A new perspective on Menopause
Connective tissue communicates information between your body and your brain. It surrounds every organ, nerve, and vessel in your body and connects bones to muscles, tendons, etc. It expands and contracts, however, if we experience a physical injury or emotional trauma, we can go into shock. It restricts movement, where we either freeze and tense up or collapse and faint.
If this survival response doesn’t resolve we can get stuck, with too much tone in the body or too little. We lose our capacity for rhythmical expansion and contraction and a sense of connection to our bodily sensations. It leaves us feeling disconnected.
In times of stress or massive changes, this can translate into a sense of isolation, confusion, and an inability to cope.
You may feel as though your body has betrayed you or that Menopause has been a source of trauma in and of itself.
Reconnecting to sensations might feel frightening, as past pain is likely to resurface from triggered repressed emotions.
Breathwork works wonders to resolve and integrate any fragmentation within.
It is important to approach this situation as gently as needed and prioritize your sense of safety across the tender edge between comfort zone and discomfort so you can move within your optimal area of nervous system regulation.
Awareness, presence, and healthy strategies are needed.
For example, if you feel dull, numb, or collapsed, you may need to upregulate through movement and mobilization to unwind from chronic freeze or faint responses.
Physical tension in your muscles and connective tissue is a protective layer referred to as “armoring”. It gets held in the body and will not release until you know you are safe.
This is why you cannot clear trauma through your rational mind alone; the core trauma cycle has to resolve in the physical body.
You don’t need to recall traumatic memories to find relief. With professional guidance, you can hand it to your breath and your body to self-regulate and heal, and altered states of consciousness are the way of neutralizing deep, subconscious beliefs that have shaped you, and allowing for the shifts to take place at the level of the subconscious, changing from the inside out.