Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to
another episode of the Tao of
Humaning, where we explore thephysical, energetic, emotional,
and spiritual aspects of beinghuman together.
I'm your host, Dr.
Christine, and I'm so thrilledthat you've decided to join me
for today's conversation.
In today's episode, we're goingto be talking about menopause
(00:24):
and how that is viewed throughthe lens of traditional Chinese
medicine.
A little caveat before we getinto it, this is one of my
favorite topics to discuss.
And because of that, I couldeasily talk for days.
So bear with me as I attempt tobreak this into a bird's eye
(00:46):
view for us to orient ourselvesin perhaps a new way at looking
at menopause.
Now, we've spent a couple ofweeks, last two episodes.
If you have listened, if you'vebeen listening in, we've been
talking about puberty,postpartum, perimenopause, and
these bigger transitional timesin Chinese medicine that we call
(01:11):
the gates of life.
And menopause is that time aftera woman has gone up to the
threshold and crossed over intothat new space.
And this is significant becausein Chinese medicine, this time
is actually seen as a newbeginning.
(01:34):
And I love that so much.
I remember so distinctly, I wasthinking of what I wanted to
talk about in today's episode.
And I started thinking about,you know, when I was growing up
and what were my stories that Ihad made around menopause.
And so as young women, we watchour moms, right, go through
(01:55):
these things.
I was thinking of my mom andwatching her in the late 90s,
early 2000s, probably goingthrough into menopause.
And gosh, what a horrible timeshe had.
Such a hard time.
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Close to zero, if not zero,conversation happening around
that topic when she was goingthrough this.
And, you know, probably I thinkit felt to her like there were
no supports for her to gothrough that or to have it feel
easier or even perhapsinspirational, which is really
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how Chinese medicine looks atthis time in a woman's life, is
so different.
Um, I remember sitting in mymaster's program in my
gynecology class, and I waslistening to this just
incredibly wise doctor fromChina share her wisdom, and she
(03:02):
started talking about menopause,and she was sharing that in
Chinese medicine it is calledthe second spring.
And I remember sitting there andit was such a profound moment
for me, like an aha moment in mytraining where I was like, oh,
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there were a lot of thosemoments of like, oh, this is
really a different lens to lookat life.
The fact that they callmenopause a second spring gives
so much context.
So if we put on our five-elementhat, right, we know that spring
(03:44):
is associated with the elementof wood, which is associated
with an increase in energy.
It's not a decrease in energy,it is a time of new beginning,
right?
It's spring, it's when thoselittle seedlings burst through
the soil and begin to blossom,right?
(04:05):
There's flowers everywhere.
This is being recorded duringspringtime, so it's also a very
tangible moment for me as I talkabout it.
Cause it's like, oh, thewildflowers are everywhere.
Like everything is just startingto open and bloom fresh after
having been in kind of thishibernation stage of winter,
right?
(04:25):
So this is the lens that I wassitting there learning about,
and I remember it so distinctlyjust being like, wow, like what
a gift of a reframe for womenwho, you know, at the time, that
was probably 2025 that I wasstarting to learn these things.
(04:46):
I mean 20, 2005, no, 2025.
Um 2005.
And I just remember thinkingabout my mom and her friends,
and wow, just what a hard timethey had going through this
transformation.
And now, you know, 20 yearslater, there's so much
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conversation happening aboutmenopause out in the world.
I get really excited about thatalso, because I think it's
really important for women tounderstand physiologically
what's happening in theirbodies.
And also with that, what are thesupports that are available?
Right.
And we talk about that a littlebit in the perimenopause too.
(05:30):
It's it's really actuallysometimes the conversation in
clinic right now that I'm havingwith patients is helping to
guide women actually from asense of overwhelm because
there's so much information thatthey feel a sense of, oh,
(05:51):
because this was recommended, Ishould be doing this.
So it becomes like a should, ashoulding on themselves and uh,
you know, unmanageable to-dolist kind of a thing of like,
oh, I have to be, you know,lifting heavy things and I have
to be counting my fiber, and Ihave to be taking HRT and I have
(06:12):
to be, you know, exploring a GLPone, or I have to be doing
herbs, or I have to be doingacupuncture, I have to be doing
um all, you know, just the listgoes on and on and on and on.
And they're all great.
That's the thing.
It's like they could all begreat.
And it's really part of theconversations I'm having these
days is helping women to siftthrough all of the information
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and then be able to look, okay,these are like a smorgasbord of
options, right?
And now we want to take it backinto Chinese medicine lens,
which is my home base, and seelike what's the pattern that's
showing up for this particularwoman.
And then what is her what's hercontext?
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Like, what is she, what are hergoals, what are her, you know,
things that are gonna beactually applicable and doable
in her real life, right?
Like if she's not gonna go liftheavyweights at the gym three
days a week or four days a week,you know, does she is that a
prior, you know, just findingwhat's gonna work for her.
(07:20):
And I love being able to havethat frame too, to help it feel
less overwhelming and moremanageable because then it's
like it's it swung a bit fromlike there's no information to
there's so much information, andthen being able to kind of pivot
back to center and be like,okay, what's the information
(07:42):
that's gonna be most useful forme?
Anyway, I digress.
I am clearly a fan of using theresources, use what is gonna
light you up, and you know,being okay exploring, I think is
really important, especially inthose transformational windows,
right?
And perimenopause being a bigone.
And then today looking at, youknow, what what is the
(08:07):
orientation and the like way oflooking at menopause.
So once a woman goes throughthat threshold, it really is
it's interesting because I don'twant to get too much into the
theory of like yin and yang inthe body, but I think actually a
(08:28):
little bit might be helpful tounderstand here.
So when I think about a woman inher childbearing years, I think
about one of the things I thinkabout is there's an abundance of
yin.
Yin tends to be the moredominant feminine um
(08:49):
manifestation, okay?
And it tends to be morequiescent, it tends to be more
connective, and it tends to bemore cyclical in that we have a
monthly rhythm that we fall intothat's like okay, menstrual
cycle, follicular phase,ovulation, and then a luteal
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phase, and then menstrual cycle,right?
And we go like cycling througheach month, right?
Versus what we think of astraditional male energy or more
masculine energy, tends to havemore of what we call young.
And they're more like honestly,it's more like the sun and the
(09:32):
moon.
If we're looking to have kind ofa big picture analogy, so I'd
say analysis, but that's notwhat we're doing.
If we're looking at a bigpicture analogy of men and
women, okay, women more mirrorthe moon because we have these
cycles, right?
And we do it mirrors like thefull moon, mimics a woman's
(09:56):
energy when she's at ovulation.
It's like full brightness, goingto do all the things like really
magnetic, versus when a woman'son her menstrual cycle is more
like a new moon, and that's morequiet.
The energy has gone like deep,it's more winter time kind of
energy.
It's very natural for women toebb and flow in these longer
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cycles of 28 days.
Okay, versus the masculine orthe male yang energy is a
24-hour cycle.
They still have the ebbs andflows, but they do the same ebb
and flow in a 24-hour cycle,whereas women will go through,
you know, longer stretchesdepending on when they're
(10:37):
ovulating and all of that.
Okay.
So men are more like the sun.
Energetically, in terms of likewhat they're gonna find easiest
to tap into, um, the masculineyang is gonna be more
comfortable with sustainedenergy that is consistent, like
(11:01):
consistently radiant, right?
Like the sun is just shining allof the time.
That doesn't ebb and flow in thesame way that the moon does,
right?
At least from our experience onEarth.
Um, what happens if we're usingthis analogy?
So when a woman goes throughinto menopause, she becomes more
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young.
And there is less of that yinavailable, and that's not that
you know, that's where we seelike the hot flashes and the
night sweats and theirritability and some of those
like agitation kind of symptomsthat women will experience
during that time.
It's because of that yin that'sdeclining.
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So there is a decline in thesense of obviously the hormone
depleting, right, or comingdown.
It's not a decline in thewoman's vibrancy, right?
Because the yang actually comesup more.
So even I remember looking atstudies, it was years ago, but
looking at studies on umintermittent fasting, for
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example, and they were showingall of these benefits for you
know people doing fasting, allof these cellular benefits and
regenerate regenerativeloveliness things.
But the research was being doneon either men or postmenopausal
women.
And for cycling women, that's adifferent story.
(12:29):
A lot of times, more consistentnourishment throughout the day
is um more beneficial to herneeds overall.
However, when a woman is inmenopause, she has more
sustained yang.
So she's not, we look at it asum during the menstruating
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years, a woman is losing energyor losing jing every month when
she has her menstrual cycle.
When that stops, she's actuallyable to hold on to that energy
in a way that she hasn't beenable to since she was really
young before she startedcycling.
And it's new, right?
We talked about this as anemergence of this new identity,
(13:16):
right?
This new ultimately a new rolein the community, right?
Working towards being in thatelder role, being in that wise
woman role.
And in traditional Chinesemedicine, that is incredibly
revered and treasured.
And it is this time in a woman'slife when there is more yang
(13:42):
available to her than there wasbefore.
And she's actually able to holdher energy in a new way.
And I think we see this inmenopausal women, especially now
that women are I'm reallycurious to see how this plays
out because women are moreeducated now about perimenopause
and menopause.
(14:03):
And with that, they're becomingmore supported.
And my suspicion is that on theother side, there's gonna be
more radiant, fierce, amazing,wise women.
And I think a key part of thatis gonna be in remembering that
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that is the the next evolution,right?
The the goal isn't actually tomaintain maidenhood, right?
Or the younger, reproductivepart of ourselves, right?
The goal is actually to tobecome the most radiant, wise
(14:44):
woman that we can become, right?
And that it sometimes feels canfeel a little bit skewed if
you're on social media orhaving, you know, just in
conversations right now, it canfeel a little bit like, oh, like
everyone's trying to be moreyouthful, and there's like a
(15:04):
holding on to like, oh, I wantto be, I want to keep how I was
before for as long as possibleand like stretch out this
transformation, right?
It's not it's not necessarilybad to want to do that.
I think it's very human to wantto do that, actually, because
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that's what we know, right?
So of course, like, oh, but Ilike that part of me, so I want
to like hang on to this side.
I don't know what's over there.
Maybe I don't like that part,right?
We're gonna trust the process.
And we're gonna trust that thereis this just radiant, fierce,
remarkably wise woman on theother side, right?
(15:48):
When we walk through thatthreshold into menopause, it is
supposed to feel different andpartly because we have a
different energetic.
I'm trying to think of the rightwords here.
Um clearly not using a script,um, but a different energetic of
(16:10):
availability is what's coming tomind.
It's a different frequency thatwe can hold.
And it has because it has lessof the fluctuating up and down,
like over this broad span of amonth, right?
Women are able to hold more ofthat sun energy, more of that
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young.
So there is, and you see this insome women, they are menopausal
and they are direct, they'refocused, they are energized,
they are doing their thing, andthey are just really passionate
and alive.
And that's what I want women toremember is like on the other
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side of this, it's like I don'tI don't want everyone to be
moving through perimenopause,like grasping at the past of
like, oh, I want to hold on tothat pre-perimenopause me.
Right?
She was great, she was great,and this version is great, and
the next version is gonna bespectacular.
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So we could just hold that spaceof like, okay, we're gonna trust
the process, and that's why Italk to women too.
A lot of times they get reallystuck in this, like, oh, like
almost feeling bad if theychoose HRT, and maybe that's
because I see a lot more of likethe holistic, like naturally
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minded women.
And it's um, I remind them, youknow, taking uh hormone
replacement therapy as a supportisn't gonna stop this process
from happening.
You're still gonna go throughand get to menopause.
You know what I mean?
It doesn't it's not as black andwhite as sometimes our minds
(18:00):
want our human brain wants it tobe, like it's this or it's that.
It's usually something in themiddle.
So if that's been on your mindat all, have no fear.
Menopause, you know, it's justlike birth in the sense that
like when you're pregnant,there's going to be a birth at
the end of it, right?
Like nature has designed it thatway.
(18:21):
God willing, that's what will bethe end, right?
Same with getting throughperimenopause into menopause.
It's gonna be, it's gonnahappen.
And most likely the other sidemight be even better than we can
imagine.
And I love that word pronoia,right?
Which is the opposite ofparanoia.
It's that pronoia, it's theassuming that the world, the
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universe is conspiring in ourfavor, right?
It's it's practicing flexingthat muscle of like, what if
this is even better than Iimagine?
Like, I wonder what that wouldfeel like.
Yeah.
Menopause can be like that.
And that doesn't mean that itwon't be hard or that you don't
(19:07):
do any supports along the way,whatever that looks like for
you, but keeping that idea ofmenopause as a really gift, like
a just a gift of a time in awoman's life, like hopefully we
all uh everyone listening heregets to experience that, right?
And yeah, maybe spending alittle bit of time wondering how
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amazing that side of ourselvescould be that we haven't
experienced yet, right?
Like, what would a more youngcontaining version of myself be
like?
What would she how would shewalk in a room?
How would she hold space?
How would she haveconversations?
(19:57):
And yeah, I think maybe part ofwhat I wanted to share today was
was simply that idea of it couldbe a second spring.
It could be something that's anew beginning and that has a lot
of vibrancy and it has, youknow, it maybe it will feel like
(20:19):
sunshine.
Okay, we're gonna talk aboutthis more another time.
But for today, let that sink in.
I wonder what might be possible.
I wonder what how cool my secondspring could be.
And if you are enjoying theseconversations, give a follow,
subscribe, leave me a comment,send me a message.
(20:40):
I see them all, and they meanthe world.
I look forward to chatting withyou next time.