Hypnotherapy for the Menopause: How Your Mind Can Help Heal Your Body

Since you first noticed those changes happening within your body, and suspected that the menopause could be a likely culprit, you’ve probably dedicated a lot of time and effort into finding something to help you beat your symptoms. And in the process, you might have done your best to improve your diet, get more exercise and might even have ventured into the world of herbal medicine.

But have you ever taken a moment to consider healing your mind too?

Because as we all know, these menopausal years aren’t exactly a walk in the park. There’s something about fluctuating hormones that awakens our deepest insecurities and unlocks negative emotions. And so, not only do we find ourselves battling mood swings, heavy bleeding, hot flushes, insomnia and vaginal dryness, we often become emotionally fragile too. We question our self-identity and our place in the world, we start wondering if we really are growing old, and often struggle to remember that sexy, powerful and desirable person we once were. It’s not a happy place to be.

But there is a way you can tackle your emotional and physical symptoms, and start getting your life back. It’s called hypnotherapy.

Today I’d like to show you exactly what hypnotherapy can do for you and explain a little about how it works. I’ll explain why it’s so important to deal with the way you’re feeling. And then to round things off, I’ll give you a brilliant self-hypnosis exercise that you can do in the comfort of your own home to get relief FAST! Let’s take a look.

Stress and negative emotions impact upon your experience of the menopause

Let’s first talk a little about stress and the effect it can have on your menopause experience.

As we all know, modern life can be very stressful. There are all kinds of obligations pulling us in every direction. These include the pressures from the world around us and also the pressures we place upon ourselves. All too often, us women want to do it all- we want to be superwomen- taking care of the people we love, enjoying fulfilling hobbies, staying in shape, having careers, nourishing our relationships with our partners and looking forever youthful. And this can all take its toll, even if we don’t realise it at the time.

And then, on top of all of this, comes the menopause which piles much more stress upon the stress we’re already under. It’s no wonder we feel so overwhelmed.

And as you’ll already know if you’ve been following me for a while, stress triggers our fight or flight response. This spikes the production of the stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, impacting upon our oestrogen and progesterone levels, sending our blood sugar out of control, diverting blood away from where it is most needed and leaving us feeling completely and utterly wired.

How do you deal with stress?

The problem here isn’t so much the stress itself- stress in small quantities can actually have a highly positive effect on your life. It’s how we manage our stress.

The trouble is, most of us don’t really deal with our stress at all. We’ve been brought up to suppress our ‘negative’ emotions and put a brave face on things. Letting it all our goes against everything we’ve ever been brought up to believe.

This can have a lasting effect upon how you react to the word, and change your ‘default setting’ when it comes to dealing with the challenges of life. These often come from various traumas we’ve experienced over the course of our lives, such as difficult relationships, illness, grief and other challenges. We all carry the scars of difficult times in our lives, and it is nothing to be ashamed of.

However, we often lock emotions like these deep inside without consciously being aware of it, which influence the way you react to the stress in your life, such as whether those cortisol levels shoot sky high when someone cuts you up on the road, or whether you’re calm and in control.

Hypnotherapy will help you hit the ‘reset’ button, doing an entire spring-clean of your emotions and leaving you feeling emotionally lighter and in control. You’ll be calmer, more able to handle stress and your symptoms will become more manageable. Imagine how your life would change as a result of hypnotherapy. How would that feel?

How hypnotherapy works

Hypnotherapy might appear to be magic but there’s nothing weird about it at all. It’s just like being in REM (dreaming) sleep where your breathing becomes shallower and slower, and your mind starts to drift off into a pleasant dream. When you’re in this blissful state, your heart rate calms, your blood pressure decreases, your stress vanishes and you feel totally relaxed. It’s in this space that we can make the adjustments in any area of your life based on the changes you want to make.

There’s an excellent exercise that I like to take my clients through which helps them deal with their stress more effectively. Firstly, I would ask you where exactly in your body you are experiencing the stress. Then together, we can alter their perception of that stress and take control, taking it out of your body, changing the shape, sound, sensations, colour and size until we can finally blow it away. At the end of this, you’ll feel lighter, calmer and better able to handle your stress.

This works wonders for my menopausal clients, reducing or eliminating their hot flushes, helping them overcome low mood and irritation, stabilising any bleeding and helping them regain their confidence.

Case study: Lose weight by lying in the bath!

Let me tell you about one of my clients in particular. Let’s call her Jo. Jo is a high-achieving, strong and beautiful woman who had been incredible busy and stressed for a long period of time. She had a tough and demanding job and she had recently passed through a rather long and messy divorce. But still, she tried to keep it all together, exercising hard, working hard and battling on through as best she could.

When she came to me looking for help, I could immediately see that stress was a massive problem for her, so I asked her to stop exercising, and instead take 3 baths per week. At this point, she didn't even know if she'd got a bath plug because it had been so long! It then took her another 2 weeks to get into the bath but she persevered and she go there to the end.

At the end of our time together we’d discovered that she’s lost 4 inches off her waist in just 6 weeks without taking any exercise, but using the power of hypnotherapy teamed with the right nutrition.

Get started with self-hypnosis

I’d like to share with you a guided hypnosis that will help you feel calmer and soothe your symptoms of the menopause to help you feel better faster. Here it is:

• Before you begin take yourself to somewhere you’re not going to be disturbed and simply close your eyes.
• Bring your attention to your breath, noticing how your chest rises and falls with each breath. How do you feel?
• Next inhale to the count of three and slowly exhale. Imagine breathing in the colour that’s associated with peacefulness, with calmness. As you breathe in that colour, imagine it relaxing, and soothing your entire body all the way from the top of your head all the way down to your toes.
• Simply breathe in that colour of peacefulness and calmness and say to yourself, “I allow myself to relax” All yourself to become really comfortable, noticing how good that feels.
• Continue breathing in that colour of peacefulness and calmness as you slowly breathe in, and breathe out, and let go.
• You can stay here for as long as you wish and when you’re ready, just bring yourself back to your own natural breathing rhythm, then open your eyes.
• Welcome back!

Hypnotherapy is a powerful technique that will help you reduce or even eliminate your menopausal symptoms, healing both inside and out and feeling calmer, more confident and ready to take on the world.

It won’t just help tackle the physical, but also the emotional side of life, and help you feel better about the changes you’re noticing in your body at this time of transition.

Please send me a message if you’d like to find out more (you’ll be under no obligation)