Tending Our Fire: Psycho-Spiritual Resourcing for Perimenopause and Menopause

 
 

Thanks to everyone who came to the January retreat! The next retreat is TBD.

Step into an experiential sanctuary and learn ways to be with the potent psychological state of change that comes with perimenopause and menopause. To be in relationship with this many-moons process we will look at how we meet change and how we tend our inner fire. We will experiment with self-supporting resources including guided visualizations and compassion-based meditations. No previous meditation experience required. All welcome!

This experiential workshop will offer space to be in dialogue with ourselves and others about how we are reckoning with this rite of passage. We will get curious together, share together, write together, meditate together, and learn how to meet change by tending to our psycho-spiritual inner fire. Some themes we will explore include our relationship to rage/anger/heat; our relationship to sex and sensuality; arising grief; and increased self-empowerment and self-compassion.

As Ursula Le Guin adeptly reminds us, “…it seems a pity to have a built-in rite of passage and to dodge it, evade it, and pretend nothing has changed. That is to dodge and evade one’s womanhood, to pretend one’s like a man. Men, once initiated, never get the second chance. They never change again. That’s their loss, not ours. Why borrow poverty?”

We are changing again, so let’s do it in community with nourishing food, comfortable cushions, curiosity, play, and honest dialogue.

This sort of experience defies all our notions about gradually growing older without a hitch, just doing what we do better and better, giving and taking as we please while becoming wise and beneficent. Instead, it seems that in order to know and exercise real wisdom in forthcoming stages, we must first be taken to some outer reach, some distant shore very far from our perceived identity. This is a journey of the soul, a struggle to keep body and spirit together. - Davis and Leonard

What You Will Receive

  • A day to care for yourself in a supportive community

  • Time to reflect on where you are in your menstruality journey

  • Space to take a break and nourish self-compassion

  • Honest conversation about the experience of perimenopause and menopause

  • Practices to connect with and vitalize your inner resources

  • Delicious healthy organic lunch and snacks

What you will learn

  • Ways to listen into and care for the psycho-spiritual changes that come with perimenopause and menopause

  • Simple contemplative practices to nourish and care for your inner fire as you navigate the changes in your menstruality

  • Breathwork practices to balance your nervous system

  • Practices to increase self-awareness to reduce mood swings and emotional reactivity

Menopause is a profound initiation into your authority, purpose and leadership skill. Menopause mobilizes the singular genius of you to bring a positive influence to the planet, unleashing your personal agency and potency. - Pope and Wurlitzer

When: TBD

Where: TBD

Time: TBD

Fee: $80-120 sliding scale

Maximum participants: 15

 
 

So many women I've talked to see menopause as an ending. But I've discovered this is your moment to reinvent yourself after years of focusing on the needs of everyone else. It's your opportunity to get clear about what matters to you and then to pursue that with all of your energy, time and talent. - Oprah

Suggested Reading

Wise Power: Discovering the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging by Pope and Wurlitzer

The Space Crone by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Women’s Wheel of Life: Thirteen Archetypes of Woman at Her Fullest Power by Davis and Leonard

About Fiona

Fiona Brandon, MPS, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and clinical consultant who integrates Buddhist psychology, depth psychology, expressive arts therapy, dream imagery, and sensorimotor psychotherapy in her work with adults and couples. She is the Director of the Nalanda Institute’s Compassion Based Resilience Training (CBRT) and core faculty of the Embodied Psychotherapy Program. Fiona co-edited the second edition of the CBRT student manual, and the anthology Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation (2nd ed.) published by Routledge in 2023. She also contributed the chapter, Mindfulness: Self-healing Mechanism and Psychotherapeutic Ally to the forthcoming book Integrating Motivational Interviewing and Mindfulness: A Practitioner Guide to be published in 2024 by Oxford University Press. As a graduate of the Masters program in Counseling Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Fiona’s research focused on the meditative practice of Authentic Movement and the use of symbols and dream imagery in psychotherapy.