Life is all about balance, right?
Eating a well balanced diet, balancing a fit & active lifestyle with time to rest & rejuvenate, balancing me-time with seeing friends & our family. It’s all about balance.
Finding balance in my life was even more important for me when I was struggling with menopausal symptoms. Everything felt so horribly chaotic & frightening, getting my yoga on & prioritizing time on my meditation cushion gave me some really valuable moments of peace & calm to balance the unsettling & confusing times I was experiencing the rest of the time.
Creating some balance in my life gave me some much needed space & time to investigate what was going on. Understanding what was happening to me really helped me to stay more, well, balanced about it all. When I didn’t understand, when I literally thought I was going mad, I felt unbalanced & it was horrible.
Now I know a drop in oestrogen affects every system in our body. But it also causes our cortisol levels to spike. Cortisol is the stress hormone.
This is why the menopause affects our sleep patterns, our digestion, our mental clarity & focus, our moods, as well as making us more prone to putting on weight – cortisol has a part to play in all of these symptoms.
This is because high cortisol levels activate the sympathetic nervous system, our fight or flight response. When this is activated we are in survival mode: we don’t sleep, digest food, procreate, our memory is affected. And the problem is cortisol makes our amygdala more sensitive which activates our fight or flight response, triggering more cortisol & we get stuck in a vicious circle of reacting & over-reacting.
Now for short periods of time is it’s important that our SNS is activated like this – it keeps us safe when danger looms. But when this response is permanently activated it means our parasympathetic system is deactivated.
The PSN is our rest & digest system & it does the complete opposite of the SNS. But we need both systems to work in harmony for our body to function at it’s optimum. Our autonomic nervous system (our PNS & SNS) is an intricate system that is designed to work in balance & when it does it works beautifully to keep our body alive. But when it’s out of whack, then so are we.
This is why embracing a more balanced & mindful way of living & being can have such a positive impact when we are going through such huge changes. Yoga & meditation are both beautiful practices which balance the nervous system, activating the PSN which calms the SNS. And this balance is crucial for overall wellbeing & maintaining our physical, mental & emotional health.
In many ways balance is the epitome of self-care. Self-care in a conscious act of acknowledging where you are, how you feel & doing what serves you to nurture, nourish & replenish yourself physically, mentally, emotionally & spiritually.
Balancing our lives, our bodies, our breath & our body with regular self-care practices like yoga & meditation & a mindful way of living & being is an act of self-care in itself & creates a virtuous circle instead of a vicious one. And is a very powerful way to help manage some of the unbalancing affects of menopause.
If you’d like to know how working with me to help you to cultivate a more balanced & regular practice of self-care with yoga, mindfulness, meditation & a whole host of other holistic approaches, please email me at alex@alexbannard.com