Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:00]:

Hello there, and welcome back to the God of School podcast. In this episode, I get to speak with Mary Thompson, Ayurveda teacher, practitioner, and guide. Mary has nearly three decades of experience and brings a wealth of knowledge, deep compassion, and a dose of humor to everything she shares. In this episode, we dive into the psychospiritual aspects of midlife, perimenopause, and menopause, those powerful, fresh hold moments that ask us to slow down, tune in, and transform. Mary offers practical, heart centered wisdom for navigating these changes with grace, and she reminds us that this phase of life isn't a decline. It's an initiation. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Goddess School podcast, where Eastern wisdom meets Western mysticism.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:51]:

I'm your host, Lisa Marie Rankine, author, teacher, and Ayurvedic wellness coach here to help you reclaim your feminine superpowers, and I am so glad you're here. Listen, women are magical. They are intuitive, creative, wise, and magnetic. However, in today's fast paced world, these gifts often get buried under a more masculine way of life. Together, we'll awaken those powers. In each episode, I'll take you through sacred teachings like Ayurveda, shadow work, and the mysteries of archetypes and rituals so you can live with more clarity, synchronicity, and joy in all realms of life, like relationships, health, money, and more. So let's dive in so you can make the most of your one mythic life. The veil is parting.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:40]:

Let's begin. Welcome, beautiful souls. So today, I am very excited to introduce you to one of my teachers, Mary Thompson, and she was a teacher from Shakti School. And I know many of you are familiar with that. Katie Silcox is the founder of that. And I just loved Mary's approach in classes so much. And I would say that much of my Ayurveda program, Radiant Goddess, is really based on what I learned from Mary. So it's really exciting to be able to introduce her to you all today.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:15]:

And today we're going to talk about something that I think is probably on a lot of, lot of your minds, which is the Vani prosthesis or the forest dweller phase. And if you are new to Ayurveda, I'll tell you a little bit about the four ashramas in these phases, but first let me welcome Mary.

Mary Thompson [00:02:34]:

Oh, thank you so much, Lisa. It's just wonderful to be here with you today and to get to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is how to be healthier, even as we're aging.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:42]:

Yes. Well, thank you. And Mary, I'm I gave a brief overview, but is there anything else that you wanna just maybe tell us just about your journey, your experience, and how you came to Ayurveda?

Mary Thompson [00:02:53]:

Like many people, they have a story of how they found Ayurveda and it's not so different for me. I've I was having some, well, it's a woman's group. I had uterine fibroids that they couldn't tell were non cancerous. So I had to have biopsies done and surgery done. And, and basically the end result was they told me that there was, you know, they removed them, but there was nothing they could do to prevent them from regrowing. I was gonna have this problem again. And I'd really been raised with a, a profound trust of doctors in the medical establishment. And so I was stunned that they were sitting here offering me nothing.

Mary Thompson [00:03:26]:

They were offering me no solution. And I said, well, what's going to happen next. They go, you'll be back in two years and we'll give you a hysterectomy. And I was just, I was just gobsmacked, you know, it was just like the idea of what, and I thought, you know, there's gotta be something I can do. And so I started doing some research, got into herbs and I went and took an herbal class and the teacher was talking. And, and in my mind she said, blah, blah, blah, Ayurveda, blah, blah, blah, Ayurveda. And I kind of raised my hand, you know, what was that word? I need to know that word, you know? And she said, oh, she told me and she gave me some book titles and that was it. It was for me, it was just like a, a bell going off.

Mary Thompson [00:04:06]:

That was like, this is what I needed. And the happy end of the story is that was my fibroid diagnosis and surgery was when I was 35 and I had a child at 43 and they didn't think I could do that. The fibroids were not a problem again. And I just really credit the changes I made kind of follow Ayurvedic principles that made it possible. And that makes it so that Ayurveda was a huge gift to me. It was really tremendous. That's how I found Ired beta was through, you know, first a health scare, then a disillusionment in medical science and kind of a journey. And then just following where my heart led me on that journey.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:04:48]:

Yeah. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And I feel like I've heard that I've been hearing that more and more that, you know, when people are going to traditional medicine and I think we all, especially, you know, in the West, we tend to think doctors will have all of the answers and yet they're good at diagnosing and maybe treating masking, but not necessarily looking at the causes. So I know I've heard the phrase before that a lot of Western medicine is very much focused on sick care, but not so much healthcare.

Mary Thompson [00:05:20]:

I like that. Yeah. And it's true. And it's, you know, if I'm ever injured, if I'm in an accident, get me to a doctor. I wanna have medical care for trauma. I wanna be treated for those things. But my husband was pointing out, I said, a lot of pharmaceuticals don't cure anything. They just help you live with it longer.

Mary Thompson [00:05:35]:

That's because they don't address the underlying cause of the imbalance. And that's what I hear made this all about is trying to uncover those root causes, whether it's, you know, something that I have organically in my body from birth, or if it's something I'm doing with my diet, my lifestyle that I could change up a little bit and live healthier.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:05:55]:

Yeah. I think that's so important in my community. No, I often talk about like our symptoms as being messengers for our body. And it's not to think about it as our body malfunctioning, but really an invitation to realign the body's just saying, Hey, there's something that you're doing that, you know, that doesn't feel right. Like let's, let's shift whether that's working too much or eating processed foods or staying up too late or not managing anxiety, that it's really just an invitation to bring you back in alignment, not just for your physical body's sake, but also your spiritual body. Cause often when you do that, things get better in other areas as well.

Mary Thompson [00:06:33]:

That's true. One thing that comes to mind while you're doing that is if I don't get enough sleep for a few days, I get an eye twitch in the corner of my right eye. I always say nobody else can see, but I don't really know if they can see it or not, but I can feel it. And now I have the choice when I experienced that to simply take some Ashwagandha or something that's gonna pacify my nervous system and let me keep on doing this, or I can pay attention to what I was doing and say, you know, I'm not getting enough sleep and I need to address that. And so it's like, you can use these symptoms or these little signals that the body sends you. And we can either shut the signal off with medication or even an herb, or I can figure out what is my body trying to say? I just had that thought, like when we have a baby and you try to identify, was that a cry that they need something? Was that a cry that they're hungry? Was that a cry that they're tired? Was that a cry that their diapers wet what's going on? You know, and we have to interpret this signal. What is the cause of this crying? Overall, we want the crying to stop, but we know that you can't just stop a crying baby by putting your hand over their mouth. You know, it's going to be okay.

Mary Thompson [00:07:41]:

I have to figure out what the cause is and maybe those symptoms are like a little crying baby.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:46]:

Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's a great way of thinking about it. So funny. It also just made me think of my new puppy where I can like, by the way he walks, it's like, oh, he has to go poop. He has to pee. He's thirsty. You can just start to, you know, kind of intuit what, what it is that they need, but we need to be able to do that for ourselves.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:08:04]:

And I think we're good at doing it for like the puppies and the babies and everyone around us. But then when we are experiencing discomfort, it's often like need to shut this off as opposed to what is it? What's really being communicated to me

Mary Thompson [00:08:17]:

here. Because it's often inconvenient or if you're in a boat, like I am where I'm an Ayurvedic teacher, I can't have some symptom that people could see that I've got. It sounds like I just have to have it stop. Well, you know, and that's not healthy. It's just, I don't want to suppress it. I want to listen to it.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:08:35]:

Right. Oh, here's a question for you. Will we ever be completely symptom free if we do everything right?

Mary Thompson [00:08:42]:

That is a good question. I really, really, really wanna say yes, because I think we can achieve a state of balance and I'm 65 going on 66 next month. And I still have a group of friends from high school. So we've got these war women and we're, it's my little lab that I can look at and see what's going on in the world. And they'll be talking about stuff, you know, digestive issues or pain in their body or, you know, all the medications they're on. And it's just like, yeah, I don't have that so much. Yeah. So I think sometimes we have to be able to look and see what's going on in my body.

Mary Thompson [00:09:18]:

Do I have a symptom or not? Because sometimes I might ignore them. I don't wanna do that. But to think, do I have pain? Well, no, not usually, but if I do, I'm gonna stop and look at it. So I don't have any sound, sound like I'm symptom free because I think symptoms are just the body communicating. Yeah. And so there's certainly, I do have digestive issues. I do have maybe elimination challenges sometimes, but when it happens, it's how am I going to address it?

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:09:45]:

Yeah. And I think that just, that's a very empowering way to look at it too. So it's not that things are malfunctioning. It's just like, oh, I just need to, I need to address it. I need to do something differently. There's a shame. Yeah. Many of the women in my community, I would say are in midlife and beyond.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:10:04]:

So probably about 50, although there's definitely women in their thirties and forties. And some are familiar with the term vanaprastha, but not all of them. So, you know, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Vedic tradition of the four ashramas, where are these four different life phases, but then also just dive in to the vana prosthesis and like what that means from both a physical and spiritual perspective and what it's really an invitation for. How does that sound?

Mary Thompson [00:10:32]:

That sounds good. I would love to hear your take. And so please, sure.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:10:36]:

So the four ashramas in the Vedic tradition are the four life phases. So zero to 25 is considered the student phase, and this is where we're growing and we're really figuring out our way in the world and just how we want to experience the world. The 25 to 50, we can think of it as the householder phase, or it's also called the Grahasa. And there's like a lot of fire at this time. This is when we're often, you know, building a career, building a family. We've got a lot of things to do, and it's very energetic. You know, it's just a lot going on. Then we have 50 to 75 and this is the forest dweller phase also called Bana Prostha.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:11:17]:

And this is when we almost have like one foot in that earthly realm and kind of that Grahasa, the householder phase, but then one foot in the forest. And this is actually, you know, when we start almost feeling a call to slow down. And I think it's so interesting because I have so many women in my community who have never heard of the forest dweller phase. And yet before I even start talking about it, they'll be like, I just want a little house in the forest, like, to be by myself and, you know, to work on my apothecary. Like, I can't even tell you how many women have said that to me. And it's almost like this innate, like kind of psychic drive as we start to get older to almost want to retreat to the forest and just take a little bit more of a spiritual approach. And then 75 to 100, we have more of the renunciate phase. And this is where we wanna come to terms with the earthly realm.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:07]:

And, you know, it's part of spiritual liberation and moksha and just make peace with our lives. In our culture, in the Western culture. I feel like aging for women can be, can be scary. One, you know, it's like our culture really values really the maiden and the mother phases. So it's like, oh, if I am no longer fertile in Dewey, like, what what value do I have or what's next for me? So I think that's one challenge is just kind of our cultural obsession with youth. I think the other challenge is because we live such a busy lives, we can't actually get out of that Grahasa phase for a lot longer. So there's part of our body and psyche that wants to start slowing down, but we're having children later and we have mortgage payments. So we're still very much in the thick of it for much longer, which I think

Mary Thompson [00:12:55]:

can

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:55]:

take a toll on our body and our psyche a bit. I would love to get

Mary Thompson [00:12:59]:

your thoughts. Oh, there's so many, so many great things in that. One of the one of the pictures I think about women is that we are always sending our energy out. There's a nurturer inside women and we're always sending energy out and taking care of everybody outside. And so I hear is like in our youth, we're sending energy out to our friends more so and to our local communities. You know, you always see girls are forming groups and clicks and things like that because they're, they're all about community. And then we have the family and we send our energy out to our spouses and to our kids and to everyone, our work, if our we're working, all these things are being taken care of outside of ourselves. And then it's kind of like our identity is defined by that work that we do in taking care of others.

Mary Thompson [00:13:44]:

We have that role as the mother and maybe a role in our work, some kind of coworker we're codependent and tend to have all these different people we're taking care of. And all of a sudden we get it to a point where there don't need us so much. And I know a number of women go through this. Who am I now that I have this empty nest, you know, what do I wanna do? Because maybe I put my interests and my desires on the back burner because of the Dharma of being a mother or the Dharma of my work. And there comes a point where we're pulling back. I love that idea of a forest dweller. At first, I didn't think of the house in the forest, and I thought that doesn't sound too comfortable. I'm just kind of living in the forest.

Mary Thompson [00:14:27]:

I have a house I can be okay. You know, there's that, that point of who do I wanna be? What is my soul's longing? What is it I feel called to do? And finally, I can listen to that soul's longing because I no longer have the clamor of the work, the kids, the kind of the intensity. And like you mentioned, some people are having kids later. I mentioned my son was born when I was 43. So I entered that phase with a seven year old. So that was not, I was not gonna be going into the forest. But what I notice is how different my parenting was at that age than it would have been if I was in my twenties. If I was in my twenties and thirties, he'd have been in childcare, I'd have been working.

Mary Thompson [00:15:09]:

That was still, I was still in my dharmic phase of wanting to get this stuff done. And it came later in life and it was like, this is my, my focus. This is what I wanna do. So he became my forest. I think, a little bit that I was able to pull back and do that. I think it was a laid back parenting as opposed to an intensive parenting that I would've done younger. I think whether or not we are in a place where we can pull back totally and go into the forest, it's probably a shift in perspective about how we approach our work or what we want to get out of it. Where does it fall on our priority list and how, how do I begin to put myself at the top of that priority list and how do I start to listen to those stirrings from the soul about, you know, what is it I really want to do now that I've no longer in that role that I've either taken on myself or had put on me by society?

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:01]:

Yeah.

Mary Thompson [00:16:02]:

And that gets really exciting because then I get to uncover those things I love doing.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:07]:

Yeah, it can be really exciting. It's so interesting to me because in my community, we also do a lot of work based on the teachings of Carl Jung. And he has said before, like life really begins at 40. Up until then, you're just doing research. And, you know, talks about the first part of life, like, let's say, you know, like one to 40 or one to 50, is really about building your ego. And that's kind of like the Grahasa phase. Like, okay, like, who am I, and how am I gonna interact with the world? And then the second half of the phase, I was really kind of going inward. I'm like, what parts did I miss along the way? Like, is there an opportunity to be more creative, to do some of the things that maybe I used to do as a childhood, but they got pushed aside? But I just love it when we see, like, these different, like, technologies or modalities, they start to merge.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:51]:

Cause I feel like we're really pointing to that common truth. It can be an exciting time of rediscovery.

Mary Thompson [00:16:57]:

Yeah. I remember someone telling me one time, if you wanted to uncover someone's Dharma, their, their reason for being, ask them what they used to do when they were like three and four years old. What did they enjoy doing? You know, were they playing house that could be their, their thing, but maybe they're building with blocks. They've got a future in architecture and construction. You know, it's like having all of those things. I had a, a run-in one time with a boss who wanted to identify my Dharma. He really wanted me to be more of a practitioner, a more of a practitioner than a teacher. And he and I were touring a hospital together in India.

Mary Thompson [00:17:29]:

And he said to me, don't you remember when you were a kid and then you would like do operations and you put band aids on your stuffed animals and you would take care of them. And I, and I just laughed. And I said, no, I put them in chairs and I had a chalkboard and I made them go to school. It was, you know, it's just like that play that we do kind of identifies kind of our souls longing, what we like to do. So even that I'm, I'm now kind of stepping towards retirement. I'm still teaching online with places. I still wanna remain in that field because it's what my soul likes to do. What is it that your soul likes to do? What is it you were doing when you, when you were a child, maybe just loved animals and you wanted to be around animals all the time or, you know, the things, this of course is your, you're limited.

Mary Thompson [00:18:15]:

It's not like you could say, I was computer programming at three. That's what I like to do. But to think about were you putting things together? Were you taking things apart? Were you an Explorer? Were you a scientist, a traveler? You know, you had a huge imagination. You're creative. Yeah. Trying to tap back into that wellspring that served you then will still serve you today.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:18:37]:

Oh, I love that inquiry so much, Mary. And you know, that's something that I also feel like that we've been talking a lot about in my community is that sense of like creativity over consumption. Like, I feel like as humans, we are inherently creative and then we forget. And part of it is because we live in such this like information saturated environment that we consume, consume, consume. But I think we're also having, this is a beautiful time in midlife where it's like, oh, but what do I want to bring to life? Like, even if I'm not creating babies anymore, or maybe that wasn't your path to begin with, there's still things that want to bubble forth.

Mary Thompson [00:19:10]:

And. Right. It's either project or progeny, either it's something I'm working on or something I put out. So it's like, because that's how I'm leaving my mark in the world. In Sankey philosophy, they think about why are we here? We're here to have this exploration of the creation. There's a part of us that wants to leave a scent of ourselves behind. I leave something that says I existed even for this brief moment that I had in my life, that I was here. And with our kids, they carry on that.

Mary Thompson [00:19:40]:

And, you know, oh, I have this ancestor. So there was that brief moment. I must've been alive to have had the offspring, but I think it's even as we go into this Vana Prashita stage, it's even more about how will I be remembered? What is it that I do that nurtures me and serves the community?

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:20:01]:

That's beautiful. I know that a lot of women will also probably say, well, I would like to do all of that, but I'm having all of these physical symptoms like hot flashes, anxiety, insomnia, low libido. So often what comes with midlife and, you know, navigating perimenopause and menopause, there can be a lot of physical symptoms. And, you know, we started this conversation talking about our symptoms as being, being messengers. What do you think the invitation is if there is in some of these symptoms that women might be experiencing?

Mary Thompson [00:20:35]:

Well, I think the challenge is, or the what's being revealed is that when we are in our thirties and forties, early forties, the times that we're preparing our body for the future, that we're not very high on our priority list. We don't do the self care that we possibly should do that we could do that we take that we pay attention. Oh, you know, I'm just exhausted. I'm gonna rest for a while. No, that's not in your vocabulary when you're young. Right. It's like, oh, I'm exhausted. I really need an espresso, maybe a double espresso.

Mary Thompson [00:21:10]:

And then I can, then I can keep going. So one of the things that we're seeing is the end result of a time where all my energy was focused outwardly and less attention was focused inwardly. I remember being with, this was a psychology teacher at some conference. This idea has stuck with me for like thirty five, forty years. He said, you can't give 110%. If you give 110%, you're always going into the debt and that debt will be paid with your health. It is really all you're ever gonna get from me is 40%. Because if I give you 40%, I've got 60% to make sure that I can continue to give you 40% for the rest of my life.

Mary Thompson [00:21:48]:

Because if I give you 110%, you got a week tops that you're gonna get me. And then I'm too exhausted to work. And it struck me that as women, we often give 110% to our families, to our kids, to our communities, to our work. And so who is it that's putting money back or repaying us, you know, how are we repaying our health? So I think one of the challenge with the symptoms is they show that maybe we weren't too high on that priority list. We didn't do some of those self care things. Now that's not to say you're being punished in any way or that you deserve this. It's just saying, it's kind of like, if I never put oil in my car and eventually there's no oil, in the engine and the engine dies, then I just have to say, okay, that was not the right thing to do. I should have done the care of the engine along the way.

Mary Thompson [00:22:35]:

One of the things to think about is if you are in your thirties, forties, and are still premenopausal, paying attention to self care, doing those stress reducing practices, doing Ayurveda body routines for maybe like this morning, I get up and I do my self care. I got a self massage and I take care of all my senses and. You know, and then in the afternoon, I'll take a moment again to kind of regroup and say, okay, how my how's my day going? If I've been sitting a lot during the day and doing nothing, that's a good time for a walk. If I have been active, active, active, it's a good time for a rest. So it's like listening to the body and paying attention to it. Cycles becomes really important. At the end of the day, kind of looking back and saying, what can I have done differently? What could I have done better? And this by better, I mean, what can I have done better for myself? Because so often we're guilt driven and shame driven. And what can I have done better for all these people whose needs are constantly pulling on me? I heard an expression one time, which was, you can't fill others with an empty cup.

Mary Thompson [00:23:36]:

And how can I make sure my cup is full enough that I can serve others? Because that's at the heart of me, that's kind of the whole thing is how can I serve other people? And when I'm exhausted, it doesn't work. So if you're experiencing menopausal symptoms or perimenopausal symptoms, it's like saying, okay, now is the time. And again, a Chinese expression, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. You know, so it's like the best time to do that self care to prep for menopause was twenty years ago. The second best time is today. And so say, okay, so what does that look like? How can I put myself on that priority list? What do I need to nurture myself? And I have had women that sit there and stare at me and go, I have no idea what that means. You know, maybe I was told as a child, this was definitely true in my past that I was secondary to all these other people who needed my service.

Mary Thompson [00:24:39]:

You know, you should, you should just put that on the back burner. You don't need to take care of yourself. You need to take care of your mother, your father, your brothers, the aunts, the uncles, the cousins, and everybody else. And it's time for the woman. She has to, at this point, say, I need to take care of myself. And this is why I think I pictured that cottage in the forest. They're often like, I wanna be alone. I wanna go to this cottage.

Mary Thompson [00:25:06]:

I wanna have nobody to take care of, but myself. And of course we still probably have families and things that we're gonna take care of, but it's take care of myself first, you know, and make sure there's the time in that Boundaries. It brings up all those challenges around because people expect us to continue to be as available. And at this time they're capable, they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. And we are capable of taking care of ourselves. If I'm experiencing symptoms, it's time to say like me with my eye twitch, you know, I need more sleep. I get the symptom and say, oh, it's time to figure out what is it that my body needs. Like with hot flashes, hot flashes, such a common symptom.

Mary Thompson [00:25:50]:

It's looked at as being incredibly typical in menopause, but it's a symptom that the body's out of balance that it's the body has all of a sudden gone through this shift, this drop in estrogen, and it doesn't quite know what happened. And so it figures that, oh, when you drop estrogen, it means you're expending a lot of energy, which raises a lot of heat. And so you get this kind of surge as the body's going through the mechanism to say, okay, what, you know, it's, I don't know, I picture someone trying to figure out what's exactly going on. Oh, maybe we'll try this. Maybe we'll try that. You know, one of the things I found with all menopausal symptoms, the big answer lies in diet and lifestyle. Lisa's heard this before and it's, but I call it, we go through our lives kind of resting on our estrogen, meaning that estrogen does a lot of stuff for us. Remember when you were younger, twenties and thirties, and you could eat a brownie and you wouldn't gain a pound.

Mary Thompson [00:26:52]:

And it was just, you know, I've heard people say this, I used to be able to eat anything I wanted and I can't do that anymore because estrogen drove your metabolism. And so without estrogen, the metabolism drops and we gain weight. Oh, and the other thing with estrogen is it's trying to prepare you for pregnancy every month. So it's thinking if estrogen could think, I always give it, anthropomorphize everything. So if estrogen could think, it would say, oh, you know what? We could be pregnant in a couple of weeks. We're gonna need more body fluids to start feeding this embryo right away. We're gonna need more blood because this, you know, we need to start the blood production today. Oh, you know what? The muscles are really gonna get a workout.

Mary Thompson [00:27:36]:

We better start toning up those muscles. We're gonna need a little bit of fat in the body to kind of insulate the belly for this pregnancy that hasn't occurred yet. It's like two weeks off in the future, possibly. Maybe you're on some form of birth control and it's never gonna happen. Estrogen doesn't know that. It also tells the body to store minerals in the bones, make your bones more dense. And so it's doing all of these great things for the tissues of your body. And what I mean by the term resting on our estrogen is because estrogen is driving my metabolism.

Mary Thompson [00:28:10]:

Nah, I don't really need to, I don't need to exercise. I don't need to worry about the food I'm eating because estrogen will take care of it for me. It will ramp up my metabolism. So I burn off more calories. It'll build more tissue and build more strength in my muscles and density in my bones so I don't have to. And then the worst trick of all time, you hit 45, 50, and the rug gets pulled out from under you. For me, it was really sudden. It was like I went to a doctor for just kind of a general physical thing.

Mary Thompson [00:28:43]:

I don't remember why I went at this point. And she said she was concerned because she had to put something on her diagnostic sheet to bill insurance. And she said, I just can't put anything here. And she said, oh, I know I'll put down menopausal. And I said, well, I'm not menopausal. And she said, oh, you are. And I said, but I just had my period last month in August. And she said, well, you won't have one in September.

Mary Thompson [00:29:09]:

And she was right. She had blood work in front of her. My estrogen was gone. The, the LA gen FSH were spiked and I just went, what? I mean, I knew I had it coming. I was irregular cycle and things like that, but I was stunned that it was just like, boom, the estrogen was just gone. And then we get to deal with the body, trying to figure out what just happened, you know, for the last forty years or more every month, there was lots of estrogen in the body and all of a sudden it's not there. So who's driving metabolism now. And that's the hard answer because if I'm not exercising, nobody is or the thyroid is the thyroid of course drives metabolism as well.

Mary Thompson [00:29:52]:

But it can't do the job that it was doing when it had a partner in crime with a thyroid and the estrogen were working together. We had lots of strong metabolism and you can really watch when the metabolism starts to shift in the late thirties, early forties, when you start to go, woah, what just happened here? There's something going on. I can't eat. Like I ate ten years ago. So when we have symptoms, it's not that we wanna just simply replace estrogen. That's what you, you know, some people can do that. There's hormone replacement therapies. And I don't wanna vilify those at all because sometimes people need them for the intensity of their symptoms and that they can't live their life in the face of these symptoms.

Mary Thompson [00:30:37]:

Then I say, great, you know, do what you need to do to maintain balance and put the diet and lifestyle in place. So you're not dependent on those going forward. You know, you need it today for symptomatic relief, but there's lots of tools you have with the diet and lifestyle to resolve the underlying cause. A lot of people think the cause of menopausal symptoms is the lack of estrogen and progesterone, but, you know, you didn't have any estrogen and progesterone for the first thirteen years of your life, you know, and you managed without a lot of problems at that because you had growth hormone. But all of these metabolism drivers are driven by how much we exercise and how much we take care of the tissues of the body. The tissue of the body are fed with our diet. So we look at the food. Is this food really feeding us that that term you are what you eat is really going to be about that food you eat becomes your body tissue.

Mary Thompson [00:31:33]:

And so is it, is it beautiful? I think it's Kate O'Donnell who wrote everyday I read a cookbook and she coined this term, the soul food. Is it seasonal? Is it organic? Is it unprocessed? Is it grown locally? You know, these are things you can think about and strive for in your diet and really be kind and gentle with yourself. An eighty twenty rule is great. 80 of the time I'm eating seasonal, organic, unprocessed, and local, and 20%, I I get to have that slice of birthday cake. I'm not going to say, oh my gosh, no, if you made it with processed flour, I can't do that. It's like, I'm going to celebrate in that, and I'm going to keep my diet as clean as I possibly can, because that's what feeds the tissues of the body. And then we look and say, okay, now that's supply. What's the demand? What do I do with this body? And when you exercise, you clear the system of any kind of toxicity, you raise your metabolism, you build healthy tissues in the body.

Mary Thompson [00:32:30]:

So I think there's a, an idea that we are doomed. We are doomed to loss of muscle tone. We are doomed to our hair falling out. We are doomed to these misplaced eyebrows that grow off the chin and they place else on the face. We're doomed to these kind of things, but we could say I can control as much as I can. What's going on in my body with how I move it with the superficial tissues, the plasma of the body and the blood. We're looking at break a sweat, do something each day that will help you break a sweat for the blood. Do something each day that raises your heart rate.

Mary Thompson [00:33:05]:

And then for the, for the muscle tissue, do something each day where you're lifting weight, where you're doing some strength training of some sort. There's a wonderful book I'll give a plug to, which is called strong women stay young. That's the title of the book. And she did a research project on postmenopausal women and strength training. And they saw loss of weight, improved muscle tone, increased bone density. And it's like seven exercises using weights in the hands. You know, I think she had ankle weights as well, but it's something to consider when we do this strength training, we're doing the work of the estrogen. We're not resting on the estrogen, telling our muscles to build.

Mary Thompson [00:33:44]:

We're doing it every time you curl, you're going build that muscle. And then with strength training, weight bearing exercise for the bones. So we can look at these things that we can do to replace the functions of the estrogen, but not replacing the actual estrogen itself. If you in your thirties and forties were really active, you've probably already got that part down. Now you're probably looking at more of the self care part. You You might have stayed really high with the exercise, but maybe the diet was off. Or there are lots of things that we take in on a regular basis that they just aren't so good for the body. So it's like saying, okay, how can I make sure that I'm late? I'm gonna pick on alcohol for a sec.

Mary Thompson [00:34:25]:

Cause a lot of women drink wine. It's like, how can I offset that? I still want to enjoy my glass of wine with my friends, but I don't want to suffer negative consequences of, you know, drying my body out and causing more challenges that I might see. And I say, well, could you match it with water would be one thing. Have a glass of water before you have the glass of wine, have the wine, have a glass of water after you have the wine. I had one person say, but then I wouldn't get drunk. And I said, well, that's a whole different issue. Yeah. But I'm talking about if somebody wants to be able to be at a table with their friends and feel like they're not missing out by having that glass of wine.

Mary Thompson [00:35:00]:

So it's like looking at my food stuff and thinking, is there something here, some way that I could improve what I'm taking it? And we could talk too about things we can do in the moment to pacify some of these symptoms. Like you had mentioned insomnia, I think loss of libido, hot flashes are a tricky one because the more you hydrate, the more you cleanse the body system of what we, we call Amma in Ayurveda, but kind of the toxicity that the body builds up over time. The more you cleanse that out, the body regulates it. When my story of hot flashes or hot flash was I had my first hot flash in an airplane, flying out of, out of the country, trapped in a very small space, it's economy, trapped in a small space. And I get this and it's like, I'm thinking, what is this? What is happening here? Why am I so I went, why am I having a hot flash? And then I went, and then I said, oh, this is unacceptable. I will not have a hot, I will, you know, okay. Now I gotta really deal with these symptoms. For me, I found when I hydrated really well, when I took teas that were really, they're called demulcent, they help build up fluids in the system.

Mary Thompson [00:36:09]:

I didn't have hot flashes. And when I got dehydrated, that's when they happened. Now I'm not saying that's the case for everyone, but that was certainly the case for me. So when I drank my tea every day that I had made that had those in it, I didn't suffer the hot flashes. You know? So it was like, okay. That was a good thing to know. So listen to the body is a big thing. And hot flashes, oftentimes it's about the state of the liver.

Mary Thompson [00:36:34]:

So you can look at things you can do to kind of support your liver. Oftentimes you'll see articles saying you don't need a liver cleanse because your liver's a self cleaning organ and it does all the detoxifying in the body that you need and etcetera, etcetera. I just wanna say, what are you eating? You know, what are you drinking? What are you exposing yourself to? Everything that goes in the mouth, in the nose, through the skin has to go through the liver. It's going to go through the liver. So maybe I live in an area that's not got the cleanest air. My liver's gotta work with that. I live in a place that, you know, maybe I'm not feeding myself the greatest. I went home for the weekend to visit my family of origin and maybe I just ate junk all weekend long.

Mary Thompson [00:37:17]:

It's like, oh, my liver probably will need some support. And that support could be diet and lifestyle support. Could be, what can I do to, to support that? And I know Lisa's got lots of ideas for you on that. So I won't, I won't derail us and talk about livers.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:31]:

I loved what you were saying though, about like resting on your, estrogen, because it's, it's also empowering, like, okay, so my estrogen used to do this. It used to have, you know, help me with my metabolism and my muscles, but now I can do it. So it's not that all, all is lost. It's just, okay. Now I need to start taking more responsibility for making sure that I'm packing prana into my bones with, like, this weight bearing exercises and I'm eating. I love the concept that soul food. Right? That that's my priority. I think that's really empowering and it's a great way to look at it.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:38:05]:

One thing that you had said made me, think too about even the wine. This is something we've also talked a bit about in my community. Sometimes we know that things are not good for us. And if we have a glass of wine or two glasses of wine, we're not gonna get a good night sleep or hot flashes, make it get worse. And I remember, I think it was you who introduced me to the concept of Prashna Partha, crimes against wisdom, where we know things aren't good for us, but we do them anyways. And that I feel like is probably the biggest challenge. For people right now, because there's, there's no lack of information. I mean, maybe to some extent when you're initially like you're learning new ways of doing things, but there's not a lack of information.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:38:49]:

I don't think about what we need to do to feel better. Why do you think it's so challenging for people to make the diet and lifestyle changes?

Mary Thompson [00:39:00]:

There's a lot of factors involved. It's a lot of history that's involved to our our personal history. And it's so tied up in everything. Oh my gosh. There's a concept in Ayurveda that's Ahamkara, which is the eye maker, my ego. That's the part of you that believes in these things. I am a person who loves chocolate. I am a person who loves coffee.

Mary Thompson [00:39:26]:

I'm a person who likes to drink wine. I'm a person who does these things. And when we say I'm not gonna drink, I'm not gonna eat the chocolate anymore. I'm not gonna drink the wine. I'm not gonna drink the coffee. My belief system is still there. It's still there that I am a person who enjoys coffee. I simply don't drink the coffee, but eventually I'm gonna come back to it because I'm a person who drinks coffee.

Mary Thompson [00:39:48]:

You know, it's like the Ankara identifies that. So it's almost like in order to make these changes, we have to make some kind of fundamental shift in believing what we believe about ourself. And so say, I see, I can't drink coffee. I can't take caffeine because it's, it is such a strong action I'm getting that I, I could tell it in the first sip of the, if I'm drinking something that's got caffeine in it, cause my skin starts to react. So it's, it's not my issue. But let's say I'm saying I'm not gonna drink coffee anymore. It's keeping me up too late. It's giving me indigestion.

Mary Thompson [00:40:22]:

I have whatever issues I have. I've decided for me, I'm not saying anybody else, but I've decided for me that coffee's not there. So I have to think first, what are the negatives? What are the consequences that I get from this? Okay. Those are the things I want to avoid. What else I have to consider? What's the benefit I get from it? What do I love about it? With my husband, he's a coffee drinker. He loves the ritual. He loves the whole ritual of making that coffee in the morning and then sitting in his chair and drinking the coffee. So is there a way that I could maintain the parts I love and avoid the things I wanna avoid? You know, maybe if it's the ritual, having a different beverage that I create a ritual around will replace that.

Mary Thompson [00:41:06]:

Maybe I need to look at changing who I believe I am. I'm not a person who loves coffee. I'm a person who loves a ritual in the morning that involves a warm beverage and say, okay. And I start to shift that. And then what will usually happen is it will drop off on its own. Once I can change what I believe about myself to be true, then what I'm doing that reinforces that belief will change as well. So I believe I'm a person that, that really likes the ritual of making a warm beverage in the morning. Now I've got the capability of, of bringing in tea, of bringing in cocoa, bringing in, oh my gosh.

Mary Thompson [00:41:40]:

I was reading about cacao drinks and I'm all over that. You know, it's like, Oh, you'll find some fun ways to do this, or even a coffee substitute. There's lots of really great tasting coffee substitutes now. And I know, I know if you're a coffee, you just went, they don't taste like coffee. If it's the energy I get from the coffee, that's really what I want. What are some other ways that I can get the energy and exercise is a big one, Breathing, getting in that prana. When I do classes, I refer to coffee as artificial prana. You know, it's some way for me to take it in and not work in it.

Mary Thompson [00:42:11]:

So I think the reason we can't change, the reason why change is so hard is because we're really trying to shift an underlying core belief about ourself. And we think that all we're trying to shift is what's in the cup, but we're trying to shift how I perceive myself with alcohol. You know, it's like, I'm a person that enjoys going out with my friends and having a glass of wine. And, you know, maybe I could focus on the, the things I value about it, the being with my friends and the companionship. I've had one client who's a red wine drinker. I said, would anyone know if that was pomegranate juice? And she went, no, she wanted to go drinking wine. It was like, you know, no, one's gonna know what's in your glass unless you tell them she found negative health consequences with the wine. And so she looked at what was the benefit I get from it that I'm able to commute with my friends and I could change what was in the glass.

Mary Thompson [00:43:03]:

So it's like, I wanna really focus on, I'm a person that enjoys hanging out with my friends and because my friends drink wine that I drink wine, but I don't have to keep up with them anymore. So that's, I think what's hard about making change. I think the original question is what's hard about it is because it's not, we look at it as a simple thing, but it is a fundamental shift in who I believe myself to be and who I choose to be. It gets down to it. I prefer to sleep at night than to have a cup of coffee. What I believe is true at this point is coffee's fine, but it just racks my body too much. And I prefer to feel better in my body than to have the coffee. I am a person who values and I'm saying this as a general person, just me, but I'm a person who values that feeling of vitality that I can get from life more so than the vitality I get from a cup of coffee.

Mary Thompson [00:43:52]:

Yeah. You know? So it's like, I gotta look at that fundamental belief and shift it and it's not, not easy. I don't wanna make it sound like, oh, that's all you have to do. Because what I'm saying is you're changing who you believe yourself to be. And that is huge.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:44:07]:

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I think I'm glad we had that conversation because I think that is really the key is that we also have to shift our identity because I could say like, I mean, I know how people can get healthier, go to bed early, get up with the sunrise, exercise every day, don't eat processed foods, manage stress. Right? Like if you did that, you'd probably be feeling pretty good. And yet it's so hard for many to do. One of the things that I like to do in one of my programs, it's called radiant goddess, where it really goes through Dina Charya, you know, the different steps each week you learn new is really shift the mindset of like, okay, if I was a goddess, how would I treat myself? Would I be rushing from one activity to the next? Would I be spending my day on social media? Would I be eating on the run or while I was driving and really starting to shift? Like who do I want to be? And how do these rituals actually support me for this next best version of myself? So yeah, it's not as easy as just picking up the haves or not because it is a shift in identity.

Mary Thompson [00:45:08]:

Right. And I almost picture, you know, you wanna have that image in the forefront of your mind that this goddess, you know, maybe a picture above your computer, a picture above the television, a picture on the refrigerator, just to check-in. I used to say, if you were taking God to lunch, would you take him to McDonald's? You know, it's like Exactly. Yes. And so, but if we truly believe that we have that spark of the divine within us, how do we behave in such a way that we allow that spark of divine within us to inform our choices? Yeah. And it's not easy because we, and I also, I mean, there's a whole society out there doing other stuff. This is my, my inner child. Right? How come they get to do that? I don't get to do it.

Mary Thompson [00:45:49]:

You know, there's this lack and we have to look at our choices, not as lack, but as abundant. You know, it's like, a lot of people can drink coffee without getting as crazy as I get with it. How come they get to do that and I don't instead of, oh, well, or they can eat junk food and not gain weight or they can do whatever. And we have to, I don't know, pull that part in.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:46:11]:

Yeah. Yeah. I love the idea of having like that, you know, a visual too, just to remind yourself, like why I'm doing this and who is it I want to become.

Mary Thompson [00:46:22]:

Yeah. I am embracing the goddess within me and I can be that.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:46:25]:

Yeah. We were talking earlier about our symptoms being messages and how so much can be with diet and lifestyle, which is really, you know, what I teach and talk about a lot, but we also don't want people to suffer. Where do you see a balance between alleviating suffering suffering versus being able to sit with discomfort? Because I'm actually a big believer that we also have to build kind of this container that I can I can sit with discomfort, whether it's like anxiety or, you know, not feeling good, or maybe it's even like a pain in the back, but I don't wanna suffer? Do you have any thoughts? I'm like, what is that balance?

Mary Thompson [00:47:04]:

I think the balance is the ability to perform your daily life skills. If the symptom is such that I am immobilized, then you gotta shut that symptom down because you have to be able to do the things it's. It's a big conundrum, right? Is I need you to be able to do the recommendations that I've got, But if you're in too much pain, you can't do that. So maybe you need a pain reliever. I'm gonna pick on pain relievers for a minute. So the challenge with the pain reliever is you may do more to damage the underlying problem because you're not getting the signal from your body that it's in pain. If one takes a pain reliever, they have to remember my body is in pain, so I'm not going to push it. I'm not gonna say, oh, thank God.

Mary Thompson [00:47:52]:

My back's not hurting time to go up in the garden. You know, it's like, okay. Today's the day where I'm gonna have to take care of it. Maybe I've got the pain reliever and I get a back massage. I've got the pain reliever and I wear the back brace. I've got the pain reliever and I do things to take care that I'm not exacerbating the problem anymore. Also managing the pain to the point where I'm minimizing it, but I'm not necessarily zoning myself out to be unaware of it, which is what a lot of the, the opiates and things like that do. Yeah.

Mary Thompson [00:48:23]:

And again, no, no shade on, on any kind of medication you need for pain. If you're in terrible pain, you want that relief, but but you also wanna make sure that you're not continuing to create more pain. Once the pain reliever is off, it's like, oh no, the pain's back because I did all this, this extra work. So I think looking at, is it uncomfortable? Like, like you used the word discomfort. Am I still able to live my life with this discomfort? I may live with it for a time, but if it's one that's, I can't function, then I need some kind of, maybe a medication. It could be herbal. It could be pharmaceutical. It could be a nice retreat in the forest, you know, that I need something that's gonna kind of minimize.

Mary Thompson [00:49:03]:

Maybe it's counseling, you know, that you spoke about anxiety. So if I have anxiety, I will can look at where's the source of it. It's coming from somewhere. And can I address the source of it? I am terrible at returning phone calls, but it gives me terrific anxiety to know that I owe somebody a phone call and haven't returned it. Do I look at that and just say, okay, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna medicate my anxiety or do I say, okay, just go make the phone call. Call. And usually they're no big deal phone calls. It's just I'm a big phone phobic.

Mary Thompson [00:49:32]:

So it's like, I'll send a text. So there's that part of it. So if I can address it some way, then I should. But what if my anxiety, what if I say, I don't know where it's coming from? I'm having a panic attack. I don't know where this is coming from. Okay. So now this is a reaction your body's having. Let's calm down the reaction.

Mary Thompson [00:49:50]:

Again, that could be herbal. It could be pharmaceutical. It could be talking to somebody. It could be all kinds of different techniques you use, but you address that and say, okay, now, how can I strengthen my body? What can I do? You know, basically what it's saying is that I don't have the reserves for what life is handing me. You know, I don't have the strength to handle this. And maybe this was, I couldn't find the mail key. It's like, oh, now I'm having a panic attack about it and say, okay, I need to shore up my reserves. And that's where the Dina Charya, the daily routines, the diet and lifestyle, these start to build up what we call Ojas and strengthen the body so that I can tolerate little blips, because there are blips every single day.

Mary Thompson [00:50:31]:

Right? But if you're jumping, when your phone rings, it's like, okay, what can I do to shore up that, that Ojas to strengthen that core? Because without that I'm, I'm gonna be unable to handle these shifts that are happening. I hope that answers your question. That's where I would see the line there.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:50:48]:

Yeah. I think, I think that's a great way of, of looking at it when people are like, do I, do I take something or not to make that decision?

Mary Thompson [00:50:57]:

One thing that you want to talk about with symptomatic relief in that. So maybe we want to set up another call and, and I can go, you could throw up symptoms and we could talk about diet and lifestyle approaches to those.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:51:07]:

Yeah. That would be great. Yeah. Let's do that. So it'll be like, there'll be a part two.

Mary Thompson [00:51:13]:

That would be fun. Because this has been really fun. And I think this is the topic today. The different things we talked about are, I think, even more important in perimenopause and menopause, because it's about who we are, what we're going through, our diet and lifestyle, all of this. But there certainly is a concern about what if I'm having an acute expression of a symptom? You know, I'm having this insomnia. What can I, what are some things I can do that would help offset that? Maybe get me to go through it so it's not as intense. Yeah. And I think that's a, it's a whole different topic.

Mary Thompson [00:51:44]:

And I think most people when they talk about menopause, that's what they talk about is how to relieve symptoms. And today we've looked at how do you address the cause of the imbalance, which is my life.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:51:55]:

Yeah. And I think that's where the really profound conversation is, is like the cause and the invitation and the identity. Yeah. We definitely do want to talk about the symptoms as well, too, but we kind of have to, you know, understand you, well, what is going on and how do I show up? Yeah.

Mary Thompson [00:52:11]:

Right. Because if we simply treat symptoms, then we're just, we're just using Ayurveda allopathically, or just like we use Western medicine to alleviate the symptom, keep doing the cause.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:52:22]:

Yes, exactly. Thank you so much, Mary. And if you're interested in learning more about Mary, you can check out her website, marythompsonayurveda.com, and I have that link in the show notes. But it was such a pleasure speaking with you today.

Mary Thompson [00:52:35]:

Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I look forward to talking to you again.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:52:38]:

Yes. Fantastic. All right. Bye beautiful listeners. Thanks for tuning in to the God of School podcast. I hope today's episode inspired you to reclaim your feminine magic. Now don't forget to subscribe to the show, and if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple. If you wanna dive deeper into divine feminine archetypes and reconnect with your power, check out my book, The Goddess Solution.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:53:05]:

It's packed with ancient goddess wisdom for the modern woman. You can find the book on Amazon, and the link is in the show notes. And if you are ready to embrace these practices alongside a global sisterhood, I invite you to join my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivened. It's a supportive space to embody these teachings with a fantastic community of like minded women. You'll find the link in the show notes. Remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of you. She's an aspect of your highest self, and you are the goddess. Until next time, my friend.