Session transcript

Are You Listening to the Whispers of Your Body Before It Has to Scream?

with Simmi Elle · Day 4 · The Unfamiliar Feelings

Hello, and welcome to the Missing Pieces of Perimenopause Summit. My name is Simmi, and I am thrilled to be here with you. I am an Ayurvedic medicine practitioner, menopause coach, and functional medical consultant. My passion is to ensure every woman can thrive during her perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopausal journey.

I've been working with women for over 20 years, and how I differentiate myself from other menopause experts is that I like to dwell, be curious, and dig into the root cause of your symptoms. The foundation of my practice is to coach women on how to listen to the whispers of their body, so that their body never has to scream.

Unfortunately, we are programmed to wait for the scream, and then we react. By the time the body starts to scream, it's usually in a chronic state, and healing takes longer and much more effort. What would happen if you listened to the whispers of your body and made those subtle shifts along the way, so that the body never has to scream?

In my time with you today, I'm going to show you methods, techniques, and tools that you can take away with you to help you listen to those whispers of the body.

What I love to do with women is, of course, work one on one, because medicine is not one size fits all. What works for me may not work for you, especially through this menopausal journey. Our symptoms are so unique, and only we can decide how we want to heal those symptoms and how we feel when we make those subtle shifts. One supplement or one medication may work for you, while it may not work for me. So a customized, personalized approach during perimenopause is essential in order for you to thrive during your perimenopausal and postmenopausal journey.

So I'm going to start with listening to the whispers of the body. Most of us live from the neck up. We're so much in our heads that we don't take the time to listen to the body, and a lot of us don't know how to listen to the body. That's what I am here to show you.

So when our mind is full of chatter, always talking and talking and talking, what does that mean? Here are some tools for you, and take notes, because these are essential and a game changer.

If our mind is always thinking of the past, we are more prone to depression. If our mind is always thinking of the future, we are more prone to anxiety. During perimenopause, these can be heightened. Women will often feel that they're depressed, and they may also feel that they're anxious. The two of them collide. And that's because the mind is controlling you. You've forgotten about the body, so you're living from the neck up.

In order to come into the body, there's a technique called present dating and present aging, where you tell your mind today's date and your age today. That automatically brings you into the present moment. So once again, it's called present dating and present aging.

Let's do a short meditation where I'm going to ground you. That's another important technique. Grounding is essential to bring you into your body and to make sure that you are feeling safe, that you're feeling at home. There will be some positive affirmations that we say together as we come into our meditation. This is just a short and sweet little meditation using the techniques of present dating and present aging, as well as grounding.

You can lie down on the floor, you can lie down on your bed, or you can sit comfortably in a chair, whatever makes your body comfortable. Let's close our eyes and get settled in your position. You can wiggle the shoulders if you want. You can stretch first, and then softly come into stillness and just begin to breathe.

Bring your awareness to your breath. Of course, we always breathe naturally. But how do you actually breathe? Be curious about your breath.

Let's start by taking a nice deep inhalation through the nose. Inhale, and then exhale with a gentle sigh through an open mouth. Ahh. We'll do that two more times, inhaling through the nose. One last time. Inhale. That subtle exhalation with an audible sigh brings you more grounded. It brings you into your body.

Notice if you felt a little change in your breath. Perhaps your breath was a little faster before we did those three inhales and sighing exhales. Again, don't judge. Just feel and sense.

Now I want you to visualize a beautiful, 100-year-old oak tree. The roots of your oak tree start at your hips and descend all the way down through the foundation of your home, down toward the core of the earth. Your roots break through the earth's crust as they travel deeper and deeper toward the center of the earth. Visualize your roots as they travel. Then you come to the magnetic core of the earth, and you see a beautiful white pillar of light, and you wrap your roots around this white pillar.

And you say to yourself: I am grounded. I am safe. I am home. I am grounded. I am safe. I am home. I am grounded. I am safe. I am home.

Now sense what these positive affirmations feel like in your body. Again, don't judge. Just sense and feel.

Now we're going to bring ourselves into the present day and present age. Say to yourself today's date, and your age today. Today's date is... I am... years old. And one last time, say to yourself today's date, and your age.

And then you can open your eyes and come back to the room. Welcome back.

Now, how did that feel? Do you feel a softness in the breath? Perhaps a softness in your heart? Do you feel more grounded, more rooted? Do you feel like your mind all of a sudden got a little bit quieter?

These are all super important as we come into our perimenopause journey. If you're always going and doing, you're always busy, and you don't take time to come into stillness. It's only when you come into stillness that you can listen to your body.

And it doesn't have to be meditation. I personally love meditation. I meditate a few times a day, sometimes for only two minutes, but it changes everything, just like that. For me, meditation is grounding. It's rooting. It helps my busy mind come into the present moment. I use present dating and present aging to bring me back into the present moment and the present day.

I also find that meditation brings my breath back and calms my nervous system. It takes me out of my sympathetic nervous system, that place of always going and doing, and brings me into my parasympathetic system, which is that place of peace, of calm, of rest and digest. So it's really important to find that quietness, that stillness in the body, in order to listen.

Meditation is one technique you can use. Even if it's only two to five minutes, it doesn't matter. It makes a world of difference.

There's also walking meditation, for those who don't like to sit still. Walking meditation, especially in the woods or the forest, is game changing. Just walk and listen to the sounds of the birds, the trees, the wind. No headphones on, no music playing, no chatter. Just softness and listening. That's a lovely meditation as well, as we walk and listen to the whispers of the universe, and maybe even ask questions. If you're stuck and you need answers, that's a wonderful place to get your responses.

So: seated meditation, walking meditation, any place where you can find stillness so that you can listen to the whispers of your body.

There's another important way. It's called somatics. Our tissues store residue, often from trauma, and somatics and trauma work are used together to release some of the blockages, the energetic blocks, that might be held in the body.

There are many ways to practice somatics. I have a YouTube channel, so you can look there. I have a lot of practices on it. Somatics help you feel your body. You can feel where you're holding things, where things are stuck. Somatics allow you to feel the difference between the right side of your body and the left side of your body.

Why is that important? Because the right side of the body is our masculine energy. It's our yang. The left side of the body is our feminine energy. That's our yin. The right side of the body correlates to the left brain, and we know the left brain is the more analytical, more judgmental side. The right brain, which correlates to the left side of the body, the yin side, the feminine side, is much more creative and much more compassionate. And you always want to bring a balance to yin and yang, to the masculine and feminine energies.

In our society, we find that we're much more masculine. We're always taught to strive and to set goals, but we're seldom taught to surrender. I don't even know if we know how to surrender. That's the feminine essence. Coming into that feminine essence is also the ability to let go. Let go of all the doing and the going and the striving, and surrender to the universe. That's probably the hardest lesson in life, and we're not taught how to surrender.

So in perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause, there's the ability to surrender to your symptoms, and then to ask yourself, with curiosity: what are these symptoms trying to tell me?

Let me give you an example. I work with lots of women who are very much in their masculine energy. They're the type A entrepreneurs, the leaders in their world, and they seldom take time to give back to themselves. In fact, I don't think they even know how to give back to themselves. They're the ones always going and doing, striving, setting goals. They're the hamster on the wheel that keeps going around and around, and only when the body screams are they forced to jump off.

You don't want to go there, because of what that usually means. Perhaps a heart attack, maybe a stroke, maybe burnout, maybe chronic fatigue. Something that causes you to completely stop, because that's the only way you'll listen. So it's very important to know what your body is saying before it starts to scream, because that scream is the sudden chronic illness that forces you to stop.

In order to listen, somatics are a great way. There's somatic yoga, somatic meditation, and somatic therapy you can look into, and I would be happy to help guide you with that. It's a great way to listen to what your organs are saying, what your chakras are saying, what your intuition, your inner knowing, is saying. And then you make those subtle shifts so that the body doesn't have to scream. Balancing the masculine and feminine energies is essential.

Let's take an example. A lot of women suffer from thyroid issues. Often in perimenopause, all of a sudden our numbers come back and the doctor says you need to be on thyroid medication. What does that mean? The symptom is the thyroid. But what is the root cause of your thyroid issue?

This is where personalized, customized medicine has to happen. In Ayurvedic medicine, we don't treat everybody the same. It's not one size fits all. It's a customized, personalized approach to what you're going through and what your root cause is.

For some women, I have found the root cause is the throat chakra. The throat chakra is connected to the inability to speak your truth. Whatever may have happened in life, you felt that your voice wasn't heard. You felt like your voice wasn't valued. So you kept everything to yourself. You had an inability to say no. You always said yes, because that's how you were programmed. When that happens for years and years and years, the body has to scream. And in a lot of women during perimenopause, the way it screams is thyroid issues.

So if you know you're that type of woman, the woman who has difficulty saying no, who has difficulty sharing her feelings and thoughts because she thinks they're not valued, maybe that's a good place to start. Say: I acknowledge I'm this person, but I need to change. I need to say no. I need to set boundaries. I need to make sure that my voice is heard.

This is not something that happens overnight. It's not a quick fix. It's not a medicine you take that's going to change this. It's the inner work you need to do to make the shift, so that it doesn't manifest into a chronic disease that you're on medication for the rest of your life.

So that's how I work, and that's how I like to share my gifts with you for your perimenopausal journey. Listening to the whispers of your body so that your body does not have to scream.

The techniques: finding stillness, whether that's in meditation, including guided meditation. Walking in nature, in the forest with Mother Nature, really connecting with the sounds, the smells, the feelings, as you talk to the universe and ask what you need to do differently and what's going on, especially if you need some clarity and some answers. Balancing the yin and the yang, the masculine and feminine energies, using yoga or somatic work, whatever resonates with you, so you can become curious in your body about what those symptoms are trying to tell you.

So please, listen to the whispers of your body, so that your body never has to scream. It's been a pleasure to be with you, and I hope I have the opportunity to work with you in the future. Wishing you a thriving and blooming journey into perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause.