Hot Flashes are Enlightening

My first hot flash was a spiritual experience.

About five years ago, I was co-leading a yoga teacher training and we hosted a kirtan singer who led our group through a soulful mantra. We sat in meditation afterwards and I felt a warm welling rise through me – it started in my pelvis and made its way all the way up my torso, to my face, and the crown of my head, spreading heat and light through my body like an orgasm. My skin glistened with sweat yet I resisted taking off my long sleeve shirt, allowing for this feeling of hot, tingling expansion. I remember opening my mouth and sighing out loud.

It felt like enlightenment. But when the singer invited us to speak about our experiences and I shared mine, someone said, "that was a hot flash!" Everyone laughed and I tried to laugh too.

Beyond my embarrassment, I was curious. This was a hot flash? I didn't know much about them, except seeing some of my friends sitting in front of the air conditioning taking their sweaters off. I didn't know much about menopause either...the fact that it is a specific date, exactly twelve months after your last period, that symptoms can begin as early as your thirties or as late as your fifties, and that they vary wildly from woman to woman.

And that it can also wreak havoc on your body, mind, and spirit.

No one was talking about menopause in a positive light - the media is especially unkind to menopausal women turning us into raging, aging, sweaty, unsexy beasts.

Like my friend, Shirley Weir, creator of Menopause Chicks says, "the way we think about menopause is ruining our ability to enjoy it."

Menopause is life changing, and a powerful life passage that invites us to stand in the sovereignty of our experience. It is a time for deep self care. It is a time for using our wisdom to teach and guide. It is a time to remember who we are, what we have to offer, and what we are gaining.

Yet sometimes we don't know what we are gaining until we let go of what is no longer serving us.

Menopause is a time to surrender, trust, soar, set ourselves free.
If that isn't enlightenment, I don't know what is.

Photo by Michal Minster-Tal