Why Women’s Bodies hold the Key to Healing
This month, we honour Menopause Awareness.
A time to open deeper conversations about women’s health, and really, about the health of our communities.
If you’ve been with me for a while, you know how much I love this work. Supporting women through transitions feels more urgent than ever, in a world where so many of us are feeling the strain of rising crises, physically, emotionally, collectively.
For those who are new, welcome.
This space is a place of Connection; of recognising that our wellbeing doesn’t exist in isolation. We are always in relationship: with ourselves, our environment, and each other.
Body – The Relational Field of Healing
So much of modern healing focuses on the individual; “my body,” “my symptoms,” “my mindset.”
And yes, we are responsible for our own choices and self-care. But it’s only part of the picture.
We are also shaped by everything we come from; our families, our culture, our early environment.
From a Chinese medicine perspective, we are made up of three kinds of Qi:
The prenatal (Jing)— our genetic and ancestral inheritance.
The postnatal (Qi)— what we build through nourishment and environment.
And the cultivated Qi (Shen)— what we consciously refine through practice and awareness.
These three treasures weave through our entire life, constantly influencing our health, vitality, and resilience.
When we work at the level of the body; feeling sensations, observing energy flow, interrupting old patterns, we open the possibility for deep healing that isn’t just physical. It’s relational. It ripples through generations.
A Story – Healing Across Generations
Recently I worked with a woman who came to me with anxiety that had been constant for years.
With shiatsu and acupuncture we assisted her to feel more safe in her body but the deeper layer began to emerge. Difficult memories she had ‘put aside’. A difficult pregnancy years ago, when her family disapproved, and she felt unsafe in her own home.
Though life had moved on with birthing of children and family ties rebuilt, her body still held that memory.
As we gently explored and gave language to what had never been voiced years ago, it was like what was stuck in her chest, began to move.
Her anxiety softened.
Not only did she fee less pressure in her body she also found ways to express her current needs with her partner, her children, and her parents.
This is what healing can look like: the restoration of relationship; within ourselves, between generations, across time.
Menopause as a Portal
Menopause often brings old stories to the surface. This isn’t a coincidence, it’s a pattern. This stage of life asks us to reconsider, reorient, and resolve what has been stored, often in the body.
When we meet ourselves consciously, menopause becomes a portal, an opening into deeper wisdom, clarity, and vitality.
In Chinese medicine, life is understood as a natural cycle of transformation, with each stage calling us to consolidate energy. This stage, in particular, invites us to step fully into our authority as women and elders, embodying the power, insight, and resilience we’ve cultivated over a lifetime.
Closing – The Collective Healing
Our wellbeing as women isn’t just a personal matter.
Every time one of us heals, becomes more attuned, or feels safe in our own body, the ripple reaches outward into our homes, our relationships, and our communities.
In a world that feels increasingly fractured, this kind of embodied safety is radical medicine.
Let’s keep finding ways to feel safe in our own bodies, our own homes, and our shared humanity.
Because healing ourselves is healing the world.
With love,
Anny
