Rise Like a Phoenix From Your Hot Flashes!
Heat and fire energy are central to many women’s menopause journeys and beyond. One of the top Google searches for menopause is women looking for ways of dealing with their hot flashes. Women want to know what they are, how long they will last and what treatments are available for them. As it is one of the top searches, if you have these questions, I will let you explore the answers on Google yourself.
I’m here to look at menopausal heat and fire on a different level.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to try and diminish the challenge and pain that this heat that has become a huge part of your life is causing you. I’m just going to add a new perspective to it, which I hope will help.
Firstly, we all know about hot flashes that sear through the body from the ground upwards. When they’re happening it’s impossible to ignore them. If you are interested in knowing about Kundalini energy and hot flashes, I’ve made a YouTube video about this subject that includes a guided journey.
Fire is the first alchemical stage. The alchemists of old would burn their material to get the process of transformation under way. Now we know that at least in ‘depth psychology’ terms, the processes that the alchemists put their material through were really projections from the inner processes of the psyche. Transforming lead to gold was highly unlikely, however transforming the inner shadows and heavy dark parts of the self into light and consciousness was a lot more realistic.
As the feminine psyche (which consists of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies) is the ultimate alchemical vessel, then the heat of our hot flashes can be interpreted as the energy that begins the massive menopausal journey (2-10 years depending on the woman) of transformation.
Think of it like cooking. The alchemical transformation of turning raw food into cooked needs fire. Without heat the food can’t be transformed. So, yes hot flashes can be annoying and difficult to deal with, but what if when you were having one you remembered that they weren’t just a sign that your hormones were changing, but a sign that deep, inner transformation of turning the dark, heavy parts of yourself into light was underway? (see the YouTube video mentioned above for more on this).
Another thing you need to know about menopausal heat is that for many women it doesn’t just disappear when perimenopause is finished. I, for one, am in my 60th year and am post-menopausal by a long way, and yet heat has become a part of my life. The intense hot flashes have gone, but I still get waves of heat regularly. Other women experience hot flashes for decades post menopause. The inner flame continues to burn. Because fire is a symbol of transformation, purification and rebirth, it is central to shamanism throughout the world.
The continual process of the turning medicine wheel is part of the wise woman journey. Wise woman recognizes the need for burning away the old, the used, the dead, in order for new growth, insights and understanding to arise. I believe women stay attuned to fire and heat through their psyches as part of their wise woman journey. How about, instead of seeing the heat as negative and something we want to get rid of, we see it as a spiritual tool for our journey to wisdom?
Lastly, I, in my own journey through perimenopause, like some of the women I have worked with, too, experienced a massive, boiling hot, poker iron feeling in my womb space (Don’t worry – this isn’t the heat that remained), although it did need working intensively with before it died out. In retrospect and through my experience working with so many women, I now know this is a symptom of deep motherline trauma. The heat and fire in the womb space invites the woman to step into it like the phoenix and trust that she will be reborn. It’s confusing and terrifying when women don’t know what it is. This is where my experience as a menopause midwife comes in. I’m here to guide and support women as they birth themselves through the fire, but more about that later.
Let’s just say for now, the alchemical stages are a huge gift in offering women a natural and powerful framework for understanding, experiencing and navigating the feminine psyche through menopause. This is much more than just a physical journey, it is an emotional, mental and spiritual one.
The problem for women at perimenopause when the fire first begins to enflame is multifaceted. Can you relate to any of the points below?
1) Most women are not prepared for the fire to burn through them. They don’t have the mindset, information, spiritual guidance to help them sustain the experience positively.
2) The mainstream is very loud and is all about symptoms that need medicating and diminishing. This makes women feel that there is something wrong with them. It emphasizes the feeling that they can’t and shouldn’t have to deal with the heat.
3) Overwhelm and disempowerment when it comes to the inner heat prevents women from looking for ways to access the wisdom in the fire. It prevents women asking the right questions, and honoring the purification and transformation being offered by the heat.
4) For those women that experience the penetrating, intense poke-like heat in the womb space become engulfed by fear, terror, and the overall intensity of the inner fire. They don’t know what to do, where to turn or what it means. Most of them begin to feel there’s something wrong with them, which there isn’t.
5) Even those women who understand that fire can be spiritual often don’t believe that they can handle or even deserve this spiritual power. Kundalini is just for highly spiritual people and definitely not for them.
The main consequence of these feelings of overwhelm and disempowerment is that women give the great power, potential for spiritual insights and wisdom that come with the inner menopausal fire away. They either fail to see it, numb it, deny it, run from it or denigrate it. This needs to stop. The world needs mature, experienced, wise women who are not scared to navigate their own deep, feminine psyches more than ever at the moment. The inner fire is our passion, our righteous rage, our creative source, our ability to transform and rebirth ourselves like the phoenix. It is what fuels our authentic expression and our feminine voices.
If you want to learn more about this, Join me for a free online 90-minute zoom class on February 27th on The Alchemy of Menopause.