Episode 31: Perimenopause, Narratives, and Self-Discovery

In this episode, we talk about all things perimenopause!
Sara talks about the “perimenopause” seed and how it was first planted, the proliferation of her symptoms and how she reversed them through a combination of physical, sexual and emotional/energetic practices.
The bottom line here is that: you don’t have to suffer miserably throughout perimenopause and menopause. And you don’t have to be dependent on HRT for the rest of your life.
We talk about:

•  The neuroscience behind the mind body connection – how what you see, hear and experience changes your physiology 
• The physical changes Sara instituted to reverse the symptoms
•  How sexual practices manage symptoms
•  The emotional root causes of perimenopause and menopause symptoms

We want to hear your thoughts and questions, so if there's anything you would like us tocover on the show, please drop us a line on 

info@thebone-zone.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Bone Zone. I'm Sarah.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

And I'm Richard.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And in this podcast, we excavate sex and relationship myths and uncover the truth of how it all really works. We bridge the esoteric and practical worlds to bring you grounded, sage, and tangible advice and tools, whether you're looking to attract a soulmate relationship or grow and expand within an existing one.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Hello and welcome to our first video podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Well, if I really wanted to be pedantic, I would say it's our second or third, but Richard forgot to switch on the microphone earlier today for earlier episodes.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

So this is this is a re-record of a re-record for a re-record. So hello and welcome to the inviting episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

You must might have noticed that in the previous podcast, Sarah was a bit snappy at me during the podcast, is because she was annoyed. And quite rightly so, I did go and literally fuck it all up. But here we are on the re-record. Today's um I'm gonna take these headphones off. Today's uh subject is going to be a word that I only started hearing ten years ago, and that is the word of Perry Menopause, uh, for which Sarah won't even need to interrupt me this time round because she will do probably all the talking, seeing that it's a female-oriented thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Um, I will Richard will share some observations.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

I'm gonna start off with sharing one observation, and that is that I have noticed in the last 20 to 30 years um things like cholesterol readings being moved around to denote if you were in need of a prescription of statins or not, and that value seems to be getting lower and lower, and thus raising the amount of statins needing to be sold. Um, and I also see these new words pop up which didn't exist before, and as you all know, I am the lizard man, quote unquote. Well, I do believe that the farmer industry is in the business of coming up with stuff to basically earn as much money as possible.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Well, I don't think it's lizard man stuff. I mean, farmer companies are there to make money.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

I mean, yeah, but they do it at the detriment of the patient and of the customer. Uh, Rockefeller infamously said a customer healed is a customer lost. So they are not in the business of giving you any kind of cure, and they are in the business of coming up periodically with new things we've never heard of before, such as perimenopause. Now, I'm not saying that the symptoms do not exist. However, Sarah is going to now explain to you her story with these uh with this particular set of uh symptoms. Yes, yes, and I would like to reiterate, you know that you're really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

I would like to reiterate as well the symptoms are real, so no one is taking away from that, but the symptoms are, in my opinion, a lot to do with the narrative that's been perpetuated, and I'm actually going to go into the science behind that because you might say to me, well, how does the narrative relate to relate to symptoms? And I'm going to go into the science about that later. Because whatever you think, your body has a physiological response to that. And as Richard said, this narrative wasn't even around when I was in my twenties, for example. So I'm gonna tell you about where the seed started with me, and I'm going to talk about how the seed grew and did indeed create perimenopause symptoms, and I'm then going to talk about some of the steps that I took to reverse those symptoms, and I will add without drugs. I think that's uh that's probably a good point to add there. So if you are suffering from perimenopause or menopause symptoms, and you don't want to go down the drug route, I would suggest that you listen with an open mind, and maybe if some of these things resonate with you, you can start to introduce them. You don't have to do everything at once, anyway, just little steps.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

And there are also maybe at the end you could give a couple of uh you mentioned uh in the first rerun of this podcast. You mentioned a book and also a coach who is uh going through menopause herself.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

A coach is going through menopause, she's long past the menopause.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

She's long past the menopause. Anyway, she talks extensively about a different method of uh getting rid of symptoms. So you might want to mention that at the end.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Of course, darling. The sex. He's always all about the sex. Joking, not joking. Okay. So the seed. One cold morning about 10 to 15 years ago now. I think I was no wait, is it about it's not 10 to 15 years ago. It's probably five or six years ago now. I was in my late-ish 30s, I think, and I was really fucking tired. I was tired for many reasons that had nothing to do with perimenopause at all. But um, I happened to be having a phone conversation with someone that had been going through menopause, and she had had shocking symptoms. So I think like I was on a video chat with her, and I was just like, Whoa, what the hell happened to you? You look terrible. I didn't say that, but she did because basically she was just not sleeping for like I don't know, a year, two years, it was crazy. Anyway, so she's like, Yeah, Sarah, you know, it's you've got perimenopause. I'm like, what? What's that? And I genuinely had not heard about that at that point in time. I thought, okay, there's menopause. Again, hadn't put too much thought into that, except for thinking, okay, well, definitely take HRT. That was probably my thinking at the time. Um, so I listened to her talking about parrymenopause. I was like, what are you talking about, mate? I'm in my late 30s, it's like not a thing I have to worry about. Just like, no, you know, this can happen in your um early 40s, and it can happen in your late 30s, like whatever. Anyway, so she planted the seed. I have to say.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

And then you became obsessed.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

No, I think the obsession took a while to Dr.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Google.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

No, the obsession took a while to grow, to be fair. So it wasn't like an instant, oh my god, she said this, it must be true. But essentially, I was like starting to manifest symptoms, which I'm sure if you've heard women talk about perimenopause and slash all menopause, you'll be fairly familiar with some of these. So anxiety, depression, brain fog, exhaustion, weight gain that you can't seem to shift in the same way that you used to be able to shift things.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Um shouting at your husband?

unknown 8:58

No.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Was that a symptom? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

I don't feel like I did that.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

That was a kind of a joke line, anyway.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Oh, right, okay. Um, sleeping patterns started going a bit haywire. That's actually still something that I'm working on, but is linked to things other than my age and perimenopause. But anyway, so I started guessing all of these symptoms, and I felt pretty rotten, to be honest. So I went to a male doctor who did some blood tests on me, checking hormone levels and various things, and he was like, the first question he asked me was, Is your vagina dry? I was like, no.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

As one does.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Um that was literally, I feel like one of the symptoms I didn't have or didn't particularly have. So anyway, I was like, no, and he seemed to be like, oh well, she can't be perimenopausal then if her vagina is still wet. Um he didn't say that, because that would be that would have been weird.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yeah, that would have been really weird. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Anyway, all the tests came off as normal. Now, when the medical system does blood tests, their range of normal basically means that you're not ill or dead. So it's certainly not optimal levels. Um, but anyway, the tests were like, Well, you're normal, you don't have perimenopause. But by then the narrative had really taken hold of me. I was like, Well, he's wrong. I know there's something off, and it was true, there was something off.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

You had plenty of symptoms, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

And so I was like, I think it I don't know whether it was a sudden dawning or like a gradual thing, but one day I was like, fuck this, I don't accept this.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

I'm gonna I remember that day actually.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

I'm gonna actually see what I can do about this because I don't accept the narrative that you know everything just starts to decay irreparably at the age of what is it, mid-thirties.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Well, it gets uh it gets earlier, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Like everyone's first perimenopause was in your 40s and then it kind of migrated to mid-30s, probably in a few years it will be like in your 20s.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

And now the narrative says you're ugly at 28, so you have to go and get a duck face at 20. The duck face being that weird oh god, the lip pillars.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Like those are the worst. That one anyway. So I was like, right, there is more to this than um meets the eye. There's more to this than the medical profession can currently help me with at this time. I'm gonna do my own thing and see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Yeah, and you did.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

And that is exactly what I did. Brief pause before I continue this story to talk about why this narrative is so damaging. And you might be asking that anyway. You might be like, well, who cares if everyone's talking about perimenopause and menopause? How does that actually manifest into symptoms? Your thoughts have an immediate impact on your physiology. So you may be familiar with the concept of mental rehearsal. I'm not talking about looking at a visualization board and being like, ew, I want to manifest stuff. It's not what I'm talking about here. Mental rehearsal is a very common technique used in sports performance, where an athlete before going to do an event or a competition or whatever, will specifically rehearse the exact movements that they're going to be doing during the um during the event in order to prepare themselves for the event. And basically, when you imagine something, or even if you're observing someone else doing it, your cortex is starting to reorganize itself, and actually the motor cortex, which controls movement in your body, is starting to react as if you were physically doing the thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

This has been proven in sports performance, it's been proven um with music as well. So imagining playing the piano and actually playing the piano, the motor cortex of your fingers is reacting as if you're playing the piano, even though you're only imagining it.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

So if you think about it, the amount of thoughts and the amount of attention that you put on something is already rearranging your body. Now, the narrative goes you're gonna get perimenopause, you're gonna get menopause, the symptoms are gonna be awful, you're gonna feel this, you're gonna feel that, you're gonna feel the other.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

But it doesn't matter because you are no longer useful because you can't.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

We'll come to that in a second. Let's stick to the science for the moment.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

All right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Okay, so you're being told all of this, and eventually, when you hear it enough times, it is seeping into your conscious and your subconscious. And guess what? Your body is starting to react with it or to it. And it might start with one symptom when you're like, uh-oh, that's perimenopause symptom that people talk about, and then your brain is then getting evidence that actually this is happening to you. You're getting more thoughts around it, your body is starting to react more.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

And as the narrative is repeated time and time and time again, your brain starts to recognize it as the gospel truth.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yes. And the other the other interesting science, it's kind of linked, not entirely linked, but sort of linked. But just to prove the point of how trauma actually creates a bodily response, there was a study um around adverse childhood events called ACEs, and there were 20 common childhood traumas that were kind of tested in this study, and they found that the more someone had of these aces in childhood, the worse their health in later life. And I'm talking about physical health because at the point of trauma, your body has a really emotional, sorry, your body has a physiological reaction rather to this trauma. Your immune system, your neurologic system, your cardiovascular system, and this has a cumulative effect over time as things are suppressed and things start to accumulate.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

It becomes chronic, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Exactly. So this can actually lead to major health problems later in life. So this is actual science behind this kind of effect. Yeah, it's it's interesting because I was talking to my eighty-year-old friend, as I call him, about how stress had been a factor in my uncle's cancer, and he was like, No, that's not a thing. I'm like, this is totally a thing. It's like literally scientifically a thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Um, so anyway, moving on. You've got this narrative. This narrative, whether you know it or not, is having an impact on your body. Now, the interesting thing is when I talk to my parents' generation, so 70s, 80s, I mean, their descriptions of menopause are pretty muted. It's like, yeah, I was a bit tired and you know.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

My mother couldn't wait to get HRT. She was like, Oh, I'm not even gonna go, I'm gonna start before getting symptoms, because it was for her the proper thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

So, so yes, that's a good point. It could be that a lot of that generation just took the HRT straight off the bat and therefore didn't yeah, because no one knew much about it, really, not in the how it could damage you and stuff like that. Therefore, they didn't have the symptoms, but I would wager that your mum would have had really quite adverse symptoms because your mum was something terrified of aging, terrified of losing her figure, terrified of not being beautiful, and terrified of having menopausal symptoms, yeah. Like, whereas some of the other women I talked to were just like, yeah, it's just whatever, it's just it's just part of life, worse. Um, but you know, again, that's I say maybe they talked about it less, but maybe that's because they just took the drugs and that was that.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

A distinction that needs to be, I mean, I th I from an observer um from the outside I see perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms like quite they're not far apart. I mean, the hot flushes and they're not dissimilar. Okay, so in none of the So what I'm trying to understand what you're saying for perimenopause is not what you're saying also for menopause because you might get some some of the symptoms are the same, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Um, perimenopause, another very common symptom which I don't think I mentioned and which I definitely suffered from as well, is your cycle just becoming like cuckoo.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah, your cycle was a bit nuts, it was like literally all over the show. Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Um, and anyway, so going back to my story when I was like, fuck this.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Here's what you did.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Here's what I did. I started with the physical things that I could do, and when I started reaching the limits of that, I switched to looking at the energetic and emotional root causes for menopause as well. So I'm gonna go into all of that in turn, starting with the physical, and that was indeed how I started as well. I was like, okay, so I know my body's changing, and without taking into account any words like decline and this is the end, or any of that, I was like, well, your body and you need different things at different stages of life and different times of life, and that's just you know normal. So let's look at physically what would be helpful for me at this time of life. Probably most of the things I'm saying in this sphere are not going to be like things that you haven't heard before because they're quite commonly talked about now. Eating protein. So 30 grams of protein at every meal. Again, some experts say you need to eat like 70 grams of protein a day, others like 120, some go even crazier and like you have to have 150.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah, but this is specific to women with pre-menopausal, perimenopausal symptoms. We're not talking about a bodybuilder who would need yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

So um basically it's individual, so you should probably think about having some kind of individualized read into this. But so I started incorporating protein in every wood meal because we do know that muscle mass decreases from the age of 30 every year, also bone mass and bone density as well, yes. So um that's one of the things I did paying attention to the way that I eat as well. So the other reason why people tend to put on weight is because your insulin receptors are out of whack. One of the ways to start to address that is to not eat quote unquote naked carbs. So to eat carbs after you've um had fibre, fats, protein can do either all. But basically, you wouldn't eat a bowl of pasta with just some tomato sauce and be like, yeah, that's great, it's a sugar. Bomb and it's gonna spike your glucose and your body's gonna get used to that and it's gonna be harder for you to lose weight.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

So a bunch of Italians would have to disappear.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah, okay, whatever. You can't talk to me if you I don't know wax and that was no, I don't know either. Anyway, although, actually, interestingly, Italians eat pasta as a second course, they usually eat a salad or antipasti, which is vegetables first, so they're getting the fibre and some olive oil from fats first.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yes, and no, not in a normal household. They start off with a pasta and then they have a meat dish.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Antipasti comes out on more special occasions. I mean, I've my family never had a salad before. But anyway, there's there's a way to get rid of these symptoms, and this is if you did.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

So, anyway, moving on from what Italians do at home. Um, strength training. So, again, that's to maintain muscle mass and to help with uh maintaining bone density, movement in general is very helpful. And it makes it feel good. Yes, we're meant to move, we're not meant to sit all day. The other thing that I did, I don't really do it that much anymore because my body hasn't been calling me towards it as much as I used to feel, but I incorporated water fasting. So I've done juice fasting in the past, but I discovered Dr. Mindy Peltz around this time that I was looking for physical changes that I could make. Totally recommend her book, Fast Like a Girl, and she has also written a menopause-related book. She is speaking specifically about women and fasting. So essentially, I'd done intermittent fasting before, but unfortunately, your body gets used to it. So if you just do that every day, your body gets used to it, and it's like not really gonna have the impact. You mix it up with some of these longer fasts that also have proven health benefits as well. So after 24 hours of a water fast, your gut resets. After 18 hours, autophagy occurs. Explain what autophagy is to basically like defective cells when the body gaten up. After 36 hours or 36 hours plus fat burning mode, 48 hours plus your dopamine receptors in the brain start to reset, which was very helpful for me given I was like mood-wise all the time. Um, and after 72 hours plus, that's when the immune system resets. Well, just everything in the body resets. So, for example, she's given Mindy, Dr. Mindy has given examples of after five days of water fasting, like chronic body issues just started to heal that had been around for years.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

So any of you don't start on a five-day water.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

No, no, don't start small.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Start small and work your way up.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Or seek help from a professional.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Yes. Um, I really do recommend all of her resources. And from those physical changes alone, I did start to reverse a lot of the symptoms. Specifically, my cycle started to regulate, my mood started to become more even. The weight gain that had started to happen stopped happening. So um I think at that point I was probably as slim as maybe I'd been in my twenties. Um I my sex drive came back. I was never vaginally dry, as I said, but I did have but I did have a drop in libido, which started to come back as well as a result of some of these physical changes. So that's some of the physical changes that I made. Diet, exercise, water fasting, nothing revolutionary there. Anyone can do with a bit of discipline, and you will feel better. Then, as an add-on to the physical, it is physical as well. I'm gonna be talking about sexita. So um one of my uh sex mentors um is a lady called Kimonami. Highly controversial figure, love her, doesn't give a fuck, just says whatever's she's highly controversial, but um she just doesn't care. There is a lot of truth in what she says. She is gunning for the Perry Menopause Menopause narrative, and her fix-all for it is just get fucked in a good way. With a loving partner, not with a loving partner or with yourself, or with yourself, so you don't need a partner necessarily to be able to do this.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

I'll be off then, shall I?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Um she and again, uh well, the her way of looking at it is this is all you need. I don't agree with that, but she is right that it is a part of the whole equation. If you just think about it like this, if you are engaging in sexual activity that is fulfilling regularly, if you are spending time with your yoni, if you are having deeper orgasms, you're sending a very powerful message to your body, which is I'm young and up for and not old and used up and ready to be discovered. I mean, vaginal dryness is basically like I'm just dried up, it's kind of over for me.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

Yeah. So that's very sad to see though.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

It's whether you do it with a partner or you do it with yourself, do it because it is sending a powerful message to your physiology. A, I love myself, I love my sexuality. I am spending time and energy on this, and it does, if done in the right way, have a rejuvenating effect, and you're not being autocritical to yourself, saying, Well, why can I why am I so dry?

SPEAKER_02 28:55

I don't want sex anymore, because that's the narrative, and my husband's gonna go out and find someone, and all these things that kind of crop into people's minds sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yes, I mean, to be honest, the libido loss is real, and the answer is not to just say that's the way it is, I'm dry and my libido's gone. Hooray, I won't do anything about it. You can re like relight my fire.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

No, don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Okay, you can restoke the fire, and not only will you be happier because you're doing that, but it will also be something that helps to address your perimenopause slash and slash or menopause symptoms as well.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Yeah, well, my mum didn't have to go through that, she just said she had it all worked out ten years before taking HRT. She said, I'm gonna take HRT.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Just give me the drugs.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

I mean, this is the woman who famously said um whilst on uh well whilst being told she needed radical chemotherapy. She said, she said, quote unquote, fuck that. I'd rather die than lose my hair.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Yeah, no, I'm I laugh about it now.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

It was quite sad at the time, but this is a woman who so that's what I'm saying is that you know, especially in her generation, there was this new thing that could avoid, it could prevent you going from any kind of symptom, and everyone was on board. And what happens then? These women would tell their daughters about that, just reinforcing hundreds of percent that same narrative, it was auto-enforcing because it's hey, you don't need to go through what I did, you can have this treatment when you're of a certain age, and now it can happen earlier. There's been medical research, which the medical research is is paid for by the people who want to have a certain result, by the way, FYI. Okay, and so it's also reinforced.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

But also, I'm gonna say if you want to go take the drugs, take the drugs, but you'll be on those drugs forever, basically.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Oh, do you have to go and I didn't know you had to come forever?

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Basically, if you're on those drugs and you stop taking them, the symptoms come. That's my understanding from talking to people that are that are on HRT. Kind of like Ozempic. You take the fucking drug, you're slim, or in Hollywood's case. Don't get me started on Hollywood's case, you become a skeleton, and then if you stop taking it, you're fucked.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Anyway, you're fucked if you do take it anyway, but anyway, let's not just go there for it.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

So um basically that focus on sex, and obviously having sex as well floods the body with feel-good hormones, and that also starts to balance out your hormones because it's the imbalance of hormones that is causing a lot of problems.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

There is another thing that you did, which I remember you doing, which helped enormously, and that was um showing yourself sort of things like unconditional love.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

I'm getting to that now, darling.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

You're getting to that now, darling. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Be patient, my friend. Okay, so next.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

No.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Um I'm not gonna lie, some of those symptoms did start to come back, specifically after I'd regulated my cycle. My cycle started going a bit doolali again. The mood, actually, and the depression, anxiety, you know, I've got less bruises on my arm and my face to prove it. So No, I mean that didn't really come back, but let's just say some of the symptoms did start coming back, but not as powerful, not as bad as not as bad as before. Okay, at which point I was like, okay, there is more here that I need to get to the bottom of. And uh, yeah, welcome to my world. You need to know everything about everything all the time. Okay, so that's when I started getting to the emotional and energetic root causes of perimenopause and menopause. So, to link back to the science earlier, thoughts and belief systems we hold have a physiological effect on the body. And menopause and perimenopause is no different. So, yes, your body will go through menopause. There are some schools of thought that say actually you can avoid menopause entirely, but for the purpose of not blowing everyone's mind here, like I'll take that out of the equation for now and just say you can have a more seamless transition without the horrible symptoms that everyone tells you you're gonna get. Um, maybe I will later do an episode on how to remove menopause symptoms entirely, but I think that will be a while in the making. So getting to the emotional root cause of perimenopause and menopause, it has to do with feeling like you're done, you're too old for things, you haven't achieved what you wanted, you're dried up, and again, you see that physically with your vagina being dry, you feel unsexy, you feel like your career is dried up, you feel like it's too late for you, and that doesn't need to be in a specific area, so it could be in any area of life that you are carrying around this narrative. So it could be that you're like, well, I'm 50-something now, and uh my career's over for me, or there's nowhere else to go in my career, or I've never started that business, and therefore I never will. And side note here, there are so many examples of people who've started businesses in their 40s, 50s, and 60s that actually ended up being more successful in the long term than people that started in their 20s. Um, it could be that physically you've decided you're dried up, that men aren't going to find you hot anymore, that uh you're basically just unsexy. Again, that would have been the one that would probably have tripped your mum up the most. Although I have seen young girls on Instagram say things like, Yeah, by the time you're in your 40s, you're you've passed your peak. The 20s is where it's all at, and not all 40-something-year-old men want to date 20-year-olds anyway.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

So I'm like, Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

And I am like, you are literally building up for a fucking big crash in your 40s, mate. Um because you're like perpetuating that narrative. And although you've got on one hand this seeming acceptance of older women, you know, you've got older models aging gracefully now, you've got very conflicting messages as well, because you've got like young girls that are like pumping their face full of Botox, duck face Botox and fillers at the age of like 20 something.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

I know I find that I still can't get over that. You're like two years old and you've got fucking Botox in your face.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

It's nuts. So you've got these conflicting messages, and the messages you have to look a certain way, and if you don't look that certain way, you're not going to be accepted. So you start at 20 and then you ramp up the filling your face until I don't know, 60, 70, or something. Until it's just all like sagging off one side of your face, like um, so it could be in the physical area of life that you feel you're done for. It could be that you feel like your main purpose is procreation, and your kids have left home, and so you feel purposeless, and or it could be non-useful anymore, yeah, or you feel because uh you're not gonna have more kids that you're not useful anymore. Purpose is very intricately linked to both health span and life span. Yes, yes, it is, and it's that sense of having lost your purpose, lost, and it's it's almost too late for me now.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

That's a very strong message sense, your body, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Yeah, so this is again, it's it's nuanced from person to person, but that's the general overarching emotional root cause that in one or more areas of life you are starting to feel like that, and all the external programming is subtly feeding you that message, it's telling you, oh, it's fine to grow all gracefully, but also you have to pump all this shit into your face.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Nobody responds accordingly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

So that's basically something that I started to rebalance, and I'm still in the process of rebalancing. Because if you can do the physical and really have a high level of unconditional self-love for yourself and see all the possibility that you have out there at any age, and that nothing is over for you until the day you die, because frankly, we're all here to evolve, we're not here to just come here and live everything by the age of 39.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Oh, no, you just all just now that you know your kids have left, or whatever your case may be, you can decide now it's time for you to grow. Yeah, and when you dedicated your life and put yourself last, which is also another energetic massive message you're sending to you and your body. Now it's time to look after you, now it's time to put yourself first.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yes. And to link into the weight gain, the energetic root cause of weight gain, which obviously is a menopause symptom as well. Weight gain is the body protecting itself from you, yeah. So it's literally building a layer of fat to protect you from like criticizing yourself and beating yourself up and hasting on your body or hasting on any area of life that you tend to be hasting on.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

I've had that too.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Fat around the stomach, which actually Richard had what we both put on a load of weight suddenly last year. Um but fat around the middle specifically is to do with protecting yourself because you have a you're beating yourself up for things that you did in the past or didn't do in the past.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yes, I was.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Which links into the whole also feeling a bit dried up.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

Oh, it's all over your body just I should have done X, Y, and Z. Your body's a physical representation of your energy. So if energetically you are fucking beating up on yourself, um, then your body will respond in kind, it will put on layers of protections in the in in the in physically via fat.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

And that's actually another interesting side effect of the sexual work. Very often people end up losing weight when they go deeper into their sexual energy because they start loving their body, they start loving, yes, and then the body releases weight. So I had put on a lot of weight very quickly last year, and I was like WTF, and it was because I was beating myself up a lot about all the things that I thought I hadn't achieved in my career and financial areas of life.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Um, and when I realized that and started to address that, then literally one day intuition was like, right, you're gonna go do this kind of eating for a month. And I was like, cool, great. Wait, kind of dispersed or left me. I don't know, I don't know how you call it, but just to keep it simple here fell off, fell off, just to keep it relatively simple around okay, Sarah, I see what you're saying. I feel like maybe I am carrying around some of these emotions and belief systems about myself and what I have or haven't done.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

What sort of trauma?

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Yes, firstly, be radically honest with yourself. You can deny everything and be like, no, I don't think that, but really you do deep down. So be honest with yourself, and the more you put your awareness on something, the more things will come up for your attention anyway.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

But you sometimes even just recognizing the problem, you're already taking a giant leap without actually having to do the work for it yet, you're taking a giant leap into already just starting to resolve the problem itself, it's just being honest with yourself.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Yes. Um be honest with yourself, and then because we tend to look for evidence, or the brain specifically looks for evidence to back up our belief systems and biases. What you want to do is when you recognize a narrative, start to seed doubt into that narrative. So let's say um you believe that your career is done and in your 40s, and then after that you'll be sacked at the age of 50 or whatever. You can then look for evidence of all the people that have been successful later in life. And what you'll find a lot of the time is they are no different from you. They were just people that saw a possibility, put in the hard work, were disciplined, took some risks, and they managed to achieve something incredible.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

That also means you have to get rid of the narrative as oh, they all they they they got the lucky breaks in life. Yes. Not me. That's something that needs to change first and foremost.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Well, basically, what you want to do is just build up a body of evidence that. Challenges the assumptions or belief systems that you hold. So you're basically shifting your focus because whatever we focus on, we tend to get more of if you have focus. If you think of negative thoughts about your body all the time, it's gonna be really hard for you to go from I'm a fat bitch to I'm so sexy and beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Okay, just just a small thing here. Um, for those of you who are thinking, I think of money all the time, yeah. I'm not a millionaire. Well, that's because you're thinking of the lack of money all the time, not really the money itself.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

And on that note, I've done oh wait, did I? Yes, I did a whole podcast around this, and that is a story for another time. Actually, though, by the time this air, this will be true. I have got my own podcast now, The Mind, Body, Spirit Accelerator, where I talk about this exact topic.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

She does, she does, and also the the the there are no interruptions from me or her interrupting me all the time.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Yeah, it's just me talking.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

You get to hear Sarah's flow. She flows well.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

So flows well. Um anything else you would. So sorry, just to reiterate and to keep it simple, bring awareness and honesty to some of those deeply rooted beliefs and start to challenge them daily. So you want to find daily evidence that actually this is true, and it could be you meet an inspiring woman in her 50s.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

And I frankly I meet inspiring older women all the time.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

Well, if not, just go on to fucking, you know, you're all AI heads now. Go on to Grok or Chat GPT and say, give me a list of all the women who've encountered success in their 50s who have pivoted in their lives, or whatever, go and do it.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

The brain likes to work in always, right? So if you can start to challenge that, you're starting the process of reprogramming.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Question the narratives above all else, question the narratives. No one out there is doing you any fucking favours whatsoever. No government, no company, no corporation. They're not. So start to question what they are peddling in terms of narrative, and then you can start to um find the evidence.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

Well, do you know what? I think a good rule of thumb is um for anyone, anything that causes dependence and takes the power away from you. So if you take a drug that you have to be on the best the rest of your life, like you're dependent, yeah, well, any drug, HRT, Ozempic, whatever, um it's basically disempowering you and it's creating dependence. Exactly. And that works for anything. It could be that you go to this healer that insists that you have to keep coming back like every week, or whatever. It's creating a dependence and taking away the power from you. Yes. What you want to start to seek out are solutions that give you tools that you can use to empower yourself.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Great. Well, that uh feels like it's a nice time to wrap it all up.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Yes, this was a marvelous episode, darling. Marvellous.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

Did you like it? I thought the first one that I fucked up was better, but uh you're just saying that to piss me off. Yeah. And on that note, lovely people, we shall catch you on the next one.

unknown 47:43

Bye!

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Bye. We'd like to thank you for tuning in and listening to this episode today. If you like what you heard, I invite you to follow our show. And if you really liked our show, head over and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. We also want to hear your thoughts and questions. So if there's anything you would like us to cover on the show, please drop us a line on the email below. Thank you for listening, and until next time.