Most women undergo different fears and confusion that come with the midlife transitions, including early menopause changes. But how do we embrace the change and reconnect with the wisdom of our bodies?
Embodiment, intimacy, and somatic intelligence play crucial roles in facilitating women's midlife transformation. Through somatic work and embodiment practices, women can navigate the transition with a deeper connection to themselves, fostering emotional and physical healing and empowering them to embrace change with courage and resilience.
Today, I have Shae Elise Allen, and she explains the transformative world of somatic work and midlife transitions. Through her approach, she guides women to rediscover their inner strength and wisdom, transforming midlife into a period of profound growth and self-discovery.
In this podcast episode, Shae Elise Allen takes us through:
- Her personal journey of disconnection from her body after childbirth and how that led her to somatic and sexual education work.
- The importance of safety, trust, and heart-centered work in somatic therapy, especially for women.
- Her midlife transitions and early menopause experience, including her initial fear and confusion around the changes.
- The initiation into a deeper embodiment through the disruption of menopause.
- Trusting the intelligence of the body and the expansive potential of this transformative process.
And so much more!
Shae Elise Allen is an embodiment educator, speaker, somatic coach, and transformational guide supporting women at midlife. Shae teaches and speaks on embodiment, intimacy, somatic intelligence, vulnerability and courage, and midlife alchemy and supports women to repattern their sexual and body stories, guiding women to lead from a safe, empowered, and expansive connection to their body. Her vision is for women to know their truth as self-honoring, paradigm-shifting leaders and creative channels in today’s world.
Follow her on:
IG: @shaeeliseallen
Follow Aimee Takaya on:
IG : @aimeetakaya
Facebook : Aimee Takaya
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Every day, there is a forgetting, and every moment, there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world and experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy. Here is where you free your Soma.
A: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Free Your Soma, Stories of Somatic Awakening and How to Live from the Inside Out. I'm here today with Shae Elise Allen. She is a transformation coach for Midlife Women, an embodiment educator, speaker, somatic coach, transformational guide, and she has held one-on-one space for more than 450 women's deepest stories in relation to their body, intimacy, and belonging.
Shae also has a background in developing innovative leadership programs for women senior leaders, now teaches and speaks on embodiment, intimacy, somatic intelligence, vulnerability, and courage, and midlife alchemy, guiding women toward realizing their truth as self-honoring, paradigm-shifting leaders, and creative channels in today's world.
Wow, that is a lot of very exciting stuff, and I can't wait to dive into that with to all of some of that, all of that with you today. Hello Shea, thank you for being here.
S: Thank you so much, Aimee. It's a pleasure to be here.
A: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about, you know, how did you get into this career path? I'm sure there was something else you did before or something that led you into this, and more often than not, with somatic work, it's an experience in our own bodies, right?
So tell us a little bit about that journey.
S: Absolutely, I'd love to, and yes, like many people who work in this field, it is the journey of the self, the individual journey that eventually sparks that drive, that desire, that the Dharma path really.
So that's what happened to me after I had my daughter, so my daughter's 16 and a half now, and after I had my daughter, I think she was about three or four, I started to journey on the path of the body really, because I realized after giving birth to her, and then having a relationship breakdown that I was really disconnected from my own body.
So I started to inquire. I met some people who worked in the realm of somatic therapy, and started to really do the work and started to follow this thread of inspiration to learn more about my own body. And I did a lot of somatic body work in that time, of varying types. And then I started to realize that I was disconnected from my body in the realms of intimacy and sexuality and realized that actually in my early to mid-30s that I'd never really been truly connected to it.
So really felt this strong desire to do that. And through my own journey on that path, I had so many incredible awakenings and so many realizations and such enormous heart openings and also realized that some of the work I'd been doing, particularly in the neotentric field, I had discovered that I was having these incredible awakenings and really profound openings to cosmic understandings and my place on the planet and all of that type of thing, but often walking away and realizing that something was missing in that.
And what I discovered was missing was a really deep capacity to facilitate this work in the realms of the heart, in the realms of safety, trust. And as my own heart opened, I realized that this is something that I feel deeply connected to, especially holding this space for women. So, a woman holding this space for other women.
And that's the path that I had awakened to. And then started my journey of doing the practitioner trainings and really delving into the work and starting to offer the work of somatic therapy for women myself, specifically in the realms of yoni repatting, yoni mapping, but going deeper than that in the realms of NLP as well and helping women to really anchor what it was that was unfolding for them into their body and into their minds.
So that's been an incredible journey. And now I still do a little bit of that work, but now I mostly work in the realms of transformational coaching, because I went through a natural early menopause at 42, which was really the big thing that happened to me that changed the path that I now work on, not completely, but just changed that a little bit. Yeah. So I'm happy to delve into that as well, if you would like.
A: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you said some very interesting things that I have actually thought a lot about before and experienced some of myself. And I would love to kind of go a little deeper into some of these things that you mentioned. First of all, in my own personal experience, I found that the approach of a lot of Neotantra is very opening, especially when you first exposed to these ideas and principles.
And what you said about some of the ways that it's conducted is not creating the level of safety in the experience or in the environment that especially I think women, you know, and men, but especially women really, really need and is really important. You know, so I think that in my 20s, that was when I discovered kind of these Neotantra cultures and circles.
And like I said, very opening, I learned about Yoni-Ri Paterning when I first read that book, Vagina. Do you remember that one when it came out?
S: I read that.
A: That was my first introduction to this idea that, you know, that there were memories and, you know, even violence that was stored inside my vagina and that there were ways to actually repatter that and bring back awareness and sensation into this area in my body.
You know, and so I think that's such an amazing place that you started this journey on because in order to do that work, to actually do it in a way that is regenerative to a person, you must create safety, you know.
And I kind of knew that in the beginning, like there were these opportunities to like go to retreats where you would be with like a big group of Neotantra people and a lot of them were men, you know, who were these quote-unquote safe men who were practicing semen retention and all the things, right? But there was a part of me was just like, I don't think I'm going to feel comfortable to do that, you know.
And I actually instead had like a boyfriend at the time help me with that process, you know, or I was also open to finding a female practitioner who could help me with that process. But at that time, I mean, this was like what 2000 something, 2014 2015, this just was not something that most people knew about. And I didn't know how to go about finding this kind of thing.
You know, so I don't know what your timeline was on this or when this was something that you were offering. But I would love to know just a little bit more about like, what were some of the things that you felt helped you create safety in that experience, not only for yourself, but also for the women that you worked with.
S: Yeah, it's been a huge journey, as I said, of really connecting to my own needs and what was really important for me in my own experience of this work. So really beginning the work as someone as a seeker as someone who was wanting to learn more about my own body.
And then as I did that, realizing that this space of the heart, this space of meeting myself in my own heart, but also being able to hold that space for other women became absolutely critically imperative because I… you know, through my experience of holding this space for women, I, well, first of all, I didn't when I first came into this work, I came into it knowing that that is exactly what was needed, that safety and holding that space of the heart was imperative.
And what that looks like initially is just creating a process of onboarding as well, you know, so having the conversations before anyone comes to me for a session, but also, you know, really making sure that I've got three, three and a half hours with a woman to move through a process of actually going to do the bodywork, and initially making sure that women know that even though they've come to me for ye only repatterning work, it may not happen.
And actually really making sure that that is something that's communicated from the beginning, that was never communicated to me with any practitioner that I went to see in the lead-up to becoming a practitioner myself. It was just assumed that, oh, you've come for this work, so this is what we will do, despite whether or not safety and trust can be established within the body. So making sure that's communicated first, and then also, you know, as women, we discover, or we anchor into trust through talking, through seeing each other, through spending time, through having a cup of tea, so making sure that we're sitting down and doing that first.
And also communicating that as a guide of this work, that I will, you know, I will be in that capacity of guide, and I will be suggesting certain things that might support an unfolding, but that ultimately my role is to support the woman in exactly what she wants and needs. And really communicating these really essential steps that might seem obvious, but actually, Amy, they're not, they're not at all.
And that's what I had discovered through my own journey of this. And also having the realm of the heart as front and center, and, you know, beginning the sessions with heart meditation, and also guiding women through a journey of really trusting the body. So, and the ways that I might do that is just by reminding women, you know, the incredible power, the incredible wisdom of the body, that the body is doing all of these things on a daily basis, all of these phenomenally wise functions of the body that we never have to think about, you know, that we don't actually have to control through the mind.
So just talking women through the process of how the body functions and reminding women of the wisdom of the body, so that they can really, really drop in and trust the process. But ultimately, it is connection, ultimately. In order to go deep in a space like this, you need to feel safe with the person that you're doing it with, and taking the steps, the very deliberate steps, to making sure that that safety and that trust is anchored from the very beginning, so that the openings can happen.
A: Yeah, well, I love that. I think three hours sounds like a substantial amount of time to build, you know, a understanding. And I think what you made, the distinction you made about, you know, this may not happen, like this may not be the right time, this may not be the right moment, we may get through the conversation, and that might be enough for you today, just that level of, you know, discussion about it, rather than kind of like, oh, you're going to come in and get what you paid for, you know, or whatever, right, like this kind of more direct approach versus how you're describing it almost feels like it's like foreplay on like a, like a heart level.
It's like, you know, the way in which, you know, women need more time to, you know, feel a sense of arousal often in their intimate relationships in the same way that we are going to need time to open up to this kind of healing, and providing that and like taking the pressure off, I think really supports the safety that's necessary. So I love your answer.
I think that's wonderful that you really learned from your own experiences and created a model that included just taking the time it takes for this specific person's nervous system, right, which is going to be different for each woman that you're in front of, you know, and I think that's really lovely, and very, you know, very somatic in my view, because you're not there to like, you know, make something happen, you're there to facilitate what is ready to occur within this person's soma, and that's such a powerful distinction. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing about your process with that. Kind of going further into the shift that you went through at 42, I'm right now, I'm 35, and I, you know, I'm considering whether I'm going to have another child, like I'm in that mother stage for sure.
And so I don't actually know all that much about menopause and about perimenopause and all of these things, but I'm at this stage where that's like, you know, that's in the next 10 to 15 years of my life, I'm kind of looking ahead and going, what things can I gather now that I can be prepared rather than I feel like, you know, especially in my mother's generation, it was like, and maybe this even happens now for some of the women who are listening, that it feels like it just sort of catches you off guard.
That there's like all of a sudden, there's these changes that are occurring, whether it's on a hormonal level, or whether it's on a mental or emotional level, or maybe it's on an external level, like your world changes, your children are grown, all that kind of stuff that starts this like cavalcade of, in a way, it's like a disruption of the person that you've known yourself to be. So, can you speak a bit about that? Like what does this period of time in women's lives look like?
S: Well, what I can begin with is what it looked like for me, and it shocked the life out of me, Aimee, like I was not ready for it at all. I started to get perimenopause symptoms that I really started observing as perimenopause symptoms around the age of 40. And then, by the time I was 42, I'd started my one year without bleeding. So it happened for me very, very quickly.
But around the age of 40, 41, I started to get the hot flashes, and they started to come on really strong. And I wasn't expecting this at all. So I was at a stage in my life where I had finally felt the deepest connection to my sexuality, like I was so happy in my body, and I was so alive in my sexuality as well. And then all of a sudden it was like, bang, all of these symptoms started to happen. And I didn't at first think it was perimenopause. I actually thought there was something else that was wrong with my body. And I remember having lunch with one of my work colleagues when I had a hot flush at this stage of my life.
And I remember glazing over, and I remember saying to her, what's going on with my face right now? Like, can you give me some feedback? Because I just feel so strange. And I feel really, and she said, yeah, your eyes do look a bit glazed over and like you look a bit out of it, so to speak.
But I wasn't sure what that was. And then, I was able to pinpoint that it was perimenopause by going to the doctor and checking my follicle stimulation hormone and discovering that, yes, it was in the high range consistently. And that I was in, I was really rapidly heading towards menopause at this young age. And at first, I was horrified because I had all of these conditioned ideas around what this meant, because of all the societal conditioning, you know, like I didn't want to be sexually defunct. And I didn't want to be old before my time.
And I didn't want to, you know, all of these toxic narratives around what it means for a woman to age sort of came hurtling through my brain, you know, and I was terrified, actually. And it didn't take me long because I was working in the realm of somatic and sexual education. It didn't take me long to sort of dig deep into this and realize there's a huge amount of gold here for me to mine about my own experience of my body.
So I started on that journey and realized that, you know, my experience of my body was being informed by the societal conditioning. So the more I thought about all of these messages that I've been given about a woman's body and what it means to go through menopause and what it means to age, that fear was essentially informing my own experience of my body. So I started to unravel that.
And I started to understand that when it comes to engaging intimately, particularly in the realms of sexuality for women, when it comes to engaging intimately, we're so conditioned, you know, through the media and through the mainstream porn industry, whether we engage with that directly or not, it's still in the realms of our experience as women.
So yeah, I started to understand that we engage with sex, we're conditioned to engage with sex through, you know, what's known as the male pattern of arousal or a young pattern of arousal, fast, you know, we're expected to respond, you know, we're expected to engage with penetrative sex always, you know. Like there's all these conditions or conditionings that we've been through our societal experience, we've been conditioned to understand about our own body. Right. And then it's goal-oriented, often. Goal oriented. Exactly. Yeah. So it's climactic, you know, in the in the peak and drop climactic experience I'm talking.
Yeah. So all of this, I had a huge awakening around that, and realized, oh my God, there's so much gold here for women at midlife to understand a deeper pattern of arousal, a yin pattern of arousal, a slow pattern of arousal, but also to really deepen into the realms of vulnerability, because it's so vulnerable to experience these changes in the body. And it's very natural to jump straight up into the mind and try to work that out in the mind and try to make sense of it in the mind when the body is actually guiding us in a really profound way.
So it's an incredible stage of life. So much happens in terms of changes to the body, changes to lubrication patterns, you know, pain, vaginal pain, like so much happens in that realm that can have women really shutting off to their sexuality. But if we approach it in a way of deepening into what the body is telling us and what the body is showing us at this stage of life, then there is so much depth and expansion that we can uncover at this stage of life. So it's actually really exciting.
A: I can see that, and I can feel your enthusiasm for this, too. And the word that came to mind as you were describing this process is it's an opportunity for like an attunement and a refinement of who maybe we've always been, like in terms of what really feels good and isn't just something that was programmed into us and at adolescence or maybe for someone even earlier in life, you know, where we learned this is what it means to be a woman in this world and this is what sexuality means that was being funneled through, you know, for lack of a better word at the moment. Like the patriarchy or like a male perspective, you know, and then now there's this process of our bodies really shifting into, you know, a different way of operating.
And what I hear is just such an opportunity for kind of realigning yourself with what you are truly like here to experience in your body. And you're right, I feel like a lot of women, you know, when we just think about it from that cultural perspective, it can feel very limiting, you know, and it may have a lot of women kind of shutting down and thinking they're, you know, over the hill and, you know, it's all just going to go down from here and get worse. But like I, you know, I think that we can improve as we age and I've met so many amazing women, you know, like you who are older than me, you know, even, you know, women in their 70s and they have improved, like they are way more at peace. They have pleasure in their life.
They have wonderful relationships that just weren't possible for them when they were younger for various reasons, you know, so I'm totally on board with this as like, you know, a premise. And then the other thing I want to say that you mentioned a bit about this, I want to say that I think that about was just the way that you could sense that your body was responding to the conditioning of the culture.
And that I think is really an important thing to look at because it becomes like a negative food back loop where, you know, we look in the mirror and we have some judgment about our body, right? But it's based on something we learned at some point about what bodies should be like. Yes, it didn't come from our bodies. Our bodies did not create that belief. It came from the world at large. You know, it came from generations, you know, of a culture that created this model that now we're looking in the mirror, we're having this judgment and immediately our nervous system is responding to that judgment about our own body.
And this has been such a magical, profound place for me to explore in the last few years. And I would love to hear a little bit more from you about, you know, what maybe you could give us some examples, you could give us some examples of like how, what are these beliefs that maybe we're having unconsciously about our bodies and about aging? And you gave us a little bit of that earlier, but go a little bit deeper on like, what are these beliefs? And what, you know, what is like not really true about those things? Like you mentioned a little bit about like the way that our vagina is going to shift and change, like, give me an example from that would be kind of fascinating.
S: Absolutely. So that's one, I think that's a great example to start with, because, or to use, because that is one thing that we feel most vulnerable about as women. I think when we move through the menopause transition is the vaginal changes that happen. They're real, you know, the lubrication pattern changes.
So with the estrogen drop, you know, we often find that the lubrication pattern isn't as abundant. I found that initially when I discovered that about myself, that I was scared, you know, because I didn't want that to be the case for me, because it's something that I'd never had a problem with previously at all. So when I realized that that had changed for me, I was concerned. And it's natural to feel like that because it's vulnerable. However, I realized that the more space I gave myself, the deeper I connected with myself, and the more I held space for my body.
So by that, I mean just really spending more time not jumping into the mind and thinking, Oh, this has changed. And this is a problem. And I, this is the way it is for me now. And making up a story about what that is, which would then limit my capacity to expand and come to know my body. So the body is at midlife is really showing us a new way to engage with it.
And we need to allow, there is a period of descent that we go through in the shedding of what we've let go of, of the ideas that we've let go of. And I will say that most of us spend our sexual lives up to midlife really feeling a lack of belonging or really feeling like it's challenging to show up in our, in the realms of intimacy, in our true vulnerability.
And that's one thing that I have noted in my work with women is, you know, this feeling of longing to be met in the deepest possible way, but also a fear of rejection as well. So then we meet, you know, we meet midlife, and we discover, Oh, right. So, my lubrication patterns changed.
How am I going to engage sexually from this place? It's even more vulnerable than it's ever been. And it's natural to want to shut down. If you experience something like that. But as I was saying, if you can meet the body, so the way I approached this was just by holding more space for myself to realize that it's just taking a bit longer, you know, and that actually in taking a bit longer, there is so much more that we can experience to not rush through our experience of intimacy to this idea that we must jump straight to penetrative sex, because actually, you know, there is so much to discover in the realms of sexuality in, in the lead up to that, or not, you know, but our sexuality is so much more expansive than that.
And also deepening into the realms of sensory experiences as well. So when we are bleeding, we experience generally our, if we're in touch with our cycles, our sexuality through our cycles. So, you know, when we're ovulating, we're feeling like, yeah, I'm more abundantly lubricated, and I'm ready for sex.
And then often, you know, for in the winter or autumn stage of our cycle, we might feel more like retreating. And we have this map. And then we get to perimenopause, and we've lost the map.
We don't have a map anymore. So we need to learn how to draw our desire and our connection to what it is that lights us up through our experience of actually being here on the planet, through the experience of drawing in through our sensory experiences. So, exploring the body more in that way as well is incredibly profound. And as I say, it's an opportunity to really deepen our experience of what it is that drives our desire.
So there's all of this possibility to work out more about ourselves, to discover more about ourselves through these other realms that aren't just dictated by, you know, what we've been told, essentially. So it's a huge journey of unfurling and unraveling and discovering more about ourselves and very empowering, ultimately.
A: Well, it sounds pretty remarkable the way you're describing it sounds like it becomes much more intentional because you're not just riding the roller coaster of like your cycle anymore. But then at the same time, it's a little disorienting because that was kind of all you knew from the time that you, you know, went through puberty until this point.
And now you're in this kind of state of trying to figure out how to operate again, right, and operate differently than you've done it before. And what you're speaking to and why I can see that somatic practices really bring possibility into this phase of life is that you're talking about really experiencing through your whole body and not just a mental or emotional construct that we normally are tapped into, but really your sensory feedback from, you know, from your skin, probably not just in your arroganous zones, but how does it feel to have your arms stroked, you know, how to have fingers run through your hair.
Can you get in touch with that? Can you feel more throughout your whole body, you know, like the smells, the sensations, the tastes, like all of that is going to bring more of that information in that's going to light you up. You know, but like you said, when we have just been riding the roller coaster of our cycle, like that's automated or something, it's like being done for us, you know, whereas in this phase of life, it's hot, it sounds very empowering because now if there's an opportunity to be a bit more deliberate about what you are, you know, inviting into your experience.
S: Yeah, absolutely. And intentionality is such a potent word, you know, I love it. And that's exactly what what is required at this stage of life. Yeah. And also not to, I think, to really emphasize also the fact that when we do lose touch with this menstrual mat, when our bodies do start to change, just, and I know I've mentioned it already, but just really emphasizing the vulnerability that happens in that space and really, you know, it is a descent, it is a process of really letting go. And it can be overwhelming, and it can be stressful.
And, you know, the hormonal changes can be, you know, incredibly discombobulating and just really affecting, you know, and it's very, it's very difficult to move through this stage at times. And we really need to allow ourselves the space of not knowing the space of darkness in order to really bring forth the power of this experience, and then allow ourselves to very gently and tenderly evolve through to this next stage. So it's not something when I talk about the empowering aspects of it.
I'm talking about it from a perspective of illuminating into this particular awareness and understanding of the body, but just really emphasizing that it is an incredibly deep process that we move through. And we need to, you know, intentionality is a beautiful word, because it needs to be a very intentional journey of understanding this. It's not something that just we just awaken to. It's a process of really letting go and allowing the archetype of the crone to come through, and allowing her wisdom to guide us through this process. Right.
A: And the process is like, I'm sure, very similar to other kinds of healing processes where it gets messy, where it gets really uncomfortable. Like you said, it can be, you know, just the hormonal shifts alone in a way that manifests in a specific woman, you know, might come with, yeah, disruptions to her nervous system that she has not experienced before. And it's going to take time.
And so I love that you brought that up, because so often, you know, when we hear, especially words like empowering, and we're like, Oh, this could be empowering, like, okay, how do I make it empowering? Like, how do I just like flip that switch and like not feel these unpleasant feelings anymore? But it's actually through the process of like feeling and being with the darkness and being with the not knowing, as you said, and the unpleasantness that we start to naturally experience more sense of belonging in ourselves, right, and acceptance of like, really what is from moment to moment.
And those are the things that are going to bring about an experience of being empowered. It doesn't just happen because we decide we want to, you know, make this feel different than it does right now. You know, I spent a long time like wanting it to be that way. And it's just, it's really not how it works. So, thank you for pointing that out. I think that's a really very grounding, pragmatic thing for people to hear.
S: I spent a long time in that space to me. It's like, I just want to feel this. Why is everyone else feeling this amazing thing? And why can't I, you know, like I really spent a couple of years in that space before I learned to let go? I learned to let go of that of holding on, of hanging on to that idea, and deepen into trusting the body. And trusting the body is exactly the process that we're moving through. You know, it's, there's no way around it, but through it, we must deepen and anchor into the body and learn to trust. Absolutely.
A: Some of my very favorite clients that I've had in the last year have been women who are actively going through the parent pairing menopause and the menopause cycle. And they have, you know, sometimes they've specifically sought me out because they're seeking somatic work to facilitate this. And sometimes they don't even know that that's going to help them.
They come to it for some other reason, like pain relief or things like this. And then they realize like, oh, wow, this is helping me to accept the changes that I'm going through. Like we just said, like actually remembering how to let go. Because I think that our nervous system knows how to let go, but we don't, we're not taught how to do that directly as a, like, conscious act, you know, or even as an automatic response to life.
And in response to life, most of us are clenching, and we're holding tightly to whatever was, you know, whatever came before. And we don't even realize that we're holding so tightly until we start that process of releasing a little bit and a little bit. And then all of a sudden, we realize how tight we've been clenching and how restrictive that has felt, not only in our bodies, but in our spirits.
S: Mm. It's enormous. It really is. And yeah, I feel that just that experience of guiding women through that process is so profound. It's, it's extraordinarily, extraordinarily profound. Yeah. And it just it opens my heart. And I feel so, just to hear you say it, it's like, yes. And also it's, it feels so simple in some ways, but it's the somatic realms are so fascinating in that you can talk about it like this, and it can be, well, yeah, you just need to stop clenching, or yeah, you're holding on.
But the actual, but actually the process of it, the process of going through that is so much more profound than we could ever articulate. And it's mystical as well. And that's what, that's why I love working in this space because there's so much incredible power that happens through the process of your willingness to meet your body.
A: Yes. I mean, the thing I tell a lot of my clients is that, you know, we release some layers, and we trust that your body or nervous system is going to release at the rate that it is actually safe and ready to release.
You know, and so we're not going to, like kind of how you were describing with the lead up to a yoni repatterny, we're not going to force this process to move along any the faster than your body, and your nervous system, your unconscious, you know, autonomic nervous system is like actually ready to and going to allow for that. And that's actually a good thing. You know, the body requiring slowness is actually a sign of supreme intelligence. Yes.
S: Absolutely. I love that. Supreme intelligence. It's so true.
A: Yeah. I just, I love the work that you're doing. I think it's absolutely amazing. And I think it's much needed. I think that there's, you know, I can think of a couple of my own personal clients who would greatly benefit from this approach, you know, because, you know, I'm guiding them through somatic work and I'm holding space for them, but I myself have not been through this process.
And so I don't have a lived experience to offer, you know, for that. And I'm sure obviously at some point in my life, I will, but you have gathered such a rich and valuable well of your own experience and then facilitating and working with so many different women. And, you know, I can really feel in your presence how, yeah, how you carry that and how you carry that into the work that you're doing. So, thank you so much for the work you're doing.
S: Thank you so much, Aimee. Yeah, it's so beautiful to, yeah, it's so beautiful to hear that. And it's such a deep honor to have moved through this process myself and to step into holding the space for other women. And yeah, and so the coaching work that I move, that I take women through is really, it's like an alchemical framework of meeting, first of all, meeting and unveiling that part of ourselves that we're letting go of.
So, the shedding and then moving women through the process of the descent. So working through that, the dark night of the soul, the period that we need to incubate, and then moving through the process of emerging that very tender space of coming to know our new selves, which is an extremely exciting stage, but also very vulnerable and tender.
And then moving through to the illumination phase of integration. So, my coaching work takes women through that process at that perimenopause menopause stage of life, and incorporating the, the connection to embodiment and intimacy, and identity.
A: So, yeah, they all come together, and they create our experience, you know, and I think that that's just a beautiful thing that you're able to speak about this and acknowledge the way that, you know, our culture is going to affect our biology. And it's not necessarily going to stop just because we realize that that's happening. It's going to be an ongoing process of realizing that that's happening and rerouting, you know, and reorganizing and redirecting and coming back to what's really true inside of ourselves.
S: And also just, you know, looking at where we're at in human history, just feeling into the power of women moving through this process and how needed it is right now, how needed it is for us to deepen interconnection with our bodies.
I don't actually think there is a more important act, actually a more important intention than to connect with our bodies and to come to know ourselves more deeply and to integrate and to find ourselves in a situation where we do illuminate and we're actually able to act from this and make decisions and advocate and create change from this place.
A: Absolutely. I thoroughly agree like the somatic work that I've done, you know, it's hard to say it's made me a better person because I don't think who I was was bad. It's just a fee that the way in which I operate now, especially in regards to my relationship to other people, you know, and my obviously my relationship to myself has been totally transformed. And I want this kind of freedom. I want this kind of, you know, glory in a way for others.
I want them to be able to experience their life in a real satisfying and powerful way where they can advocate for themselves, and they can create natural boundaries, you know, not only with their body, but with, you know, the relationships that they have with maybe their job or their spouse or, you know, their community, like all of these things. And so I feel so deeply that what you're saying is absolutely true. I love it. I am so inspired right now.
Me too. Well, it's been such a wonderful conversation. I'd love to have you come back on the podcast some other time, and we could get even deeper into maybe some of the sexuality stuff, because I feel like there's so much more that you could share with us there on that topic. But this has been such a wonderful conversation.
I'm so excited for some of my listeners who are at this stage in their life to hear this episode and just to hear the things that you're speaking about and your expertise. Is there any last words that you have for our listeners in regards to this big change?
S: Yeah, I think probably some last words might be around the fact that it's natural to feel the fear. You know, it really is. It's normal. If you're feeling the fear around it, it's an opportunity. It's like a signal to meet yourself more deeply and to trust that it is a process. It is a process, and the process is incredibly expansive.
So to trust the process, because the body knows. The body always knows. So yeah, just to deepen in trust and gentleness and heart connection for oneself and that will guide you through the process.
A: Magnificent. Thank you. Where can people reach you? Maybe it'll be in the show notes, but maybe you can just also say whether the channels or the place, how do people reach out and talk to you?
S: Sure. So I'm about to, I'm actually in the process of rebranding at the moment, which is really exciting. My business is called the tilt-shift.co. So I'll give you those details, Aimee, to share. I'm launching a program, Midlife Desire Codes, which is a foundational program that supports women through the process of deepening in connection to the body and intimacy at Peri-Mana-Pawson beyond.
A: Excellent. That's beautiful. Yes. So, listeners, check the show notes to hear more about Shea and Lisa's incredible offering. And yeah, I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you so much.
S: My pleasure. Thank you so much.
A: You've been listening to the Free Your Soma podcast. Subscribe now to hear more stories of somatic awakening and gain knowledge and tools for somatic living. If you'd like to learn more about me, Aimee Takaya, Hanosomatic Education, or the Radiance Program, please visit www.freeyoursoma.com.
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