This separation of mind and body is clearly not great for our overall sense of wellbeing and can go some way in explaining the rise in mental ill health problems over the last ???? years. As life gets faster and creates more demands on our time we forget to tend to the needs of the whole person and tend to just do the basic things we need to exist. Not creating the time to listen to our bodies and its messages about what is normal and what is not within it is cause problems with our mental and physical health and wellbeing. And this particularly true when it comes to menopause.  (listen to your body ilustation here)

As we have discussed previously, the symptoms of perimenopause can begin to show  in our 40’s and for some people even in their 30’s.  This is a time when many women are extremely busy in their working life and tending to the needs of their families. There is a kind of overwhelm that begins to creep at this time that largely goes unchecked but many women feel a sense that something has changed  as we continue to dash through their daily lives trying to remember everything and keep on top of the all the tasks. We are basically living in our head and although we may pop to a zumba class once a week we feel that this placates the need of the body but in true the body is not getting a look in. It’s not being heard.  As a result we start to feel that we are not being heard, leading to feeling low and possible feelings of depression.  ( woman doing a zumba classes iuulstration here)

Sustained imbalance between the mind and body can lead to feelings of dis-ease (disease) within the body. Have you ever noticed that if you are feeling upset or angry you might also experience feelings of nausea, or when your nervous you get ‘butterflies’ in your stomach.  Perhaps when you feel low, anxious or depressed your body feels heavy. These are physical, bodily sensations that follow a mental disturbance.

It works the other way too if our body is physically ill, injured or extremely tired because we have been pushing it too hard we may find it difficult to concentrate.  But the keep ‘keep calm and carry on’ spirit keeps us going until we feel overwhelmed at which point we may become more forgetful or start to struggle with our emotions. And just like children we may become tearful, intolerant or clingy once we have pushed ourselves to our limits..

Humans can recover fairly quickly from experiencing brief amounts of mild stress, indeed, it can sometimes even function as a motivator, for example; having a deadline can spur you on to achieve. However, there can be consequences for health and wellbeing when experiencing a prolonged period of stress or when constantly living in a fearful state. This can impact the body and mind both physically and mentally and may even go on to cause long term illness. For example, the digestive system might start to react to long term stress, causing stomach ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome.

It is essential then, for our wellbeing, that we maintain a strong connection between our mind and body so that we can hear when our bodies telling us they need rest, food, water, love and then respond appropriately. Conversely, we can also tune into and respond when our mind when it is calling out for peace and calm.

Happily, neuroscientists are now starting to uncover the extent to which the mind and body are interdependent. They are discovering that the mind and body are of equal importance when it comes to health and wellbeing and our bodies are actually an integral part of our mind. Research has found that the ‘mind’ is not located just in the brain, as previously thought, but in the whole of our body, specifically the nervous system, the heart and the gut.  Surprisingly, there are more messages being passed up to the brain via the nervous system, than there are from the brain to the rest of the body.