Business Innovators Radio - Clarissa Kristjansson- Midlife and Menopause Coach & Mentor on Thriving Through Menopause

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

In today’s episode, Luana Ribeira interviews Clarissa Kristjansson, health coach, Chinese medicine practitioner, and menopause educator.Clarissa created the ultimate THRIVE program that empowers menopausal women to optimize their health, awaken their vitality, and develop longevity. Her expertise is highly sought-after, and she hosts the top-rated Thriving Thru Menopause podcast and is also a best-selling author. It’s no wonder menopausalwomen flock to her for guidance and support!Learn more here:https://clarissakristjansson.com/https://www.thrivethrumenopause.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarissa-kristjansson/https://www.instagram.com/thrivingthrumenopause/Newsletterhttps://clarissakristjansson.substack.com/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/clarissa-kristjansson-midlife-and-menopause-coach-mentor-on-thriving-through-menopause

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Hello and welcome to Business Innovators Radio with me, Luana Ribeira, and I have a very special guest today. Very excited to speak to this incredible woman, Larissa Krest Christensen, Midlife and Menopause, coach and mentor, and host of the Thriving Through Menopause podcast. Clarissa, welcome. Thank you so much, Louana. I am delighted to be here. You're doing such incredible stuff.

So tell us exactly what you do and who you help. Yes, well, I'm a holistic and therapeutic menopause coach and mentor. I'm helping women who are struggling with their menopause symptoms to find ways that naturally support that diet, lifestyle, movement in the form of chie-gung practices, as well as working with our mindset, conquering our stress, building compassion for ourselves. So really the way we can nurture and nourish ourselves in the menopause years,

not just through medication, but really through the whole holistic approach, mind, body and soul. That is absolutely incredible. What do people usually get advice, like when they hit menopause, what do you do differently? Well, I think most of the advice that they get is great advice from doctors, but it's very focused on the body. It's focused on the body. It's focused. on working with those physiological symptoms that we have, be they hot flashes or weight gain or the myriad of other symptoms that can appear. And sometimes there's a little bit of a dressing of, should we say, mental health issues like anxiety or depression. What we don't address maybe many of the root causes that are there, how healthy is your gut? How well are you managing

your sleep, your stress, how much time are you taking out for yourself? And I think also, how do you speak to yourself? We have a terrible way of talking about ourselves and thinking about ourselves as women that comes from decades or centuries of being indoctrinated that we have to look and be a certain way. And that comes back and kind of bites us a bit in perimenopause and menopause. And so I look very much at those root causes and helping women to overcome some of these limiting behaviors, beliefs, and really say, how do I put my life onto a different track? Now that I'm going through perimenopause, how do I take hold of it? And also, how do I begin to look at what's going to come next? You know, we're going to be in menopause when we're 50.

Yeah, we're going to live another 30, maybe 40, maybe even 50 years if we're lucky. Why shouldn't those be the most amazing years of our life? But we've got to lay some foundation to do that, and a lot of that lives inside our own heads. You know, we need to shift and change our mindsets quite a bit to do that. I love this so much, Clarissa. You're so absolutely right. I mean, we're conditioned, aren't we, to kind of, they almost. think that it's the end. And it's insane because it's barely halfway. Like, there's so long to go.

So how does somebody know, like, how does a woman know if she's going into the menopause phase? Well, you know, I think one thing is to recognise we notice the changes in our bodies. You know, if we're nearly in tune and a big part of this of my work is also body awareness, how do we listen to my own body? Are you looking at what your periods are like? They're a really good indicator. There are no tests. There might be a million people out there on social trying to sell you some fancy tests to make a lot of money.

But there isn't a test unless you're in very early menopause and you're in your 20s and that's a completely different medical condition. But for most of us, it's noticing the change in our periods that we don't quite feel like we used to. I don't handle stress as well as I did. maybe my sleep's gone a bit wonky. Maybe I'm a bit moody and I'm snapping at people. We notice those things very early on, even just at the start,

we might even only be in our late 30s, but our hormones are already beginning to shift then, and we're often not well prepared. So it's important to really tune in. It sounds tedious, but start tracking what's going on with you and saying, well, something's happening here. what could I do to shift that? Chinese medicine has always known this.

It's written about this for two and a half thousand years. And so it gives good guidance around planning on a mental, emotional and physical level for those years. And it goes in stages. There's the early stage where we make a lot of preparation, shift our diets. Maybe think, well, I can't go out, party until two in the morning and get up four hours later. shouldn't go to it. Sorry, that doesn't work anymore. You know, we have to start making adjustments and caring for ourselves. And then as we go through the actual perimenopause years, what support teens do I need? You know, who needs to be on my side here? How do we get the best help that's

right for me? There isn't one way. We're all individual. And then when we've kind of ended our periods, our bodies are still changing. You know, we're still going through a lot of hormonal change, even though we're not having our monthly period anymore. It's just settling down. That's a great time to rest and restore and reflect and start thinking, what do I want to do? Who do I want to be? What are the kind of relationships I want to have, the job I want to do?

You know, do I want to pick up things that I had to drop because I had a family and a career? Do I want to try completely new things? I think yesterday I was reading about a woman who was 60. she started becoming a rapper. Well, wow, I love it. And I thought, that's brilliant. Do I want to, you know, we don't all have to become, you know, coaches and leave our careers, but we might take up a new hobby.

We might travel somewhere, learn a language, but start to think about you and how you want to embrace life's opportunities. Nice. And are they the kind of shifts that happen when women come and work with you? Absolutely, because that's what I'm seeing them to do. They sort of step back and go. how I can do this or maybe I can do that or actually I can, I'm not happy where I am. Maybe we do need to go to couples counselling.

That's a hard thing, but maybe you need to do. Maybe you need to have much stronger boundaries and say no and stop giving to everybody and ask other members of your family or seek help. You know, we may have aging parents. Many of us do. I did. My mum had dementia when I went through perimenopause. But in the end, I knew that I couldn't do this.

anymore and she had to go into her home. That's a really hard decision. But many of us are facing those things which are beneficial for us and for other people involved. So we start to put ourselves a little bit more fast without being selfish. Wow. And what's your journey being like? How did you get into this? You know, I had a very difficult perimenopause years with a lot of anxiety.

I was under a lot of stress. I'd gone through the loss of my mother, I had a marital breakup and a small child. And I emigrated actually to Australia when I was 44 and went to living in Sydney for nearly 15 years. Wow. I needed to change my life. I knew that where the track I was on wasn't good for me and it wasn't good for my child. And yes, I went back to a corporate career and I wish I could have walked a holistic path then, but it wasn't the right time. But as my son grew up, I then started to get more interested first in my own health and then how I could help other people.

And I began to just have more and more women who were kind of midlife. Their stories sounded in place as very like mine. And I delved deeper into the menopause. And I picked up threads from my past where I'd been working with Chinese medicine and holistic massage as well as health coaching and put them back on track. And that's what I do now and I've been working full-time like this for nearly eight years. Wow. Can you give us some examples of changes that people have had through working with you? Yes, I've had a lot of women who have come to me really running on empty.

I had a wonderful, wonderful client who was juggling two small children, a big corporate advertising career, tried to build a new relationship. And she was just trashed. I mean, her whole energy was gone. She had really bad anxiety and brain fog. She ended up being asked to leave her big corporate job because they were saying to her things like your clients don't trust you anymore, you know, because she's going brain foggy and forgetting things.

And we're not always as tolerant as we might hear the menopause at work stories say. and she came to me and we really worked together where her energy was going, what her priorities in life were, started looking at her diet and her exercise as well. And she took some time out. She took a little temporary job to Tider over and she's actually now, in her relationship, it's flourishing, she ditched her corporate career and in fact is now a local politician. A wonderful job. And I just see her out there.

She looks a completely different person from the person that sat in front to me online. You're thinking that her whole life was going down the drain. So sometimes it's me putting in place little stepping stones for people to say, I can do this. Sometimes I have people like a current client of mine who has Hashimoto's. She really vary on well in many ways. but I'm helping her to have better conversations with her doctors so that she gets the help she needs and supporting her with things like diet and setting boundaries because that's important because she gets tired and she wants to do everything.

And she's beginning, and I can see the change in her already, much bolder, much more able to say, actually, no, I can't do this, but I can do that. And so we think those changes sometimes when we say them sound small, but they're big inside people's lives. They're fundamental. No change is a small one, is it? Because it all adds up and it moves into other things. That's amazing.

Like, it's a full life change, isn't it? Absolutely. It's a whole different way of people to look at their lives and what they really want from it and how they put in place a different set of sort of pathways to get there. They can be physical, they can be mental, and they're definitely emotional and spiritual too because we're a whole human. Yes. What would you say to somebody?

What final bit of advice would you want to say to the women out there who may be going through menopause right now? I think what I would say to you is, you know, not every day is not a bad day, you know. We have moments and we have to cherish the good ones. Try and focus on some of the positive aspects of this time of life, not always just the negative. You know, that's big in the media. There's a vested interest because people want you to buy stuff. But there is a positive side to this.

And that is that you are preparing to step into what is known. Chinese medicine is your second spring where you can be creative, have new opportunities, and like have another spring in your life. You know, amazing. So, you know, it's not always easy. There is help, but it does end to. Nice. And you have a podcast, don't you? I do. My podcast is a podcast. This is really a- Describing through menopause. It's the been rated the top holistic menopause podcast worldwide. I'm glad to my twins.

I know. I started this in my bedroom, but now it's sort of got a life of its own. Absolutely amazing. But every week I interview amazing experts from around the world. We talk about all sorts of dimensions of menopause from the mindset to nutrition, to libido, you name it. We don't have any topics.

talk about and we just have really great conversations that women can tap into, get information, maybe if you want to connect with someone for a particular problem, and that opportunity is there. So that's thriving through menopause podcast and we're on both YouTube and all the other platforms where you can listen to podcasts. Fantastic. And we will also include the link here. So head on over to Thriving Through Menopause podcast podcast.

What was that? Lurisa, you have been absolutely phenomenal. Keep working your magic. And thank you so much. Well, thank you for having with you, Leuanna. Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters, visit us online at businessinnovatorsradio.com today.