Mindlight Meditation

Mindful Menopause

Session One - Acceptance

Welcome to Session One of the Mindful Menopause Programme. My name is Berni Crane. I am a Mindfulness Facilitator and Menopause Coach and I will be guiding you through each section of the course. Please click on the video opposite to start.

Mindful Menopause

Session One - Acceptance

Prior to sitting down to start this programme, you have probably been rushing about here and there trying to get all those little jobs done before taking some time out for yourself. So! before we start let us just take a moment to allow our minds and body to relax a little. Doing this will allow us to enter 'The Learning Zone'. A relaxed and mindful state that will allow you to take in information easily and remember it for longer.

Please click on the audio player arrow below to join me in a short meditation.

Awareness of the Breath Meditation - LisaArtist Name

00:00 / 04:16

Just spend a few minutes in silence now, thinking about how that felt for you. Did you notice the transition between the state of 'doing' and the state of 'being'.

How did that you feel for you? Hopefully you feel a little more relax and ready to learn.

Journal Prompt

Journalling is the act of regulalry writing down your thoughts, feelings and reflections. It can helps reduce stress levels and assist with emotional regulation. Writing by hand allows you to engage the brain on a deeper level and as a result therefore your are more likely to commit the information you write to memory.

Journalling also creates a safe pace for you to process your thoughts without judgement. It can help you to increase self awareness by exploring your patterns of thought, habits and routines. It can help boost self esteem and motivation by providing a measure for progress. It can also help you manage anxiety of levels by offering a space to dump thought that do not serve your well.

So why not treat yourself to a new shiny notepad, specifically for your journalling activities throughout this programme. For those of you who do not enjoy writing perhaps you could get creative with your journal and use images, keywords or junk journalling. Or failing thay some of my studnets prefer have been known to speak their jounal entries into their mobile phones.

Throughout this programme there will be little journal promtps that will encourage you to reflect on your experiences.

Hang on a sec! Just before we begin, I think its important to say . . .

Menopause is not an illness, disease or disorder. Menopause actually is a normal part of the female human development process and natural part of aging that involves physiological and psychological changes. Any person with ovaries will experience menopause.

However, with the development of synthetic hormones in the 1930’s and 40’s, the ‘treatment’ of menopause was brought under the auspices of the medical profession and became medicalised. This has had both benefits and disadvantages.

Although it certainly has its challenges menopause doesn’t have to reduce women to quivering husks’ of our former selves. When managed effectively menopause can be an extremely empowering stages of life, allowing us to no longer feel the need to conform to society’s expectations and energising us to take action.

Research has shown that women who have a better understanding what to expect during menopause can help them to navigate this time of life with a little more ease. It was found that women who had been educated about the menopause felt more confident in managing their symptoms. And that is exactly what this course aims to to do. Provide you with the information that you need to make infomred choices about how to manage your menopasue, with plenty of activities for your trial along the way. After we all expereince menopasue in a different way and this course will help you create your own menopasue plan that suits you.

Lets start with a few facts and figures

Did you Know?

Meno Stats - Slide 1

Meno Stats - Slide 3

Meno Stats - Slide 15

Meno Stats - Slide 1

1/14

Wow! it's hardly suprising we feel so negatively about menopause before we've even truly started to experience it. In the past menopause was not really discussed openly within the private sphere (within families, or between friends) or in the public sphere (the wider society). There was very little in writing on the topic and much if it was written by men.

It was more of a stage of life looming in the future and if questions were asked they were often dismissed by those who had already gone through what was known as 'the change'. I know that many of the women I interviewed when preparing for this programme said that when they tried to seek inofmration about the menopasue they were ablout to embark on from senior family members there was a real reluctance to share their experiences. Leaving them all the mmore mysteified.

Happily, things seems to be chaing and many women seem far more open to the idea of sharing their expreinces and coping technqiues although it is still taboo in certain cultures and sections of the wider population.

This programme has been specifically designed to asnswer all those questions you want to know the answers too. Yes! even the embarassing ones like - Why do I suddenly smell so bad, is this normal? to What can I do to keep my sex life going?

Knowledge is Power!

When we are armed with knowledge we can come to a place of acceptance and make conscious decision about how we can manage our menopause in a constructive, more proactive manner, instead of suffering in silence.

This is where the mindful aspect of the course comes in.

What is menopause and Where am I at?

Menopause is defined by the British Menopause Society as

" Menopause is the time in a woman’s life when her periods stop as a result of the reduction and loss of ‘ovarian reproductive function"

Which in basic terms means that the body no longer produce the hormones necessary to prepare the body for pregnancy and produce eggs for fertilisination. As result of this periods stop and other changes start to take place within the body.

Identifying which stage of menopasue you are in, is not quite a straightforawrd as you might think There are generally Three Stages of Menopause, as outlined in the diagram below.

Those Pesky Hormones

We hear it all the time, don’t we?! It’s my hormones. And it’s true hormones, profoundly impact almost all of the body’s processes. Hormones are chemicals that move around the body via the blood stream carrying messages. They instruct the body to turn functions such as temperature, mood, the ability to reproduce (cell reproduction and bone reproduction), on and off.

Their role is to regulate a wide range of bodily functions, however, when they start to fluctuate as they do during menopause this can play havoc with some of the body’s processes.

The steady decline of these hormones in the female body happens over many years. It usually begins around the late 30’s.early 40’s but for some can begin very early. The diagrams below shows the levels of estrogen in the average woman throughtout the life span

Estrogen Hormone Levels through life span.jpg

During the first few sessions we will be looking at some of the symptoms involved in menopause in a lot more depth over the coming week but below are some of the main areas in which a decline in hormones can affect the body.

I think it’s important to point out that not everyone experiences all the symptoms associated with menopause. Experiences of menopause vary widely, although there are some shared similarities. Some people might have severe and intense symptoms whilst other may not notice many changes at all.

What we do know for a fact is that lifestyle, diet, stress levels and overall general levels of health can have a significant impact on how we experience the menopause. Therefore, having a good general knowledge of what physical and, cognitive and emotional changes might occur during menopause can help you plan ahead to ensure that you are prepared for when symptoms might start to reveal themselves.

What is Mindfulness?
and
How can it help me with menopause management?

Mindfulness is about being fully present. Being present and aware of what we are feeling in our mind and bodies. Being aware of physical bodily sensations and being aware of our own thoughts and feelings. Having a good awareness of ourselves means that we are able to notice when things start to change as they do throughout menopause.

When we are aware of these changes we can take action. And so it is with menopasue - when we start to notice changes to our minds and bodies, many of which begin quite subtly at first, we can start take action to support ourselves and in some cases reduce symtopms. This may mean small interventions such as a change in diet, or introducing strengthening exercises to seeking more specialist support such as talking therapies or being prescribed HRT.

Being present in our bodies and minds helps us to monitor and respond appropriately to our physical, social, cognitive and emotional health needs. The diagram below illustrates some of the ways in which employing a mindful approach to menopasue can be benefical . . .

Benefits of Mindful Approach to Menopause.png

The Three Stages of Menopause

Perimenopause

Perimenopasue usually starts around the mid 40's, but occasionally some women start to experince peri menopausal symptoms in their late 30's.

Symptoms can begin around 8 years before your last period.

Hormone levels start to fluctuate as the ovaries start to produce less estrogen.

Menopause

Menopause is a point in time rather than a stage.

It is the day on which menstrual bleeding has not occurred for exactly 12 months.

The average age a woman will experience menopause is

51 Years.

The ovaries have now stopped producing eggs and the production of estrogen and other hormones declines.

Post Menopause

Post menopause begins the day after you have not mensturated for one year and lasts for the rest of your life.

Hormones levels are now low but stable and many of symptoms expereinced during peri menopause have started to fade.

However, lower levels of estrogen and other hormones can have a long term impact on health.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Well if you it does then you are probably at the stage your identify with the most in terms of age and lived expereince????

There are a couple of exceptions to the above and these are . .

Premature Menopause

Early menopause describes the circumstances in which a woman ceases to menstruate before the age of 40 years old. Around 1.5% of the population experience premature menopause. This is usually as a result of autoimmune disease, family history and genetics, weight and lifestyle factors. Chromosomal factors that cause conditions such as Turner's Syndrome an Fragile X Syndrome can also bring about an early menopause

Surgical Menopause

Surgcial menopause occurs when a woman undergoes surgery to remove her ovaries (oopherectomy) and/or her uterus (womb) which is know as a hysterectomy.

This is completed removal of the reproductive organs instantanesouly places a women in post menopause, as she will not be capacle of menstruation after surgery. The sudeen drop in formone levels is significant and can impact the body. Surgery takes some timWomen in surgical menopasue expereince am instantaneous and signficatn drop in hormes levels.

So let's start exploring some of your symptoms

Print off a acopy of the checklist below annd allow yourself sometime to think abou the symptoms listed on the left hand side. Do you expereince any of these symtpsom and if you to do conisder the frequency and aseverity with thicvh you expereince them. Fill in the boxes according to your expereince.

This exercise is a good way of finding your starting point. It can act as a measureable for the future progress you arebout to make in controlling mood disturbances, pain levls, Sleep distrbance and aspcect of phsycial health such as weight gain, blood pressure etc.

Accepting Menopause Meditation

One of theings that a mindful appropach to menopasue can provide is a greater level of acceptance. Acceptnace is on eof the key attitudes of a mindful life and by rpacticisn gthis attitude throughout menopasue we come to see menopasue as a natural phase of develppment and thertefore we do not try to mental and phsycial combat its impact on our lives. We learn to suspend our judgment of ourselves and how we should be and being to accept how things actually are. This is can help to make the process a much less stresful.

This m,editation is designed for you to come to a place of acceptance with the chnages that are going on withing your mind and body throughout menopasue. Its a great one to use when you feel it is all become too much and need to relax into the process.

You can do this meditation sitting or lying down in a comfortable position.

Track NameArtist Name

00:00 / 01:04