Beyond Hormone Balance: Pleasure, Purpose and Midlife Vitality with Carla Wainwright

Welcome to The Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones.

Welcome to The Balanced Body Health and Wellness Podcast. I'm Sherri Griggs with Balanced Body Health and Wellness. It is called The Balanced Body, and today we have a really exciting guest. Her name is Karla Wainwright with Karla Wainwright Coaching. And this will be very interesting because it goes very much hand in hand with everything I talk about with hormone replacement and balancing and metabolic health. But what happens when that's not enough? So Carla, our midlife alchemist, is going to talk to us about what you can do. And, and well, you know what, Carla, I'm just— you tell us about it. Tell us how you got into this. What's your story?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Sherri. So, um, yes, I call myself a midlife alchemist, and it's kind of a fun name. I mean, there's a broader, you know, there's a lot of things that I do. You know, I'm a holistic wellness coach as well as a sexual awakening facilitator. But, but the reason I call myself a midlife alchemist is, you know, back in medieval times and even before that, there was this great desire to turn base metals into gold. So to take something ordinary and make it extraordinary. And I really think that midlife is this opportunity in a woman's life to really— it's not that she's ordinary in any stretch of the imagination, but she can really step into something extraordinary. And so we have all of these pieces of ourselves that can really be transformed into, um, you know, this incredible place of thriving, of creativity, of wisdom. And so my job as the midlife alchemist is to support a woman in that transitional phase so she can really step into, yeah, the most potent version of herself in those midlife years and beyond. So the reason I got into this, um, well, so my background, I'm originally trained as a wildlife biologist. I have a master's degree in conservation biology, and I worked in that field for many years. And, and in that training, I did a lot of, um, also physiology. I did a lot of biology courses, um, health courses and all of those sorts of things. And I've always had a huge passion for health in my own life. And, you know, I worked in that field, yet at the same time, I, as a young person in my 20s, I started to go down a road of being really curious about healing my own trauma that I had experienced in my life and was not really finding any solutions kind of in the mainstream field. And so I started to explore the more esoteric traditions, of course, like yoga and tantra. And I actually really found that through those paths, I was able to heal a lot of my trauma and really, yeah, find a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. So I actually left my career as a biologist and really embarked. I had a yoga studio for 22 years. I'm trained as a homeopath and I've done all kinds of training. Wow. Around somatics and healing through the body. And then of course, sexual awakening and using the power of our sexuality and our sexual life force as a real driver in our lives, as a way to heal, but also as a way to really fuel our creativity. So I did this for many years and then hit my mid-40s and perimenopause kind of hit me like a truck, like it does for many of us. And so despite having a very healthy lifestyle, I was ticking a lot of the boxes, um, I still was struggling. And I realized that I needed to, you know, come back to my science roots in some way and just really begin to be curious from that perspective about, you know, what was happening and what could I do to support myself. And so that was really my own internal alchemy of bringing together all of these pieces from my life, which, you know, they're no accidents, of course, like everything on our path is there for a reason, but really bringing all of those things together and So now I really feel like I have this capacity in the work that I do of bridging the sacred and the scientific. So I have the background in science, I have the background in the more esoteric, in the sacred, and I really strongly feel, and I see this over and over again in the work that I do with women, that both of those aspects are needed to, one, you know, nothing heals in isolation. We are a beautiful, complex being that has so many incredible facets Uh, to ourselves. And so when we address the whole, the holistic, that's really when we see the greatest transformation possible.

Well, and, and that's the thing, you and I talked a little bit before we started, is that I really address the physical, right? That's, that's what I do in my, in my area of practice is addressing the hormone balance, physical, physiological, uh, the metabolic, right? Because we know that if our cortisol is too high, it blocks those receptors. We can't use the hormones we have, or metabolically, if we're And I remind people all the time, insulin is a hormone. So I just— I'm gonna go off to the side a little bit. I was talking to a patient yesterday and she said, why don't— what, what's the problem with the hormone replacement? What's an issue? I said, I don't know, because they don't certainly have a problem giving us insulin when we're diabetic. She goes, what do you mean? I said, insulin is a hormone.

Mm-hmm.

So it gets to be very interesting that— so why is it okay to replace some hormones or okay to help us Physically, physiologically, when we need hormones, some are okay and some are not. So I just kind of went off on a tangent there, but it had come up and a lot of people not realizing that when you talk about metabolic health, that's right there with it, just another hormone. And what you do is, is you bring in that, that sacred, that, that heart, that soul into it. Tell us a little bit more. So when I have them all balanced, And everything physically is working, but there's still a block of some sort, something holding somebody up. How do you— how does that work for someone?

So first of all, I, you know, I absolutely echo what you're saying, is that we have to take care of our metabolic health if we want to thrive as a sexual being, which doesn't necessarily mean, um, you know, sex in the, the narrow viewpoint of what it is, which is wonderful, of course, But it really is like our sexual energy is our creative life force energy, right? So that might be expressed in sex, but it might be expressed in all of the creative things we do and all the things that we, you know, envision and put forth in the world. And our metabolic health is such a key piece of that because if we don't address that, then it's like we're diminishing the capacity of that life force energy to really be available to us. But in terms of what I do, Um, in, in the more, uh, sacred piece of this is I really, um, help women, uh, attune into the wisdom of their bodies and begin to understand and listen to their bodies. And for many women, in a way that they've never had that experience before. So, you know, in our culture, uh, in Western culture, it's not something that we're taught. We're not taught as girls to listen to our body, to understand that there's womb wisdom, that there is like a deep You know, there's a deep power within ourselves to be able to hear what the body needs and then act upon it. It's like an internal compass. And so beginning to attune into that is, is part of that work. It's really where we begin. Now, some women can do that easily, but a lot of women can't. And but everybody has the capacity to do it. It's just that, you know, when we don't know how to do something, of course we have to learn, right?

You know, any skill. We don't know what we don't know.

Exactly. And so, um, everything is available to you. Your body has this wisdom. It's just waiting for you to tap into it. So we'll do a lot of different kinds of exploration of connecting to the body. Some of it is through, you know, guided practices. Some of it is through breathwork. Some of it is through pleasure practices. Pleasure is a huge piece of what I do because it really— I believe pleasure is our birthright, but women consistently choose stress over pleasure. We're hardwired to do that. There's an evolutionary biological strategy for that. If we didn't do that, we wouldn't have made it to here today. We have to pay attention to our surroundings and be attuned into potential dangers, which is why we would choose stress over pleasure. However, in a modern world where we are inundated with hundreds, if not thousands, of stressful events a day, which is not really how we evolved, right? We live in this modern context with so much stress. Um, we then create kind of this neurological wiring of just constantly defaulting to stress and not giving ourselves the capacity to step into pleasure. And of course, pleasure produces oxytocin in the body that has a beautiful cascade effect on the rest of our hormones. Like, it is so, so important. But so many women have lost the capacity to really connect with pleasure. And that can even be exacerbated in midlife because we lose some of that neurological protection from these stress hormones. So we tend to even find life more stressful. We tend to be in that kind of stress bubble more easily. So it's like, how do we pull back from that? Well, we have to use intentional practices. We have to connect with pleasure. We have to slow down. We have to find our breath. You know, there's many different things that we can do. They sound Simple, but simple, sometimes we need to remind ourselves that simple is powerful, right? Things don't have to be complicated in order to be effective.

Well, and awareness. So I was talking to a gal yesterday and we talked about, well, if I don't feel like I need to get— do something, or I'm not doing something, or I don't feel like I'm like this, then I'm being lazy, right? Because like you said, in our society and the way we're wired, We deny ourselves, especially in the care field. We take care of everyone else. I had another practitioner text me last night and said, do you ever find that you have patients that come to you with problems that they want you to fix and you haven't even fixed your own? And, and I said to her, I don't believe that you don't know how to fix your own problem. I believe that you're not taking the time. And that comes back to self-care, which I feel like falls into what you're saying when you say pleasure, self-care, taking care of yourself, enjoying your life, not feeling like you always need to be on. And like you said, it sounds simple, but it's— you have to take the time to do it.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're somebody that's not very self-aware, it's even harder. So How do you— let's just say you have somebody. So, and I'll go back when you said oxytocin, we are literally now talking about replacing oxytocin as a next step. But what we know about that hormone is it is very, very finicky. If everything else is not balanced, it doesn't work.

Mm-hmm.

But that goes back to natural would be better. Because for you to be able to produce your own oxytocin through pleasure is a much better thing. Because when I hear you speak, I also hear in the background lowering cortisol, lowering cortisol. And in my world, we know that cortisol sits on the receptors and blocks your body's ability to use the other hormones that you have floating around in your blood. And You can do your scientific numbers and the numbers may come out— well, testosterone's the big one, right? That gives us our ability, I say, to conquer the world, our ability to not be so fatigued, to feel like, I got this, I can do this. As a woman, we lose that. We lose our testosterone. As one patient said, before, I'd wake up and go, yeah, great, I gotta get up. She says, now I wake up and go, all right, what are we going to do today? That was the difference between replacing her testosterone. And when you talk about as we get older and the stress, our progesterone is our anti-anxiety. And so we get all of these symptoms, and even if we fix them, the chemistry— sometimes our brains still aren't there. And getting— so you have a You have the woman that comes to you that's been on all the time, high-stress job, raising family, doing all of these things, and now you're trying to teach her how to discover, to find her pleasure again, to breathe. How does— what does that look like?

So, well, there's 2 pieces. So of course there's what happens in a session, which is guided, and then, you know, she really has that container of support and and doesn't have to necessarily, you know, she doesn't have to think of anything except just allowing herself to be in that moment. So being guided through that, and the, the power of that is it gives her the experience, sometimes often for the first time, of feeling things in a new way that then creates that curiosity and desire to, oh, maybe I would like a little bit more of that. Or maybe starting to connect with some of the wounded pieces of herself that are maybe funneling into not so great behaviors, but she can actually have the agency to be able to support those pieces within herself. So instead of outsourcing her power, bringing it back to herself and really supporting herself within herself. And then there's the other piece of the homework. I'm sure you give your clients that too, right? So what are things that you can do consistently to really start to rewire the brain, create those new neural pathways that over time are going to be reinforced towards looking for positive oxytocin-rich experiences, pleasure experiences. So one of the things that I, you know, is kind of the basic homework for everyone, and your listeners can take this on as well, is to ensure you have a minimum of 5 pleasurable experiences a day, one attached to each sense. So what is something What is something you look at that just brings you joy? And just be with it for even just 30 seconds. What is something you hear? What can you touch that just feels really good? Or maybe it's like warm water from the shower just over you and just letting yourself immerse in that. What smells wonderful? What tastes incredible? And just be with it. We do these things hundreds of times a day, right?

Mm-hmm.

But we don't pay attention because we have such distracted minds. We're constantly pinging from one thing to the other and we're not present. So this invites the quality of presence. And when you're in that place of presence, you're really allowing yourself to immerse into that experience. You're welcoming the, you know, oxytocin in, you're lowering cortisol. All of these wonderful things happen in the body and you're creating that new neurological wiring, which is going to invite you to seek more of those experiences.

Wow. Well, you've definitely given me something to do now. And when you're saying that, I'm like, What makes me smile? My little Bella, my clinic greeter, you know, and what smells good? What do you feel? Those, and thinking about that, you're right, we do experience those every day, but do we pay any attention? The old stop and smell the roses.

Yeah, it's exactly that.

Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I suppose just, and again, like you said, it sounds simple. I'm like, oh, these just little simple things. That we don't do. So, as you— do you see, as people are doing these things and they're doing their homework and they're moving forward, what type of results, positive things, do you see? What comes of these simple things when people start to grow?

Well, when a woman starts to really attune into that wisdom and and the creative life force in her body, she starts to get clearer about all kinds of things in her life, the things that work and the things that don't work. I mean, that's one of the gifts of midlife is we have this capacity for more clarity and to start to shed all of the roles, responsibilities, and things that we don't necessarily wanna do, but maybe we did earlier in our lives because we would be people pleasing, we would be doing, they just were expected of us. And she really feels empowered to take that to the next step. So that is a beautiful becoming because in that clarity, she can start to mold and create the life that she wants to with a place of, yeah, more empowerment, more agency. And the ripple that happens from that is quite phenomenal. So she just may start to have the confidence to do things in her life that she never really had considered before. Her relationships change. Usually for the better. You get rid of the relationships you don't necessarily want, um, that aren't serving you, aren't nourishing you, and you really, um, are able to nourish the ones that are really supportive. Her sex life gets better, right? So there's, you know, a huge myth that once a woman reaches menopause, you know, it's all kind of downhill from there. There's so many women, you know, 60, 70, 80, who are having the best sex of their lives. And it's because they attune into their embodiment and they get really clear about what they want and they ask for what they want. So these are all these incredible ripple effects that can happen when a woman just really steps into that place of, you know, the, the Tao is called the second spring. So the second spring is this time where instead of a woman losing her, her, um, her sexual power through menstruation, it gets channeled back up into the heart and it's available to her to use in whatever way her heart desires, right? So this is really what happens, is the capacity to fully embrace the second spring.

I bet that can really shake up some relationships.

It can, it can. You know, I love to— so Esther Perel, who many people will know, she's a very well-known psychotherapist, she's wonderful. She talks about how we'll have, you know, 2 to 3 major relationships in our life. And often that can be with the same person, right? So it can shake up a relationship, but it often can shake it up for the better. You know, it really can if the partner is willing to kind of navigate and, you know, explore what that new version of a relationship can look like. But I think anything's possible.

So your partner has to be able to change with you as you're changing.

Yes, absolutely. And that can be challenging in long-term relationships because we can kind of get stuck into ways of being and routines. But, you know, anything is possible. If, if there's a foundation of, you know, love there, I think really anything's possible and relationships can transform into something even better.

Yeah, because as we age and we have different times in our lives when people are having children and children are growing up and leaving, and, and there is a lot of change that takes place.

Yeah.

And then if a woman is finding herself because maybe her whole life has been about everyone else Then that's just another change. So I'm gonna put you on the spot. Okay, I do this to Rapina too. I don't warn people, but can you think of a story of somebody that you worked with that was— that comes to mind that made an amazing change? And what happened? And what did that look like?

Hmm, okay, let me think for a moment. Um, yes. So, uh, you know, I'm thinking about, um, well, in this case, a woman who was in, was in a relationship, was married, and, um, was not happy. Um, and really, uh, you know, just was struggling. Like, her kids had grown up and she just was kind of in a place of feeling like she'd lost herself. And really not sure, you know, what what was next for her. Like she didn't really feel like she had an identity. She was also really struggling just with brain fog and her mood, and you know, a lot of the symptoms that a lot of women in midlife struggle with. And so, like you, we really very much addressed the metabolic piece and supporting her body so that she has like that baseline to be able to access that creative life force energy. So spending time around that and then really helping her attune into, you know, her desire function. Like, what is it in this phase? If you can imagine that she's gone, you know, through her life and now she's in the chrysalis, and it's like, what is the phase that you want to emerge into as the butterfly? And it was a lot of deep exploration. We had to really go into some old trauma. We had to go into, you know, so many of us have to take that heroine's journey of going and going into the depths. I mean, the analogy of the butterfly is so powerful because so many of us have to do this. We have to go into the goo, right? The caterpillar goes into the chrysalis, it dissolves completely, but there are those imaginal cells which are, you know, the essence that then help transform into this beautiful butterfly. And so this was the case with this this person, this woman, that, you know, she really did have to go into that heroine's journey of stripping off all of the, the beliefs, all of the things that she thought defined her, and really getting clear on what it was that she wanted. And so, you know, she stepped through that and she did leave her marriage. That does happen. But I think that was You know, the best decision. You know, she said that was the best decision for her, and she's just in a place now of thriving. She feels good in her body. She feels strong. She feels able to, yeah, really take the direction that she wants to take to be able to live life in the fullest way possible.

So, so probably in that case, her husband wasn't willing to go through that change with her.

Yes, yes. And you know, some, some relationships just do have an expiry date. You know, most divorces between 45 and 55 are initiated by women.

Yeah, yeah. So because they're doing— they're changing, they're, they're finding their voice, they're— yeah, yeah, they're realizing.

Yeah, yeah. And I, and, and I think that's okay, right? You know, that's— it's really okay. Sometimes a relationship has run its course and then And, you know, it's— you say goodbye and you're on to whatever the universe provides you from there.

Right. So, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and to work with you, Carla, how do they find you? Great.

So, the first thing I recommend is I have a free gift. It's called the Vibrancy Guide, and it has 5 tips, easily accessible, doable in your life for women to feel more energy and connect to their pleasure potential once again. So, it definitely taps into some of the stuff we were talking about, uh, today. So you just go to vibrancyreset.com and you can download that for free, and that also takes you to my website. So vibrancyreset.com. You can find me on Instagram at Carla Wainwright. Um, and, um, yeah, I love hearing from women, uh, and just hearing their stories and really helping women step into the— yeah, their greatest and fullest potential in midlife. and beyond.

Well, this was super exciting, Carla. I, yeah, I listening to you and thinking myself about some of the things that I have done in my life. And the joke would always be my friend and I would take a warm trip every year. We'd go on a cruise, we'd go somewhere. And I would find about the first 2 days were very painful. And I mean that because I had to sit quietly. I wasn't constantly on the go. There weren't things happening. But I would almost always come back and make a big decision.

Mm-hmm.

So I told my husband now, well, I came back and made a big decision and you're still in my life.

I love it.

That wasn't always the case for relationships, right? Yeah, come back and I'd have the time to sit and, and, and, you know, feel. And that's why it was so painful for the first 2 days because I had to feel all these emotions. That have been pushed down for so long as I was on go, go, go all the time, not listening, not feeling. And what you're saying is very empowering to know that if somebody hears themselves in this, if they recognize that they're not taking the time to experience pleasure, they're not taking the time to find out who they are, listen to themselves, or actually live in the moment, that they can reach you. And they can go get their vibrancy guide, at least as a start, and, and then reach out to you and connect with you for some assistance to do that. I think that's just very, very powerful, very empowering. And I always tell the listeners, if you need to reach me, I'm balancedbodymedical.com. I do free discovery calls so we can talk to find out if it's a good fit. I always love to hear what what's happened. I guess I shouldn't say always love to hear it because I was very upset this week about a woman that the medical assistant had failed miserably. It was very very sad and angering. But on that note, you can also call 402-807-5333. I can also do telehealth or internet just like just like what Carla does. But otherwise. If you do need some testosterone, you have to see me once a year in Omaha, Nebraska. It's the law. So thank you for being with us today, Carla. This has really been good. I really appreciate it. Thank you. It was enjoyable.

Yes, thank you, Sherri. It's, it's really actually been a great pleasure to be here. Thank you.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical Podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherri, go ahead and look for the website balancedbodymedical.com. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherri at her office, you can find her at 10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza. Thank you.