The Menstruality Podcast - 99. How Menopause Supercharges Your Creativity (Elena Brower)

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Today we’re talking about menopause and creativity. In Alexandra and Sjanie’s menopause book, Wise Power, they speak about there being an ‘altar’ at the heart of the inner sanctum of menopause, “the point of deepest dark in which you experience the hot breath of your inner critic on the back of your neck, and you turn to fully face it.”They go on to speak about how this powerful moment forges a new level of authority, a kind of authority that can be incredibly fertile ground for your creative process. This has been true for my guest Elena Brower. She is prolifically creative; the author of several books, a new volume of poetry, and the creator of yoga programmes, paintings and more, alongside running a successful business. She’s also passionate about re-writing the cultural menopause story (she recently interviewed Alexandra and Sjanie for an exciting menopause upcoming event - more about that soon…).We explore:- How she’s experiencing a kind of creative re-birth a year and a half after her last period - a new kind of harmony happening, which is allowing her to think and make things that she’s never considered before.- Why older women believe in themselves more and care less about what others think and how it feels to be catching glimpses of a full acceptance of herself in this phase of life.- Her current greatest creative challenges, and how she’s navigating them. ---The doors are now open for our Your Creative Power course, starting in September. You can find out more and take your seat here: www.redschool.net/creativity---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. Welcome back or welcome if this is the first episode that you're listening to. Today we're talking about menopause and creativity with someone I've really looked up to over the years and to introduce this in

Alexandra and Sharni's menopause book Wise Power they speak about there being a kind of altar at the heart of the inner sanctum of menopause. They say the point of deepest dark in which you experience the hot breath of your inner critic on the back of your neck and you turn to fully face it. They go on to speak about how this powerful moment forges a new level of authority, a kind of authority that can be incredibly fertile ground for your creative process, for your creativity. And this has definitely been true for our guest today Elena Brower. She is prolifically creative, she's a mother, a mentor, a poet, an artist, a volunteer, a best-selling author and the host of the Practice You podcast which I really recommend. She's taught yoga and meditation since 1999, you can find her classes on Glow. Her first book, Art of Attention, has been translated

into seven languages and her second, Practice You, is a bestseller and she's just released her first collection of poetry, Softening Time. She's also incredibly passionate about rewriting the cultural menopause story. She actually recently interviewed Alexandra and Sharni for an exciting upcoming menopause event, more about that soon. And in our conversation today she shares how she's been experiencing a kind of creative rebirth a year and a half after her last period, which is allowing her to think and make things that she's never considered before. Why older women believe in themselves more and care less about what others think, and how it feels to be catching glimpses of a full acceptance of herself in this phase of life,

and her current greatest creative challenges and how she's navigating them. So welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, Elena. Thank you so much for being here. I've been learning from you for many, many, many, many years, and it's a real joy to be in conversation with you. And I'm really looking forward to speaking with you about menopause and creativity. You know, you are pretty prolifically creative, wouldn't you say? There's books, there's classes, courses, you're running a business, you're parenting your son. Did I just see that spoken word poetry gold record just happened? Yes, ma'am. It was pretty amazing. That's very exciting. Yeah. And I, you know, I was lucky to speak to you about your recent baby that you birthed into the world, your book of poetry. And I, yeah, I just wanted to start by asking how has that launch of that book been in the world and how are you feeling and

how has it been different to launch something in this phase of your life you know it just feels a lot less doubtful you know a lot more um confident and natural I think to releasing things now uh when I was 50, I started my engaged mentorship program, which is kind of a pretty beautiful, enriching, few hundred mostly women learning together, coming together every month. And I didn't feel comfortable doing this until I turned 50. And after that point, I was like, I can do anything now, anything whatsoever. And then when I was 52 was when I came into full menopause. And wow, the difference in my level of confidence and quiet internally is notable. And that also leads to this feeling of, you know, kind of ease around launching things and ease around putting myself out there in the world in a different way and all that said now i feel like yes i'm writing another book and yes there

is some really serious beauty coming through but i also am feeling like i just want to pull back and retreat now i'm entering into the second year or closing out the second year of menopause and i feel like i just want to get quiet now, you know, study and sit and not do so much. So how are you negotiating that around the book writing process? Is there a deadline for the book? Is there some flexibility there? There is flexibility, which is a blessing.

The book itself, what I thought the book was and what my editor thought the book was, two very different things. And she gave me some of the best feedback, hard to hear, of course, but best feedback of my life. And now this book has turned into a very personal, basically a compilation of tales of things that have happened in my life, things that I never thought I would share, actually, for the most part. And she said, you know, we've signed the contract. Everything is in place. She said, just take your time and do what you can when you can

and let it be comfortable and true so that's what's happening yeah I think there's something about this menopause spiritual initiation that has somehow catalyzed sort of your capacity to share things that you wouldn't have shared in the past is that menopause connected do you feel I do feel I do feel I think um it's I was just reading a piece from a dear friend of mine by the name of Laura McCowan she has a sub stack blog called love story a couple of books most recent one is called push From Here. And she wrote a blog about just not caring about what other people think and the struggle to get to that point and how it's changing her. And I think, I have no proof of this except for my own experience, but I think that once one hits menopause it's as

though some sort of chemical switch trips and i just i i truly have felt so much less uh imprisoned by other people's opinions over the last couple of years and I've had some weird things happen I can't even begin to tell you um you know and I just know who I am and I know how I spend my time and I know how I wake up in the morning and I know the relationship that I have with my kid and my partner and my parent and I'm good like it's okay for for me not to please everyone it's okay for other people to think ill of me or to make up stories about me like all of that is okay because I know who I am wow that's a really profound thing to to receive from the place I am in my life currently in this early 40s place to know that this is coming if I pay attention and take care of myself well is

very freaking exciting good yeah it does depend on taking care of yourself and taking care of your mind taking care of your body and carry your muscles where your mind gets healthier um you're good yeah but all of that is this feeling of like, okay, I can pretty much do anything. And I can be who I want to be without concerning myself so much with what it looks like, or sound like, or, you know, appears like. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about menopause care, because in your interview with Alexandra and Sharni on the beautiful Practice You podcast, which listeners go over to Elena's podcast, it's absolutely glorious. Thank you. You said your experience of menopause, and I'm quoting, has been a joy.

And a lot of people don't feel that way. You know, a lot of people struggle a lot and are suffering a lot. And you named some of the things and you just mentioned them there that have helped you. And you named building muscle, knowing how to rest, getting the supplements you need. Could you say a bit more about what how you've prepared and what's helped you to experience menopause as a joy yeah I want to acknowledge first that I know that I have the privilege of going to acupuncture once a week and having a trainer even though it's on an app online um the app is called future and it's wonderful and it's very relatively inexpensive for an entire year of

training sessions through the app. I have a great doctor by the name of Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. And on the side, I have a couple of other really great doctors whom I can call Dr. Sarah Godfried and also Dr. Rachel Abrams. These are all like big, big forces in the world of women's empowerment. And I know how lucky I am to have them if I need them. So Gabrielle, as my main physician, has me working out with weights at least three times a week to build muscle mass. She has a really great YouTube video, a TED Talk called The Midlife Muscle Crisis. And it's important to watch because you learn about how building muscle actually helps to create longevity in the brain, healthier brain, and also helps to mitigate the effects of sugar on the system. She's taught me that supplementation to balance whatever I find in my blood work to be out of balance is completely valid and easy.

Just be consistent. In fact, I have about 12 bottles of various omegas and zincs and magnesiums and multivitamins out on my counter right now as I prepare to be away for two weeks. And what I do is I actually put all the vitamins for each day into a separate Ziploc, dorky as this is. And each day I just pull a Ziploc, boom. And I know what everything is. So I can just pull out the things I need in the morning and pull out the things I need in the evening. That blood work has also yielded an understanding of what hormones the endocrine system is doing. So I know that my progesterone was a little low. Then once I got into menopause, my estrogen was quite low because I've spent my whole life trying to dim the estrogen down because of my mother's cancer history. So now I have to add a little bit

of estrogen back. Those sorts of pieces of information are like pieces of a puzzle that when the puzzle is put together, or at least partially put together, we have as women more of a hope of having an easier transition into menopause. Additionally, really no sugar, like really, truly, so little, as little as possible, makes a huge difference in my mood. And when I first started noticing around 47 years of age, I started noticing like a little bit of heat coming up in my body. I instantly just got rid of the sugar, got rid of the bread. And a little bit of dark chocolate is fine, seems to be fine for me, just a tiny bit in the evening or the midday. I drink a little bit of matcha when I'm not cleansing.

I'm on a cleanse right now, but matcha seems to not aggravate anything. But yeah, that's kind of, those are the pieces that really have made a difference to me. And like I said, I noticed like little glimpses in my late 40s and I was like all right I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this properly and I instantly started to work out with weights and that was that was the most significant change yeah I hear this time and time again I've started now because I'm like right let's let's get going now. A couple of years postpartum and it's so good. I can feel how it impacts my mood, my mind, my thinking. And I didn't know the connection between the muscle and the brain.

So I'm going to look into that. Thank you. There was something else you said in the interview, which really struck me, where you said that you felt like you'd been reborn through this menopause process and that you're thinking new things and making new things that you've never considered making before now we talked about you sharing your stories more personally in your writing I'd love to hear what else are you thinking anew and making a new in this phase well I've dialed back I had a pretty substantial business with doTERRA and I am still there and I'm still doing that business but I dialed it back quite a bit and by that I mean I'm not any

less involved I am earning less money and spending less time just a little bit of less time. That is probably one of the most important things I've done for myself in the recent years. And I would have never considered that before menopause. You know, it was always like, go, go, go. You know, make it happen. Make it happen for you. Make it happen for all the people that you're working with. Make it happen for all the people that you're working with, make it happen.

And to become comfortable with earning less and doing less has been a very important transition. And in that time, I've also started to do other work. So individual, private mentoring feels really good to me and true to me. And I feel like I can really help women who are 10 years or 15 years behind me, even five years behind me in age. I've worked with a couple of men too, and that's always really fun also. But that change was something I never would have considered and you know again I'm no less involved in the business in terms of what I mean I use the oils all day I'm constantly in touch with the people with whom I work but to let go of the the heavy lifting it feels very appropriate right now and to just find my way into my creativity i have like just piles of books here quite literally literally piles i'm entering into

chaplaincy training next year early uh in 2024 to learn how to be a chaplain and to take care of the dying and the sick. After seeing my mom die and, you know, literally being there in the moment and feeling the holiness that that was, I decided at some point I needed to learn how to do that, you know, as a practice, as a profession. So I'm going to do that too. And I never would have thought of that before menopause, you know. There's sort of a, you know, from this height, there's a dialing down that I'm finding where there's like this nice steadiness at a lower level of involvement that feels really appropriate right now to me. Well, that's really beautiful the way you say that, this dialing down and like the way you

used your hand, this lower level, I can feel it in my body, what you're pointing to, it's like the stress levels are reduced, the pace is slower the there's more space around everything that's the sense that I'm getting and what I see in my friends who are in and post-menopause and geez there's wisdom there for all of us just taking the pressure off really and I realize and honor the fact that you know I have other sources of income so I can do such a thing and I understand that some people don't I understand that totally but since you're asking me that was my experience and that was how I did it hey I just want to jump in here and share about the five phases of menopause for anyone who hasn't

encountered these yet. So Alexander and Sharni go into them in depth in their book Wise Power, which Elena and I have been talking about all the way through this conversation. And they are betrayal, repair, revelation, visioning and emergence. I'm just going to read this section from Wise Power just to act as an intro to these five phases. So this is from page 110. Through the five phases of menopause, you're reworked. Your everyday conscious self is dismantled and reshaped so that you can meet the new level of expansion and the responsibility that comes with it. Each phase in turn helps you to move from that

instability and not knowing to greater levels of coherence, stability and knowing, eventually arriving on the shore of the new world post-menopause. It's this process from disorder to new order, from breakdown to rebirth, that's the crossing, the initiation. Frodo's just settling in behind me to listen. The conditions you encounter after the initial shock of the announcement of the light, when you've cast off into the sea of the unknown, are firstly a disintegration into the depths of your being. You're in phase one, betrayal. In time, this phase will deliver you to a cocooned place of greater calm and acceptance. Phase two, repair, a time of rest and healing.

Eventually from within this deep cocoon you start to notice something stirring. It's a subtle dawning of a new recognition of yourself, a feeling of possibility and potential. We call this phase three, revelation. You begin to see yourself in a way you haven't done before, and it feels good, freeing, a relief. You'll hear in a moment that this is where Elena is locating herself. Through sustaining spaciousness and kindness with yourself, you quietly cement in this self-recognition and cultivate the conditions for phase four, visioning, to fully flourish. Visioning is your capacity to know, sense and deeply feel and receive what it is that you're here to serve, where you want to put your energies, what you're to manifest now. As you relish the unfolding possibilities, you start to outgrow the cocoon and the outer world beckons.

You're in phase five, emergence, coming out of menopause, freshly minted and learning to hold to this new appreciation and pleasure in being yourself as you step out into the new world. Okay, back to Elena and she's going to locate herself in these phases in terms of the like Alexandra and Shani's structure of the five phases of menopause do you know where you would locate yourself at the moment probably in the third or fourth phase i would say it's this undeniable knowing that comes in those you know with those third and fourth phase where i trust in everything i trust in the timing i trust in the lighting i trust in the people that are around me i trust in the things that go terribly awry.

I have this sense of trust that I didn't have before. I feel less tangled up with myself and with other people. You know, I feel like I'm proceeding along a path. My people are with me, but there's less of this entanglement somehow. I don't know how else to describe it. Well, there's a of this entanglement somehow I don't know how to describe it well there's a story that you told I was listening to an interview with you I can't quite remember who it was with but you were talking about how you'd been through um a winter meditation period at Upaya Zen Center and I love this so much there was this teaching that you had been working with

which is um so good complications are auspicious do not resist them yes i believe that's from the song of the jewel mirror samadhi which is a kind of a sutra coming from deep in the soto zen lineage and this teaching complications are auspicious do not resist them to me feels like everything like there's nothing else to say about life that's's it. If you had to distill it down to one thing, there are going to be complications. If we resist them, we land in these patterns of thinking and patterns of being that are basically just leading in one direction toward anxiety and depression. If we realize that, oh, yes, and this complication is auspicious. And my rage prior to menopause, when I first stopped breastfeeding, that was also auspicious.

All the things that go sideways in our lives, they're all auspicious. Without resisting them, we actually have a hope of managing them. Things that go sideways in our lives. They're all auspicious. Without resisting them, we actually have a hope of managing them. You know, don't fight with reality is another teaching that my teachers offer constantly. There's no reason to argue with what is. Another way of saying it. No, okay, it's like that. It's really painful. It's really painful. How am I going to manage myself in the face of this?

And how am I going to manage the entire situation that's happening? And I think that's, for me, that's what that means. Complications are auspicious. Do not resist them. Figure out a way through. Yeah. You shared a story. Is your partner called James? He is, yes.

Yes. So he was apparently listening to you while you fielded an email that had come in which really complicated a creative project that you were working on and he basically said yes how did you respond to that so creatively and you said well complications are auspicious do not resist them but I mean in terms of a creative superpower what an amazing superpower because as soon as we create anything other humans then come and get involved and this like beautiful thing that we've made suddenly becomes yeah entangled complicated or you know complexity arises and yeah well everyone has projections and everyone puts on whatever you create their understanding and you know there's nothing you can do about

that but you have to understand that that will happen I have to understand that that will happen and that's how it's going to go you know mistakes will be made victories will be won beauty will be created and all of it is part of it what advice would you give to someone who has been sort of quietly creating in their lives and is sort of just about to maybe bring the book they've been writing or the project they've been nurturing out into the world and is feeling naturally trepidatious about it and about how they can embody this knowing of complications are auspicious. I think just trusting that if it pleases you and if it speaks to you

and if it serves your communication well, you kind of cannot worry about what other people will take from it or think about it. You just can't. There's no option here. If I spent my time worrying about what everybody thought about everything that I do, I would never be doing anything. Never. I would never have a podcast. I would never come on this. I would never create anything. I would just be concerned and it would stop me from doing everything. If I let go of that concern, which takes time and actually is one of the gifts of menopause, as we've already said,

the creation is really just for me, you know. It's nice to be able to look at social media as a vision board of a sort and to say, okay, when I'm feeling low or I'm feeling sad, I can look over there and see, you know what, all this stuff is happening. Keep going. Don't lose your momentum. Keep going. If you want to go more slowly, go more slowly, but trust that all this happened and you can and should keep creating what I'm hearing is that this calling in you that is now you know even more on fire in menopause it's like a non-negotiable now and I'm thinking back to well I'm thinking of people for whom there is a lot of doubt and there is fear of visibility and there is just this fear of criticism or their own inner critic

is very loud and is it that for you like that inner critic is quiet now or is it that you have such a relationship with it that you are able to keep moving forwards in spite of it what's um you invite us into your mind there yeah it's a good question I don't had the great fortune of having parents who were really present and really loved me. And I see now how rare that is. And I also see now how that fact of their presence and their support and their encouragement led to a life in which I don't really have the experience of an inner critic. I have an inner kind of, what should I say, maybe student or inner teacher who's always

kind of like, okay, keep going, keep going straight, don't veer off, don't get lost over there. But I don't have that critic. And I know that that's rare. And so I can't speak to it because I don't have the experience of having to sort of stifle it or manage it somehow. It's just not there. I have had the experience of other people's projections and problems with me. I've had a couple of experience, pretty stark experiences of people many, many, many years later coming after me for something I did or said that

did not work for them at the time, but they never said anything at the time. So I had no idea that it happened. And it's hard to say what came first? Yes, of course, I must have made a mistake somehow, but not given the chance to sort of rectify it. And that that gives me pause, time and again, you know, the couple of times that's happened, it did really kind of, I did feel really sad about that, and really wanted to fix it. And I realize now that I can't. I can't make everyone agree with me or the ways that I've behaved in the past or the ways that I'm behaving now. I can't make everyone like me or even love me much as I would really like to. I have to be okay with trusting in the order of things as they are, you know, and I wish it were different. Sometimes I really do. But that's about as much of the inner critic sort of negative experience that I have internally.

It's so beautiful to hear because I feel like one of my main quests in life at the moment is to raise my little boy, to pour love into him so that he can be emotionally resilient in the way that you're talking about. So your story of your parents really inspires me. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I think the best thing I did for my kid too was something like that where I wasn't I wasn't too overly enthusiastic about this but he always knew that I was there and he always knew that he could count on me and he always knew that I wouldn't be too heavy-handed but that I would be present and now he's almost 17 and we're really tight and this this is probably the best work I've ever done actually

is this person I think that's my finest creation actually actually i'm going to pause this episode for a moment to invite you to join us for our brand new upcoming course your creative power where we're exploring a blueprint for your wildly fulfilling creative life and how your menstrual cycle awakens it. This is for you wherever you're at in your cycling or your menopause life and since we're talking menopause today we wanted to clarify a couple of things about this course if you're in or post menopause. So the course explores the creative cycle which is a map that red school founders alexander and sharni have unearthed from the practice of menstrual cycle awareness but it's completely relevant to you whether you have a menstrual cycle or not right now it can serve as your map for all your creative endeavors for the

entirety of your third act it has four phases and when you can locate which phase you're in for any given creative project that you're working on you can unearth a wealth of insight support inspiration and meaning you could think of it as creative cycle awareness so alexandra and shani would love to explore this map with you and see how you can apply this cyclical intelligence to your creative blocks and challenges and longings. The course begins on September the 21st and you can save £100 if you join before September the 10th. You can find out more at redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's redschool.net forward slash creativity what are you creating at the moment in your in your life and like what is flowing and what is challenging for you at the moment well like i said earlier the the book that I'm working on is called Come Home to Yourself and publishing it with Shambhala.

It's hard. It's really hard. It's like an up-leveling of practice you and being you where there are paintings and beautiful pages in which to write beautiful prompts that are a little more sort of Zen focused, let's say, based on the studies that I've been doing for the last three, four years. But the stories that are going along with each one of the spreads, the two pages of paintings across are very, like I said, very personal. and writing them is both a total joy and a total challenge. At the same time, I'm writing a blog on Substack called Softening Time,

which has been a real treat and has actually helped to fortify the writing of the book. That's going very well, and I really enjoy that work. What else? I am with my partner. We're building a home. Wow. Yeah. From the ground up. And that's really cool. Like, wow. What a project and what a challenge and what a team we have created between the two of us. So that's been really fun. And then, of course, starting my chaplaincy training in 2024.

And as a sort of lead up to that, the last thing I would point out, I guess, I've really enjoyed this year. I started teaching yoga to a men's level two penitentiary. I have about five or six guys in each class, sometimes as few as three. They really appreciate being treated the way that we treat them. We teach yoga, I teach yoga, and then somebody else teaches about a 20 minute meditation. And it's exquisite, really just, I mean mean and challenging in all the ways we've got like a shoeshine guy right behind the class we've got sometimes a barber who's doing his buzzer with radio on right behind the class you know there's all kinds of guards and men sort of shouting at

each other across the room and like we're just practicing yoga it's taught me so much about presence and being present for the moment and not veering off also and then lastly i teach probably once or twice a month at this point in a women's family shelter where families who are unhoused temporarily unhoused come and once a week one of us sits down with them and just leads them through a 20-minute sitting and that too has been tremendous you know the comments from the women after about how different they feel and how much more settled they feel within themselves. Like these are the gifts that we can give. This is, I think, the most important thing that I'm doing. And as wonderful as it is to write books and have people who are, you know, in our circles,

very privileged and able to read them and get closer to themselves, all of that is very important. These are family people, and it's really good to help them and get closer to themselves all of that is very important these are these are family people and it's really good to help them no question but to go into situations like that where things are just so dire and to help in some small way it feels really appropriate also right now yeah wow it's really beautiful to feel how you're tending to multiple levels of things like yes there's the work to write and communicate en masse and then it feels like since menopause

there's like an intimacy I'm hearing around like yeah creating intimate experiences with one-to-one clients in the penitentiary in the family center that there's something in you that is moving to it and the chaplain the chaplaincy and being a death death daughter is that the term that you used someone say i'm going to be a chaplain a buddhist chaplain yeah wow yeah interesting the the shift the way that you use the word intimacy I think that's very um apt you speak a lot about becoming an elder and how you're um I'm not sure exactly the words you've used but like walking yourself into this elderhood and I was struck by this interview that I heard with you where the woman that was interviewing was really honest with you she's 48 and she said

look I get Botox fillers and dye my hair once a month and you were really fierce with her it was my mom my mom came through I swear was my mom. My mom came through. I swear, I remember the moment. My mom came through and was like, who are you doing this for? Ask her, who are you doing this for? So I posed a few questions and she very generously answered and listened. And I don't know if she's changed anything, but she was certainly very grateful to have the honest dialogue about it.

Nobody really has that, you know, either it's putting people down for doing it. I don't particularly mind. Like everyone gets to make their own choices. If that makes you feel better about yourself, then fine. So be it. But this girl was mentioning it as though asking, and I just presented her with the opportunity to determine for whom is she doing that?

And she said it was for herself, but I dare say, I mean, I have like lines and things that I would love to get rid of, except that I promised my mom that I would never do it. She made me promise. Yeah, mama. She made me promise. So I will never do it, but I really want to, but I don't think it's for, I don't think it's necessarily just for ourselves. I think it's for the world. And in this particular case, this gal, the podcaster was saying how she feels like she can't get older in front of the world.

That it would affect her work, it would affect her viability. And, you know, I question that. I question that. elderhood and our aging as a very definite healing as a way forward into end of life and taking care with other people that really helps other people to see how that can go in a comfortable way I think that's important you know I don't I don't want to be resisting that you shared in contrast something you do in the morning and you said that you look in the mirror and you consciously smile at your face and you touch it with love yes and as you shared that

something was really transmitted to me to feel you doing that practice could you just walk us into that practice because it's so beautiful okay so there's this practice called face yoga I've been taught it by a couple of different friends of mine it's wonderful I don't really do the practice necessarily like 20 times 15 times but I do use my hands when I apply my facial oil in the morning just to coax all of the muscles sort of upward you know it's on the fascial layer so it's very gentle and I do that and then I'll do like a little bit of defining of the jaw a couple of times, maybe with the first two fingers and just enjoy the experience of bringing my

face where I want it. That's it. It's very simple. Face yoga is a wonderful practice. However, I want to just give that a vote of confidence. If anyone watching comes across that practice definitely try it a couple of times because it will lead you into this awareness that your sweet little hands and your sweet little face can be friends and it's not like this put on whatever you're putting on

quickly it's actually like a really sweet way to honor yourself and your eyes and your light. Yeah. You said that you'd moved from the kind of, which I know what so many people will relate to, the kind of tugging your face around thing with your hands to this, to this loving and sweet is the word, this sweetness. Yes. Which feels like such medicine for our bodies in this world,

which will tell us all kinds of stories about how we should be looking, you know. Totally. We can rebel. I think it's a matter of contact that we have with our own face. I think the way in which we use our fingers on our bodies, on our faces, changes our chemistry. I have felt that to be true. So when I'm gentle with myself and I'm kind with myself, even in the ways in which I'm touching myself to put moisturizer on or blush or something like that, it changes the way that i feel inside makes me more soft and more

gentle and more kind um so just something to think about alexandra often speaks about how that there can be a harshness in her in post-menopause life and there's she actively works to cultivate innocence this sort of inner spring innocence to counter there's there's a kind of jadedness that can come in that she speaks to it feels like this sweetness is is part of that stream of keeping that innocence and that yeah tenderness alive it's very beautiful I can also feel for part, I can also feel like a return to that sort of innocence. That's very natural to me. Like I'm, I'm a kid again, you know, and the things that used to hurt, they don't really hurt so much because I know, because I'm

a kid, I know that they don't actually matter. You know what I I mean that's alive in me somewhere and I I really never put words to it until just then so thank you wow that really connects to the last thing I wanted to ask you about which is um you you said somewhere in in my last couple of days of listening to you that it's just so beautiful to see how women believe in themselves more in menopause and post-menopause and to make that connection between yes that it's the elder in us but is it also the return to the child in us that allows us to believe in ourselves in a very natural way. It brings tears to my eyes to feel it. Wow. Yeah, I think that's true.

I think if, if, and it's a big if, if we can let go of all of these sort of, you know, traces and threads of worry and doubt, fear even. We're left with this nervous system of, just like Alexandra said, of innocence. That innocence will carry us into the end of our lives with the quality of contentment, even happiness. But there's a lot to let go of, and I recognize that it's hard to do. And I recognize also that some of us are in situations where letting go of fear might be presenting us with an unsafe situation. We might be finding ourselves stuck in a situation that isn't safe. Who knows?

But I fall to say that. That innocence, though, is always available. It's always present. The child within you is still here. Danny Shapiro and I were talking about this. I did a series of interviews for Softening time. They're all free. She and I were talking about this, saying how every single age that we've ever been is still here. You know, sometimes when I look down at my feet and I see my five-year-old shoes,

this moment, how do we tap into that? How do we mine that experience of the past for the best aspects of it and bring it forward into the present without, you know, allowing ourselves to not feel jaded and to not feel disillusioned, but instead to feel, you know, really kind of excited about things and maybe even moved by possibility you know who's to say what's going to happen next it could be it could be something very unimaginably as you said sweet coming to you next making room for that sweetness to come through is important. And I think if there's anything that you, our listener, can do towards that end, I think it's probably a great idea. Thank you, Elena. How can our listeners connect with you if they'd like to know more

about you and your work? My website is probably the best place elena brower e-l-e-n-a v-r-o-w-e-r.com and there you can find all books courses podcasts everything it's all there thank you love thank you so much and good luck with your creative projects your home your boy your book and everything that you're creating thank you so much for being with us today I want to just say thank you for all the time that you've taken to prepare for this talk the questions that you've asked which were super relevant and the the attention that you're offering to me here I really appreciate it and I feel very seen and heard so thank you I'm so glad so glad enjoy your day thank you lots of love thank you so much bye

Sophie oh I feel like that one was full of so many golden threads and I hope that you enjoyed it and it was inspiring to you with anything that you're creating in your life at the moment and I want to reiterate our invitation to you to come and join us for your creative power in September I'm so excited about it in the program Alexandra and Sharni will be walking us all through the four phases of the creative cycle and how they can support us with all of our creative endeavours, whether that's writing a book, growing a garden, growing a family, growing relationships, growing your own soul path or following your calling.

The creative cycle was born from Alexander and Sharni's research and study and personal experience of the menstrual cycle but it's relevant whether you have a menstrual cycle or not and they say that in many ways it's a kind of guidebook for post-menopause life, this creative cycle. It's a way of holding you through all you're creating in this next phase of your life for yourself, your work, your family, your community and all that you're caring for in our world. So if you're interested in the course there's £100 off between now and September the 10th and you can find out more at redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for

being part of the community gathered around this podcast and this conversation to rewrite the story of the menstrual cycle and of menopause together being cyclical beings in a linear world it's so good to be with you and we'll be here again next week until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm