Day 3: Your Body Isn't Betraying You, It's Protecting You.

Hello, good morning. Today is our day 3. The first day we understood how perimenopause affects women's bodies. What are the symptoms that come up? What are the challenges for us as we move from an estrogen dominant system to a more alternative fuel burning system, a more hybridized system? Yesterday we went deeper into where we go wrong. What are the 5 aspects which affect our health? The fuel, the mindset, the rhythm of energy, our lifestyle, our wiring, our identity, and our thoughts. These 5 aspects are constantly shifting us, affecting us, bringing up responses from our bodies. Positive or negative to combat the stress that gets created. The stress can be positive or negative. Because we are held by these 5 aspects, the medicine is also in the 5 aspects. Yesterday we did the journaling, we went deeper, we figured out that these are the problems, these are the problem areas. So therefore, these are the ways I must support myself. I must find What works for me. Today we're going to talk about some remedies for the problems. Let's begin. Honor of our feminine rhythm, our monthly rhythm, our daily rhythm, our yearly rhythm, and our lifetime rhythm. What is our yearly rhythm? Our yearly rhythm is the extreme Shift in our energies we feel during spring and fall. During this time, most of the religions of the world, the ancient traditions of the world, will have some sort of a fasting ritual, and women will usually follow that. Earlier, men would also follow that. These were important ways to maintain health throughout the year. It's called ritucharya. Monthly, we were very particular about resting around our period. Our PMS time was a time for rest. We would be very productive during our follicular phase. We will be productive during our luteal phase. As the luteal phase starts to end, we will then start to rest more. And the periods, the first 3 days, we would absolutely do no work. We would simply be resting. That is how we maintained our youth, our beauty, our Devi self. The embodiment of the Devi is through resting during these critical times, so that every time our body is given that opportunity to rewire itself, to upgrade itself, During puberty, we are upgraded for independence, good decision-making, prefrontal cortex development. During periods, we are upgraded for intuitiveness. We naturally become more intuitive around that time. We get messages from people we love. We have strong feelings about things. We know this is how it happens during the PMS times. We are deeply connected to our femininity. We are vulnerable, we are shaky, we are in pain, not doing so well. Sometimes we have a migraine, but then our intuition is very strong during this time. Pregnancy, postpartum, absolute rewiring of the brain. We become rewired to look at anybody and within seconds figure out what they need. We are rewired to that, to become fiercely protective of what we value, what we hold precious. This wiring that we have, this rewiring that we have in perimenopause, during our late 30s, 40s, our 50s, we get to keep each of this upgrade our brains received. Our brain is not going to drop any of this by living. This human female brain, it's getting upgraded every time. It's becoming a more efficient, more powerful machine over the time. So while the brain may reduce in volume because we are aging and we can't help aging, we can't stop aging, some people are trying, but the certain centers are going to grow. They are going to be more pliable. This female brain is super neuroplastic. The only requirement is we listen to our body, we rest adequately. That's all. Isn't that delicious? We don't have to go work out. We don't have to go find something that's impossible to find. We just need to be in our bedrooms, safe, in the dark. What is shifting? Our mindset is shifting. There were so many things we wanted as in our 30s. We were like, oh, I just need to have that. Now, not so important anymore. Dropped off. We don't want it. The rhythm, the daily energy that we feel. We are very sure now. When am I energetic? When am I not? What brings me energy? Who are the people in my life who bring me energy? When we walk away, we know who brings us energy. It's very critical during our perimenopause that we pay close attention to what gives us energy and what drains our energy, and we stick to that. For me, coming here like this gives me energy, and I can go till 12 in the night after this, no problem. Fuel. Fuel is our Diet. What are we doing that's right? And what are we doing that is making us heavy and stuff? It's like, my stomach is tight. My stomach is bloated. People would tell me I look 4 months pregnant in the evening. Identity. Who am I? What am I saying to myself? I am this girl who has X as my boyfriend, my partner. I'm the person who hangs out with my mother in this particular place. I am somebody who makes only friends with such a circle. Things are changing. Maybe now you are more into yoga, more into meditation, or the opposite. Maybe now you're into rock music. Owning that you are shifting and that the shift that is happening is the right shift for you. I was all about spirituality, spirituality expansion for so many years, and now when I'm here in perimenopause, I'm like, I love my human self. I love my human emotions. Now I truly know that when I was being spiritual, I was trying to escape the pain. That was an armor against the pain. That was my discomfort. With sitting with the pain. And now my body is literally being my guru and showing me how to be spiritual through the experience of the body. We understood that estrogen was the main fuel. That was like that gasoline which our body loved and burned, and every part of this body had estrogen. During this time, estrogen is tanking just like it tanks during our periods. Just during PMS, estrogen drops sharply, progesterone drops sharply, and therefore we go through the experience of PMS. Similarly, it's dropping now. Progesterone is dropping now. Perimenopausal time is our second PMS, the PMS of our life. For some who are lucky, it's a few years. For some, it's decades. It comes very slowly, very gently, and then it peaks like mad, stays in that plateau depending on how we've handled the peak, and then goes away. Estrogen affects everything— our sleep, our mood, the way we think, how the brain processes information, our emotion. Therefore, because things are getting rewired, we are a little bit faster to react. Progesterone is also falling, and progesterone was the one, the glue that gave us the calm, the safety, the stress management. Before we got PMS, when we had periods, progesterone helped with the thickening. Progesterone is a kapha hormone. It helps with stabilizing, thickening, calming. Estrogen is a pitta hormone. It helps with transformation. It increases heat. It increases metabolic functions, which is why the spikes and the drops are so crazy on the body. Testosterone maintained our muscle strength, our libido, made us frisky, made us happy, made us cheerful and bright-eyed. Now even testosterone is dropping. Testosterone will drop. If we are not paying attention to resting. Rural women rest, therefore they have a better tolerance to the perimenopausal journey. We do not rest. We are on 12 hours a day, and then at night we are working some more, and we don't seek support. We don't know how to go get help. Plus we have this ageism thrown on top of that. When people ask us, oh, how old are you now? You're aching and paining here and there. Oh my God. Your friends will also call you all kinds of names. It's built into our social fabric to use those derogatory names, words for women who are growing in wisdom, who are garnering all this life experience. Therefore, we don't speak about it to anybody and we keep pushing. And we get into the weeds. We get into trouble. Just as in our menstrual phase, right before menstruation, everything drops. Boom! In the end of the luteal phase, around the 25th day, everything drops, and then we have that experience of aches, pains, upset, brain fog, not able to think. Extreme fatigue. You can't keep your eyes open. You want to take a nap. Disturbed sleep, diarrhea, constipation, migraine headaches. All this shows up in perimenopause as well. Estrogen peaked during early adulthood, and then now is the time when there is a drop. Once we stabilize, then we get back into normal. We get back into healthy. I use the analogy of the plane. When the plane is on the tarmac, it is absolutely safe. When the plane is in the air, it's under the control of the pilot. But when it is transitioning, it is going from that ground to air. It's a phase of transition. It's Sandhikala. That's what it's called in Ayurveda, in Sanskrit. In Sandhikala, It is always said that care must be maintained because in Sandhikala, we are under the influence of the Doshas, which may go out of balance very quickly. Which is why when we are transitioning from the ground to the air, that sacred time is protected by fierce protectors. How mad do our cabin crew get when we get up? I need to go to the bathroom, man. Sit down. Put your seatbelts on. They're not gonna let you do that. This is the time to put your seatbelt on. Stay put. Take care of yourself. Tell your boss, I'm going through health challenges. For the next several months, I'm gonna take it easy. I don't want any new projects. I don't want any more stress. I am dealing with a physical, emotional, mental health challenge. I need rest days. I need maybe fewer number of hours of working. 100, 100 symptoms. Everything. This is what happens to us because estrogen was holding up. Everything. Now that estrogen is gone, everything is going to fall apart. I'm just laughing at the hundredth brittle teeth. I literally chipped off my teeth during perimenopause. My teeth were fine. Now I have a chip. So if you are feeling it and there are more than four or five symptoms that you are feeling. You can pretty much be sure your estrogen is winding down slowly. This is going to happen to every woman. Puberty, pregnancy, lactation, perimenopause. We women live 9 lives in our whatever, 100 years. Every time, this is a new body, this is a new mind, this is a new personality. Therefore, we have several opportunities that the Goddess gives to reinvent ourselves. Don't think the way you were born, you became an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, and that's what you're going to remain. No, no, no. This is like you have opportunities to be 5 different careers if you want. Your brain will assist you. Because this organ is getting upgraded every time. And I talked about this briefly, the reason why no one shares with us— who's ever heard about perimenopause? I did not know about perimenopause. I knew menopause. I did not know about perimenopause. And I'm in this field. I help women. The reason we don't share it is because we are branded as getting older. Yeah. So none of us wants to be that girl who wakes up with, ow, my back is hurting. We don't wanna be the one saying that out loud. We go to doctors and tell them about this. My sciatic's acting up, or I have this migraine headache which is going on, or I don't know why I have so much plaque, or why does my heart flutter? Why do I have anxiety when I wake up? Why am I constantly tired? The doctor's like, you look fine. Your labs are looking okay. You know, just borderline, maybe ferritin levels, maybe borderline something, but everything looks fine. They're not telling us that, oh, you are past 35, your estrogen is winding down. Get prepared, get ready. This might be a decade-long ride. Get your support system ready. Talk to your boss, talk to your partner, talk to your mom, talk to your best friends. That's how we prepare. We should not be feeling ashamed, or we should not be hiding this. People tell me, you're so brave, you go around talking about bad stuff. What's the point of hiding? Every woman goes through it. Nearly 50% of women go through it. Every girl you meet tomorrow, every other girl is suffering just like you. Majority of them are not receiving any support. Because of this, workplaces are losing $1.8 billion per year in America, just in America, $1.8 billion lost from women who are taking breaks and not able to show up. How should they have been protected in the corporate world? They should have been given longer leaves for childcare. They should have been given more childcare options. The government should have prepared better childcare. Women should be able to take breaks around their menstrual period. Women should be given breaks. Maybe women don't take a 2-day weekend every week, like in America. They maybe take a 1-day weekend, but the 4 days of the period, they have a total break. Like they can enjoy themselves and go to sleep the whole day if they want to. Then we would not have all these issues. Women would handle perimenopause a lot easier. The hormones versus the Ojas view. So what does Ayurveda say? Why are we losing this? Because our Vata and our Pitta is very high. The Vata-Pitta is constantly fluctuating. Vata is the energy of air, of wind, and Pitta is the energy of metabolism, of heat, of fire. These 2 are constantly fluctuating and are in imbalance. Therefore, our life force, our essence, the thing that makes us magnetic and juicy, glowy, like I say, that is our Ojas, and our Ojas is getting affected by it. The Ojas is reducing, which is why our hair, our skin, everything starts to get a little dry. For us women, our nervous system is connected to our ojas, to that libido, to that joy. Ojas can also be like the byproduct of good testosterone. When we are not taking care of our nervous system, when we are constantly being bombarded by requests and emails, and we are not taking adequate rest breaks, then our nervous system starts to deplete. When the nervous system starts to deplete, Vata starts to deplete, then our Ojas starts to deplete. For us, the Ojas is the last thing to go. First goes Vata. How do we know our Vata is out of imbalance? We have that brain fog. Our thoughts keep dropping. We have anxiety, constant anxiety. Anybody says a thing to us, we are overwhelmed, emotional, sensitive. And that's when we know that my Vata is out of balance. Our Ojas is our vital essence. It's our reserve. When things are running us down, Ojas is what keeps us up. When we are constantly bombarded, our adrenals are shot. And our adrenals moonlight. Our adrenals provide estrogen when our ovaries are taking a break. When our ovaries are taking a backseat and not producing enough estrogen, our body needs estrogen to keep the mechanism running while it is rewiring everything to ketones and lactates, to the lipids and the amino acids. The adrenals will produce the estrogen, but many of us come into this stage with adrenals already running on empty. Why? Because of stress, adrenals are constantly producing cortisol to manage the stress levels in our body. And already we are in such a compressed state by the time we are perimenopausal. We are all in mid-level management, supervisory roles where we are holding certain responsibilities. Our stress levels have already depleted our adrenals. The body cannot Focus on the adrenal to produce the estrogen. The other estrogen supplier is fat tissue in the body. The body will make more fat to produce that estrogen which is dropping that it really needs to keep us alive. That's when we wake up and have a menopause, bumps and lumps here, cellulite here. Fat stored under our skin. We are like, what the hell is happening with my body? Why am I storing fat here now? Because your adrenals were shot. It's just a sign that your body couldn't get the extra estrogen from your adrenals. Therefore, it is storing fat even though you're dieting, even though you're exercising 2 times a day. Your body is storing fat because it needs that estrogen supply. Otherwise, it would not keep you going as long as it can. The body is always innocent. It's always trying to keep us alive. It will keep us alive no matter what. The body produces estrogen from 3 sources. One is the ovaries. We all know that, our beautiful 2 little diamonds. In our tummy. Then is the adrenals. The adrenals are glands which sit on top of our kidneys. So right at the back of our spine, the right at the back of the body, the adrenals supply estrogen. The third is our fat tissue. So adrenals also have play a vital function of supplying cortisol to manage stress. A lot of us come into perimenopause with the adrenals already shot. Men and women, both our adrenals are shot by the kind of work we do in corporate environments or the kind of stresses that are placed on us even when we don't work. When I don't work is when I feel the most stress. Now, because the ovaries are shutting down, the body needs estrogen to do all these vital functions throughout the body— mood, brain, blood, skin, hair, everything. Digestion. When it is not able to pull the adrenal into task, the adrenal's like, nope, I can't do this. I'm already tired. I've overworked. I'm taking a break. The body has to produce fats, more fats to make sure that it is producing the correct amount of estrogen to make sure everything is functioning well. These are the habits which deplete us even further. Fasting increases Vata. Very high intensity exercise without taking breaks will increase Pitta. Pushing ourselves too much is going to increase Vata. You will have to become fierce protectors of your threshold. Can you all promise that you will be fierce protectors of your threshold? Perfect. Thank you for affirming that to yourself because your body Listens to what you say. It will listen to whatever you say. If you say, "I'm sick, I'm sick, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired," it'll be tired. You have to protect it. You have to provide support for it, and then it will work beautifully for you in spite of the challenges. You will see all the ways you are able to do better than before. The joy that I feel now is the joy like I never felt in my life. The 40s is of Goddess Katyayani. Goddess Katyayani, the Navadurgas, the 9 goddesses that protect women's lives from birth to the end of our lives. The 5th goddess is Goddess Katyayani. She is the fierce protector. She asks us to witness. She Asks us to hold our emotions as sacred, because when our emotions are sacred, then we become more intuitive. Only through feeling our emotions, we become more powerful as women. There is no escaping the emotions. That's my lesson coming here. There is no escaping. If the hand is caught in a trap, it will hurt. There is no pretending it doesn't hurt. Sitting with that pain, allowing ourselves to just go into that pain, is how we are going to find our way out. There's a saying that life is a river of fire, and the way is through it, not over it, above it, under it. No, it's through it. The next decade of menopause Is Goddess Kalaratri. Kalaratri is terrible rage, darkness, and destruction. She is going to remake us. Whoever we were till now, we still are carrying the vestigial parts of who we were as young women, as when we were young girls. In Sanskrit, we are proudha. Till the age of 55, we will be proudha, meaning a woman Who has achieved her full potential. She is no longer a young something. Turn her this way and she falls this way. Somebody influences her and she falls that way. Buy this lipstick. Oh, she's gotta go buy that lipstick. Now we are at a stage of proudha is so established. She's like, I don't care what the world thinks. I'm gonna do what I wanna do. Because I know what I want. That is the beauty of arriving at this stage, that we know our mind, we know what we want, we know who we want to hold close to, and we know who depletes our energy, what depletes our energy, how to keep that away. If we do not respect our menopausal journey, our perimenopausal journey, insomnia, that Being stuck in that Kalaratri stage is a very real possibility. The fix is very easy. It's either complete dark exposure for a week or light exposure for a week. We can heal ourselves through either of these techniques, but of course you have to be under the care of a practitioner to get back to health. You have to be under somebody. This is the coming of our second Now we are going to live for ourselves. Till now we lived for the world. Now the energy is turning, the tide is turning. We were outwardly focused, outwardly giving. Now be inwardly giving. Give yourself, give yourself that holiday in Naples. Give yourself that spa weekend. Give yourself that hike in the mountains. Give yourself that special treat. Give yourself that morning calm, that quiet, that silence. Give yourself that midnight meditation. Go on a pilgrimage. Go on a dancing trip. Go to a Shakespeare festival just because you felt like it. Don't stop yourself from doing the wonderful things for yourself, because these are the decades where you are going to collect the memories That you are going to remember when you are ready to exit this world. Okay, take good care. Lots of love. Have a wonderful rest of the day. Bye-bye. Bye.