Heritage of Healing

Menopause and Curanderismo

• Michelle Rios Rice and Liz Howard • Season 1 • Episode 15

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In this episode, we delve into the topic of menopause, exploring its significance and how it was revered in ancient cultures. We'll discuss how modern society's obsession with youth affects women's perceptions of aging and share insights from Curanderismo practices to support the journey through perimenopause and menopause. We'll cover various ways ancient traditions celebrated different life stages, the role of women as wisdom keepers, and natural remedies for common perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. Join us as we elevate consciousness on this topic and embrace the beauty and wisdom of aging.

00:00 Introduction to Menopause and Cultural Perspectives

00:53 Ancient Views on Aging and Menopause

03:30 Modern Society's Obsession with Youth

07:25 Embracing the Transition: Wisdom and Aging

11:27 Perimenopause: The Transitional Phase

16:11 Natural Remedies and Practices for Menopause

23:59 The Power of the Crone: Wisdom and Acceptance

25:09 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Follow us on Instagram @CuranderaPodcast

Speaker 1:

Menopause is inevitable for about half of the population, at least for those lucky enough to live to that point in life. Getting older and gaining wisdom used to be met with honor in ancient traditions, but our culture worships youth and arguably demands that women in particular focus on agelessness. While this is both impractical and impossible, it also disadvantages women from embracing the power in this transitional stage. So today, michelle and I discuss how menopause was viewed in ancient times and what women can learn from curanderismo to support their journey through perimenopause and menopause. Did the ancient cultures view life stages, particularly menopause, differently than we do now?

Speaker 2:

Yes, very much, very much we. In the ancient ways an elder is revered. Children are revered also as knowers and seers and they're untainted by the world and they have that innocence and that connection to the spirit. And elders are also seen in that way that when you get to a certain age, seen in that way that when you get to a certain age, you begin to recognize kind of a calm or the knowing that death is not far and that your body is changing and the hormones change and the mind changes and your needs change and you're just revered in a very different way than Western society how we see elders and how we see actually the body and the body changing.

Speaker 2:

I think indigenous peoples, traditional peoples, have a much, much healthier understanding of the human body and what it's there for and there's less status connected to the shape of your body and your breasts and flat stomach or this size of a rear or whatever, and so it's just a very different, much more healthy way of seeing that process and that phase of change that a woman goes through. And women are held in a very different esteem because it's always known that the woman is a portal between worlds and she brings life from the spirit world, into the body and into this world. So she's a portal. She's held in a very different esteem, and before the Spanish arrived with the indigenous peoples, women were always in charge.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people think that they were not. Oh, the men were the ones that ran everything. No, the women were the ones that were the wisdom keepers and they were the ones that held everything together. They were the ones in charge of the clans. So you have the clan mothers, who were usually elders. Sometimes it could be somebody younger, but usually it's an elder. That where you've come into that place through your initiations and so forth, through your life process, and so menopause is actually a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1:

There is a survey done by an online dating site called OkCupid and it's become viral and they were asking people of different ages which age they found their mates to be the most attractive. So they did this bar graph and for women that were attracted to men, they found that that it followed the same average. So pretty close to their age is the age that they found men more attractive. When they're younger, they liked men that were just a couple years older. When they were older, they liked men that were just a couple years younger, but it pretty much followed the same line, right? So it was where their age was. The age of the person that they found attractive corresponded pretty closely. Then they did the same evaluation on men and men of all ages.

Speaker 1:

So, whether you're talking about a 20-year-old or a 70-year-old, they all found the most attractive age for a female to be at about the age of 22. So there's no correspondence for age. Old men found 22-year-olds most attractive and young men found 22-year-old women most attractive. And it's really started a lot of conversation about even the exposure that our society has to the images of older women, right, because there's so much airbrushing, there's so much curated content that people aren't even seeing in mass media what an actual face of a woman looks like or body of a woman looks like when it ages completely naturally and unaltered, and it's terrifying. I wonder how that lands with you.

Speaker 2:

I just there's a couple of adjectives that come to my mind. One of them is like that's disgusting. You know, as you're talking about, as you're talking about filters and people airbrushed you can make your body look like anything with these filters. You can shape your body, your boobies can look really big and voluptuous and your face can be without wrinkles and your eyes you can change the color, you can change the whole shape of the face. All of this stuff, and it's very scary to me and for women, for girls and women we think about.

Speaker 2:

I know that there have been studies done years ago in reference to like young girls, teenage girls looking at magazines. Now you have social media and all these women who are just sexualizing themselves to extremes. You just wonder what does this? How does a woman perceive, and maybe women know I'm an older woman, I'm not going to be attractive to men and so I need to do what I need to do to try and make myself seem like I'm something I'm not. Like 22? Yeah, like 22. It's what for?

Speaker 2:

And this is a thing you and I have touched on this a little bit. This is a thing of elevating consciousness. Yes, we're called to elevate consciousness and to not be stuck in the mundane or in the genitals or not be stuck in the ordinary sight, but to transform into the spiritual sight and into the sight of an awakened society, an awakened being. That's an ancient teaching right. We want to revere wisdom, not the outward appearance. I'm not saying you can't look good but we want to revere what's inside. We want to revere the heart radiance. We want to revere our wisdom, our intellect, our supernatural abilities and ways of being and operating. So we are worlds apart. When I look at that it's very scary.

Speaker 1:

When we think about societies. Our society is just starting to acknowledge that there's a medical or a physiological impact to this change of life for more than half of the population. What about in ancient ways? How did the ancients acknowledge that there was a shift in the way that women existed at different times of their lives?

Speaker 2:

They honored individuals. The indigenous people are. They're a tribe of people and within the tribes there's clans and the clans hold certain roles. A lot of those roles are very sacred. The leaders of the clans were usually women and the women would come to that place. She recognized from her wisdom that another woman had approached the shift. The shift comes with our own bodies, our need for rest. It's like a time of hibernation in which you come into the fall or the winter of your life and in that time there's rest and there's calm and there's wisdom and there's guidance, there's introspection, there's dreams and they come so that clan mother can give that wisdom to her clan.

Speaker 2:

She is the goddess. She's the one that holds the beauty, that holds the knowing, that holds the history, that transforms that oral history into the now from the past. And so it's a beautiful, reverent position to hold. It's very different than, oh, a 22-year-old is attractive. It's the knowing that this woman has it all. She is the badass, as you say. She has it all, she's done it all and she's there to hold that and give that and to the tribes. That's a very attractive thing.

Speaker 2:

When the body changes in a tribal ways, it's not seen as something that's ugly. It's not seen as something like, oh, that poor woman is fat and old and ugly and wrinkled. It's like her wrinkles mean something. The depth in her eyes, the sorrow and the joy in her eyes show her strength and her capacity through life. And the indigenous people, including myself, we do ceremony for those things. You have your puberty ceremonies, where you're bringing a girl into womanhood, and that's also tied to ministration. So it's very known and it's very celebrated. And when a woman comes into menopause and no longer is in those places, there's also ceremony connected to that. And so those are beautiful, detailed, ritualistic ceremonies that hold a depth for everybody in the tribe for a man, for a woman, for a boy, for a girl, for an old lady, an old man, and so it's very different. We're really, in the Western world, lacking that.

Speaker 1:

So there's transitions, right, it's just like the seasons. They don't abruptly. We're really in the high 70s, it's still summer, but there's a nod to fall coming and that really spoke to me as I get older and I see a couple little gray hairs popping up and all those things. There's little suggestions that a season's changing. Can you talk about perimenopause and what that phase is for women?

Speaker 2:

I see it, I see it more. Let's say the end of the summer. I see it more. Let's say the end of the summer, if you look at seasons, if you're taking it at nature, at the end of the summer into fall, and in that point in time when you think about how nature changes, well, we too change. We're a part of nature, and so we shift in our hormones, in our moods, in our sight, in our values. Think about it. You tell me real quickly how you see yourself in the point in time, where you are. And then, let's say, coming into, entering into these phases, into these forms of nature, into this flow.

Speaker 1:

I think I feel so much more grounded. So it's not an early spring. My roots are getting more and more established every day and I'm not a tree that's going to sway in the wind anymore at all. I know who I am and my roots exist not because other people told me where they should be. It's because I grew them myself and think there's a confidence and a knowing and a lack. It's interesting because I think there's a lack of fluctuation and an openness to fluctuation.

Speaker 1:

So, while I see that I look different than I did, I can see a difference in the way my body behaves. I think I'm lucky because I did have exposure to older women in my life and so I see a lot of beauty in a face and actually my personal viewpoint, which doesn't have to be anyone else's but is that usually with a face with a little more maturity, I see a more elegant and sophisticated kind of beauty. I'm not taking anything away from the youthful beauty that is so obvious and so beautiful and should be celebrated, anything away from the youthful beauty that is so obvious and so beautiful and should be celebrated. I'm not throwing rocks at that, but for me personally, when I see a face with some angles and some wrinkles and some of its own personality on it, I personally find that really beautiful, and I don't know that I would have 20 years ago. But as I've come into this phase of my life, I think it shows, it represents something very different after you've walked a mile.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and that's the beauty, that is the beauty of recognizing the phases. I love, as the apprentice, how you are conveying that wisdom, because that's exactly it, that's what we come into when we understand that we're, we are nature, we're a part of nature and we're going to go through those exact phases too, and we all hold. Everything holds its place, everything has its value, and so we get the opportunity to be that 22-year-old, and we also get the opportunity if we're privileged enough to have a long life, then we also get the opportunity to be older in age, and it is a privilege we forget. Wow, we're going to move on, we're going to die, and so we get this whole thing. Oh, I have to be you, I have to look like a 20 year old, I have to do this, I have to do that. No, it's accepting. Like you have that wisdom, and so, as you go through life, you do become rooted, and for a woman, that's an amazing thing, because then you don't give a shit, you don't have to prove to anyone your beauty, your worth, your value, like I'm rooted in who I am and I am beautiful. I am beautiful and I am wise and I don't want to be the 20 year old.

Speaker 2:

It's not that 20 year olds aren't beautiful. They have their purpose too. They have that moment in time, as we did and as others have before us, and it's perfect in its place and its time. Everything has that season and I see that phase as exactly what you said. I see it as the part in which you're rooting and you're coming into your force and you're understanding that force and what it means and what you value. You've also not everybody, but you come into the point where you've either been married or you are married or you're establishing your, let's say, your household and your children, and you're understanding the gift of that, giving that wisdom as a woman to your children, to your partner, to your spouse, to your parents, to your grandparents, to the family circle around you and, if you're not, if you don't have that, to the people that are around you that you desire to give to.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about some practical uses and again, we are not offering any kind of medical advice. These are things that are passed on through ancient ways and we are only talking about them and not recommending them. But what are some of the things that might be offered to someone early, like in the perimenopausal time, where you may have issues with hair loss, anxiety, sleep problems, weight gain? Maybe you can speak to more of them, but what might be some natural things that a curandera would offer to someone that is in this time of transition?

Speaker 2:

Of course you look at your supplements You're thinking about in the ancient ways we understood and there was a connection to nature and the connection to the water and the sun and the moonlight, and all of those strengthen our field. They strengthen our intuition, which is you're coming into those phases. Your intuition re heightens again. So when you're a little child, your intuition is completely open and then when you come into, you go through life and it dims out for a lot of people, some people it shuts out. And then you come into, let's say, your late 30s, early 40s, into 50s, and we'll stop there in terms of the age, because it continues to grow. But your intuition then reopens again and some of the connections to your spiritual gifts open again. So you want to enhance that and enhance the phases that you're going through by working with the sun, working with the moon, being in the sun, being in the moonlight and being with water and sometimes fire, but water more so because it holds the energies. And then you look at your supplements and you're, I think, right away, I come right off of the bat and think about, like your vitamin D, if you're not outside getting it from nature, you do need that supplement. You need to have your calcium, which everybody knows about that because of your bone densities. Your greens, your green vegetables Now that's so important. You know your kale and your spinach and having high protein is super, super important during this time. You want to stay away. Doesn't this sound like a normal diet for anything, for health? You want to stay away from sugars and caffeine and alcohol. They don't help you in any capacity. Movement, even if you move slowly, the movement is a meditation and the movement is a connection to the force all around you in your own force. And so those are many things I like. I love, actually, evening primrose. It's local to our area and that is something that should be used by women once you get into these menopausal stages, and it's very wonderful, very valuable Roses themselves in water in the baths. Evening primrose you can use also to make a bath brew and soak with. When you're talking about hair loss, I think about Romero and lavender, rosemary and lavender Sorry, I said it in Spanish.

Speaker 2:

Making a mix or using an essential oil with coconut oil and placing it on the hair, where you're losing the hair and sometimes ingesting a little bit of it. And that needs to be consulted with somebody like myself who knows the amount for the person and make sure the individual what they could be taking in terms of medications and so forth. But I have worked with people actually who have had humongous hair loss, like balls of hair where they bald because of the hormonal changes and restored there at the growth of the hair, and so it is possible to do it through natural means. We want to have flaxseed is also very good, so you can boil a little bit of it. It turns into a gel. You can use it topically or ingest it.

Speaker 2:

So those are just some of the things. Obviously, water you want to bathe in water, you want to consume your water and be very hydrated because the body's shifting and it's like it's drying. It's in the fall right when things dry out, so you want to hydrate. It's in the fall right when things dry out, so you want to hydrate and nourish in hydration, which is so beautiful and so wonderful because when you go into it into kind of a meditative way or a ceremonial way, it's very impactful when you impact and imprint the energies and the cells.

Speaker 1:

So what might Akutandata tell someone who's right in the midst of the red hot center of menopause?

Speaker 2:

I would offer them red clover and the evening primrose, I would do a limpia, a cleanse, with them. That specific that's called the reboso. A reboso is like a shawl, a long shawl, and it's a way of wrapping. It's so you get wrapped in the rebozo. You get wrapped and held and contained while you're going through the processes of the body re-regulating. And it's a re-regulation, it's re-regulating itself into those spaces of harmony to rest, because when we rest, when we sleep, when we rest, we heal and the body takes its own self and it knows how to heal itself. And so the rest is very important. Again, water going into the water.

Speaker 2:

I love when women are at that point and they're going through all of this process where their body is coming back into the crown energy, into the wisdom, energy, and you do the rebozo, and a woman is held and her womb is held and everything that her womb has been through.

Speaker 2:

And so when you think about that, and you think about giving birth, being pregnant, being penetrated in a beautiful way, being penetrated sometimes in ways that are violations, we hold all of that inside of us, we hold a man's semen inside of us, and so that's also a point of deep cleansing, of removal of all of these things and all of what that is, and returning to the wisdom of the woman, of the divine feminine you mentioned her earlier and it's that return of that energy. And a woman wants to regulate the hot flashes because they're very uncomfortable, but also to breathe into them, using the breath to breathe into it and to regulate it and re-regulate yourself. And, like I said, of course, the flax seed and the lavender and the romero, also just in terms of, like supplemental, having probiotics and prebiotics and bone broth strengthens a person. Through that, it works in the whole system, in the immune system, in the gut itself, to harmonize, so that helps to lessen the intensity of those things as you're talking about it.

Speaker 1:

it makes me want to be menopausal. Just the invitation to come back fully into the divine feminine, where our womb or uterus isn't a utilitarian tool that's available to other bodies right, even if we love it, even if we're grateful for it, even if it's the best case scenario, but it's ours again. Wow, what a powerful statement.

Speaker 2:

As women, the trick is to hold ourselves back and our partners or the people around us in that value, in that understanding, and to level up, so to speak. We're being called, actually collectively, to level up and to level up in relationships, to level up as a man, to level up as a woman. You and I have had this conversation like who are you, michelle? Are you the crone? Are you the Yoda? I'm all of that. I'm a master, I've been at this forever, but I'm a crone. There might be a negative connotation to the crone, but the crone doesn't give a shit what anybody else thinks. The crone is in her power and the crone has. She is menopausal and beyond and she just holds that. She just holds it. She's lived life. There's a wisdom and a beauty to having the opportunity to grow old and live life and to love your family, to love your partner, to hold that space in such a divine beauty.

Speaker 1:

So what would you say is the one thing you would want to leave with a perimenopausal or a menopausal person or someone who is supporting them?

Speaker 2:

that's listening of the wisdom that they're holding and that they're entering into and that phase, and to look at it as a season, in the way that we look at the seasons of nature, and to say what happens in the graces of fall, in the beauty of fall, or in the beauty of winter, what happens there and how can I take that understanding and incorporate it into my world and to just really nourish this season that I'm in, not to be afraid of it but to honor it and to know how privileged you are to have that season, to make it to that season and to gift those things of your knowing and your process to those behind you, to your children and their children's children, right, and then also to look to your parents and your grandparents and their parents and the ancestors and the lines of wisdom that come to you of what you carry, what they have already been through, and how beautiful that is how you hold that inside you.

Speaker 2:

And so, when you're going through menopause and you're having your hot flashes or you're exhausted or your body is changing, to see the beauty in that and the gift that it is.

Speaker 1:

That is all for this week's podcast. If you found this podcast interesting, please share it with someone that you know. If you want to stay in touch with me and Michelle, you can find us at Kudandera Podcast on Instagram. Until next week.