body holds that memory. It expects this same pattern to continue to repeat because energy is not about the physical. Energy is about the memory. So learning about your 4 phases or season is a way for you to stay connected to you in your essence for as long as you are on this earth plane and with or without a bleed to act as an indicator.

2. So many women struggle through menopause because it is a big shift - usually physically in the body, emotionally as you re-adjust to roles you have identified with, and it usually comes at a time when your environment is changing. Maybe kids are moving out of home or your partner and you are adjusting to career changes. This is a big moment of change in your life and a moment that you are not given tools to support yourselves with through the transition. Learning about your cycle and getting intimate with it is choosing each day to wake up and be in relationship with yourself. So, when your whole outside world shifts, you can use this inner knowing as an anchor to keep your grounded. Knowing how to feel into your rhythm and connect to what you body needs is the medicine. When life feels out of your control, you can go inwards and sense what you need to feel balanced because you have been practicing this technique with your menstrual cycle.

3. Getting curious about your body and being present enough to listen to how it talks to you is the ultimate act of self-compassion. It is through the practice of living in alignment, that helps you know the why's - why you feel the way you do, why you react the way you react, why you need a different source of self care on different days. Learning about your body now or at any phase in life is ultimately saying "I love you and I want to help you feel seen everyday from now until eternity."

And (as a bonus point) let's not forget that having a healthy cycle for as long as possible also helps us stay healthy in our elderly years. Our menstrual cycle and having the cycles of hormones in our body for as long as possible helps with bone density, heart health, and reduces our chances of other disease like diabetes. So having a healthy cycle into our 50's is what will help us feel young post menopause.

All this to say, stay curious about your body. Feel into the gifts that each hormone brings and the health and vitality that comes from the bleed. Allow the felt sense to imprint a memory into body so that you can always feel your rhythm and live in alignment to the wisdom of you womb.