What the mind refuses to address, the body will express: listening to your body in peri-menopause

Over the years as a yoga teacher, I’ve lost count of the number of times I have said the phrase ‘Just listen to your body’ as I guided students into different postures. I’d talk through body scans in the savasana (relaxation) part of the class, asking them to notice sensations in their bodies. As a yoga student, I would force my body into postures, somewhat ignoring the discomfort it took to twist myself into a pretzel, blatantly ignoring my own words to students.

I always remember thinking that 'listen to your body' just meant 'does this hurt, or just hurt?' Over the years, I’ve attended many intense retreats, all designed to ‘listen.’ I completed a two-week yoga intensive where I’d sit on a cushion for up to 9 hours a day (in chunks of 3 hours) doing different pranayama (breathing) exercises. I’ve completed silent meditation retreats, somatic retreats, and numerous trainings, and the focus has always been around the yoga teaching of 'Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodaha' or 'stilling the thought waves of the mind,' which is one of the key teachings of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Whilst these retreats were powerful experiences, they rarely encouraged dialogue with the body, which is often where we can learn a great deal, particularly as we go through perimenopause. It’s only recently that I’ve been drawn to working with my own body in a different way, in order to navigate the shifting landscapes of midlife and perimenopause.

Our Bodies and Our Psyche

Carl Jung – the 20th-century psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology – did not explicitly include the physical body in his model of the human psyche; however, he did state during a seminar:

“For what is the body? The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche; and the soul is the psychological experience of the body.”¹

According to Jung, our bodies are the external visible expression of our inner world. The Jungian psychoanalyst and writer, Marion Woodman, continued this theme when she wrote:

"The body is the mirror of the soul. When the conscious mind refuses to face a conflict, the body is forced to live it out." ²

She wrote extensively about the somatic link between the body and psyche and how, when we refuse to deal with something difficult, challenging, or traumatic in our lives, inevitably it will be expressed in our bodies. Supporting these psychological and somatic theories, the late Candace Pert, PhD, stated that:

“Your body is your subconscious mind and you can't heal it by talk alone.”³

After discovering neuropeptides as the literal molecules of emotional expression in the body, Pert provided proof of the mind-body link.

All of these incredible minds are telling us the same thing: that our bodies are not separate from our minds. Jung’s model of the psyche includes our minds, both the conscious and unconscious aspects of it. The unconscious mind houses our shadow, which contains the suppressed and exiled elements of ourselves that we consider unworthy of love, too painful, or too risky to be accepted and therefore stay safe in the world.

So, when we say 'listen to your body,' I believe that mere observation of sensation alone doesn’t teach us how to tap into its language. During midlife, as our hormonal landscape shifts, the volume on this language gets turned up. Perimenopause is often the exact moment when a woman's body refuses to stay silent anymore. The unconscious mind begins using our physical systems to scream the truths our conscious minds have ignored for decades. Essentially, our physical sensations, symptoms, and signals are the body's way of telling us, “Something’s up,” “Don’t do the thing,” or “Do the thing.”

Our ego is the part of Jung’s model of the psyche that keeps us safe, but it also prevents growth because it often operates from a place of fear and risk assessment. It’s the part of us that filters incoming information, and if that information is too painful, threatening, or incompatible with our identity, the ego represses it into the unconscious. It will stay there in our shadow and subsequently in the tissues and cells of our bodies, until it is brought into awareness and integrated.

It’s the part of us that might decide not to take the job that sounds really amazing, because of all the risk factors. The pay might be slightly less, and what if our bills go up? It’s in a new town, and what if we don’t make friends? What if we find the job too hard, or too senior, or too stressful?  

When I got made redundant, everything in my body was telling me to leave. I held on with white knuckles because it was all I’d known for many years. Leaving was fraught with risk and the unknown. My body was plagued with headaches, fatigue, insomnia, and digestive problems as I navigated the last few months. It was only when I decided to take redundancy and leave that my nervous system collapsed, and I spent a period of time recovering, resting, sleeping, crying, and being angry. During that time, I realised that I’d spent far too long in an environment that wasn’t good for my health, my growth, or my soul. The alternative to listening to our ego is to tap into our intuition, and it is this that takes practice. Intuition is a felt sense in the body. It's the language of our soul, as our soul is embodied.

Ultimately, our ego is there as a tool to help us, but letting it run the show will direct us down a path that can often feel narrower and narrower until we’re well and truly stuck.

Ruling Out Red Flags

It is vital to note here that listening to your body's signals requires practical common sense. Putting persistent stomach aches down to an 'indigestible working environment,' attributing an episode of severe insomnia entirely to the full moon, or putting a chronic sore throat solely down to 'an inability to speak your truth' is spiritual bypassing. We must be able to recognise when we need to rule out physical, medical red flags first. Once that has been done, the true, deeper conversation with our bodies can begin.

Listening to our body

Developing a dialogue with our bodies and subsequently learning to listen to our intuition is not complicated, but it takes regular practice.

1. Firstly, find somewhere comfortable to sit or lie without being disturbed. You could put on some relaxing music (no words to distract you), be out in nature, or just sit in the silence of your own experience. In order to anchor into your body, start focusing on your breathing. Doing this is the quickest way we embody. It creates an immediate awareness of something rhythmical and constant taking place physically within us, that happens without us having to think.

2. Once you are aware of your body, carry out a brief scan from your toes to your head, noticing how the body is feeling. Is it hot, cold, stiff, tense, relaxed, comfortable, or are you feeling pain and discomfort anywhere? Just begin to notice how your body is feeling without commentary or judgment around it.

3. Once you've embodied and grounded yourself physically, you might want to take hold of a notepad and jot down some of the answers that come up as you begin to enter into dialogue.

4. Ask the following question:

   
   

   ‘If my body could speak, what would it be telling me?’

   
   

   It’s important not to overanalyse the response, to not second-guess what comes up. Just write freely, even if it doesn’t make sense. Often the response is already very clearly there, but we think it has to be something else. We think it has to be some sort of revelation from the depths, but it’s the simplest answer that has been there all along.

5. Then you might want to go further and ask:

   
   

   'If my headaches [or other problem area] could speak, what would they be telling me?’

   or

   ‘Where do I feel emotion and if it had a voice what would it say?’

   
   

   Again, jot down the answers. If there is emotion tied to it, let it come. Emotion needs to move and to be expressed, as it is not permanently excreted by the mind; it is stored in the body and the unconscious, so let it show up. Your tears will eventually stop, and your anger will temper. Allow yourself the time and space for these things to be fully felt.

Ongoing Practice

You might not find any answers immediately. This is an ongoing practice, and something to find time for every day if you are struggling with a specific issue. Be gentle with yourself and let things unfold in their own time. The body tends to release its secrets only when it feels safe and ready and so the process of grounding and calming your nervous system is essential here. Commit to showing up for this practice daily, and I’d love to hear what comes up for you as your practice evolves.

"The body has its own way of knowing, a thinking that has nothing to do with words."⁴

¹ Jung, C.G. (1988). Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. 1, p. 355. Princeton University Press.

² Woodman, M. (1985). The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation. Inner City Books.

³ Pert, C.B. (1997). Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. Scribner.

⁴ Oliver, M. (1986). "Wild Geese." Dream Work. Atlantic Monthly Press.