WiseWomanhood School

Supporting Women - Body, Mind, & Soul

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Perimenopause- the Autumn Season of Women’s Lives

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The Autumn season has much in common with perimenopause. It’s a transitional season between the fertile summer and the winter when energies go more inward. Some days may be more summer-like, then some are cooler and windier. Dryness increases. It is unpredictable so one must prepare for any weather, with layers and perhaps an umbrella.

Just as Autumn is different in different climates, so does perimenopause vary according to the doshic condition of the woman. And it isn’t always easy to tell, at first, whether Autumn is truly here or it’s a cooler spell of late summer. Same with perimenopause – much must be taken into account.

One view of the menopausal transition, along with all the seasons of a woman’s life, is as a physical opportunity for initiation. Through conscious work with challenges presented a woman may increase her wisdom and power. So beyond the purely physical, mental and emotional must be addressed. A calm clear mind, sattwa, is open to the novelty of a new phase and can navigate more easily.

The Wisdom Goddess who associates with the unknown of the perimenopause is Bagalamukhi. She is know as the paralyser, just as the unknown of perimenopause can sometimes paralyze a woman. Bagalamukhi’s power is to stop us, so we can evaluate our past, and clearly see how we want to live in the future. We are forced inward, stopping outward activities temporarily to be still and contemplate. Embracing this initiation can help is along.

Comparing typical hormone changes
pre-menopause v perimenopause

As this illustration shows – perimenopause is highly changeable. Therefore, a remedy that helps symptoms for one month may not work the next! Confusion can reign in this unknown territory.

However there are many physical and emotional helps through this, especially when keyed to an individual woman’s body. When she is conscious of how to observe her body, she can learn to suit supports to her needs more skillfully.

If you are interested in learning more about Perimenopause, consider the new live zoom class this fall I’m teaching through WiseWomanhood – Perimenopause with Ayurveda. Gain more skill for yourself &/or your clients for helping smooth the path of perimenopause.

Loving Kindness Meditation

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At the recent NAMA conference I loved the workshop, Role of Ojas in Building A Healthy Family from Birth to Old Age. It reminded me of the importance of ojas. And one speaker suggested a good way to increase ojas is through Loving Kindness Meditation.

This form of the Loving Kindness Meditation is what I use: I sit for meditation, focusing on the love I feel towards a person or deity. When this feeling is firmly established, I let go of the object and allow the love to be inward, filling my whole body and aura as I inhale and radiating outward from my heart like moonlight, as I exhale. This inborn love never is depleted.

Try it! You may find it renewing and also ojas increasing.

On Being Sick

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Weakened and recovering from hip replacement surgery, I have become (temporary) host for some kind of virus.

Tell-tale symptoms slowly unfolded, so slowly that I missed them as I focused on getting my repaired leg reintegrated and detoxed from the necessary drugs involved. Scratchy throat. Feeling feverish. Low appetite. Dry cough.  At first, I thought it was a resurgence of acid reflux, which could have similar symptoms, without the feverishness. I took some herbs to loosen the cough – grindelia with usnea and red root, a tincture of Colorado herbs that I’d made up myself. It worked, stimulating mucus production in this vata body living in a vata climate. For awhile the cough was worse.  I got some Serious Cough tincture by WishGarden Herbs, which has helped, along with sitopaladi. Eucalyptus essential oil,nasal rinses and heat to my sinuses to loosened them up. Herb teas and zinc lozenges helped with the tender throat.

Uncertainty of What It Is

Well, I took a covid test which was negative, but later realized that I’d rinsed my nose that morning so may have reduced the viral load. It feels like a bad cold, except in the early days of it, food tasted off for me. Not noticing it any longer, but also not eating a wide variety.  Eating rice and beans mainly, with some cooked vegetables.

Recovering Body and Mind

Day by day I’m becoming more myself, less a virus factory. Frustrated to have spent time with surgery recovery and then be isolated and low energy again. Sticking to my meditation practice and practicing bathing my body & mind with loving kindness helps.

I noticed how difficult it is to be a practitioner for myself when I’m sick. It’s a rare occurrence, without well practiced protocols for myself. Time to re-establish a relationship with another practitioner to depend on when needed. 

How about you? Who helps you remember how to take care of yourself when you are deep in sickness brain?

The Power of Prayer

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If meditation is opening to the highest power, then prayer is the speaking through that opening–  with praise, requests and thanksgiving.  We connect and invoke the power of creation to bring forth goodness into the world.  The highest prayer is for Divine Will to unfold through us.  Our ishta deva or chosen deity could be named or unnamed, Mother Nature or Jehovah, Krishna or the Great Spirit.  For me these are all names for the same Power & Love, just as we are all separate impulses of the same Oneness. Maybe I am a bit like the character in “The Life of Pi” who worships as a Muslim, Hindu & Christian with equal fervor and belief, even though his various teachers all saw it as impossible and improper to do so.

I remember praying as a child before I went to sleep each night:  “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.”  It was a little scary to me to contemplate that I might die before I wake every night just before sleeping.  I have amended that prayer over the years—“Now I lay me down to sleep, I ask you Mother, grant me peace.  Fold me to your loving breast and nourish me with healing rest.”

Lutheran heritage

As I grew I learned the prayers of my Lutheran heritage—my favorite was the Lord’s Prayer: 

 “Our Father Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory Forever & Ever.  Amen.”

Shifting faith

Then as my matrix of faith shifted from God the Father to God the Mother I learned to invoke the Goddess in ritual, but there wasn’t much emphasis on prayer.   

When I began the path of Siddha Yoga, meditation, chanting and selfless service became important spiritual practices to feed my soul.  But prayer was not a practice we were taught per se.

Ayurvedic studies included vedic mantras, the invoking of divine power through sacred Sanskrit syllables.  It is prayer in a very pure form. Once I was treating a woman with a painful tailbone, hurt over a month before in a fall from her horse.  Even her experienced chiropractor husband couldn’t replace it.  I was inspired to chant the Sanskrit healing mantra

 “Om–Tryambakam Yajamahe, Sugandhim Pusti Vardanam, Urva Rukamiva Bandhanan, Myrtyor Mukshiya Mamritat”. This mantra protects as well as heals.  It calls upon Lord Shiva, who was the first to utter it to transmute poison he had swallowed to save the world.   In ayurveda school we had chanted this mantra thousands of times and it’s also part of the Siddha Yoga tradition in the ancient vedic Rudrum chant, so I was empowered to use it. As I gave her reiki, holding my hand gently over her tailbone, I chanted.  Suddenly I felt the tailbone move of its own volition.  She reported that it felt better and that the pain was gone from then on.

In giving Reiki we invoke healing energy to course through us, asking that it bring the highest possible good to both the receiver and the practitioner. It is a prayer in action.

Maya Healing

Studying Maya Healing work with Rosita Arvigo and Miss Beatrice Waight made prayer more specific & essential to my healing work.  Miss Beatrice taught me to pray again, as I had as a child, “with all my heart, with all my heart”. My blessings for those I cared for became more focused through prayer, using words to bring it into form.  

Miss Beatrice taught me to pray to Archangel Rafael, the patron saint of healers, happy marriages, and casting out of demons. As taught by Rosita & Miss Beatrice, I always pray for my clients and students and myself, to bring the highest good to us all. I invoke many faces of God, which I see as just different energies or languages which are accessible to different people at different times, asking the Higher Power to heal through me and guide me.

“In the name of the Father, the Mother & the Holy Child, the Nine Mayan Spirits, Shri Krishna, Jesus my Christ, and Archangel Rafael

I am the one, calling upon you, asking you to heal ____________, of her physical & spiritual disease.

I ask you this with all my heart, with all my heart, and I ask that the spirit of the rose assist with this healing.”

While at Cozumel, the island of Maya women’s spirituality, I got to attend to praying at the Temple of Ix Chel, goddess of the moon, She who lives in Sacred Waters, fertility and healing goddess, goddess of weaving. An iguana did a fertility dance for me at one temple—whether to entice me or scare me away from her eggs I’m not sure.   We shared the traditional prayer of the Primicia ceremony with all the participants in the Maya Abdominal Massage conference there at the central temple plaza. That night we had a sudden rain—an indication she received our prayers.   The next day we did the full ceremony and buried our offerings in the sand at the beach. Then we did a healing spiritual bath with flowers in the ocean waves.  We played and splashed in Her Sacred Waters – a prayer of laughter.

A few days later I was lucky enough to return to the temple with my friend, Samantha, & her teenaged daughter.  Samantha had been told the best place to make offering to Ix Chel, so we went there to offer our personal prayers.  When we got to the small pyramid, we found it guarded by two very large iguanas who were about half way up the temple—it was intimidating to look up at them, especially since it was the fierce time of nesting.  We started climbing up and the one closest to us went inside the rocks of the temple.  When we asked if we could go up further we received a “no” , so we did our prayers where we were, sang a song, and then threw our offerings up to the top of the temple.  A few minutes after we descended, both of us felt the answering wetness of a few drops of Her sacred rain, telling us she had again received our prayers & offerings.  Samantha’s prayers for pregnancy were soon answered.

Responding with Prayer

Recently I read the book “Illuminata” by Marianne Williamson.  In it she gives examples of prayers for many situations and talks about their use throughout our lives. I’ve been finding that praying more often, extemporaneously, really has been very helpful.  I was inspired to pray for guidance when my teenaged daughter came home very late after her curfew, in a state that mothers don’t want to see their daughters.  It helped me avoid taking it personally, getting overly emotional and allowed me to focus on her problem, rather than on an emotional reaction on my part.  I believe that this helped her learn rather than just react too.

I hope you will try praying more freely in your life.  Let me know how it works for you.  Prayer is a way to relate more personally to God as we know God, to give thanks, ask for help for ourselves and others, and to bless.  With prayer we acknowledge that we are children of God/dess and that God/dess wants the best for us, just as parents do, even if we ourselves don’t know what is best.

Pratyahara – developing inner awareness

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Pratyahara is one of the Eight Limbs of Yoga from the Yoga Sutras. It is the linchpin between working with the outer physical world and going to the more inner, subtle senses. This is relevant to both Ayurveda and Shamanism.

For Ayurveda, it works at awakening to the Atman, the Highest Self.  This is the source of Truth, Light, and Love.  It supports a sattvic mind, leading to better lifestyle choices.

For Shamanism, developing our inner senses allows us to sense the subtle Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds. This allows us to bring more information back to this world.

The first steps to Pratyahara involve learning how to properly deal with relationships. These are the first limb – the Yamas and Niyamas.

Yamas

Yamas focus on our behavior and thoughts towards others.

  1. Ahimsa is non-harming, non-violence. It is being loving and compassionate.
  2. Satya is truthfulness and honesty.
  3. Astya is non-stealing.  We develop healthy interchange with others. This means not just avoiding thievery, but also avoiding being a taker or user without giving back somehow.
  4. Bramacharya is moderation of the outer senses.  This means controlling your sensual cravings and addictions.
  5. Aparigraha is non-hoarding. We avoid unnecessary materialism and selfishness around sharing our time and energy with the world.

Niyamas

Niyamas help us learn to maintain a positive environment and develop self-discipline and inner strength.

  1. Saucha is purity and cleanliness. This involves physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.
  2. Santosa is contentment.  Learning to accept and enjoy what is now.
  3. Tapas is heat or fire of practice. Using our best efforts even when we don’t want to develops the discipline needed for deep inner work.
  4. Svadhyaya is self study. We contemplate ourselves– mind and body – to find our own truths.
  5. Ishvara Pranidhana is surrender to Higher Self. We may surrender to Nature, a personal god or the higher self as spiritual practice.

Asana

Asana is another limb of yoga.  As a spiritual practice it is more than poses.  It liberally means “to sit calmly.” Through asana we become aware of our bodies, emotions, and minds. We become healthy, balanced, calm and disciplined enough for further inner work.  Prana – the life energy- can where we put our attention. Asana helps us become aware of our whole body. It also releases stuck areas that inhibit the flow of prana.

Pranayama

Pranayama is meant to allow prana to circulate freely through our body-emotion-mind- spirit system. It is opening up to allow the flow to happen. Being able to sit (or live) calmly and allow our prana to nourish every cell, give us the energy and safety to move on to pratyahara.

Pratyahara

Pratyahara can happen when the prana flows. We need to be in a safe place in the external world. Then we can practice opening up and strengthening our internal sense organs.  Next blog, we’ll delve more into the practice.

I highly recommend the Pratyahara class by Dr Claudia Welch and Dr Robert Svoboda

Part 2 will delve into more about developing Pratyahara

Embrace the Sun Light

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There is no better time to become aware of the importance of Sun light to our lives. Now that the Winter Solstice has passed, we in the Northern Hemisphere are leaning more and more towards the Sun. This life-giving star of our Solar System gives us our light, gives us our warmth, and feeds all living beings. It’s no wonder that our ancestors carefully watched and worshiped the Sun! Science too shows us the importance of the Sun to maintain our health with Vitamin D.

Roles of Vitamin D

Our individual bodies can use the sun’s light to create Vitamin D. It’s now considered more of a steroid hormone in its actions within our metabolism than a vitamin. Vitamin D has multiple roles in the body, helping to:

  • Maintain the health of bones and teeth
  • Support the health of the immune system, brain and nervous system
  • Regulate insulin levels and aid diabetes management
  • Support lung function and cardiovascular health
  • Influence the expression of genes involved in cancer development.

The Alchemy of Sun light into Vitamin D

Sunlight converts cholesterol on the skin into calciol (vitamin D3). The liver then converts Vitamin D3 into calcidiol. The kidneys then convert calcidiol into the active form of vitamin D, called calcitriol. As such, statins and other medications or supplements that inhibit cholesterol synthesis, liver function or kidney function may impair the synthesis of Vitamin D. Diseases of these organs also inhibit it.

Blocks to Vitamin D from the Sun

Scientists who study this process tell us that to absorb and convert into Vitamin D we need to allow sunlight to touch our skin. The cholesterol on our skin may be lacking if we just bathed.

Sunscreen may also inhibits this process. But as a practical matter, very few people put on enough sunscreen to block all UVB light, or they use sunscreen irregularly, so sunscreen’s effects on our Vitamin D levels might not be that important. An Australian study that’s often cited showed no difference in Vitamin D between adults randomly assigned to use sunscreen one summer and those assigned a placebo cream.

Unfortunately, studies have also shown that being obese is correlated with low vitamin D levels and that being overweight may affect the bioavailability of vitamin D. Since Vitamin D is so intertwined with health, this may be a contributing factor to the worse health outcomes related to excess weight.

Theoretically, age may be a factor. Older people have lower levels of the substance in the skin that UVB light converts into the vitamin D precursor, and there’s experimental evidence that older people are less efficient vitamin D producers than younger people. Yet the National Center for Health Statistics data on vitamin D levels don’t show a major drop-off in levels between middle-aged people and older folks.

Another factor is the latitude and season of the year. When our hemisphere is tipped away from the Sun, the rays are not as potent for creating Vitamin D. The further from the equator we are, the less the Sun will feed our Vitamin D in the winter season. In Boston, for example, little if any of the vitamin is produced in people’s skin tissue from November through February.

The further from the equator we are, the less the Sun will feed our Vitamin D in the winter season.

Terra

Interestingly, warm skin is a more efficient producer of vitamin D than cool skin. So, on a sunny, hot summer day, you’ll make more vitamin D than on a cool one.

Don’t worry if you live in a cloudy place – the UVB radiation, which can also cause sunburn, is still there to create Vitamin D3. However air pollution is a factor. Carbon particulates in the air from the burning of fossil fuels, wood, and other materials scatter and absorb UVB rays.

To maintain healthy blood levels, aim to get 10–30 minutes of midday sunlight, several times per week. This is if you’re wearing shorts and tank top with no sunscreen. People with darker skin may need a little more than this. Your exposure time should depend on how sensitive your skin is to sunlight. A fair skinned person in summer dress will get about 10,000 IU Vit D from 10 minutes exposure.

Maintain Your Vitamin D Level

Winter is another story. Studies consistently show that vitamin D status drops during the winter, with levels peaking in September and at their lowest in March. So for some people at least part of the year, it may be important to rely on dietary sources of vitamin D or supplements. Being covered and having cold skin, along with being tipped away from the sun all contribute.

Good digestion, as always is important when vitamin D that is consumed in food or as a supplement. It is absorbed in the part of the small intestine immediately downstream from the stomach. Stomach juices, pancreatic secretions, bile from the liver, the integrity of the wall of the intestine — they all have some influence on how much of the vitamin is absorbed. Therefore, conditions that affect the gut and digestion, like celiac disease, chronic pancreatitis, Crohn’s disease, and cystic fibrosis, can reduce vitamin D absorption.

Levels also drop if you are confined indoors. One study on Vitamin D levels of hospital patients showed that however high their Vitamin D was on entering the hospital, it was down to one half of that level within just 24-48 hours. This is concerning since immunity and healing are both greatly effected by Vitamin D.

Vitamin D is so important to our health, even helping protect us from serious COVID. Be sure you have healthy levels through lab tests in September to see your peak amount for the year. Inexpensive supplements are also highly effective, when needed to maintain healthy levels. A meta-analysis published in 2007 showed that vitamin D supplementation was associated with significantly reduced mortality.

Do embrace the Sun light – finding your healthy balance.

Sources:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/9-things-that-can-undermine-your-vitamin-d-level

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-d-from-sun

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3356951/