Talking Intimacy in Menopause: Insights from Heidi True

This is such a needed conversation in the stress management and the menopause education space. Heidi True and I discuss sexuality, bodies and intimacy in the menopausal transition and beyond - the challenges, the benefits, the practices.

Heidi is a certified sex, love and relationship coach, yoga instructor and creative teacher with 20 years of embodiment experience. She holds certifications in both male and female sexuality, pelvic de-armouring and nervous system regulation and works with couples and individuals around their bodies, intimacy and sexuality in midlife and beyond.

You can find out more about her here https://heiditrue.com/about/.

Read more about our honest conversation on:

  • Redefining sex and the pleasure imperative

  • Sexy time as another “to-do” on the list

  • What might happen as we stop "accommodating others”

  • Vaginal health 

  • Being in ageing bodies with love and appreciation

  • Recognising midlife changes and transitions for men

  • What we might want to think about in our 30s!

Prefer to listen? Get the podcast here: Intimacy and pleasure in menopause, a conversation with Heidi True.

These are often secret concerns (and sometimes don’t even make it out of our heads) and I am so pleased to be able to share this interview with you as a validation and source of support!

P.S. Dr Louanne Brizendine and Mama Gena (Regena Thomashauser) are the two authors that Heidi mentions. 

I loved having this conversation with Heidi from the point of view of female sexuality, of intimacy within couples, of embodiment. So Heidi is a trained sex, love and relationship coach and yoga instructor. She comes to us with a background in embodiment, in sexuality, in nervous system regulation, and she works with both couples and individuals around their bodies.and their intimacy in midlife and beyond. So in this conversation, we unpack a little bit what might be happening to us physically, mentally, emotionally in the times of thirties, forties, fifties. So we kind of look at redefining sexual experiences, looking at how we see ourselves. 

And I love the way that she brings in both sexuality, acceptance, menopause, physical changes, rest, self-care, what might be happening with our partners or with the men in our lives, communities. So there's so many aspects that we touch on in this conversation. And I'm excited for you to listen to it. It can be a little bit taboo. We don't often have a lot of spaces where we talk about what goes on for us sexually in our 40s and our 50s. And in fact, in popular media, we almost see that part of ourselves maybe disappear or be negated or be scorned and judged. And so I'm really excited to give you this conversation for you to think about what that means in your own life and maybe even create some change if that's something that you're desiring. So let's dive in.

Heidi, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today about being in midlife female bodies and all the things that come along with that. You work specifically in intimacy, sexuality, relationships, is that right? Maybe tell us who you are, where you are and what work that you do. 

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm my name is Heidi True and I'm a sex and intimacy coach. And I work a lot with sexual shutdown in individuals and in couples. And so this means a lot of women come to me and perimenopause and post menopause. Because this seems to be a time where your sexuality gets a little bit of an upheaval and you really need to start to deliberately consciously focus on it. For sure.

I also work with men in the capacity of helping them support their partners in intimacy issues and also with their own sexual and performance issues.

So many things that I love just about those first one minute pieces that you're bringing. Number one, tell us more what you mean about sexual shutdown. What does that mean for you and your clients?

Yeah, just so when, you know, they stop being intimate, some clients actually stop having any affection and intimacy at all, and others just stop having sex. And I like to really work on broadening the idea of what sex is, rather than just making it, penetrative sex, because that can be something that is less of an interest to people as they get older, especially women. And just to kind of really open up the idea of what sex can be, it can be so many things.

So I'm very much around the pleasure imperative, really focusing on pleasure rather than performance or desire. In perimenopause and especially in menopause and post menopause, we do have a different style of desire. It may not be different for everybody, but it can be just that you don't spontaneously feel like sex as often. And so that means that people stop having sex, whereas really we don't have to want sex to have it. We can just want to want it. So I really work with a lot of couples around just making the environment and the kind of opening a space towards intimacy rather than say, okay, we've got to have sex because we haven't had it in a month or something like that. And taking the pressure off and making it about pleasure. So shared pleasure. 

And that tends to make couples so much more connected and intimate with each other if they just come together for shared pleasure, whatever that is, it may or may not be specifically sexual. And it really seems to help people who've got that sexual shutdown and that aversion. A lot of women in perimenopause and menopause have this really strong, visceral, pushing away response in their body when their partner comes towards them.

And literally it feels like they're shrinking away and they feel terrible about it because they love their partner. But it's, it's the body's kind of somatic response saying, leave me alone. And there's ways around that. It's usually a very specific reason and it's often to do with stress. And sometimes it's just about not having their needs being met. So yeah.

One thing I want to pick up there. So I work in stress management and burnout prevention. And when you were talking about that kind of shrinking away or leave me alone, I feel like what I hear a lot and what I see a lot is clients feeling like sex is another thing I have to do, another place I have to show up, another “should” and feeling so tired and exhausted from all the things that they're holding and doing. 

And it's so ironic, right? Because we know that experiencing pleasure and being in our sexuality, whatever that is in our season, reduces stress and it can be another stressor, right? This feeling of I need to, or we should, or we're not, or I'm not good enough, or whatever it is. How do you see that playing out within couple, a couple dynamic?

Yeah, well, for sure that that feeling of I see it as the if it's the woman, especially it's she's full, she's got she's got no more capacity. So we just don't have, I believe, as much capacity for stress as men. And I don't think and for good reason, you know, maybe nature's made it that way that we just shouldn't try and be doing all the things that men do. But this is my belief anyway. Modern culture makes us do way too much. And then when things shift in perimenopause and menopause, you really are at capacity. If you've got a stressful life, you're working full time, you've got some maybe some teenage kids, you might have aging parents, all those things, maybe some shifts in your body as well. And you are full, you're at capacity.

So what I find is that women really need to look and that's why, you know, like stress and burnout is really important. Looking at that, getting help around that. But women really need to look at what they can let go of and where they can make more space. And making more space for pleasure is really powerful because it nourishes us on a deep nervous system level and it really helps us come home to ourselves and to our body and start to love ourselves again if we've lost that. Or maybe for the first time, I find many women for the first time, begin to love themselves in menopause and perimenopause, because they decide to and they do the work to. 

I find that quite often,they're expecting sex to be a certain way and therefore that means it's too much on their plate. But really if we take this imperative of orgasm off the table, if we take the imperative of penetration, things like that, then and just make it more about sexual intimacy or intimacy in general, it can be really healing. So that's often teaching men as well that sex doesn't have to mean bit of kissing, bit of foreplay, penetration is over. You know, it can be just kissing or just foreplay or whatever. And so really opening up the idea of what sex is really helps women find less stress. You know, if they just cuddle in bed naked, then isn't that better than, you know, pushing away from a hug because they're so worried that their partner if they give their partner a hug, that their partner is going to think that they want more. 

And that's really common. I've seen women that shut down even just kissing and cuddling because they feel that if they do that, their partner is going to then get aroused and push for sex. And women's arousal patterns are so much slower than men, especially after menopause that they haven't communicated that perhaps they need, you know, I need half an hour foreplay before I'm ready for anything else. So that's completely common and normal. So I think a lot of women think that they're meant to just be ready for it. And of course, we don't need to be ready for it. We need to nurture our libido and our arousal. In my tradition, the way I've trained is in tantra is that we always have sexual energy. It's always there.

Sure it gets lesser as you get very old but we can be having sex well into our 70s and 80s but it might not look like the sex that we had at you know 18 or 20 and I tell you it's much better than the sex at 18 or 20 as well. And it's just that we have to find that energy and that energy is there in our body it's a life force it's shakti it's prana and we we really just need to get all the ducks in the row really to to allow that energy to flow and usually depressed is the thing that allows that and actually being alone and a little bit selfish for women as well can really help them find that sexual energy in their body.

When you talk about shifting the dynamic and the expectation within a partnership dynamic, especially for heterosexual couples, that's work, huge conversations. Because it's so contra, you know, what we see in porn, what we see in the media, what we see, what we even see in romance novels or Bridgerton, what we may have grown up with, you know, as messaging as women, what we should be doing to quote unquote, take care of our partners. When you think about how to open a conversation like that, what is your advice to somebody who maybe wants to share with her partner that she's in a different phase, without shame and without guilt? 

I find that unless there's a big age gap, the men are in a similar stage at menopause and are starting to open up to a different idea of intimacy. But if there is a big gap between that, I mean it means I need to educate him a lot about women's anatomy and women's arousal patterns and men's and things like that. But I play a lot of games in my couple's work where they're actually learning how to give and receive and take and allow. that's Betty Martin's work, The Wheel of Consent works, amazing stuff. And just a lot of games around touch and being able to really honestly and gently tell your partner what you want to need through a kind of a very somatic experience like listening to your body, what does she need? I know my body needs a certain kind of touch for my nervous system to calm down. 

So I really helped couples to work out what their body needs in order to feel like being intimate, like perhaps it might be a massage or some time alone or a hot bath or a walk in nature or something that down regulates the nervous system, then they'll find that desire is there because it really is always there. It's just hidden under layers of stress, perhaps illness, busyness, busyness is, I don't know, it's a busyness is a very terrible part, I think of, of our modern life, because it really robs us from being in our body and being with ourselves and being with our partner and our kids and things.

Yeah, so when you talk about that deep rest and creating those moments for that and bringing intention to sexuality, what I'm hearing is there almost needs to be that decision, right? That this is important to me, this is something I want to maintain, this is something I want to protect and create boundaries around. And in my experience, a lot of women are going through relationship challenges at the same time. 

So there's almost separating out the, you know, there's sexuality and intimacy, and then there's relationship questions or possible separation or affairs or divorce going on at the same time. So it can be really challenging to, to be in that intention of sexuality when there's also that, that emotional peace or that safety in relationship in a dynamic. Is that something you see in your work as well?

Yeah, so I don't tend to work on with couples who are actively divorcing, although I do must say I've got a couple of couples at the moment who are thinking about it and they're coming to me as a kind of a last resort to see if they can bring their intimacy back together. And so usually they'll have a relationship therapist as well to look at the communication, though I do do some of that as well. But what I find is there's a shift, that powerful shift that we have in menopause does shake up the relationship and some men understand it and go with it and some really find it difficult and some women just have had enough and then they take off and others find that it's a really powerful time. They've kind of got the urgency to really fix their relationship. 

What I feel that is is that there's a few things there's that grief of losing our fertile years and transitioning out of the fertile stages, there can be grief with that. The changes to your body can really make you adverse to intimacy. And then there's also that whole thing about the decline of estrogen being this powerful awakening. This is what I found and I find in many of my clients. As estrogen drops, you just don't accommodate as much anymore. 

So estrogen is a hormone of accommodation and we bend over backwards to help people when we're full of estrogen. And you even just notice it in their monthly cycle, when you're full of estrogen, you're more accommodating to people's needs. And at the end of your cycle when estrogen drops, just before your period, you might snap and be a bit more, I see it as like you've taken off the estrogen colored glasses and suddenly you're seeing the world as it is. So estrogen really is this hormone of accommodation of peacekeeping, bending over backwards for everyone else, making sure everyone else is happy, especially in a family or in work. And as that declines, suddenly you're like, fuck, my, my needs matter. I have a say in these things. I feel like I've been, you know,  keeping my true nature under wraps for you know since you were a young girl. 

When you get to menopause slowly your estrogen levels go back to when you were before you were a teenager and that is actually nothing I don't believe to grieve. Sure there's a grief in the transition but a grieving in the transition but it's actually really powerful because you've got this kind of savvy little girl nature with all the experience of an older woman. And you really can tell it like it is and you just don't take as much bullshit anymore. And that is just so powerful. For me, I'm almost five years since my last period and this is the best time of my life. The best time. I'm absolutely loving it.

There are aches and pains and things, but I'm really loving it. And I think that if we seize menopause as a really beneficial opportunity, or if we change our mindset and realize that actually it's, it's fabulous. We just have to accommodate a few things that we need to rest more, we need more deep rest, we probably need to eat more, we need to exercise a bit differently. We need to take care of ourselves more but if we can tick those boxes it's such a powerful time.

We hear a lot of negative stuff about it. And I really like to focus on the positives because I just think it's a time where we really truly step into our true power. You can feel it in your body. And I think a lot of the frustration is you can feel this power, then people, society and culture around you doesn't see it. And so that makes us pretty cranky. We can feel that inner like wisdom. We've come a long way. We actually feel like helping people more in terms of sharing our wisdom. Being that maga, you know that not I couldn't even say elder yet because you know being 50 -55 is not an elder that but really having that experience and wanting to step up into our power.

I love the image of being a wise 11 year old. That tickles me. I wanted to kind of speak about, if I break down, you were talking about a mindset piece of how do I think about myself in this time? How do I think about my body? How do I think about my sexuality or my relationship? And you've talked about an emotional piece maybe of how do I feel about those things, right? What emotions are coming up? When you think about the physicality of change, what do you see within bodies? I saw you call yourself a pelvic floor nerd, which I can resonate with. What challenges do you see on a physical level within intimacy for women who are maybe in their forties and fifties?

Yeah, and and beyond. Yes. So there are a few things. If a woman has had babies, the injuries that she's had in her birthing experience, they will come up. So if she's had scars, scars can play up, you know, episiotomy tearing scars can come up with the changes of the skin, estrogen, vaginal dryness, I hate the word atrophy and loathe it.

These things can be managed, whether hormonally with HRT or in vaginal estrogen cream, or there's a really fast, fabulous product you can only get in the United States called Julva, which is for clitoral and vulva youthfulness, let's call it. It's a DHEA cream. So that's a precursor to hormones, sexual hormones.

That's a fabulous product. But also just using sexual pleasure as an exercise. So basically making sure that you have touch regularly, you're getting engorged regularly, you're bringing yourself into at least some pleasure there. It doesn't have to go anywhere, you don't have to have an orgasm, but just some self pleasure can really help keep those tissues working.

There's Jade Egg and crystal wand practices, which I teach my clients as well. Pelvic floor, we just have to be more aware of it. I actually find a lot of women have an overly tight pelvic floor and they have to start to learn how to release that, especially if they're exercise type women. They may be over exercising or over tensing their pelvic floor and that can be a stress response as well. It's a very common stress response.

And if you do have a tight jaw, you're very likely to have a tight pelvic floor. There's all kinds of stuff going on there. And then of course, the weaker pelvic floor, can happen from not having repaired your pelvic floor after birthing, after long labours and things like that. A laxity of those muscles, which can quite easily be reversed as well. Even a mild prolapse can be reversed through pelvic floor stuff. So there's that. And then there's also, you know, just the changes to your body, the way the skin shifts throughout all of your body in the way you look different. 

A main part of my work, especially one on one work with women is to really, really cultivate self love. So what you do with that is you look at a part of your body or you massage part of your body that you're hating and you consciously decide to love it and feel the sensations of love like the oxytocin relief like release you really really concentrate on loving and bring that love to yourself and after three or four weeks of doing that you will actually start to love yourself more because you're building those neural pathways using oxytocin to actually strengthen those pathways of self love and that's so powerful. I have a whole course around that work with them with women so we have to decide to love ourselves.

We have to decide to accept the changes in our body and do what we can to heal and to nurture and to nourish our bodies but not expect to be 30. Not expect to be like that anymore and that's fine. It's good to age.

Yeah, there's something that you're saying is like, yes, the decision to be with yourself differently. And that decision in the face of a culture and society and marketing messaging that shows us youth, right? That venerates youth in the Western world at least. And that's quite radical, you know, for women to pause and bring intention to acceptance or self neutrality, llet alone self -love.

Yes, and self neutrality and just being okay with things is, is okay to you know, that's, that's great. But I do find that a lot of women can get to a pretty good level of self love for most of their, their being with practice. And that's the thing is that we have to kind of work towards it. But we're also working to undo all the conditioning of a whole lifetime. So it is, it is hard work with them.

It's hard work and I think what's so interesting as a theme that comes up again and again is so much of the hard work is the letting go, right? So much of the hard work is the deep rest. So much of the hard work is the exercising differently, right? Not pushing myself as hard when you're talking about the pelvic floor, can I soften, can I relax when we think about working, not overworking, it's almost coming back from that extreme of go, go, go, go, go, which often has served a lot of women very well. They've got to a point in their career or their finances or societal standing that that they associate with that level of busyness and doing, to soften and relax and allow rest can feel so threatening, can feel so dangerous.

Yeah, because it's such a pattern, a habit, and we've really wired ourselves to be in this adrenaline mode, which you know, in many actually ends up being adrenal fatigue at the same time as menopause. And that's really common. And then all we know if you've got aging parents or rowdy teenagers or something that adrenal fatigue is even more present. And that certainly affects sexuality more than anything I can think of really. Because you know, the female body cannot feel arousal and have high levels of stress at the same time. cannot have adrenaline flooding through our system and enjoy sexual pleasure at the same time. It's just impossible. So we have to down regulate. 

So a lot of my work is about helping women realise that they're kind of living in this hyper mode and they need to drop into their body and drop into some self acceptance and nourishing themselves as much as possible. And that tends to end up in a real kind of blossoming into this new being. It's like the perimenopause stage, we're in a chrysalis form and then we blossom when we get to the post -menopause stage, you know.

I was talking to somebody and I can't remember who as part of the series of conversations who was sharing with me that in the Chinese philosophy, this is seen as a portal and a gateway.

Second spring. Yeah, second spring is beautiful.

And also seeing this time as a vulnerable window for women's health, right? If we don't pause, if we don't take that time and if we have been pushing ourselves to that limit to then get to these five, six, seven, 10 years, whatever they are and to not make time for our bodies has such devastating effects when we hit the sixties and really comes out in that. So I know it can feel like such a luxury to create time for yourself, to create time for your body, to create time for your health. But I feel like when we continue to ignore and dismiss what our bodies are saying to us, we can't even imagine yet the repercussions, the consequences of that.

Yeah, and I think this is something I say to the women I work with who are a bit younger, maybe in their 30s is to start to already get yourself ready for menopause, like start to see where you can pull back and get some more rest. Right in the beginning of like, let's say the beginning of your 40s or the end of your 30s. I truly believe that we've been women are kind of forced to live this hyper adrenaline fueled kind of world. And we're not really meant to. I know it's good. It sounds counter feminist, but it's not at all. I just don't feel that we're meant to be as busy as we are. And we really need to work out sometime in our early 40s, how to pull back and nurture ourselves a bit more. Because because if we're trying to suddenly do that bang right at right at perimenopause or right at menopause, where it's too much of a shock.

We need to slowly unwind into the more feminine way of being, I believe. I actually feel more feminine post menopause than I did before when I was fertile. And a lot of people, you know, think and you hear this in culture and on TikTok and Instagram and horrible places like that, that that women are seen as kind of male, they've given judgment of being quite masculine after menopause. I feel so feminine because I'm more relaxed and open and less busy and stressed, I suppose.

Hmm, when you think about the both, so you were saying you work with couples and men are often going through something similar in their own midlife, in their own 40s and 50s, which I think is such a good point to make because often when we're in our experience and possibly in our frustrations and in our rage and in our grief, I think we can often forget that on the other side, there may be a parallel existence where some of that is happening too. What do you see happening for midlife men?

So andropause is a thing and it's slower, but it's definitely a thing. mean, the testosterone levels, they don't plummet like ours do and then it go up and down in a day as severely as ours do in perimenopause. We have one minute you're full of estrogen, the next minute you're not. But they do decline and there's a lot of difference. They have a lot less desire for sex. They may still have spontaneous desire for sex. But they may not get as many erections. They may not be getting their morning erection and things like that. A lot more erectile dysfunction or the erections aren't as firm. Actually a lot more premature ejaculation as well in older men which might be to do with more anxiety around performance. And for men, it's so important to stay fit. If they're not doing any exercise, their testosterone levels can tank and they're not as able to, 

I don't want to say perform because I hate that word so much, but do the things, you know, especially in penetrative sex, if they're not fit. And weight is a big thing for middle aged men. It can really affect their self -esteem and their ability to maintain an erection and things like that. So it's not that different, is it really? It's just not talked about because, and there's also this thing called Viagra which they tend to reach for, but that's not particularly safe and actually not always needed. There's plenty of things that men can do to stay sexually fit, let's call it.

Such a moment of, I think, just recognising with grace and tenderness that the humans on both sides may be going through their identity or what they've thought of as themselves or as their sexual selves and reconsidering and feeling maybe a little bit insecure or a little bit embarrassed or a little bit ashamed. Thank you for bringing that because I think they can also be a culture of kind of complaining or dismissing on both sides over this time and stereotyping. And I think this remembering can be so useful when we're in it. 

I also think that just really honouring age, it's utterly privileged to age and people just don't realise it. It really hit me, I'm a widow so my partner passed away about five and a half years ago and from then on every wrinkle and every age spot and things like that, I am able to meet that with grace and go, my God, I'm alive, I'm healthy.

And it's really lucky to age and sure, we're going to end up looking completely different than we did in our, in our prime. reckon our prime is around, you know, 45 myself. but it's okay. It's really okay. And nature has made it so that our sexual, functioning might not be as spontaneous. You know, you're not so horny and things because we don't need to be making children anymore because we're no longer so fertile or fertile at all. Doesn't mean that pleasure has to go. In fact, the sex that we have as we age is better, can be better, especially if we decide it's going to be better because we are less likely to be, especially once that nitrogen declines to just put up with things and we're less likely to hopefully judge our body. We don't have to be the porn star supermodel when that's 30 when we're, you know, 58, because we know we're not. And so we can just relax into who we are and make our sex more about pleasure and less about performance and less about, you know, trying to have as many orgasms or, you know, trying to make him happy all the things that, you know, people feel these imperatives that they put around sex and just drop into pleasure and mutually exchanging pleasure and being in pleasure together - so powerful.

You talked a little bit about what happens to the hormones in terms of plummeting off a cliff slash gradual decline slash fluctuating in a day. When you think back to what you've done through your perimenopause journey, did you decide to replace hormones or not? What was your experience there?

So I'm really interested in HRT. Because you know, it sounds so positive, but I don't have any. I've talked to my doctor and she's like, well, you're not really eligible because you don't have any symptoms. So in Australia, at least they only give HRT if you've got some things that you are worried about. I'm just worried about osteoporosis because that's my family for later life and maybe you know, cognitive decline, I know that HRT is really good for those long -term things. I don't have any symptoms. I have them at the occasional hot flush. I just went through Chinese medicine and it really helped me. And he basically said to me, get more sleep and put on some weight. And he said, I don't care what you eat, just eat. And so I've put on about five kilos and I am, my menopause symptoms went away. I was too thin. So I was over exercising. I was too thin. So I had to be more yin, and more surrendered and eat more carbs and eat not do intermittent fasting and just literally soften into a curvier shape and which I love and really be more yin I think is really what it mostly was be more feminine if you want to conflate yin with feminine but just more surrendered and receptive and less hard.

I found that just taking all this advice, eating more protein, things like that as well, exercising less hardcore really helped me and my symptoms went away. I did use vaginal estrogen for a couple of years and I would again if I needed to, but I seem to have, that's all healed. plenty of moisture there and that's through deliberate pleasure. Either self pleasure or I have a boyfriend so plenty of sex so that really helps. And on that, I really believe and my newsletter this month is about that, the more sex and I'm talking pleasure not you know, penitentiary of sex, but the more sexual activity, intimacy that we have, the more we want. And the better our body responds. 

We've got a bunch of pipes and machines inside that need to be oiled and maintained and we need to be using the beautiful capacity for blood flow and we need to be using erectile tissues that we've all genders have got. And we need to be, you know, moving that lymph and moving those muscles and working that fascia and all of the things that we've got in our genitals. So the more that we use these parts of ourselves, the younger they'll stay or let's say more vital they'll stay.

There's something there about it also being such a personal journey when you were talking about hormones and how we treat that and, what's available to us in our country. know that, different countries have got their own legislations, different, you know, medical practices have got limitations on what's available and what isn't. And so looking at how do we build community? There maybe multiple sources of support that we get when you think about Chinese medicine, traditional medicine, exercise, sleep, food, all of those things that can support us rather than one magic resource that's going to change everything.

Yeah, and because HRT is not available for everyone or, or appropriate for everyone as well. There are a lot of things you can do with herbs and diet that help some belly know, I know they don't work for all women. I've got plenty of friends who've tried everything natural and it hasn't worked. And once I went on HRT, their whole life changed. So everyone's different. And I think that's really important to, to find what works for you. Even when your friends say, you got to try this product in this herbal thing will fix you and it doesn't, you know, we're all different. So Chinese medicine is great in that it looks at you as an individual.

Hmm. One of the things that I think is also so powerful to think about in this conversation is almost taking ownership of your sexuality, your sexual health, your body, your sexual organs. And so you're, you know, part of what you're saying or what I'm hearing is yes, if you have a partner, experiment with your partner, have conversations, play with your partner, work with that, work with an intimacy coach.

But if you are not in that space with your partner or if you are solo or if you are dating or whatever it is, still bringing attention to, well, how do I feed that energy? How do I activate that part of my body? How do I bring circulation to, you know, my blood flow and my muscles and my body as a sexual health practice? So there's part of relationship and there's part of also me owning that maybe I want that part of me to feel alive.

Absolutely, you don't have to have a partner at all. And in the my online course per it's 10 weeks of these practices that help you have blood flow and help you find that erotic aliveness inside you on a very physical and emotional and somatic way. And a lot of it is pushing against this resistance we've got of touching ourselves. A lot of women are just like, I don't feel anything. So therefore I don't want to touch myself. Well, of course you don't feel anything. There's no blood flow there. So you have to bring the blood flow in and it takes a little lube and maybe five or 10 minutes of conscious touch with no sensation before something will happen. It's not immediate, especially as we age. We don't have an immediate sensation quite often.

We have to, you know, down regulate the nervous system to allow, then we have to bring that blood flow in. There's so many practices that can really help. And then 10 minutes in, you can be like, I feel something now. And then, then you can just go to sleep if you like, because you've brought in that blood flow, you don't have to go all the way into a long self pleasure practice. But just committing to a pussy massage for, you know, five or 10 minutes, a couple of times a week can go a long way into keeping everything working and feeling pleasure and more connected to yourself as well.

You've often talked about that transition time or that down regulation time or like giving yourself time to go from your busy day or your stressful day into something that feels possible to access sexuality or eroticism. And I think you've given us a couple of examples of maybe that's a walk, maybe that's a bath, maybe that's a nap, maybe that is, know, whatever that is for you. And I think that's often something we miss out. So I'm just repeating it here for anyone who is putting pressure on themselves for that urgency, immediacy, if it's not happening in two minutes, there's something wrong with me. It's broken, whatever the story is of giving ourselves time to regulate our stress, to breathe, to come back into our bodies, to land in where we are, to become aware of our senses, right? Our sensuality and invite that in and seeing that as a practice and an experiment that is contra a lot of modern day living.

Yeah, and it will be something different for everyone. One person will need a hot bath and the other will need to meditate and someone else will find five minutes of hip circles gets ready. It's really different for everyone. Some might need a glass of wine, but certainly not one that I would do. would be the opposite for me. That would make me feel not like having sex. It just really depends on experimenting with what works. You kind of know yourself what really makes you feel at peace. Go with something that really makes you feel at peace. Or for some people they need something that kind of stimulates them as in brings them kind of into a more energised state.

If you, so you were thinking about women in their thirties maybe, and you were saying, you know, you would recommend building in rest practices or slowly looking at your schedule. What can you let go of? Where can you make space? Is there anything else you would recommend to somebody who may be starting to notice changes in her body?

Yeah, I really think keeping track of it is really good. Because you know, in your early 40s, you might start to let's say have a period every three weeks for a few years, or you might have and you know, your doctor won't call that perimenopause, but I would tend to believe it is. There's really keeping really being very aware of your body and your cycle and your your times when you're angry and the times where you're sad and the times where you're most happy and the times where you most feel like sex and just really getting to know yourself. Also getting good practices towards sleep. Like getting that if you've got any issues in your 40s with sleep, get on top of them before you hit 48, 49, 50. Sleep is so important and when it comes to perimenopause, it's sleep that goes. 

Once we start having these sleepless nights, that's when all hell breaks loose and things go crazy. For me, probably three months of utter hell in perimenopause and that was it. Then I got help with Chinese doctor, but it's the lack of sleep that makes us feel so bad. So learning, having that good sleep hygiene, good 10 years before, you're trying to get, I mean, we do have babies quite late these days. 

And also, would say, learning how to look after yourself in terms of your own needs for space and time to yourself, you'll need that in perimenopause and menopause, you need more time alone without all the things that we have to do. So having a little bit of selfish time, starting to build that in, especially if you're in a relationship, building that in that you have this time just for you. For me, it's a yoga practice every morning, but you know, whatever it is for someone so that they're, they wither away a little bit of time for themselves to be with themselves and have that as a habit so that they're used to doing that. They don't have to carve it out at the last minute when they're feeling frazzled.

Hmm. So there's something about keeping track of where you are. So whether that's a notebook or it's online, or it's a voice note to yourself of tracking where you are, really paying attention to your sleep hygiene and then starting to look at boundaries and protecting a little bit of time for yourself. So you've got those moments to pause, to breathe, to check in with yourself.

So from all the people I know who've been going through perimenopause and menopause, it's the ones that are stressed are the ones, you know, it's maybe not their fault that they're stressed, you know, they've got a stressful life. They're the ones that really suffer. And so if we can learn the practices to not be stressed, to regulate our stress at least and be able to cope with our stress before we start to come through this very physically stressful time with these hormones going up and down and all over the place because that is a lot on the body, then we then we're in a much better position to be more smooth through this pretty nutty transition. It's really just as crazy as meant as puberty.

Stess management, one of my favorite things to talk about. One of the most challenging things to do in practice. Thank you so much for the time. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you feel like is important for women to know from you?

Yeah, just a little bit about the female brain. you know, we hear all this about brain fog and stuff like that. But actually, there's studies that the female brains get stronger and better in midlife and beyond, because we actually can have more ability and I would say this is probably post menopause to focus. we don't, estrogen makes us really be able to focus on many things at once. 

And we know through studies that focusing on many things at once isn't as effective as focusing on one thing. And, you know, so you can imagine why nature has done this. It's like, okay, we're, we're cooking the dinner and we're looking at the kids and we're making sure with our peripheral vision, which women have got better peripheral vision, that the you know, the saber tooth tiger is not getting the kids and we're thinking about this and we're doing all these things. We need to do that in our fertile years and then later on in life we can focus and if you have this because estrogen is declined and your brain gets completely shifts and rewind and everything changes completely, then we're able to focus more.

If you've got, if you work on that skill, you can get a lot done for the first time in your life. You can go, I can actually focus on one thing, especially if you have the spaciousness of not having, you know, kids to look after as much, or maybe you've got more spaciousness with your career or things like that. You can actually get a lot done with this new version of your brain. So I think that for all of the negatives that we hear about menopause, there's always a positive as well that's not being talked about as much. 

There are struggles to get sometimes from where you are to where you want to be. But most people can get there if they find the right help or they do the right things or have the right practices.And I think also having a positive mindset is a lot for that. So if you decide how you want to be and how you want to feel and keep that as your North Star as your goal, and then you work towards it, I think that can be really powerful.

You have been such a good example for us in this conversation about bringing the positive and sharing how good you feel in your life, in your sexuality, in your mindset, in your ability to focus. So thank you from all of my heart for bringing that because I feel like we, as you say, we don't hear about that aspect enough of how maybe good it can feel to be on the other side, how freeing it can feel to not be in the accommodation mode, how fun it can feel to be exploring different versions of ourselves. So, so much gratitude for you for bringing that into the conversation.

You're so welcome. Thank you. Yes. A great book to read is, what's her name? Dr. Louann Brizendine. And it's called The Upgrade. It's quite medical, I must say. But it talks about how the female brain gets stronger. It gives you even some pelvic floor advice and things like that. But it's a very positive look at midlife. 

Great name, The Upgrade.

Yeah, it's really good. And then I also love Mama Gena, you know, Mama Gena, she's a relentless advocate of radical self love and the stance against, you know, what aging is. Yeah. There's a lot of role models. It's good to have role models, I think, to look for people that really, you really feel that you could be like them rather than some fully botoxed up, somebody who can't move their face, you know, trying to pretend that they're not old. I think it's really wonderful to just embrace it and find the beauty in it. 

Yeah, so there's a call there also to bring intention to what we are taking in, terms of images or influences or articles that we're reading, right? When you were saying, you know, yes, look at food, yes, look at rest, yes, look at all of those pieces, but also what am I telling myself? What am I showing myself about aging? And can I curate that? Can I make sure that I'm following people that feel inspiring, that feel like they could be me, that feel realistic.

Absolutely. You go through your Instagram, people you follow and, and unfollow all the ones that don't make you feel good about yourself. And, and follow the ones that are doing it a bit differently. You know, who embracing who they are and firmly standing for who they are rather than, you know, perhaps living in, in this culture of trying to escape the inevitable. And the inevitable is beautiful. really is. Aging is absolutely a privilege. And sex can be better and pleasure can be so much more expansive as we age.

Hmm, that's making me feel like I can't wait. Thank you so much for the time, Heidi. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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Maude Burger-Smith