Balancing Hormones with Primal Power and Yoga
When asked to prepare a Female Primal Power article addressing hormonal balance, I was sure that I’d need to
A. Take a feminine perspective and given the timing was 3 weeks into the Covid-19 lockdown
B. Somehow draw upon a more global concept - this can’t just be applicable to Women.
The following is what I came up with and inside this incredibly vast and complex topic, the intention is to bring us all back to the consideration of what is most important - our connection to nature As nature and the total health this remembrance can bring. Primal is the word.
Nature is as much masculine as it is feminine and we shall begin here; let's talk about the hormones of a male sexed individual and we’ll talk about them first because basically the hormonal cycle of a bloke, is simpler.
To be honest, I’d also love to begin with the guys because I want to get the guys attention - so if you’re reading this and you’re a male, please read all the way through the bits about women too because it WILL HELP YOU.
Onwards
To begin, a little about me and what I’m into, I'm all Woman and I love all genders equally - I’m daughter of Father, the sister of a brother, the niece of 6 uncles, also the Mrs of a man and the mother of 2 adorable and energetic young boys.
The 3 of them rise with the sun and set with it too and having had lived with this direct experience, as an embodied cyclical woman, it’s no surprise to me that the male offspring of a parent is called son. His hormones typically cycle through a 24hour timeline and he’s honestly pretty much the same all that time through.
Men and Women however are not the same, Men and Women are VERY different. As already established, a Man cycles daily like the sun and from the age of puberty, he is potentially pretty consistent in being governed by testosterone to high age. That’s his primal birth right.
What is Testosterone
Testosterone is the male governing hormone and is responsible for energy, physical power, aggression, motivation, confidence and sex drive. Testosterone is at its peak in the morning and peters out as the day runs.
Hot tip - Women, don’t bother with the ‘deep and meaningful’ conversations is the morning, your man won’t hear you, he just wants to GO. He’s got one of two things at the forefront of his mind and it’s either; that of the carnal desire, or getting out into the day to HUNT (or go to work as the case may be). Testosterone lowers in the evening making him more receptive, passive and generally more agreeable. This is the general way a man needs to be for his optimal primal functioning.
Moving on
The preparation for this next part of the piece comes directly from my practice. My own primal remembering inside of decades of embodiment work specifically and even more specifically, time in my own body #somanaut.
Let's talk about the Women’s hormonal Cycle and the fact that it is dramatically different to a Man’s. Understanding these differences is what can help us, as sexes, help each other in (I might add) this hyper masculine oriented world, during these incredibly stressful Covid-19 times.
…
I am Woman - and for the first 25 years of my life, I pushed through every day, week and month held within the unconscious belief that I needed to measure up with an output equivalent to that of a man. Truth is, I was flushing my energy and intuition down the drain and with it, the opportunity to really know myself and accept the normal fluctuations of being born into the finer sex.
Fortunately, the routine practices of Yoga helped me to find my feelings and realise that my body and mind changed from week to week !
Read - Women are different every week within a 4-week cycle because biologically her hormones change and this is totally normal and okay.
It's therefore impossible for a woman to feel mentally stable all the time because hormones fluctuate and this means that emotions are supposed to go up and down.
To clear up any confusion;
A Women is supposed to be sensitive. This is the Primal nature of Woman.
As we established, Men are like a flat line - they stay the same. This is the Primal nature of Man.
I don’t know about you, but as a working Woman of the modern world, this information was a revelation ! For year’s I had been waking up every day to meet the arch of the Sun and yet the cycle of the Moon was my truest mainstay.
A Women’s cycle and the effects of Modern Day Stress
The governing hormone of the Woman is Estrogen (which is an umbrella term that describes multiple hormones) thus eluding to the complexity of each and every woman’s personal chemistry.
From the onset of puberty, a woman enters a cyclic stage of anywhere form 40 - 50 years during which her hormones are rising and falling within a regularly patterned pathway.
It is imperative knowledge that hormones effect mood and emotions, body pleasure and pain.
Menopause arrives and is essentially the same rhythm that a man has lived within his whole adult life; by the completion of this transition, the Woman’s cycle has transformed into consistent predictability.
The Estrogens that however govern most a Woman’s cycle, define the nature of a Woman as ‘caregiver’; by biological nature, a Woman is wired to be present to every arch of the day and some day’s - void of a good night’s sleep or down time - it can be tremendously intense and exhausting.
In this, I see so many beautiful mama friends especially, working within the socially dictated masculine arch whilst painstakingly caregiving maximally to their loved ones at the sufferance of their immune strength.
Sing it with me sister – “Been there, done that, not doing it any more !”
Whereas the blueprint of a man is Testosterone which makes him laser focused, the aforementioned is the general blueprint of a woman - biologically designed to fluctuate week by week inside of a (relative) 28 day ‘Moon’ period thus making her different every single week and also incredibly susceptible to stress.
Take it from me, when a woman is sick it's hard to get throughout the day but we do it anyway and the number one cause of most women being sick and having their hormones off, is stress - by far and perhaps the main provocateur is our modern world and the immense stressor of needing to always be ON; like the sun.
Stress by definition, is any physical or psychological stimuli that causes disruption of the bodies homeostasis (balance) - real or imaginary.
Stress can be physical, chemical or emotional; examples of physical stress that change the chemistry of the body include bumping your shin bone - your blood pressure will likely go up and breath pace quicken.
Chemical stressors include all the additives and artificial ingredients found in all kinds of food and skin care products that we are sold on the daily, causing irritation and inflammation in the body. And then there is stress of the emotional kind.
Understand that hormones run our entire ship and are impacted by the state of the nervous system. Emotional triggers effect the nervous system. The nervous system responds in 3 ways to stress of which we all have our own individual propensity - fight, flight or freeze. When challenged do you fight like a lioness, take flight like a deer or be like a possum when taken by surprise and freeze in an epic show of playing dead ?
The thing about animals, is that they pass through the moment and re-emerge refreshed. We humans are also animals although highly evolved, and are yet bombarded every day with micro portions of mental/nervous system triggering stress, with no outlet to refresh.
The solution would therefore be to re-primal oneself, re-learn ways to extricate ourselves from the unhealthy strains and initiate a clearing for health giving pathways be easily maintained.
Enter the ancient practices of Yoga.
The kind of Yoga I like to practice, is Primal. Sure, it might be fun to act like a monkey sometimes but really what I’m talking about is the slowing, the unwind, within which you can unlock and find all your deepest longings and unleash the power of your intuitive desire; to know yourself as nature’s most extravagant expression of divine might and primal power, personified !
Dealing with stress and balancing hormones through the practice of Yoga
The following teaching about the Koshas is mutual to both Yoga and Ayurveda and is applicable for all genders. It’s totally wild.
The Koshas refers to our layers of being. Beginning with the gross and venturing to the subtle, this is an invitation into a delicious journey back to the true essence of our nature As nature - the reconnection to our Primal roots.
The first layer, is your body - You are here. Right here in your body, comprising of your skin, muscles, bones, organs and all the juice that is the product of you. This is called the Annamaya kosha - translated to mean food body and you can look after that with good nutrition, quality sleep, getting fresh air, exercising appropriate to your constitution and getting with regularity onto the yoga mat. So fun !
The additional reward of caring for the outer body is discovering the breath body - which is called the Pranayama Kosha.
Prana means life-force and so this is a pretty important one. We can direct the life-force with our breath and the power of a well-played deep breath can do wonders in anchoring the next layer of our being which is called the Manomaya kosha and is very important within the context of this article; Mano means ‘mind’ and from the Hatha yoga practitioners standpoint, this points to the central nervous system and how we work to effect positive change during the practices of Yoga.
It kinda goes like this - After some time the body gets warm, the breath is flowing and slowing and as we bring the mind into the body with the breath; the nervous system unwinds, relaxing us into a sense of safety.
It’s within this place that we can enter what I like to call ‘the yummy’ or the next layer, called Vijanamaya kosha; This is our intuitive body that lays just over our deep bliss, and when we are heading in this direction, we are heading in the right direction, to calm emotional stress and thus positively affect hormonal function.
Although the topic of hormonal balance is vast and so often complicated, there is much that we can do to find harmony. I’ve only brushed over the surface here and there is much more. My sincere hope is that after reading this article, you are inspired to actively embrace your personal cycles and find lifestyle practices that support you in being (your version of) nature’s most extravagant expression of divine might and primal power, personified !
Join me on the Yoga mat locally in Bern, on retreat in October also for online offerings - subscribe to my regular newsletter via my website and visit my events page for upcoming embodiment training and wisdom cultivating opportunities.