SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Empower Your Menopause. It's coaches James and Julie here, and today we're talking about something that can feel like a luxury but is actually a real necessity: rest and recovery. Now, whether you're experiencing sleepless nights, feeling wired but tired, or just wondering why rest feels harder than ever during menopause, this episode is for you. We're going to explore why rest is about so much more than just sleep. We've already talked about sleep in a previous episode, so we're going to go way beyond that. It's also about promoting something we call deep health. That's where every part of you, your body, your mind, and your soul, absolutely thrives. By understanding how rest and recovery impact all aspects of life, we can start talking small, realistic steps to bring that balance and vitality back into our daily routines. So let's start off, Julie, with a really simple question then for you. Why do rest and recovery actually matter? Why should we be paying heed to this at this time in life?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Well, it's a really interesting question and one that comes up quite frequently because the truth is, as we're going through menopause, our bodies are already working really hard to adjust to all of the changes that we're going through. And we have different hormone levels. We have to manage our energy differently, maybe cope with extra stress on our nervous system, all of the other things that are going on in our lives, all of these demands on our time. And guess what helps with all of that? Good quality rest and recovery. Now, this isn't just about sleep. Rest is a tool that can support every single part of you, physical, emotional, mental, um, and even your social health. So when we talk about rest, we're not just talking about sleep, we're talking about something that's more related to a concept that we call deep health.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Okay, and we'll go into deep health in a little bit, but have you worked with any clients who've had a transformation when it comes to rest and recovery? I know that I've personally, I know that I'm not a woman in menopause, but I've just had a real wake-up call in my own sporting endeavours. I, for those of you who don't know, I run ultramarathons. I went and did a very, very long race, 153 miles called Spartaklon. And I've been running ultramarathons for around 14 years, and really lots of niggles and things like that have come up for me, and I've kind of ignored them and just carried on ploughing through. And I'm just had a massive breakdown, one of my muscles is torn, it means I can't run for three to four months. So I suppose that is a real sort of like short encapsulation of how you know not paying heed to rest and recovery at any time of life can be a challenge. But we do see that a lot, particularly, I feel at least, with the women that we work with because they are just have so much on all the time. And we've talked about this again before, you know, all that stuff that people have to deal with kids, families, jobs, partners, uh, their own parents, their friends, all the other demands on their time that it just becomes a real, real challenge to find the time to make time for me time, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Absolutely. And I I have uh a favorite client story who when I worked, there was a lady I worked with um in Canada, and she's an executive and has uh crazy demands, like huge long work days and lots of pressure. She's got a son who was in his teens and getting ready to move on to university, um, dealing with uh family, extended family, living with them. Her in-laws were living with them. So she was expected to prepare all the meals and take care of the household as well as have this job. And then her son, who is uh an opera singer and training in the musical arts, a lot of travel and demands on his time as well. So she felt really, really at wit's end. And we started by focusing on taking breaks, something as simple as getting up and stretching during the day from her desk or um going for a short walk, um, learning to build in some of these things. It wasn't about just about sleep, eventually her sleep improved as well because she was able to do some things that that helped like ask for help from her family and delegate some of the things that that she could because we realized that you know it isn't all about her having to do everything for everybody all the time. And when we finally, and this took about six months to work through, this isn't a quick fix kind of thing. It takes building new habits and learning new things and having some challenging conversations. But once we got through all of that, not only did she have more energy, her moods improved, her sleep improved, her weight just because of the changes she made to her stress levels and her rest levels, her body started to recover and she lost quite a bit of weight. As a matter of fact, when we finished working together, she actually took her very first solo vacation for a week. She said, you know what? I owe this to myself and I've earned it, and I'm going and I'm going to spend a week in a friend's condo in Florida and just have the best time of my life. And she did, and her family was shocked because she's never gone anywhere without the whole family, of course. But it was such a it was such a a new beginning for her. It was lovely to see, really lovely to see.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah. And what a great um story that is, and a great example of just how important this is. Again, it's something we've talked about before. We talk about a heck of a lot that stress is such an enemy at this time of life of the perimenopausal or the menopausal woman or even the woman in postmenopause, because of all those other things that are going on and the effect that stress has on the hormones. And I suppose it's a good time then to bring in this concept a little bit and just talk a little bit about deep health and how that that works. Because you know, your endocrine system doesn't work on its own, hormones don't work individually, they work as a whole body concept, and that's why we coach whole body health. We talk about it in the terms of the looking after people in a 360-degree way, those four pillars that we've talked about how you think, how you eat, how you move, how you live. But deep health is kind of like the underlying concept behind that, isn't it? Because privatizing rest and recovery actually helps support the whole person and whole life health. That allows us to grow and adapt and really enjoy this chapter of life rather than just seeing it as a drag or another stage as we head towards sort of like later midlife and the end of our life. So there are six aspects of deep health, and each one of them benefits in different ways from rest and recovery. I just wonder if you wanted to take us through and maybe explain, Julie, what those ideas of deep health are. What are the six aspects of it?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Sure. Well, the one everybody thinks about most often is our physical health. Um, when we rest, and again, that we're not just talking about sleep, we're talking about rejuvenating activities, and we'll get into the details of this in a little bit. But it rest allows our body to recharge and rebuild and help our energy levels and muscle recovery, for example, after a workout. We have our mental health, and fortunately, this has becoming more widely talked about. It was something that was not really discussed in the past. But when we allow ourselves that kind of downtime, it really helps with clarity and creativity and building resilience. And I can say that today I was reaching my wit's end with some technology issues and I had a lot of work left to do. And I just said, no, I'm going out for a walk. So we went down by the lake and took a quick walk, and I came back feeling like a brand new person. So these are the kinds of things that can really help us with our mental health. Emotional health is a big one as well. Sometimes we don't allow ourselves to feel our feelings because they're inconvenient or uncomfortable in a particular situation. And so once we stuff those down, whether it's figuratively or literally with food and other things, um, it can build up and cause some problems. So taking time to rest and learn how to tune into what we're actually feeling allows us to have a more broad range of feelings and learn how to adapt and deal with those in a healthier way. We've got our existential health, our purpose and meaning in life, right? Rest will help us create space to connect with that why and sense of purpose, whatever that looks like for you, whatever your belief system is. We've got social health. Um, we need to be present in our relationships. And we all have relationships of one sort or another, and being able to be more present really is important for all of our other aspects of health as well. But when we are taking recovery time, it helps us do that. And then, of course, environmental health. We want to be um feeling safe, we want to have a sense of calm, we want to be in a space, um, whether that's our our home or our neighborhood or our city or our state, you know, expanding out across the globe. Our our environment plays a big role in uh in that. So those are those are all the facets that make up that sort of whole deep health, whole person health focus that we that we use.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

I find the one that challenges most of our clients is the idea of existential health because it sounds kind of exotic, doesn't it? And out of the, you know, we we all know what physical health is. Mental health has been talked about so much over the last few years. We know that we, you know, we need to have balanced emotions and things like that. So the other ones are all ones that I think people are are more familiar with or more comfortable with, but existential health is probably the one that people are least comfortable with or understand least, but is often the key to unlocking the door to an entire health journey or the the entire why you do anything. You know, once you know why you want to do something or what the reasons are for doing it, it's much, much easier to find the the motivation to seek answers and to change and to experiments comes comes to the fore. And that is why one of the first steps that we do with our clients, Julie, is this idea of talking to people about mastering a menopause mindset, trying to get to a a place where they they really have a vision statement of where they want to go, what underpins everything, and and and why it's important to them to get there. Because unless you have that sense of importance, none of the other things really I find come into play properly. You need to know why you want to do something to be able to really, really do it.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Absolutely. And when we do the when we do the mission statement kind of work, that menopause vision statement, one of the things that we do is we look at outlining out what are your values, what are your core values personally, because most of the time, I think when we run into issues, when we have ill health or we can't manage a particular part of our lives, it's because we're living out of alignment with our values. But if we don't really pay attention to what those are, don't give that some thought and attention, the decisions we make are made in a way that doesn't align with those values. And then we feel out of balance and we seek different ways to comfort ourselves because we don't have that connection.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah. And then I think the other thing that challenges people in this area is that because women are so busy trying to find the time to dedicate to a practice like this often seems like the the biggest step. But the truth is you don't need a heck of a lot of uh time to do something. I I I always think it's funny, you know. The classic thing, isn't it? Oh, what should I do for the rest of my cover? If have you tried meditation, you know, there's there's a local kombucha shop near me, and they've got t-shirts, and they say, Um, yes, I have tried fucking yoga, thank you. Um it's the number one suggestion, isn't it? It's either yoga or meditation. But the funny thing about meditation is how many people say, I can't do it because as soon as I start doing it, my mind starts to wander. And really, that is the whole purpose of doing meditation, to recognise that your mind is starting to wander and then to try and pull it, pull it back. So, this idea that you've got to sort of like actually sit there in silence, like the Dalai Lama for 45 minutes in some Zen state, then and and finding yourself one with everything, um, isn't the starting point. People like the Dalai Lama and your guys and things like that are people who have worked to these practices for years and years and years, they've gone to monk university to get that level of dedication to a meditation practice, and yet we're also constantly searching for things to be immediate and right there for us that we expect to be able to do it from the off. And that is not true at all, is it?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

No, not at all. As a matter of fact, it's it's funny you mentioned that because I for years wanted to start a meditation practice because I knew what the benefits were and how good it was, but with my monkey mind, I found it really difficult. And then I finally found an app, the one that I use is called Insight Timer, just because I like it. And they have tons of guided meditations, and that helped me get into the practice, and I could do one that's as um short as two minutes, all the way up to two hours if I really wanted to. But being able to have that guidance through the process really made a difference. And I found some walking meditations and other things that because the purpose of meditation isn't to just always be still. That that doesn't necessarily work for people, but it's to be able to just let your mind sort of flow and let the energies just sort of flow and and take a moment of calm. And that looks different for a lot of people, so it yeah, it isn't it, and meditation certainly isn't the only tool. There are lots of other tools that we can use when it comes to rest.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Absolutely. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, she's uh mid-40s, she's got a young son, and she is at the moment, she's on a real self-care role, looking after herself. I mean, she's she's naturally always been relatively fit and relatively into these kinds of things. So she's found it relatively easy, but she started um doing some grounding work recently, you know, going and doing maybe a bit of forest bathing or just taking her shoes off and standing in the garden and feeling at uh one with the other. And she's introduced this concept to her son, um maybe somewhat to her own dismay, because now her son also grounds, and and but she said they will go for a walk and she'll be trying to get him on the walk to school or something like that. And he'll just say, Right, just give me a second, mum. So he's like six years old, kicks off his shoes, takes his socks off, and stands on the grass for a few minutes so he can get his own grounding in as well. So I thought that was quite funny that sometimes you know these things can spread out beyond the individual and into the family just by having some of these sort of like really short things that you can do that could just take it could just be a five-minute body scan where you just lay down and just run through head to toe how you're feeling, so you become more attuned with how your body's feeling. It could be a simple 10 deep breaths to to just give you that little flip into what we call the parasympathetic, the rest and digest nervous system to try and help reverse some of the stresses that we have on a daily basis. So if you are looking, Julie, for some new techniques, how would you what kind of mindset do you think you need to have to actually choose something? Because we as health coaches can suggest any number of things that might work for us, but they might not necessarily work for the individual because obviously we just talked about deep health, and deep health relies really on an individualized way of approaching life in general, but particularly the menopause transition. So how could people what what do people need to do to to try and explore this more then and find different ways of bringing in some R and R into their life?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Well, I think one of the first places to start is to think about things that bring you joy, things that you like to do. And as a matter of fact, um my husband came in this morning all just ear-to-ear grin, and he said, You have to, you have to listen to this. And it was a a really short video of a baby who had taken um her mom's phone and she was giggling. And so the sound of babies giggling really brings him back to his core, just loves that. So I could hear him playing that over and over this morning just to relax. Um, I have a I have other friends who love to color, and I know that's a a little bit more of a time investment, but it it doesn't necessarily have to be. Um there are, I don't know, there there are lots of things you can the the main thing is to find something that you enjoy doing. It's especially important that you don't try to force yourself to do something that you don't like to do. Like that was me at first with meditation. I was doing it because I thought I should do it. Once I got practiced at it, I started to love it. And I'm glad that I have that practice available to me. But um, box breathing is really good. You know, if somebody enjoys just not having to think too much, you inhale for four or five counts, hold your breath for four or five counts, exhale for the same amount of counts, and then hold the exhale empty for that same amount. And something interesting I learned just a side note about the breathing, is that um our vagus nerve is stimulated on the exhale. That's what contributes to things like heart rate variability. So we won't talk about that right now, but the vagus nerve can really help stimulate that rest and digest cycle. And a lot of times when we're tense, we hold our breath. And that's why a lot of people sigh when they're feeling tense or when they're feeling a little bit upset, because that's a natural instinct for us to exhale pretty hard and stimulate that vagus nerve to help us relax a little bit. So breath work can be really good. But the main thing is to just think, make a list maybe of things you enjoy, keep an open mind if they're things you're curious about. And curiosity is a great tool when it comes to this kind of thing, to just see how it works, see how it feels, see if you like it, because you don't really know until you try. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Um I think that's a really uh important point, is it to view this as sort of like kind of like almost like an experiment, um, in a way, and to keep an open mind, to have a kind of like a growth mindset where you're thinking it's okay to try things and for them for them for them for them not to work. And I don't mean you know just give meditation a go a couple of nights and then say, right, that definitely doesn't work, particularly if you are thinking, oh my gosh, I can't do this for more than 30 seconds, which most of us do think the first time we try and do it. But to actually just give things a go for maybe like a week or two weeks, and and and actually I think it's a time where journaling can really help you explore what works as well. The one thing I would probably think is and maybe advise to listeners is maybe not to try and do three or four different practices to try and bring rest and recovery all at once. Because if one of them works, you aren't gonna know which one it is. So just sort of like cycle through some of these ideas, whether it be giving grounding a go, whether it be giving colouring a go, whether it be giving box breathing a go, or five-minute body scans, or whatever it may be. I suppose that brings on to like there are lots of different ways and forms of rest, aren't there? Beyond the actual just the techniques, you know, emotional rest. How do you actually differentiate that and how does that look like from social rest? Maybe taking a break from some of your social obligations for a while to actually just be able to stand back and reassess a little bit. I know that I've done that over the last couple of months or so and I've really tried to cut down on social obligations because I felt as though we had too many as a family or creative rest. Would be the kind of things you're talking about, sort of like either using creativity to perhaps help with rest and recovery, so something like colouring or something like that, or actually just taking a break from from being creative. I know so many people who uh artists in some way, shape, or form who might be working and then have a um you know totally lose their artistic mojo, if you like, just because they haven't taken a break from it.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah. Yeah, and I uh that's a that's a really good point. Um, it isn't about flopping down in front of your Netflix or your Amazon Prime and just binge watching something. That's not actually recovery. Once in a while, it's a nice indulgence, but we're talking about things that really support your health and feed your well-being. Um, because we need that, we need that downtime. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

So it's I think escapism, you know, watching a show on Netflix or something like that definitely has a place. Sure. But but it is certainly um not to be confused with what I'd call intentionally setting out to do some kind of uh rest and recovery protocol, you know, just sitting down and doom scrolling on your phone. You yes, you might not be doing anything, you might be away from answering an angry email from your boss or a row with your partner or you know, driving the kids around to soccer practice, whatever it may be. But you're you're probably just taking a break from reality rather than sitting down and saying, I am doing this purposefully because I want to achieve something, and I think that is the difference. And like I said, that is not saying that escapism is is wrong. Plenty of people play games like Candy Crush for hours on end and get a lot out of it, but it's very, very different, I think, because it is also stimulatory in a different way to actually intentionally to do something that is a little bit more intention, I suppose, is the word I'm looking for. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Yeah, exactly. Because if we're still stimulating our minds and feeding all this information into our brains, it's not giving our mind the the time it needs to shut down. And there's a lot of research around how important that is for mental health and even physical health. And so one of the things that we've lost the ability to do is sit quietly and be with our thoughts. And that can be scary and uncomfortable. I I know I worked with a client once, we said, let's start with 30 seconds, and I hit the timer and I just said, just breathe, just focus on your breath for 30 seconds. And and then we got to a minute, and then it was two minutes, and and we grew from there. You know, starting small is perfectly okay because these things do take time to get used to. We're so used to being on the go 100% of the time, we we don't know what it feels like to shut off anymore.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Yeah. I suppose the one thing that we haven't really delved into a lot just before we finish off is incorporating movement as a way to a recovery. So, how can these things like just taking a walk or yoga or stretching or whatever actually support better recovery at this time of life, Julie?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Sure. Gentle movement is is one of the best ways to recover. When you're working, especially if you're working out regularly, you need that active recovery to allow your muscles to get the blood flowing through, process out any toxins and lactic acid, that kind of thing, waste products that are building up in there. But but if nothing else, even if you're not regularly exercising, that movement is really good for your heart, for your lungs, it's good for your muscles, it's good for your mind. Um, it it really brings, it really brings a shift in your energy. So when when you're feeling very tense, a little bit of movement can help process that through in a way that doesn't feel um over overwhelming, um, I think is is the word. And and again, especially depending on the kind of movement that you do. If you do want to try yoga, it's amazing. Again, it's a it's a practice, so it takes time to build up the skills and the strength and the flexibility, but it can be good. But something as simple as walking, walking outside, walking in a park, if you have nature nearby. The the Japanese actually use a uh a form of mental health is that they write prescriptions for is called forest bathing because they find it so beneficial to people's health. Yeah.

unknown 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Okay, so let's start to just have a recap and run through things that we've talked about then. So, first of all, I suppose the key takeaway from all this is that rest and recovery are an absolutely super important tool during the menopause transition, right? We need to find that, and I know it's a term that people it gets overused days and stuff like that, but finding balance is is is is really really essential. And like I said, I know that term is a little bit cliched, but that's what we're trying to do, trying to find a flip side to the hyperactivity that goes on in a woman's life when she's going through the menopause transition. So that's number one. Number two is remembering that I suppose health is deeper than just you know whether you're going to the doctor's or whether you need to take pills or not. It's about thriving across lots and lots of different aspects of life. We talked about deep health, we talked about physical health, mental health, emotional, existential, social, environmental health, lots and lots of different facets of health there. We talked about the value in trying to take small steps and starting out ex with an experimental mindset and just trying some of the many things that we've talked about here. Things like whether it be colouring or meditation or yoga or forest bathing, breathing exercises. I can't remember. Did we mention any more? I think we mentioned a few more, but you know, all those different things. There are many, many different ways of finding ways to rest and recover and to do it with some intention so that you're actually setting out to do it rather than it just being a form of escapism. Um, so anything else, Julia, I missed there on the recap that you can think of.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

No, I I think you covered it all, but one thing I would say is if you feel like you don't have time to take breaks and give yourself that rest and recovery, you need it more than you realize.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, absolutely. 100% percent. I suppose this is a good time to tell people about if they do want some extra help about a special offer that we've got running through November where we're giving away 40 free coaching sessions. Julie, tell people how what what we're offering and how how they can get get one of those, will you please?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, this is exciting. We we're really we're gonna have a lot of fun with this. And for women over 40 for November, as James said, we're offering 40 free coaching calls. And these aren't sales calls, these are meant to be supportive places for you could go. We're gonna talk about some of your goals, some of the things you're doing well, where you might feel like you're stuck, and put you on the path.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Okay, so we are gonna try this again. You may realize if you're watching on the YouTube feed that Julie's face is now much bigger in the camera. That's because we just had a little bit of a blip, let's say, where for unexplained reasons we've been talking about stress in today's episode, and our stress levels have just gone through the roof because five minutes before we're due to finish the podcast, Julie's camera decided to give up on her, and her computer's decided to give up on her. It kicked her out of the system, so Julie is now dialing in with her phone. So we're just gonna quickly refinish the end of the podcast by talking about our free offer of 40 free coaching sessions. So if you're struggling with your rest and recovery routine or any other effect of your health, your hormones, or your happiness, we've got a special offer for you this month. In November, we're giving away 40 free coaching sessions to women, 40 and above. Now, these are not sales sessions, they're done with the best intentions to help you get the best you can from those 45 minutes to give you a roadmap towards your menopause transition journey. To do that, we talk about three different things. One, where you want to get to, two, what's working for you now so that we can build on the good stuff that's already there, and we're not throwing out the baby with a bath water. And then number three is what's holding you back from achieving that vision. And that is where Julia or I, depending on which one of you you're booking with, will step in to help you and give you some tips and work through some challenges with you so you've got a roadmap of the first things you need to start working on. Of course, we said it's not a sales call and it's absolutely not. If you do like what we talk about and you want to hear more about how we work together, we're happy to share that, but you don't have to. This is us giving back and serving the community that we serve in a better way. That's really, really well intentioned. So spots are filling up fast. If you do want to join us, just head to freecall.fabulousbeyond40.com and we'll put that in the link before. All you've got to do is go on, choose which of us you would like to speak to. It could be either of us, or you can just leave it on all members of staff, and then you will uh just get assigned, you'll get a list of times where it'll be kind of like potluck, which one of us you get when you when you click through, and all you've got to do then is book in, we'll send you email reminders, we'll do it over Zoom. Nice and simple, a great way to spend 45 minutes. You've got nothing to lose by doing it. So do click on that link and reserve your session. So I suppose that's it for this week's pod, then. Julie, do you want to do the sign off?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Oh, yes. This is James and Julie reminding you to stay strong and stay fabulous.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

We will see you next time. Thanks for listening or watching.