25. Energy Healing Essentials for Perimenopause: A Discussion with Claire Tait

Perimenopause isn’t just a physical transition — it’s an emotional, spiritual, and energetic shift. In this empowering episode of The Histamine Well Podcast, Joanne speaks with Claire Tait, a holistic kinesiologist and intuitive energy healer, about how to navigate perimenopause with greater balance, calm, and self-awareness.

Claire shares her expertise on how kinesiology, reiki, acupressure, yoga, and other holistic practices can support women during this powerful life stage. You’ll learn how to regulate your nervous system, address anxiety naturally, and embrace the spiritual metamorphosis of perimenopause.

This conversation is filled with practical rituals, personal insights, and empowering perspectives to help you surrender to the changes, reconnect with yourself, and thrive during midlife.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Emotional & spiritual transitions of perimenopause
• How self-awareness supports hormonal and emotional health
• Kinesiology: blending Eastern and Western healing methods
• Reiki, acupressure, and yoga for grounding and calm
• Natural approaches to easing anxiety during perimenopause
• The role of the nervous system in healing
• How intermittent fasting impacts women’s health
• Embracing aging and rejecting societal pressures
• The energetics of female empowerment

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Transcript

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Histamine well. Today's episode is a little different. It's not about histamine or gut issues or methylation. Instead, it's for women navigating perimenopause and early menopause or post menopause. I've invited kinesiologist and energy healer, Claire Tait to join me for a heartfelt conversation about how energetic healing modalities can really help support women through this transition. Together, we explore what it means to nurture yourself during this stage of life. Why gentleness is so important, and how this time can actually be a powerful portal into coming home to yourself. Now before we dive in, I want to clarify something I said in our conversation about weight training. So ladies, I absolutely recognize how important lifting weights is for your bone health, and I encourage it. But if you're in late perimenopause and you feel completely exhausted, you don't need to push yourself in that exact phase. You can always come back to it once you're through that one year transition and into your post menopause, when your strength returns and your hormones are more balanced. So I'm not saying weight training isn't important, it is vital for your bones. I just wanna give you the permission to go gently if your body is asking for the rest during that time. Because I know on social media we see women just pushing it at the gym. Some women can, I'm just here to say you, that many women can't. We also ended up on an unexpected tangent about Botox and I want to be really clear here too. I'm not against Botox at all, each to their own. Yes, it is technically a neuro and there are safety questions. If it's right for you, that's your choice. What Claire and I both notice though, is that after going through perimenopause and into post menopause, we've become less interested in those kinds of things. It's almost like once you move through the transition, you care less about changing your face or keeping up appearances and more about how you actually feel inside your own skin. So whether you are in perimenopause now approaching it or supporting someone who is, I hope this conversation encourages you to be gentle with yourself. Social media often sells us the idea of being ageless, toned, and unstoppable. But the truth is, during the transition, you might not have the energy for all of that, and that's okay. Once you're on the other side with the right diet, exercise, hormone balance, and weight training, you can really feel unstoppable. Welcome to the Histamine Well Podcast. Designed for practitioners and patients alike. This is your trusted source for insights on histamine intolerance, methylation, gut health, women's hormones, and much more. I'm Joanne Kennedy. Your host, naturopath, author, and educator. Passionate about breaking down complex science into clear, accessible knowledge. Whether you are a health professional or navigating your personal wellness journey, the Histamine Well Podcast bridges the gap between cutting edge research and practical understanding to empower you with the tools to thrive. hi everyone, and welcome back to the show. My guest today is Claire Tait. A holistic kinesiologist, reiki master, yoga teacher and intuitive energy healer based in Sydney. Claire has been working in the field of energetic medicine for over 35 years, supporting people to release blocks, rebalance their nervous systems, and reconnect with themselves on a deep level. She blends kinesiology with reiki, acupressure, breath work, flower essences, EFT, and other tools to help her clients shift both emotionally and physically. In this episode, we talk about what kinesiology actually is, how it can support anxiety and the nervous system, and how these energetic practices can be a lifeline during the often chaotic and confronting perimenopause transition. If you've ever felt like there's more to your symptoms than the physical, or you've wondered how energy healing might support you or your clients, this is a conversation you are going to love. So Claire, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Joe. It's an absolute delight to chat. Claire is my kinesiologist. Who I've seen a few times over the years, and she's helped me with a few of my dramas. Boy dramas, mainly I call them. Love it. And Claire wrote a post. It was an email that I got a few weeks ago, I can't remember. It was overwhelm and anxiety, and I think you're talking about perimenopause. And I thought, wow, like this is something that us girls need to really understand that the perimenopause transition, it's not just physical, it's emotional. It's spiritual. Yeah. It's, you're like in a vortex. It's like a massive recalibration. I call it the chrysalis. I'm in a chrysalis. I feel like I'm in a chrysalis. Yeah. And big changes happened through this time. It can be overwhelming, but working with someone like Claire can help you through that transition to get to the other side renewed and like really ready to take on the world. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yes, it can be challenging Joe, but equally it can be so empowering. If we get all the things right. Eventually you feel so empowered and strong in who you are. Yeah. And what you want to do and what you're here for. And we do away with all the superfluous the things that don't matter anymore. We've come into this wisdom where we actually don't care about all that superfluous. Which then allows us to focus on the really important things. It's beautiful. Yeah. I love it. It is a really empowering time. But we do need support. Without doubt we need support. Yeah. And that support can look different for everyone. You know, some people do need more hormonal support. All depends where you are at in your stage and you might get one aspect of your life right. And then you need support in another area. And that's beautiful. The key with all of it really is self-awareness. Actually in yoga we call it Svadhyaya or self-study. Like being interested in the self and listening all the time to what your body is telling you. Because your body is telling you all the time what it wants. One of the issues is we are just overriding that all the time with all of this outside stimulation. Mm-hmm. That we don't have this time for self-study. This internal, where we can listen to this free by the way, internal guidance system. It's so interesting with perimenopause like I find that you want to go internally. I have friends that have gone through this and I'd be having dinner with them in the city. And they'd say, oh, thanks for dragging me out, Joe. I haven't been out for months. I just don't feel like it. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't feel like it. They go, no, no, you'll understand. Yeah, you'll understand that You just feel like being more internally focused for this period. And it's actually beautiful. I've loved mine. I am on the other side. So I am postmenopausal.'cause of course, you know, menopause. I never knew this until I actually went through menopause. It's one day, right? Like you Yeah. Very menopausal. And then you've got menopause one day and the next day you postmenopausal. So yeah, it's really true. So ladies, this is really interesting. So we are in on a bit of a perimenopause rollercoaster throughout our forties. And often you're still menstruating regularly. This is how I look at it. You start feeling, you just feel different. You feel emotional, you get more symptoms, you're more fatigued. You are more PMS symptoms. But what happens in like late perimenopause is when it's like a whole year between your last period and, sorry, I should say you have a period and it's one year since that period. This is the actual late perimenopause. Yeah. And this is the crazy time. Claire hates me saying it. This is like the beautiful reflective time. It's a bit of the chaotic time. Yeah. And you are essentially having, ovarian failure is what is going on. This is a naturopath talking. Claire will say it way more poetically. There is your ovaries are failing. You are trying to ovulate, but you can't. Then you start taking HRT and your body's gotta get used to that and you've got massive swollen boobs and you can feel really emotional. That's why it's quite different to when you are having regular cycles and you've got that typical ovulation mood or you've got the premenstrual fatigue, the premenstrual anxiety, depression. It's a very, very different time. And from my experience, it is a very profoundly spiritual time. It's like being in a portal. Which is why I wanted to get Claire on the show today. Because I know that a lot of people listening to my podcast are gonna be really interested in how energy medicine can help through this transition. An energetic portal. A hundred percent. We can allow it to be that exquisite energetic portal to Yeah. Oh look, now that I've got my hormones balanced, I'm just in this energetic, spiritual blissful. I love that. Yeah. I find it really blissful now. It wasn't blissful for a month. But I was telling Claire before, I go for nature walks around their neighborhood and looking at trees and birds. I've never seen trees and birds the way I do now. Like I'm serious. You start to really see nature in all its glory. That's been my experience. Well that's because you are nature. We are nature. You are source. Nature is source. It's this whole idea of we are one. Because actually energetically we are. We've formed as different things like all the atoms and cells have been put together. You as Joe and me as Claire. And the fern as the fern. But actually they're all atoms that just make that thing and then they dissolve and then they become something else. So like one of your atoms could have been part of a tree. Yeah. We're all carbon. We're carbon atoms. Actually, carbon comes from the stars. It does. Part of the star system. And That's important to remember when we sometimes get lost in like, you know, am I worthy? Is this what it's all about? You've gotta remember you were cosmic. You are cosmic. I know that sounds really like out there. No, I love it. Science. It is science, guys. So we're not just talking waffle. The humans, animals and plants are made from carbon. And carbon actually comes from the stars. They break up and somehow end up on the earth. Yeah. And so the iron in your blood could have come from another solar system. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, just remember that when you feel insignificant. Yeah. Don't. Don't feel insignificant. No, I love it. Beautiful. All right. I've got some questions I wanted to ask Claire in a more structured way, just so that people that haven't seen a kinesiologist before or done any energy work can start to understand what we are talking about. Claire, for listeners who are new to this space, can you explain exactly what kinesiology is? Kinesiology is number one. It's a beautiful marriage between east and west. So we have the art of muscle testing or monitoring, which is really just biofeedback, which comes from the chiropractic work. And then we combine that with the beautiful 3000 year old philosophies of traditional Chinese medicine. We are bringing the ancient and the new together. The biofeedback is like having a conversation with your body subconscious. So it bypasses the mind and asks your body, what do you need right now to heal? And why kinesiology is profound is because, it's not that we are discounting what the person has to say. Like, we're discounting what's in your mind. The problem is we have so many limiting beliefs, so many stories, so many, you know, la la la on top here, that we actually can't find the root or the source. So when we bypass that conscious mind, which is telling us all of these different stories. We can get to the root cause. And often if you think, oh, well, I procrastinate a lot. And so on a conscious level it's procrastination. On an unconscious level, when we start exploring that, it might be something like shame. So underneath that procrastination is shame, which we can trace back to an incident that you might not even remember on a conscious level that happened at school. I dunno. This is just an example. And that's for me is the beauty of it is that it's really literally a conversation with the person's body. And your body doesn't lie, right? Your body's storing stuff all the time. And we know this to be true. You know, it's like the um, uh, what's that beautiful? I went and did saw him recently, Bessel van der Kolk and his book the Body Keeps the Score. Your body holds stuff and we either, are we self-studying, are we listening or are we just pushing it down? Pushing it down? And I'm here to tell you it manifests as illness. It does. Ultimately it does. So it's telling us all the time, and we can choose to listen and we can catch it in its energetic phase, which is where you want to catch it. And if you don't and you keep pushing it down and you leave it for decades and decades, ultimately it manifests in the physical body as an illness. Yeah, we see that all the time in clinic. Yeah, really. We really do. Of course you do. We really do. Yeah. So Claire, I know that you use other modalities like reiki and yoga and bark flowers and bush flowers and all these other things. Can we bucket this into like energetic healing. All of these things. All of them, absolutely. So how do they all sort of interplay together and work together with kinesiology. And just give us a bit of an understanding for those people who haven't really done any energetic healing, how you are working with them in your practice. It's really just because I've been alive quite, quite a long time. I'm an avid learner. So I love studying things. So of course I'm always adding things to that seem appropriate, et cetera. And so it's like yoga. I found that personally for myself, but then it was such an expansive time in my life that I then started to teach it as well. So I teach it for four times a week as well. That's my other love job. But sometimes I'll bring in a yoga pose for, say a client for homework and they don't have to have done yoga before, but I'll just show them the pose. And the reason is because, for example, so say if we look at your kidney and liver meridians, they run along the inner seams of your thighs, right? If we are working on something around kidney, and I know we are gonna probably talk about anxiety, so that, that's the kidney meridian right up there. When we want to activate a meridian. Because that meridian runs along the inner seam of the legs. I might give them a pose, like a double legged forward fold or a butterfly pose, et cetera. And so that's how I'll bring in the yoga pose that might just be for homework, right? When we look at things like vibrational remedies, so essences whether they're Australian bush flower or bark essences, there you're looking at finding a frequency match to the issue that the client is showing, right? So do you need more self-love? Do you need belief? There is an essence, a remedy that matches that. And so we'll bring that in and that'll also potentially, we'll, you'll have it as homework. Well, I like to call it soul play, or we might put it on an acupoint. And that's what I love doing and what I've found. As I've been doing this longer and longer is layering different modalities, right? Mm-hmm. So it might not necessarily have been taught in that way. But I now bring it in that way. I also am clear sentence, so I feel things right. I sometimes I'll listen to the person's body and I'll feel in my own body, oh. They need this, and then we'll try that out and that has an energetic release. And then I make a mental note of that. And so that's how I've slowly added in. For example, breath work. I'll use breath work in acupressure as well. Mm-hmm. And that's just the way I work. That's not necessarily how kinesiologist work. I've just morphed them all because ultimately Joe, we are holistic beings. And there is no one protocol. And you'll find this yourself when you are dispensing or whatever. There's no one protocol where you say, oh, well you have self-worth issues. Therefore I'm going to do this. Number one, number two, number three and number four. Doesn't work like that because we are all so different in how that self-worth has shown up. Has that self-worth issue shown? Oh, well, let's go back to anxiety. Has that anxiety has it been a constant. So have you been an anxious person from. Your youth, in which case probably your constitutional type is water, right? So water. When we look at the elements, fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. And when I look at the elements, I look at them from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, not a yogic perspective.'cause of course they have air and space and ether. If the client has naturally been anxious their whole life, constitutionally. They probably are water. We know our constitutional type from the time you are born. The time you are born where you're born at 9:00 AM et cetera, that will tell you what you are constitutionally. If however, they've never been anxious and then suddenly they're anxious. For example, let's take myself. I've never been an anxious person yet in perimenopause I got anxiety. Mm-hmm. It wasn't bad. Like I could use over the counter stuff. I think I used like herbs of gold, I don't know, anxious relief or something like that. Yeah. It had ashwagandha in it. And that really helped calm me. And I realized, well that was because of that drop in estrogen. That estrogen has that calming effect. And as I started to lose estrogen, I started to get anxious. One can't say that, oh yes, there's this protocol for anxiety.'cause I really need to look at the person and what they are experiencing in their particular life. Yeah, it's beautiful. You got so many tools in your toolkit and then you can just blend them all together, for each individual person that you see. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's really, it's powerful. It's really powerful. I tell you what, guys, St. Claire was really powerful. And for me, I'm gonna go and see her again soon, actually. Beautiful. I love that. And I am just so blessed to call this work, like literally. Because someone actually said to me the other day. She said, your life looks so good.'Cause I went and I taught a retreat. I love doing that. I teach yoga. I do my online clients. One day a week I see people in person. I said, my life is really beautiful. I said, but you know what? It was by design. I've worked to make this happen. I haven't just haphazardly bobbled along. Like I've thought about, like I've done that self-study, right? Yeah, absolutely. I've been in the wars and the trenches and those dark nights of the soul. And I've made my choices from that, right? Yeah. And we all have that. We all have that ability to choose, okay, what is my next step? Do I choose to stay in bed, and not get up because that would feel so good right now. Or I mean, and that's not to say we discount rest Absolutely. If one needs rest. But I'm talking about, the idea of giving up because you've now faced a new challenge. Because of course, Joe, we go through new challenges and as women with the fluctuations of our hormones and also when we look at the whole idea of the trifecta, the, triple Goddess archetypes of maiden mother crone. We've got all of this. By the way, those three. I still think there's another one in there. It's called the Magi. I did a beautiful women's yoga retreat with, my yoga teacher, Amy Pederson, and we were Amy. Yeah, I saw that you, she was on your Facebook or something. Yeah, Instagram. So Amy's amazing. I love Amy. She's D Divine. Yeah, she's so great. And she's so down to earth. I love her humor. She's so real. She's so real. Yeah. Amy's so good is she's so real. Yeah. She looks like charlize theron on and she's so real. Yeah. Yeah. She's gorgeous. So it's like we have maiden mother. And then there is this sort of post menopause up to crying's a beautiful old lady. Yeah. But there's a whole sort of your fifties, your sixties. Yeah. Where I think she called it the magi. Yeah. Or it could be like the, a sage, a wise woman, something like that. Yeah, it is. I call it the high priestess. I love it. High priestess. I tell my husband thinks it's hysterical. Oh, here's the high priestess. Whatever you are, you deserve it. Once women, if women give birth to children and then go through menopause, they deserve to be a high priestess. Yeah. So we do have all of these aspects of our life. Different seasons of our life with different challenges and then different choices, right? Even if we just look at say, an older woman when children start to leave home and that whole empty nest syndrome, that is a time when you can either decline because now you no longer have that definition of I'm a mother and you can just not know what to do with yourself. And you always want to know what your kids are doing. Your adult kids are doing, or you can choose to now fly because your children, you've brought them up well. You've given them wings. They have flown, and now you can choose to fly again in a different format. So that's what I'm saying about. These choices and coming back to this person, making an observation about my life. Yeah, you're right. But you know, I've designed it that way. Yeah, no, Claire Itest that. I've done the same. Exactly the same. Yeah. And you're on that next level now as well. You're going into something exciting as well. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it is, uh, Claire's talking about my move to Lisbon. I'm moving to Lisbon at the end of the year. But I just, you know what, as I've said that I didn't, I didn't know if you told anyone. Oh, no, no. It's no big deal. It's like I still see patients on. I just see patients on Zoom. Of course you do. Yeah. It's just better time. Yeah. So it's, um, yeah, no, it's really interesting what Claire's saying, because, even with the patients that I see Claire, there are, I mean, you have to bring it up. There are the patients that are, they will come to me and they're ready. They wanna make change, they'll make it happen. It's a decision. Yeah. And then there are other people that are not quite ready. And so people like that. They would benefit so much of seeing someone like you to work out, what is it? Why are they not ready for the healing? What is the blockage? Yeah. That's why I love kinesiology. It's like working with the blockages and working on the body, understanding why. Yeah. Because your mind knows I should do this, but you just sub, there's some subconscious blockage and you just, you can't get to the next phase. Yeah, exactly. And that is the beauty of kinesiology and energy work. From my perspective in traditional Chinese medicine, we don't separate the body systems like the way western medicine does. The bodies and integrated energy systems. So we are looking at the entire thing. So the entire body. So yes, somebody might, think, oh, I have gut issues and they way may well have gut issues. But actually underneath that gut issue could be something like maybe the liver and the heart meridians were out of balance, right? So the gut issue is earth element out of balance. And so you would think, okay, I'm gonna work on stomach and spleen. And this is where the beauty of now talking to the body and not necessarily just like on a conscious level, what is your symptom? Not that we discount the symptoms. The symptoms are important, but they are just a sign of something else. And so, for example, yes, you've got bloating and you are in insomia and you're at this burst of anxiety. Of often people will think that's their gut. And it does make sense. It could, yeah. It manifests in the gut, but it's coming, it's so often coming from stress and trauma for sure. And that will manifest in how we look at it, is a disrupted vagus nerve, but from an energetic Yes. Ancient Chinese medicine, it's gonna be meridians or out. Literally liver and heart. So we'd look at the resentments are maybe like something like resentment that they haven't expressed, because that's another thing. Often when we get to perimenopause, menopause. Women, there is some resentment. And it's just because of, I think it's this whole thing tied, women are the natural nurture, and this is a huge generalization. I absolutely acknowledge that. But women we are the nurtures. We look after people, we arrange things, we do this, and eventually, we hit our forties and our fifties and we've just had enough of it all. Unless you work on that, it can turn itself into resentment. And so that's an example of where the resentment that wasn't expressed. Because of this heart soreness around not being acknowledged, et cetera, then shows up as the anxiety and the bloating, the gut issues, right? Yeah. Anxiety is a symptom. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a mental issue. It's just a disturbance in one of the meridians. Yeah, it's true ladies. It is low estrogen, that's for sure. But when you get your estrogen sorted and you are having, you feel a lot of grief or regret about things in life, it will just, it can start to manifest as depression, anxiety. So, Claire, I wanna ask you this question. I wanna just stick on anxiety generally before we're gonna move more into perimenopause. What are some of the most common energetic imbalances or patterns you see in clients dealing with like generalized anxiety? I wish there was one simple answer. I know there's not gonna be a simple answer. Yeah, there isn't. And I'm gonna tell you why. Because again, so remember I'm coming at it from an element perspective. So if we look at the fire element, is it hot, right? Because that's about emotional processing, right? So is that anxiety from. Not processing your emotions properly. Then if we go on to earth element, is it the spleen? Because the spleen is about overthinking, which so many, and this is a generalization again, but women, do we overthink Yeah. Things, right? Totally. And so that anxiety can come from the overthinking. Then if we move on to metal. If we look at the lung meridian on metal element, that's about grief and letting go. And if you're not letting go of things that you need to be, and remember now we are in our forties and fifties, so we've piled on all these things that we haven't got rid of. That can also be a cause of anxiety. And then if we go onto the water element, that's kidney and bladder. Kidney, the kidney region, that's the storehouse of our vitality, right? That is where our chi and our pana come from. And that is fear and adrenal depletion. So maybe the anxiety's coming from there. So yeah. There is no one answer. It depends, and now I'm gonna complicate it even more. That's just looking at it, anxiety from that perspective. But then what is the client constitutionally? So if they are constitutionally, uh. Fire. So like, um, heart, you know, how is that affecting? Because it's not a simple thing as saying, oh, we're just going to then work on, so for example, the overthinking, we're just gonna work on earth'cause that's overthinking. But if they are, a fire type person, fire feeds earth, right? We see this in nature. You have a bush fire six weeks later, beautiful new green shoots coming out. It's the same way. By the way, we have all of the elements within us, but we are one constitutionally. So maybe the fire element within the person needs building up in order to be able to nurture the earth element. Or maybe the fire element is so dominant and being a bit of a bully that we need to calm it down so that the earth element can grow, right? So it's very nuanced. But it's beautiful how you can work with someone's body with all the tools to get to the actual root cause. Yeah.. I mean, it is exquisite. I've been doing it so long and I'm still like, yeah, Claire loves it. Blown away. Yeah. I love it. It loves, she loves it. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Before we go any further, I want to speak directly to the practitioners and students listening. If you're intrigued by histamine and methylation and eager to expand your knowledge in this fascinating area. We offer the Histamine and Methylation online group coaching course. The only program of its kind. It covers everything you need to know about histamine and methylation, providing both the theory and guidance you need to treat these issues effectively in clinical practice. We cover sibo, hormonal imbalances, oxalates, M-T-H-F-R, the four pathways of methylation, including the folate pathway, methionine pathway, tetrahydro biopterin pathway, and the all important transsulfuration pathway and much more. The program is delivered by detailed online webinars and handouts for you to keep. And for eight weeks you'll meet with me for live coaching calls in a private community space with other practitioners from all over the world dealing with histamine and methylation issues in their patients every day. Together we learn so much. To learn more and apply, visit joanne So Claire, now I just wanna ask you about, you know, perimenopause is for a lot of women. It is a vulnerable stage in life. It's like this sort of, the chrysalis of change and you feel, you know, you're not as robust, you're tired. Even like physically, women's can start flooding. I've spoken to girls in the bathroom at yoga studios about this stuff like this. About hormones and like you can have flooding, hit heavy periods. You can put on a lot of weight. You not, you potentially don't feel as attractive anymore. There's just so many things that can make women feel vulnerable. You can't perform well at work'cause you've got the brain fog. Brain fog. Yeah. All of this stuff. Yeah. So my question is, how can kinesiology support women through this sort of vulnerable transition? Yeah. Beautiful question Joe. Yeah, and you're right. You know, perimenopause is not just a physical transition. It is a physical transition. Yeah. But it's so much more than that. And, I think in our culture, the western culture, it's not seen as that and it's not honored. We are actually, we are starting to become disposable. Really. Yeah. And you'll see that as you age even more. I noticed that I felt I, became a little bit invisible. But of course that's on me as well. Like that's my interpretation and I had to sit and do this. Have the self-awareness to think about it. And it was just because it was a different period in my life, right? Like, so I now don't have that maybe physical beauty because I have wrinkles and I have hair loss, and I put on five kilograms in men menopause, which I've struggled to lose, et cetera. So I now don't have that physical beauty to instantly attract. I've now gotta be so much more. I know that's, this sounds very surface level, but it is part of the conversation, right? Yeah, it it is. Yeah. And so this is why it's not just a physical transition. We are now shedding old identities. So that old identity I had where you could maybe turn heads when you enter the room, well that changes, right? Yeah. It's a different role now. It's a different way of being and as you've described so beautifully. I dunno if you described it now whilst we've been in the podcast, but prior when we were chatting, it's this real spiritual and emotional metamorphosis. Right? And to your question about how kinesiology can help, really the biggest thing I would say, because it's so nuanced, but the biggest thing is bringing the nervous system back into this parasympathetic rest and digest, which is where healing happens. And I know that sounds so broad, but really it. It's like something I like try and bring into my yoga classes. We are always trying to find expansion. You cannot find expansion when you are in constriction. So if you come into say, a yin pose and it's feeling particularly tight in one of your hip flexes, can you find expansion in that area of tension? And maybe use your breath and let your body know. Let your nervous system know I'm intentionally doing whatever. Maybe I'm intentionally doing an inversion because your body's thinking, why the hell do you want to do an inversion when you've got two feet? Just stand on your two feet. But of course, we're doing all these different poses to experience different things, right? But. I'm just saying from a biological point of view, your nervous system is like, no, no, no, this is not good. And so we might use breath work into that area of tension to find expansion and let your nervous system know, Hey, it's safe. All is good. And that is where the healing happens. I will often describe it in my yoga classes. I'll say there's three phases to every yoga pose. The first phase is finding the cue, like finding the physical cue in your body. Like setting yourself up in that pose. Second phase is recommitting to your breath. And then the third phase, which so many people don't do, is just sitting in that and allowing the magic to happen because there's something beyond your conscious level that is now allowing all of the, you know. Whether it's your meridian system, your chakra system, the healing work to be done. And so for me, I would say really the kinesiology helping perimenopause, it's about helping the nervous system. Then their gut starts to settle, mind starts to soften, and then people start, women start to feel like themselves again. Yes. It's the tiny, I just, that's exactly right. Women don't feel like themselves. Yeah. And that's very vulnerable. That's a very vulnerable feeling. Yeah. And often they'll feel like their body's betraying them. Right? Yeah, I know. I felt that, I felt like what the hell? And I'll give you a perfect example. If I had like put on a kilo or two, all I had to do was intermittent fasting. And I find intermittent fasting really easy. So I would just move to two meals a day. And depending how strict I was, I could do 18 hours of no eating. I would be able to drop the weight like that. Well. Once I hit menopause, my body was not interested in intermittent fasting in nonsense. No, I don't mean that. Yeah. It needs the fat, it needs the fat to make the estrogen. Yeah. And that's from a biological perspective. From my, when I sat and I thought about it, I thought, that is too young. That intermittent fasting is too young for my body now my body wants nurturing. It wants, you know, meals more often. It doesn't want this constriction of Yeah. So it's really true. Yeah. So, you know, ladies, I do see this clinically doing intermittent fasting, especially from like in your forties. Yeah. It causes massive anxiety in a lot of women. Yeah. I did it. I remember I did it when I was like 45. And I was, I felt fabulous, skinny. I had like a little six pack going, but I was an anxious mess. Yeah. It's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. No. So it just drives up your cortisol and your adrenaline, which disrupts your hormones. It disrupts your progesterone production, which is the last thing you wanna do. Yeah. Yeah. It's the absolute reverse of what you should be doing. It's the reverse of what? Absolute reverse. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's the reverse. Hormonal shift, sleep problems, anxiety problems, gut issues, all of that's going to come back with that. It will. Yeah. I see the aftermath of that, which will be hormonal dysregulation, insomnia, bad PMS and gut issues. Yeah. But yeah. No, it's beautiful. But Claire, I just like the conversation around. like, I don't know. For me it's just the words that you use. They very soothing for me around the energetics. When I think about the energetics, it resonates deep with me, which is why I wanted to get you on.'cause I know that a lot of women will feel the same.'Cause it's just like if you sit and listen to your body and you understand that you are connected to the universe. That women are beautiful at all ages. We being vulnerable is not weakness at all. Yeah. And then strength grows from that vulnerability. Yep. And then you pop out the other side and you feel more connected to yourself than ever. You feel more feminine than ever. You feel stronger than ever. Yep. Free. Free. Yeah. As I said, very super empowering. Yeah. But it can be really chaotic during that phase. And I'm here to help women during that phase and I'm very pro hormones for many reason. If you need to take them, if you wanna take them, yeah. But not everyone might want to. Yeah. As Claire was saying, absolutely nurturing yourself during this transition is going to allow you to move through that portal into the other side. Really strong, really grounded and more in love with life. It's not, you can't fight it. It's all about surrender, isn't it? Actually, Joe, I love the word surrender in a way because, can you, and maybe we are talking at cross purposes, but can you surrender into this next phase of your life? Can you surrender that anxiety into a feeling of safety? Of course, it's through work, but can you give yourself over to this next stage? Yeah. And have no attachment to, for example. Not having that little meow belly that suddenly before you had a flat tummy, and then suddenly you've got this little bump. Not having that attachment to all of those other things. Can you surrender into the exquisiteness of this next stage? Yeah, because it's got lots to give. It's full of jewels. Oh, that's, I love that. It's full of jewels. True. There is so, so much treasure. And a lot of that treasure brings together and the feeling of internal peace. And there's nothing more powerful than feeling at peace with yourself. Nothing, because you're not sitting there questioning this and questioning that. You're just like, yeah, it is what it is. And life is so good. And I noticed the trees and I noticed the birds. This is you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's peaceful. Well,'cause I had to surrender. Yeah. Yeah. I had to surrender. So, you know, listeners, I just nose dived into late perimenopause and my hormones were tanked. And I know, I had low estrogen, low, low progesterone, low testosterone, and felt terrible. Got my hormones in, and it was a bit of a rocky transition for about a month. Yeah. During that month, although it was uncomfortable, I'd go for little nature walks around the neighborhood and just check out all the beautiful native wildlife and trees and birds. I've never done something like that before. Yeah. Interesting. And it was like a portal. Mm-hmm. And now I just feel reborn. Yeah. But it was a big surrender. And I knew enough, Claire. I knew enough that I had to surrender. Yeah. And I surrendered through it. And now I look back at it, even though I have very, very anxious. I look back at it like, wow. Like, I'm glad I went through that. Everyone has completely and utterly different stories. I get a few hot flushes. Some people get massive hot flushes or some people get very depressed or, you know, the women get that, the more physical symptoms, like the joint pain and the Yeah. Vaginal dry vagina and the the flooding and things. Just things like that. Yeah. Mine was just more, like it is just like the overwhelm and having to surrender. And now that I've come through that portal, I'm just like, wow, that was really powerful. But it was the surrender and I also really nurtured myself. Mm. Instead of doing heavyweights at the gym, I just went walking and went to yoga when I felt like it. Yeah. Lots of sleeping, lots of nourishing foods. Yeah. And I feel like that was the best thing I could have done for myself. And that's because you listen. Our bodies, It's a new time. And we might feel like our body, as I said earlier, is betraying us, or it's like fighting, like, what the hell, why are you doing this to me now. Because you think, we've got it all right? And then suddenly you hit perimenopause and menopause and all those things happen, right? It's so interesting, Joe, I read somewhere and I've forgotten. But the number of symptoms for perimenopause, it's like outta this world. Yeah, it is. It's every symptom under the sun. It's unbelievable. Yeah. I got such a weird one. I got burning mouth syndrome. Oh, you did? Yes. And I didn't know that that's what it was, but my mouth would feel like I'd been eating chili all the time. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? And I looked it up and it was a symptom of perimenopause. And I had it for about a year. Wow. Um, yeah. Anyway, so we are thinking that our body is fighting against us, et cetera, but it's not. And you've explained it so beautifully, your body's actually inviting you to slow down. Yes. To listen deeply and then, find all the tools, which is what you provide, which is what I provide. And then ultimately we return home to ourself. Yes. Turn home to yourself as such a powerful human being. It's beautiful. It's in your body, is inviting you on this journey. Yeah. As I say, it's like, it's an invitation. Feel like the high priest steps, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. But I love that your body is inviting you to slow down so it can show you the way. Come back into energetic alignment, just one layer at a time. And we are making it sound easy and it's not, and there's months. I was the same as you when I went on to HRT, it was a while to get those levels right. And at one point I thought, oh, I'm not, am I gonna carry on with this? And I thought to myself, I'll give it one more go. Actually the reason I decided to go on it was more for the long-term benefits because I had very few symptoms that I was working with. Like, so no hot flushes, my sleep wasn't disturbed, et cetera. But just when I did a little bit of research on all of the long-term benefits in terms of bone strength, mental capacity, heart health. I just thought, oh, I'm, yeah, I'm going on these things. Yes. Yeah. The research is there now. There's a lot of amazing doctors spreading the word. There's a lot of great books on the importance of hormones. You know, My beautiful gp. She's older than me. And she's not just a gp. She does a whole lot of stuff. And she's a naturopath. She said to me, Claire, if when I went through menopause, if I had the hormones we have now, I would be on them as well. Oh yes. That was for me, the deciding factor. So the hormones have changed so much from 20 years ago. Oh, we're so lucky. Yeah. To be able to get hormones that are bioidentical and Exactly. Different applications for different needs and yeah. Yeah, no. Beautiful. Claire, I really wanna ask you about like specifically your transition into high priestess. And I love it and you deserve it. You're like, women that have gone through menopause, they deserve it. What are your jewels? What did you find at the end of the rainbow? Yeah, I don't wanna repeat myself, but for me the biggest thing has been this confidence. And you would've said I was a confident person and I probably was. But now I'm so darn confident. Not in a bad way, but in such a, like, I know myself. Like this whole idea of get to know thyself. I'm so confident and happy in who I am. One of the biggest thing is this internal happiness or the peacefulness. The not being worried about all of the little things. Like what's that book? Don't sweat the small stuff. Well, that's one of the jewels because it's just like, oh, that's just not worth my time. Right. They sound like small, generic things, but when you piece put them all together, it creates such a different person. And so for me, as I said at the beginning. The biggest thing for me, I would say is how empowered you can move into this period of your life. You can become really empowered if you've gotta surrender into it. Yeah. And listen to the body and not fight it. Yeah, a lot of women fight it. They do. You can either choose to surrender or fight. And yeah, please don't fight. Because really the treasure is in that surrender. And as I said, coming out as that empowered person. And when you feel empowered, then of course has that snowball or flow on effect of where you then feel happy, oh, I'm gonna take this on, I'm going to try this, I'm going to do that. And so your life doesn't have to become full. But you're not afraid to try new things. You might experience something differently. There's a lot of that flow on downstream effect of becoming confident and empowered. Not being afraid to talk about it because, as I I said, we spoke briefly about this invisibility that one tends to experience, not so much in my world, because I have such beautiful humans in my world. My clients, my yoga students. It's like you're in a bubble, right? But then every now and again, you go out of that bubble and you look at other people. That's a different way of looking at things and they might not feel, that an older woman has value, et cetera. So as I said, you get to that stage where. But you don't care. Yeah. It's so irrelevant because you actually do have so much to offer. And we know as my husband often says, women should run the world because we would live in a peaceful world because are we totally right? We know how to sit down. We know how to have conversations. We know how to compromise. We know how to listen. Yeah. I know, it's beautiful. Beautiful. Claire? I know. We live in an ageist city. Yeah, yeah. Tell you what, you go to Europe, it's completely different, right? Oh, seriously. No, I just noticed it. Even in Lisbon. I just noticed this couple. This German guy, he was young. He was like 35 and gorgeous looking guy. And his wife, she was well into her fifties. Indian lady and he adored her. Yeah. It's very different in Europe. Also what I also noticed, in Europe is just no Botox. Look, I'm not against people taking Botox. But it's just whatever you want, if you don't wanna do it, it is just, you know, you don't have to walk around, with a face full of Botox, because, I know when we were in Sydney, I go out and about in Sydney and I'm shocked. Yeah. Like, I'm like, wow. Like people and the fake lips and the fake eyelashes. And the fake boobs. And the fake faces. We don't need to be pressured to look perfect. Yeah, exactly. And of course some women may want to do that and that's absolutely, that's true. No, it's totally true. That's absolutely, that's totally true. Joe, I would still be interested to chat. Why? Like, why, you know, why don't you want to step into this next age with the lines on your face. Because there's still something there I believe. I mean, that's a crystal. I know. I believe it. I think what it is with me, what I've noticed is like when you go through, I mean, I'm in the chrysalis as still, you know, it's only been a few months. I'm gonna pop out the other end in Lisbon. Fabulous. Oh, I can't wait to see the photo. Yeah. What I'm trying to say to women listening is if you're younger, like you're not gonna care. Like, that's the thing. It's like you actually don't care. And there's such risks with Botox. There's massive risks. You pop up the other side and lo and behold, you actually don't even care. They have all the money you can save. Yeah. And all the money. All the money you can save. That you can then use that to go and travel with. Totally. I just look at like all the cost of it where I could, you know, it's like, so that my face can be perfect so that, I don't know, it can be. Revered by what? Men don't care that much. Other women? Yeah. Or I could spend that money going to the Alps and like, so that I can the mountains and God can be looking at my wrinkly face. Yes. And I think that's what I prefer to do. Yeah. I didn't feel like that at 40 because I just was still a bucket of estrogen. Who said this to me? Estrogen is the, um, fuss, fuss, fuss, fuss, fuss. Care. Care. Care. Gather. Gather, gather hormone. Right. Look pretty. Look pretty. Yeah. Be nice. Gather. Gather, gather. Fuss, fuss, fuss. Worry, worry, worry. Yeah. And then it goes and you're like, what ifs? Yeah, exactly. And that's where the resentment ultimately comes in when you've depleted all of that and it's like, oh dear. You, and here we come full circle back, just surrender. Yeah. You come full. Forget this next cycle. Surrender.'cause there is a beautiful phase. And it is the phase between mother, whether you had a child or not. It's just the pool of birthing something in life. You birthed a career or children or whatever. Yeah. And then before a new exciting time in Lisbon, you know, that's open. Yeah. That's birthing. I birthed a business and a life for myself. I'm not a mother, but that's what I birthed. But then you have this transition in before you get to the crone, which is really exciting. I see women and how embodied they are, how powerful they are, how happy they are Once you go through the perimenopause phase and sort of early menopause, you can start building your body back up. Yeah. And this is the women I see in Pilates. They're in like 65 and they're like doing these planks and these really hard maneuvers and just really strong. Yes. And they're starting new businesses. They're traveling the world, they're skiing, they're doing all this stuff. So you pop out the other side and you get your strength back. But during perimenopause, ladies, when your progesterone is dropping, you will feel very weak. You feel very inflamed. This is why you can't be pushing yourself at the gym to exhaustion and injuring yourself. And why you can't be doing intermittent fasting because it's going to cause massive issues with your hormones and you're gonna fast feel really weak. Some women are fine'cause some women are fine, but then the other women that are just simply not. But you can pop out the other side if you look after yourself and then rebuild. For me, that was never an issue because I've always loved exercise. Yeah. And I've always, for me, it's part of my mental health. Yeah. Like, seriously it is. And actually I just moved to starting when I was in perimenopause. I moved to start pushing much heavier weights because I loved that and I loved the way how strong I got. Yeah. A lot of women are different. I know with myself, a few of my friends and clients that just during the sort of late perimenopause, just doing heavy weights was exhausting too much. May too young. It was too yang for me. Way too young for me. That's actually what it was. But I will get back into it. That's me though. Yeah. Whereas for me, I think I needed that yang ness because other aspects of my life were yin. Like my work is very yin. I teach yoga that's very yin. Yes. Clients for me is very yin. My life is yin. It is, isn't it? Agnes is in the gym. And so my, yeah. It's funny. My work is, my brain is very yang. Right? Yeah. You see, because I I work so much intuitively as well. Mm-hmm. Um, that is very yin is very y You've gotta to be in a yin, expansive state to access that. Beautiful. I love it. I need to get more yin going with myself. Yeah. Lisbon will bring that on for you, gal. Um, I'm sure it will. Just one more question, Claire. Can you recommend some simple energetic practices or rituals that women can do at home to feel more grounded and calm, especially during the perimenopause phase? Hmm. Okay. Listen, how long do you have? Love it. I would say, and this is also gonna sound trot, but journaling is so powerful and you can always ask the Google or chat GPT depending on how you're feeling. You can say, can you give me some journal prompts? But for example. Let's think of something so many women in perimenopause, menopause have issues with say, boundaries, right? Say you're having an issue with boundaries. I would sit and journal around something like what am I digesting emotionally that I no longer need to hold? And then you would write all of that down and it's free writing. And for me, it's very much about the act of writing. I think the act of writing versus just thinking is very different energetically. There's a lot to be said as well, Joe, around getting a felt sense. A somatic work. How does this feel? For example, like I did a recent talk on self-care and I got everyone to design a self-care menu, and we had three aspects to it. Micro moments, medium and macro. And so for example, the micro moments could be just one hand on the lower belly. Breathing into it. What do I need right now? I'm safe. I'm soft, I'm supported. What else do I need? It could be some acupressure. It could be just a mindful drinking of the tea instead of drinking the tea while scrolling instagram. And then the medium things that might be going for the walk. Going to do a yoga session, cooking a beautiful, mindful, grounding meal. And then the macro things are things that take a bit longer like taking yourself on a half day retreat, et cetera. So ritual. I think perimenopause and menopause ritual is a wonderful thing. It provides a little bit of structure and therefore safety. It's finding those little rituals throughout the day. I would also use things like acupressure Acupressure for calm. So for example, I might just take, these are some of my favorites, heart seven, which is super easy to find. Heart seven is along the line of your pinky finger. And if you come to your wrist, so where your wrist is, and that wrist line is on your pinky finger side, on the inside of the arm, that is heart seven. And so you might hold that with your thumb and you'd hold both sides. So you'd hold one side and then you'd hold the other side. Heart seven it's actually called Spirit gate, right? And it nourishes the heart. It promotes emotional balance. It eases restlessness. It reconnects you to your inner sense of calm and nurturing. Acupressure is super powerful and you can add another level to it by really tuning into how does that point actually feel. I dunno if you know Joe. When I hold somebody's acupoint and even when I see them online,'cause I see most of my clients online. I get permission to surrogate for them, and so then I hold it on myself. In effect, I'm holding your acupoint. So I might hold it and then I get a felt sense of how that feels. And so say for example it feels chaotic, I'll then use breath work. I'm using the acupressure which in itself is enough, but then I might use breath work into that point, and I might layer my breath with calmness because that point feels so chaotic and vice versa. Acupressure can be super, super powerful. It's something you can do at home. It's so easy. You palpate the point. Palpate means you just push in, release, push in release. It's like knocking on the door like letting the point know, oh yeah, I'm gonna work on you. And then you hold it with firm pressure. Not hard, so that it's sore. But not soft so that you're not doing anything. And you might hold it for three to five minutes. Breathe into it, try and see how it feels. Don't try and overanalyze it. If you can't feel it, don't worry about it. And you can Google. Like if acupressure is new to you and you dunno what the hell, what meridian does, what you might just type into Google. Give me an acupoint that I can hold, which is for anxiety. And it'll probably give you a key point and then you'll sit in your whole, do a little bit of acupressure. Or of course EFT, like tapping, same thing. You're tapping on end points. Of course then you've gotta come up with your script which depends what works for you. And that's something I like to do with clients.'cause when we decide on their soul play their homework, we will see what resonates for them.'cause some people hate journaling. I love journaling. They do. I love it. It's powerful journaling. Yeah. And then there's a question as to why do you hate journaling? Yeah. Writing down your inner thoughts. There might be work there to be done. It's very powerful journaling. I found it very soothing. Transformative. Yeah. I started doing it a few years ago. I think morning rituals are just so important. When I don't do them, I feel so different Even my morning ritual at the moment is simply I get up, go and get a big glass of water, make my bed, then I sit on my bed. I love, I'm willing to Dr. Sue Morta. And like her, you know, Dr. Sim Morta energy codes. And I do her central channel breathing. Remember you talked to me about central channel? I do my central channel breathing, and then I do a beautiful meditation, which is called mountain meditation, which is for stability. So you kind of imagine that you are a mountain. Yes. You know. Beautiful. It's actually on the Calm app guys. It's so beautiful. It's on the calm app, under emotion series and it's called Stability and How to Build Stability. And it's like you meditate on a mountain. You bring the mountain into your body. And then I do go for my little nature walk and look at the trees. Yeah. I love to do even like a, if I can't do a big one, like an hour and a half one, like this is my big one, I'll even just go outside and like make sure I'm like looking at the sunrise and like the mere or whatever. Just looking at what's going on with nature. Checking out my little birds and my trees and then journaling. Yeah. When I do that, I have a completely different day. You do. And you know why, because it's intentional. Yes. It's all very, it's all very, you have ly gotten up and bop, bop, do this, do this, do this. You've been intentional. And whilst it might sound quite privileged to have that amount of time, like in the morning, everyone's different so we don't all have to have an hour and a half free in the morning. That journaling could simply be five minutes Yes. Of a brain dump of what's happened in the night.'cause remember, our brain is processing at night through our dreams. We might not remember those dreams and that's okay. But if we just wake up in the morning and just five minutes. Right. For five minutes. And then when you make a cup of tea or coffee or cacao or lemon water, maybe you drink that mindfully instead of dressing at the same time. You don't need an hour and a half. It's you literal literally have 15 minutes. Yeah. What Claire's saying is true. Even if I did the central travel channel breathing, or I do prayer work. I'm just in complete connection with God. Love that. If I'm busy, I just do my little prayer of God intentionally. Yeah. And then I get going. It's so true. It's kind of like, even a little thing sets my day up completely different. And then just'cause I'm sort of in this sensitive stage instead of rushing to, for me, instead of rushing to the gym doing weights, yeah. I'm just doing what I like doing my little nature walks and looking at the birds and journaling, which is better for me. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. And it like your beautiful mountain uh, meditation. You could also, for example, if you love the chakra system, whilst you're in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil or whatever, you might just stand there and you might visualize your, the seven chakras on your body, and then maybe the extra two soul stone, earth straw beneath you and feel that groundedness into the earth. And then you might simply set an intention for the day. And that could be one word. Intention. This idea, okay, calm or space. Whatever it is, surrender. So you've taken your surrender, you've taken three minutes. And so yes, there can be no excuses about time. It's powerful. Yeah. Like I know, how I feel so much different, so different when I do those simple things. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. So Claire, I know that you see patient people on Zoom globally. No doubt. Yes. In your clinic in Brookvale, in Sydney, yes. They've only on a Saturday. On a Saturday. You've got some online offerings as well. You do retreats and don't you have a little course online? Yeah, I do retreats on occasion. Generally the day retreats are on the equinoxes and the solstice. And then once a year I do a retreat with another beautiful friend of mine, and we often do it in Bowral. And then sometimes I do host retreats at Billabong as well. Beautiful. Yeah. So Claire, where can people find you? Easiest place is my website or the socials. Claire Tate kinesiologist on the socials. And then my website, easy. Claire Tate, C-L-A-I-R-E-T-A-I-T. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Claire, for your time. Pleasure. It's wonderful to talk about this energetic stuff. It's so fascinating. It is. It is. It's the ultimate. Yeah. It's the ultimate. Thank you Joe. It was You're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks, Claire. Bye. So thank you for joining me. I hope you found this episode beneficial. Be sure to subscribe to the histamine well so you don't miss an episode. Leave a review and you can also share this episode with someone who could benefit. If you have any questions you'd like answered. Or have a topic you'd like me to discuss, please go to my website, joanne kennedy naturopathy.com, where you can provide us with that information. Until next time, take care and be well.