The Sacred Womb
Come home to your true nature; Embody The Wisdom Of Your Menstrual Cycle, Heal Across Your Soul’s Journey & Unify Your Divine Masculine and Feminine.
The Sacred Womb
Menopause, Hormones & Health with Salena Walker
Salena Walker; Herbalist, Naturapath and Nutritionist joins us to talk about what’s going on during menopause and how we can support ourselves with what we drink, eat, think and excrete!
She talks us through what’s going on with our hormones, what we need to consider to take care of ourselves, plus herbs and supplements to support the transformation.
ABOUT SALENA
Salena has over twenty years of teaching experience and offers many of her courses both in person in her woodland classroom in West Wales and online. Her course ‘Hormones and Menopause’ is now available online.
Melanie Swan is regarded as a leader in healing the physical womb, restoring the metaphysical womb, and connecting with the cosmic womb.
She’s a Womb Medicine Woman and Soul Worker with 20 year’s experience – who guides and empowers women to come home to their true nature.
She hosts The Sacred Womb Podcast and runs The Womb Healing Training, and is currently writing her first book The Sacred Womb, which is, at its core, a handbook for the empowerment of womankind; due for release in late 2025.
Okay, everyone, welcome back to the podcast, and today we've got a massive, massive treat in the form of Selina Walker, who is a herbalist, naturopath and nutritionist who lives in West Wales, and so welcome to the podcast, selina.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to be talking about hormones and menopause and just to kind of set the scene, selina is really passionate about empowering people to look after their own health with you know, skillful tools and information, and she loves teaching people that we are what we eat, think and excrete. And drink. I think that was a good order Drink, eat, think and excrete. I love that you included poo on there. So yes, great strapline. So yeah. So could you start off by telling us your take on an experience of what is going on at the transition of perimenopause into menopause?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the body preparing for the transition. So I think a lot of what I see in clinic and with with people that come on courses with me is it is a fear of the unknown. There's a fear of the transition, but what is actually happening is the body is transitioning from having a bleed every month to not having a bleed, and that transition is going to create symptoms, is going to create change in the body. But I think, as humans, lots of us fear change rather than looking at it as transformation. There's two very different ways you can look at it and I think the way that society is now willingly talking about menopause which is great, but we are kind of going towards that path of fear without conversations about it, and I think what we need to realize is a natural transformation in the body. And as soon as we can realize that it is a natural transformation and we don't fight that transformation, then can be transformational. It can actually change us into a transformative woman that can create change in the world and may I ask your age?
Speaker 2:okay, so where are you?
Speaker 1:at in your kind of perimenopause transformation at the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting really. I would say about a year ago I would have said, yeah, I'm definitely starting perimenopause, but I was finding I was having symptoms and I was very quickly jumping on that bandwagon. It was perimenopause. And then I was sitting with him thinking, ok, have I just lacked on my self-care and do I need to up my self-care, or is it perimenopause? And then I was sitting with it thinking, okay, have I just lacked on my self-care and do I need to up my self-care or is it perimenopause? So I put a lot of what I teach into practice and was taking lots of the lots of herbal remedies to help and suddenly my cycle went back to what it normally was.
Speaker 2:So I don't know whether whether it a start a blip, I might say or whether it was just my self-care had gone slightly down. So there was a bit of anxiety coming up, my bleeding was a bit heavier and I had a lot of PMT. But when I stopped and looked back I was thinking, well, that's happened in other points in my life when I haven't been looking after myself, when I've been more stressed, in other points in my life when I haven't been looking after myself, when I've been more stressed. So I would say at the moment I'm definitely noticing changes, noticing that I'm really that param, that kind of premenstrual time I'm noticing can be a bit more intense, um, but also I'm aware that I have more focus on it because of my age, because all my friends around me you know either in it or or through it and they're telling me about it. So I do wonder how much that is because my focus is more on it. But I'm certainly more aware of changes each month.
Speaker 1:And so what would you say are like natural symptoms of the body changing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really interesting question using that word natural, isn't it? What a natural ways the body's changing. I would say natural symptoms are. Obviously you're noticing a change in the bleed, so your natural changes could be. Some people notice it gets heavier, some people notice that it gets lighter. But there's that word change.
Speaker 2:There will be a change in the bleed and that change in the bleed is going to result be a change in the bleed and that change in the bleed is going to result from a change in the hormones and because oestrogen is responsible for so many other things in the body. You know, we have oestrogen in every cell in the body and we kind of think of oestrogen as just being in our ovaries and that's that. But it's going to affect every single cell in the body naturally. Now that doesn't mean that we're going to have raging hormones. We're going to have raging symptoms. It's going to be dependent on the environment that we've put our body in. So, naturally, we could have a crazy menopause. Naturally, we could have a calm menopause and I would class them both as a natural menopause because it's all going to be a result of what position we've put our body in.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, so you're, you're saying that how we sort of enter perimenopause, you know, and how I guess how well we've looked after ourselves, or how in touch with what was going on we've been, or how busy we've been, or whatever. It kind of sets the tone for the beginning part.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely. I always say, you know, it's one of those things that it's worth looking at before we're in perimenopause, that kind of you know, from 35 upwards, looking at how. How are we looking after ourselves? Because so many things play a role, because our oestrogen stops being reliant on our ovaries and goes to our adrenal glands and a lot of the time our adrenals are exhausted because of the life we live, the stressful lives we all live. So when suddenly our bodies go and actually adrenals, can you take on a bit of an extra job and start producing oestrogen for us? A lot of the time our adrenals are like no chance. I'm completely exhausted. I've got enough of my plate, I've got no room in my schedule, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:So a big thing is is looking at so what happens if, like the adrenals, say no, I'm too busy, I'm worn out, I can't take on this extra job? What's that look like in the body? What happens?
Speaker 2:so that that's where you'll get a lot of symptoms around the adrenals. So it may be that you have a complete intolerance to stress. You go kind of extreme with reactions emotional reactions quite easily, you kind of can't burn the candle at both ends anymore. But also that's going to have an impact on your hormones as well. So that's going to mean that your oestrogen can be fluctuating quite a lot. So some days that you might feel like your breasts are heavy and they're really painful and you might have spotting in between bleeding because your oestrogen is all over the place. Or it may be that you don't ovulate one month and then you suddenly then the next month you might have a heavy bleed. So it's going to result in a lot of fluctuations and, okay, a lot okay that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So what can we do about that, given that what you're saying is basically there are natural symptoms, uh, the body's going through a massive change. Um, we've, we've lived lives, basically just by the very nature of our current time, space and society, that are stressful, that are going to mean our adrenals are in a position where they're like, uh, hello. Um, so, given given the majority of women, I guess, enter perimenopause in an already stressed state, what can we do, like what are some core things we can do to support our body?
Speaker 2:well, it's remembering our body is a physical, emotional and spiritual being. So just because we focus in on the adrenals, some people think, well, it's just stress. But remembering that stress can play a role in all parts of our body and it's bringing it all back to. If we are looking at menopausal symptoms, we are looking at the ovaries, which are part of the whole endocrine system, and our adrenals are also part of the endocrine system and our adrenals are also part of the endocrine system. And this system is a bit like an orchestra really, because all parts of the endocrine system you've got your pituitary gland, your pineal gland, your thyroid, your adrenals, your ovaries all all the glands involved in the endocrine system work like an orchestra. And if one of them suddenly like if you were viewing an orchestra, and if one of them suddenly like if you were viewing an orchestra and suddenly the violinist started playing really fast, all other parts of the orchestra would have to speed up to try and keep the music playing. And our endocrine system is exactly the same. So if our adrenals are suddenly going really slow and they're fatigued, everything else in that endocrine system is going to go very slow and fatigued. So what we want to do is support that the whole endocrine system as much as possible.
Speaker 2:And I always say you know you want your drink eat, think and excrete. And I always start with the very simplest things, such as water. And one of the reasons I start with water is because, going back to menopause and the symptoms that that's going to create, if you were constipated as a result of not drinking enough water, that's going to mean that oestrogen that is in your body is constantly being recirculated. Because when your bowels are full and you're waiting to have a poo, there's a lovely conversation that happens between your liver and your bowels to pull back water. The conversation goes a bit like hey, liver, how hydrated is my body? And if you're dehydrated because the water hasn't been coming in, the liver will say there's no water here, I need every bit you can give me. So the bowels will allow the liver to suck back the water.
Speaker 2:It's sucking back the hormones, so the estrogen goes back in rather than out, and it means that you're hydrating your body, selena.
Speaker 1:I am never going to skip that glass of water again. Now you've told me that I actually had no idea that that happened. I love how you say it, because our body does talk to it. It does have inner conversations, doesn't it? And our organs are alive and they have their own thing. You're basically feeding yourself shitty water that's got old hormones in it that are basically supposed to be out Beautiful. Let's drink some water, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's something very easily that everyone can take on. And I think the one thing is, everyone knows we should drink water, but people don't. And I say, you know, it's one thing having knowledge, but we need to turn knowledge into action. And during perimenopause, that's the time we're all the knowledge and that wisdom that we've built up we do need to turn into action. So that's looking at what you drink and then looking at what you eat. Well, I would say the main thing with what you eat is having food as close to the garden as possible. So that means cutting out processed foods, cutting out anything that's going to have an impact on that digestive system, because we want going back to the poo impact on that digestive system, because we want going back to the poo, one of my favorite subjects. We want that poo to go through smoothly. We don't want rabbit droppings, we want good, solid poos. You want to eliminate what we need to eliminate and anything that's going to kind of result in stickiness in the bowel we are very likely going to need to cut out our life.
Speaker 2:So many women benefit around perimenopause stage of letting go of gluten, letting go of dairy, letting go of sugar, because the inflammatory effect that can have in the body, and also looking at you as an individual. If you are someone that is starting to suffer from hot flushes, then it may be an idea to let go of the curries and the hot spices for the time being, so you're not adding extra heat to your body, and then fried foods can be another one, because the fried foods actually become carcinogenic. So letting go of that as well up to the body, and then depending on your lifestyle so if you're someone that's quite sedentary you know you're sitting at the computer all day then maybe having a lot of high carbohydrate foods in your diet, which is poor energy, isn't going to serve you that well. So what you want to look at is how can I balance my diet with my lifestyle? And the main thing is then OK, well, filling up on rainbows. That's the easiest way to look at it.
Speaker 2:You want to look down at your plate at every meal and just ask yourself a simple question Is this meal going to create the best possible version of me? Is this meal going to enable me to have a transformational menopause and have that moment to be honest with yourself? You want your plate to be full of rainbow veggies. You want to be aiming for 30 different varieties a week so you can feed the gut bacteria, because the gut bacteria enables us to excrete hormones as well and process hormones. We want to make sure that we're having things like berries and grapefruit support our liver to be able to cleanse cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, which is great for estrogen balance, and then things like pulses and legumes. So a good variety of vegetables and that's what I would say. So that's what you drink and what you eat. Now the tricky one I know what you think. Oh yes go on yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:That's more of a tricky one again. The first thing I would say is being aware of what. Do you think? You know, having those quiet moments because that's the scary time is when you're quiet, allowing what's there to come in arise, such as deep breathing techniques, trying to get that out breath longer than the in breath, so you can almost fake it till you make it. You're sending messages to your nervous system that you are relaxed. And then little techniques. I love the technique. Um, from the artist's way by julia cameron, the morning pages I know the book, but I don't haven't read it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a lovely technique and many different practitioners have called it different names over the years, such as rage on the page and process pages, but it's basically where you get a notepad, your A4 notepad, and you get your pen out and you write three sides without stopping, without thinking, and you might be writing. I've listened to this podcast and Selena mentioned do this, I'm going to do this. I have no idea what's going to come out, or when I'm at the shop later, I need to get cat litter and cat food, and it's just a sprawl of thoughts coming out. It's all the drama out of your head onto the page. And what generally happens and what I've experienced myself personally and with clients is, after about a page and a half, your own internal therapist comes through. You get all the drama out the way, and then your own internal therapist comes through. You get all the drama out the way and then your own internal therapist steps in and suddenly something might come out such as I need to dance or I need to meet up with my friend today, and those nuggets of wisdom come through, telling you what you actually need. But that can only happen when we allow ourselves to stop and go into that process.
Speaker 2:So I would recommend that, for you are what you think and then, when you are, what you excrete, I would say the big, big thing for menopause and perimenopause is your roots of elimination, loving your liver, allowing your liver to let go.
Speaker 2:So it's all about your roots of elimination. I teach a lot about doing things such as castrol packs and enemas to support excretion, because it's our liver that detoxifies hormones and my experience of working with people is people don't get high oestrogen suddenly from norway. It's usually recirculation. It's the liver not excreting what should be excreted, or it could be the digestive system. The liver might be doing the job, but it's the next step along the way that's not doing its job. The digestive system is overloaded and it's not being excreted. And you can do that. You don't have to go to the extreme, because I always say meet your body where it's at. If that all sounds a bit scary, then you can do a more gentle detox, using herbs to help detoxify the liver. But it's all about looking after that and starting with something simple such as water, but going through all those stages of drinking, eating.
Speaker 1:I love those. They're really clear. It feels just really like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah all those elements before thinking about are there any herbs I can take to support me or anything, because those feel like the absolute basics and if we're not doing those, then maybe herbs, herbal supplements or whatever aren't going to land in a very good way really. Would that be fair to say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, exactly. I always say we have to meet the herbs and supplements halfway, because it's it's no good taking them in an allopathic way, such as if we have something wrong, we might go to the doctor, take a tablet and it's just putting a plaster on it. We're not looking at the root cause.
Speaker 2:If someone came to me and they had digestive issues and I thought the digestive issues was because they were consuming dairy products, for instance, I could give them herbs for calming the digestive system, for soothing the digestive system. But if I then don't give them the advice that I feel that it's a result of dairy and to cut that out as well, herbs are superheroes, but they can only do so much. You need to look at the root cause and work on that as well. So I I would never say to someone okay, take these herbs, take these supplements without doing all the other steps, because it's not empowering that person, because it's just using herbs and using supplements in an allopathic way, just as we would use pharmaceuticals, all right so I, like I'm really stuck with this drink, eat, think, excrete I'm.
Speaker 1:Actually. I saw, um, uh, what do you call it? An enema bag, uh, for sale in the health food store the other day and I was looking at it and I didn't. I've done them years ago and I thought, maybe, but I I think I'll give it a go now. Friend Rachel is always doing them, she's, she texts me while she's doing them and I say do you want, do you want, a video chat? She goes not, not right now, not, no, no, I'm on the bathroom floor. Okay, so I understand. You put all this in a, an online course as well. You do it in person, but you put it online because you've got, I mean, there's a demand for it yes, yeah, definitely I think.
Speaker 2:I think there's a demand for people having information. I think the main thing is, as I said, we've been talking about menopause a bit more, but it's good to have a variety of information, because people need information to make their own decisions, and I think having that in a source that you can just look at at home can be great, because then you can keep coming back to videos, you can keep coming back to pds, you can keep going over things. So I run the course face to face, but I've recorded everything so you can come on the course and it's just like being with me face to face in my woodland yurt. Yes, that you can watch it online.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope when I go back to england I can come up and, um, we can meet and we can go and pick some herbs and go and have some fun. Um, so yeah, we've. I feel like we've covered the basics. You've covered, like, okay, what's going on with hormones and, um, what we can do to support ourselves more. Is there anything else you want to add to like how you support women and the information you give at perimenopause and menopause?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's. I mean, I think there's a couple of things that women can actually get on board with quite easily. And I will touch on herbs slightly, because I think it's really good to look at the herbs that we all have in our lives every day and we don't realize how much of superheroes these herbs are. For instance, sage. I mean lots of women these days know a sage and they might think of it just as the superhero for hot flushes, and it is because there was a study done and I think off the top of my head I think 65 of the women had a reduction in hot flushes within eight weeks of using sage. So it is a superhero as far as hot flushes are concerned.
Speaker 1:But it also helps with serotonin and with estrogen so is that like a sage tea or something you?
Speaker 2:get some fresh leaves yeah, just make sage tea. And that's why I say it's great, because generally we've all got dried sage, you know, in our herb cabinet. If you've got a garden, a great plant to grow because it's available all year. But even if you've just got your dried herbs in your herb, rack a teaspoon dried herbs in a in a mug, fill it up with hot boiling water and put a lid on it because you don't want all the good fumes to to go off the herbs. Put a lid on it and leave it brew for, you know, 10-20 minutes and then you can drink it. Now some people find sage can be a bit bitter and I think that is because as humans we don't consume as much bitter foods, and I would say try and get used to it. But if you need to, you can put a little bit of, say, honey or something sweet in there. But ideally you could have it on its own. And then other two other herbs I would mention again, because they very likely you've already got them rosemary.
Speaker 2:Rosemary is the protector of the liver and the brain. So if you were someone that's addicted to coffee, quite often I will move people over to rosemary tea. Now it's not going to taste like coffee but it wakes the brain up, it gets the brain moving, it gets the blood really pumping around the brain and it's really protective for the liver. So if you was to drink alcohol and you were to have rosemary tea before, it would be a really good liver protective. Rosemary tea before it would be a really good liver protective. So I would definitely say rosemary, because also we need to remember that year once we are in menopause, that year after it, our brain is recalibrating, it's reforming. We lose the ability to learn, we lose the ability to focus and that's natural because our brain is reforming, our brain is going through a transformation.
Speaker 1:But rosemary can really help okay I love the idea of having a cup of rosemary before going out and getting drunk. It's not something I do anymore, but I wish I could just have a little whisper in my 20 year old self's ear before the six bottles of cider, if you could yeah rosemary shots exactly. I'll just see if I can backtrack on that. But yeah, okay, great.
Speaker 2:So sage rosemary, and there was one more, I think there was one more fennel seed, so fennel is very gentle oestrogenic qualities so it can be a great one to include because it has a gentle dose of oestrogen. I think it's a very gentle form of oestrogen. In fact in my clinic I make a um, a fennel seed vaginal balm, so women can use that to help with vaginal dryness and as a lubricant as well. Obviously if condoms aren't being being used because there's oils in it, so that that would wouldn't work that well. But fennel seed is great for that reason. You can make it into an oil and take it vaginally, or you can just have fennel seeds tea as well. But I think it's a great natural alternative to some of the other vaginal inserts that people are using that are more estrogenic.
Speaker 1:Does that mean, that juicing fennel or eating fennel is also helpful, or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's helpful as well. I mean, ideally you pick the seeds. If you've got a fennel plant, you pick the seeds kind of just as they are. They are that right green colour just before they start to go brown. Because as soon as they start to go brown they kind of spread and they seed everywhere. So you can get them in that point. But the fennel seed is the best In the studies that they've looked at this. The fennel seed is what's been looked at in the studies. So I personally make all my products that I'm going for fennel's oic qualities from fennel seed Wow.
Speaker 1:Okay, I didn't know any of this. This is great. Thanks, luna.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we've done the herbs, and I think there was one more point you wanted to make the other thing I would say is because people always ask me about what supplements can I take, and I think these days, because supplements are becoming the new pharmaceuticals, you know they're quite uh, they, they companies that want to make a lot of money and we do have to remember that. I would say, if someone was to say what supplements should I take, the two supplements that I would advise people to look at. And I say to look at because we are all individuals. We need to check exactly with the herbs and with the supplements. We need to check contraindications for our own conditions, what supplements we might already be taking, what pharmaceuticals we've already taken.
Speaker 2:But the two things I would recommend looking at are B vitamins, because when you're stressed, stress gobbles up B vitamins, like if you were like me, you're old enough to remember Pac-Man Pac-Man going across the screen. It's Pac-Man's. Like that Pac-Man is gobbling up your B vitamins. For when you're stressed, all your B vitamins get gobbled up and stress is around us every day. So the added stress then of going through perimenopause on top of maybe already stressful life, it can be really good to bring in B vitamins.
Speaker 1:I'm so relieved you said that because I've taken that and I was thinking I hope I'm taking the right one. Ok, magnesium, great yeah.
Speaker 2:And magnesium is great because it's the relaxer of the body. So magnesium and calcium do a bit of a dance in the body. Calcium contracts, magnesium relaxes and we need them both because they they both have their uses in the body. But generally for things like if you've had period pain, if you've got tension in your body, if you've got anxiety, if you've got headaches, if you're grinding the teeth any tension in the body magnesium, magnesium, great okay, wonderful, okay.
Speaker 1:So I think we've been, you've been really thorough. Actually, we've got the drink eat, think, excrete, um, the hormones, what's happening in the body? I'm just going through it myself so I guess, yeah, yeah, I don't see the plan. The herbs I'm definitely going to get some sage going and some rosemary and supplements to take and really the name of the game really is reduce some stress, be honest with self and take care of ourselves like better than ever before, I would say.
Speaker 2:And remember to laugh.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I'm smack bang in the middle of it. So it's just, yes, challenging, and I've got shed loads of tools and support and I live in Thailand where there's no stress you, you could not rush here, so and it's still challenging, uh.
Speaker 2:so, yeah, it's, it's a tough transition yeah and I think, uh, you know lots of people say, oh, it's like going through puberty again. But I had a a woman friend, say to me once that she she got told that lots when she was going through menopause and she said, yes, it, you can say it's like going through puberty. But she said it's going through puberty but with all the wisdom of being a woman. And I love that because if you look at, you know the transition of you might remember how difficult it was going through that transition of puberty but we didn't have the wisdom and I think that's something to hold on to, that it is a massive transition but we are going through this with a lot of wisdom fabulous thank you, selina, and I just wanted to say as well like I can feel the love you put into your work.
Speaker 1:It's actually quite moving. I feel actually quite moved about it because it's I. I can feel that you, you like, love the plants and connect with them and understand them, and understand how the body connects with itself and things flow and dance and and communicate. So, yeah, I think there's going to be lots of people that this is really useful for, and just thank you again for being so generous.
Speaker 2:So is there anything else you want to add before we close?
Speaker 1:I would just say the main thing is just to meet your body where you're at, okay. So if anyone is interested in taking this further, selena has an online course, called course, called hormones and menopause. Her website is selena spelt s-a-l-e-n-a walker, w-a-l-k-e-r dot earth. I will put the link in the show notes to both selena's website and the course as well. Do you do one-to-ones?
Speaker 2:I do do one-to-ones. A lot of the time I'm fully booked and that was the reason I'm doing these courses. So people can.
Speaker 1:I imagine you are you'll be probably getting a call from me, though I know you're fully booked, but you know my friend Rachel's, I'm gonna be coming up you know, you know I run the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely do definitely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I wish you a great day in your gorgeous wooden home in the west of wales and, um yeah, thank you for your work actually and thank you for inviting me again I really appreciate it.
