Women's Health: Balancing Hormones Part 1

The Context Within Which our Hormones Express Themselves

You can access a recording of this post here

It’s the full moon. The Quiet Moon, or perhaps the Wolf Moon depending on where your ancestors roamed this earth. And it’s the perfect place to begin our exploration.

This is going to be a deep dive. And we are going to explore it over the course of the coming weeks. So let’s settle in. Carve out a little space in your day, grab a cup of tea and get comfortable. We need to set the context for understanding the feminine so that we can understand her ways.

As women, our hormones play out through our reproductive years with powerful cyclical brushstrokes across the canvas of time. The moon waxes and wanes. Our blood rises and falls. There is no way to extricate ourselves from this dance. She is a powerful force with which to reckon. She is Nature expressing herself through us, with us, in us.

The Source of life itself is deeply entwined in the feminine. In our womb space. The deep dark void from which life originates through our bodies. How can this place within us not be held as holy, as sacred? How can this place within us not be revered?

So we move through our lives with great speed. Disconnected. Pushing ahead. Not a moment to stop. To sit and rest in her fullness. Proving to the outer world that we are good enough. Strong. Worthy. Super Woman.

Because we had to. Because for generations, the women that went before us suffered at the hands of a system that dishonoured the very forces that made her who she is. And so our mothers and their mothers acted with great courage to bring us to where we are today. And here we are. Full throttle ahead. Proving to the world how strong and powerful woman is.

Or are we?

You see, we have been trying to prove ourselves within the structure of a system that dishonours the forces of Nature and the Earth. Source itself in fact. A system based on the paradigm of power OVER Nature. And because we as women are so closely and intricately tied to Nature and the Earth and Source itself, the process of proving ourselves within this context comes at great cost. The cost of dishonouring the true principles of the feminine that our world so desperately needs. And never has there been a time on the planet where the true power of the feminine has been in greater need.

Our hormones as women are a mirror for how we are experiencing our lives.

Evolutionarily speaking, if our bodies sensed danger or threat, our reproductive function shut down. Our evolutionary biology depended on this wisdom in order to survive. The cues of danger and threat that our physiology takes in through each moment of our lives colours the expression of our hormones.

The threat we experience may be more ubiquitous than we realize. Whether that threat is not fulfilling the expectations of being good enough, perfect enough, or having achieved enough. Whether that threat be the experience of mothering as an isolated act removed from the safety and resilience of a community of support. Or struggling to pay the bills as a single mom. Whether it be working in a corporate culture that does not feel aligned with your values, or trying to juggle a 40 (often more…) hour work week within the realities of our biological drive to tend our families, our homes and our lives with love and care and creativity.

Or perhaps the threat comes from the ways we stress our bodies, our physiology - over-exercise, lack of sleep, or under-eating and the continual drive to lose weight or be thin. Beating ourselves up because our body is that of a voluptuous Marilyn Munroe and not Twiggy or Barbie.

The very unique power of our reproductive hormones as women is awe inspiring. It is the magic glue that allows us to move through all these incredible challenges and just KEEP GOING. Because we are wired to be resilient. To encounter adversity and win out over it. Because our reproductive hormones have created a unique and powerful effect over us where we are able to put our needs last and tend to everything else that needs tending to first. Because we as women have been the crux upon which the survival of the species has depended since our existence began on this planet many thousands of years ago.

We can bask in this strength inherent in us. It resides in our marrow. It is powerful because it is tied to our very survival. And it comes at a cost. And this cost reflects itself through our hormones.

Welcome to Woman.

The survival of the species not only originates in our womb, but depends on our power for its very survival.

The fall out of all of this is that it disrupts our hormones. If we are lucky, if we have come into this life with abundant reserves of energy, we can keep it going for quite some time. But there comes a point where the body gives in and surrenders to our need to nourish, to slow down, to embrace the deeply feminine yin qualities that are the source of this strength and power in the first place. You see, all this strength and power that we manifest does not arise from thin air, from nothing. It originates with what in Chinese medicine is called Yin - the feminine wellspring of energy on the planet that lies deep at the core of our being. And if all we do is use up this wellspring of energy and don’t do enough to drink in the nourishment and fill it up again, the well runs dry. And when this well runs dry we have no more Yin to draw upon to feed life.

There are many ancient practices through cultures acted out (mainly by men I might add), in an attempt to access this Yin, to harness this energy. The search for the eternal fountain of youth, the “Holy Grail” so to speak. And what I have come to appreciate about the nurturing feminine is that she is a direct portal to this energy in the world. That life on this planet depends on the feminine being connected to this Yin Source of Life. And that portal comes to us through our womb space. And we need to learn to slow down, drink in from that wellspring and listen deeply for guidance that comes to us from Source. And act on that guidance. For we are in a place of great responsibility as women. It is up to us to decide what we will nurture and grow in this life, versus what we will not. The world is waiting for us. She is in need of our healing balm.

And WE as women, are in need of this healing balm. Because it is only in honouring the Yin forces in our bodies and on the planet that we can truly come to rest in our hormones with ease.

And so we begin with nourishment. In order to start to embrace the concept of “balancing our hormones” we must first come to find the stillpoint of Yin within us. And the best way to do that is to slow down. Even if it is just in our own minds.

I came up against the edges of this understanding of Yin and the feminine as a felt sense, versus an abstract theoretical concept when I started going through early menopause a decade ago. It was not until I realized that what I was suffering from was actually a deficiency of the feminine, of this Yin principle, that I could begin to turn the ship around.

This week, If you want to dive in deeper, I am going to encourage you to explore a few things to begin to integrate some of these concepts into your world:

• Focus on nourishment and rest. We are still in the depths of winter - a perfect time for rejuvenation and rest. Let go of the doing as much as you can. Drink tea. Eat soup. Sleep. Dream. Love. And that includes yourself 💜

• For more support on nourishment, print up the Food as Medicine Food chart and hang it on your fridge. That’s all you have to do for now. You don’t have to figure it out or understand it. Just hang it on your fridge. You can access a copy of the chart HERE.

• Make a soup or stew to enjoy this week. If possible make soup or stew with some kind of legume. Most of us don’t eat enough legumes, and they are one of the most powerful foods that can help balance our hormones and improve health outcomes - regardless of our phase of life. Find tips on getting more legumes into your diet HERE.

• If my post on Rose resonates with you and you want to bring in the support of a plant ally to nourish the feminine, you might want to bring some Rose into your life. And if Rose does not resonate, find a flower that does. Of all the plants that I have experienced and worked with over the years, it’s Rose that brings me closest to the feminine essence. The lush, exquisitely fragrant petals of varieties of rose that still hold the true magic.

Stay tuned as we continue our discussion and exploration of Balancing Hormones over the coming weeks.

It’s good to have you here 🙏🏼 🌸