Beat the Midlife Body Blahs + Learn to Reawaken Pleasure with Gabriella Espinosa of Women's Body Wisdom
Show Snapshot:
Do you feel great about your body? When you look in the mirror, do you think—I’ve still got it? Or do you feel frumpy and lumpy and totally midlife-y?
Embodiment and menopause coach Gabriella Espinosa helps us beat the midlife body blahs and combat menopause symptoms like low libido, poor sleep, fatigue, and even brain fog. Gabriella’s work lies at the intersection of embodiment, neuroscience, Eastern traditional wisdom, and menopause health, and she walks us through ideas for trusting and appreciating your body and reconnecting to pleasure, power, and purpose in midlife and beyond.
In This Episode We Cover:
How to know, trust, and appreciate your body.
Pleasure as a birthright.
What’s an embodiment practice and how they can help combat stress and fuel wellness?
How perimenopausal brain fog, low libido stress, and anxiety pushed Gabriella to explore embodiment practices that led to the launch of Women’s Body Wisdom.
Do you get quiet enough to listen to your body’s cues for rest, nourishment, movement, and for pleasure?
What are the obstacles that get in the way of innate wellness and the steps to conquer them.
How to reclaim your life as a sensual being.
How embodiment is an invitation to befriend your body.
Bite-sized actions to bring pleasure into your day.
Reframing menopause.
Quotable:
We need to get quiet enough to listen to our body’s cues for rest, for nourishment, for movement, for connection; to sit with the emotions and feelings that our bodies hold for us and that have been stored there for so long.
By my early 40s I was running on empty; ignoring the creeping anxieties, heart palpitations, brain fog, low libido and you know, it was moving into perimenopause, it totally caught me off guard.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty [00:29]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. Do you feel great about your body? When you look in the mirror, or at a rack of bathing suits, or even at your romantic partner, do you think, I’ve still got it, I feel sexy and sensual, strong, fabulous? Or do you feel frumpy and lumpy and totally midlife-y? My guest today is going to help you and me befriend our bodies because the midlife body blahs, along with menopause symptoms like low libido, poor sleep, fatigue, brain fog, can sometimes make you feel like your body has become a stranger.
I’m joined by Gabriella Espinosa a body wisdom coach, menopause mentor, and pleasure educator. Gabriella’s work lies at the intersection of embodiment, neuroscience, Eastern traditional wisdom, and menopause health. She works across disciplines including yoga, somatic movement, breathwork, and embodiment practices. If you want to know, trust, and appreciate your body and reconnect to your pleasure, power, and purpose in midlife and beyond, stick around this show is for you. Welcome, Gabriella.
Gabriella Espinosa [1:41]:
Hello, hello Katie. I loved that introduction, I kept saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” [Katie laughs] That’s what I want for all of us, to really know, trust, and appreciate our bodies and discover the treasure trove of pleasure that exists within them. So, thank you so much for affirming that.
Katie [2:00]:
Oh, I’m glad you appreciated the intro, I am admirer of your work from afar; I’ve been following you on Instagram, I’ve spent some time on your beautiful website. Our paths have crossed virtually because you were involved with Bossa bars’ Menopause Empowerment Day, you have been a resource to Kindra; both of these brands have sponsored this show at different points. I so appreciate the work that you’re doing and I’m very excited to explore this.
So, my intro shared that your work is very multifaceted. You are a yoga and somatic movement teacher, you are a menopause mentor, we’re going to explore all of these, but I want to first kick off by asking you when and how you decided to launch your business, Women’s Body Wisdom?
Gabriella [2:55]:
Thank you so much for asking that. So yes, my work lies at the intersection of embodiment, neuroscience, Eastern traditional wisdom and menopausal health. And it’s informed by my own lived experience of living in a female body and also guiding other women through practices of yoga, somatic movement, breathwork, and coaching to connect to their bodies. As I mentioned at the beginning, I am passionate about empowering women to really know, trust, and appreciate their bodies and really discover that pleasure is their birthright.
I started out as a yoga teacher, it’s always been a practice for grounding, and clarity, and connection and it’s really anchored me in periods of enormous change, especially when I was moving from being a career woman, to being a mother and entrepreneur, and then moving into menopause. I trained as a yoga teacher in London about 16 years ago, where I was living at the time, and really loved the philosophy of yoga, the teachings of kindness, contentment, self-acceptance, service to others and self-reflection. And I’ve trained with some incredible world-class teachers, not only in yoga postures but breath work, meditation and I’m so grateful for the inner lens of self-awareness that the practice offered me. So, I loved sharing this practice with other people and seeing the shift in their physical and emotional state from the moment they walked in the door and got on their mats, to the end of class.
So, I started teaching yoga in my home and that quickly became unsustainable. I opened a small yoga studio, managed all the admin scheduling and teaching of classes, whilst trying to raise three young children, be the perfect mom, [laughs] the perfect wife, constantly striving to be in service of others. But you know, teaching is physically demanding, and burnout is a big thing amongst yoga teachers and we often don’t follow our own advice of self-care and preservation in order to serve others.
Katie [5:26]:
It’s so ironic that that is something that happens to the wellness community. Even the word that you just used, ‘striving’... you were striving to transmit all the kindness, contentment, self-reflection that yoga gave you but even the word ‘strive’ has connotations of hard work; it was hard work to be the perfect wife, the perfect yoga teacher. When did you stop striving and sort of more embrace this embodiment and kindness to yourself in your own practice?
Gabriella [6:04]:
I think burnout is a big thing in the wellness community, sadly. By my early 40s I felt, doing all the things that I was doing, striving, trying to balance being an entrepreneur and a mom... by my early 40s I was running on empty; ignoring the creeping anxieties, heart palpitations, brain fog, low libido and you know, it was moving into perimenopause, it totally caught me off guard, totally caught me off guard. I’d never even heard this word mentioned 10 years ago. We didn’t have the awareness then that we have today.
Katie [6:49]:
That we have today, sure.
Gabriella [6:49]:
So, it was a really confusing time for me. My doctors weren’t giving me the right answers, they prescribed anti-depressants, beta-blockers, it wasn’t spoken about in my family or circle of friends and to be honest, I felt quite embarrassed even bringing it up to my friends because I felt it was like admission: I’m getting old. It was a wake-up moment for me when I started experiencing this symphony of symptoms that were just very, very loud.
So, I started scaling back my yoga practice and my teaching, spent a lot of time lying over one of those, I don’t know if you’ve seen those big yoga bolsters [laughs] just trying to catch my breath and figure out what’s next. And I got really curious, learned everything I could about my health and my body. I trained as a nutritional therapist and learned about how all of our body systems are connected. I got to know myself better, really focused on the things that really mattered.
It was during this time that I meant my mentor and teacher, Michaela Boehm, who is a world-renowned intimacy and embodiment teacher, who taught me about body wisdom. I had never even heard of that word, ‘body wisdom’... what is this? It really is this idea that we have this innate intelligence in our bodies to navigate whatever life throws at us: stress, overwhelm, trauma, pain, discomfort, challenging emotions. And when we are able to do that, tap into that innate intelligence, we discover that beneath all the pain, all the trauma, all the stress, struggle, there’s always potential to access goodness and pleasure.
This is based on neuroscience. Neuroscience has been teaching us that beneath all of that stress, all of the tension, all of the trauma, the body holds this incredible ability to hold goodness and pleasure. We just need to get quiet enough to listen to our body’s cues for rest, for nourishment, for movement, for connection; to sit with the emotions and feelings that our bodies hold for us and that have been stored there for so long.
So, that’s a great part of my work. When we’re engaging, when we’re moving through these hormonal shifts in our life i.e., perimenopause and menopause which can take us into the unfamiliar territory of fluctuating emotions, physical sensations. We feel that our bodies are no longer working, we feel we’re broken and need to be fixed.
Katie [9:50]:
I want to explore that in a minute. I want to explore these quiet cues you were talking about and how we can listen to our body’s wisdom. We’re going to move into a quick commercial break but when we come back that’s topic number one.
[Ad Break]
Katie [11:01]:
Gabriella, we’re back from our break. You had me at, quiet cues and body’s wisdom. The moment you said that my ears perked up and I thought, my life feels very noisy right now; I am busy with two jobs, I have three kids, I have a pandemic puppy that eats everything. I love every aspect of my life, but it can feel noisy. You shared that quiet cues, when we pay attention to them, can unlock our body’s wisdom. What are the obstacles that are preventing us from hearing these cues and what should we be paying attention to, what kind of quiet cues should we be looking for?
Gabriella [11:39]:
That’s a great question. So, yeah, the obstacles... [laughs] there are so many.
Katie [11:44]:
Let’s start with the obstacles and then we’ll do the quiet cues. What’s getting in the way because I want to be wiser? [laughs]
Gabriella [11:52]:
You named it at the very beginning. This constant striving and doing which keeps us in our mind space, in our head space. Thinking and doing versus being and feeling. And of course, we need our minds, I’m not discounting... “Oh, don’t think,” or, “Don’t use your mind.” We need our minds. But we’re in this constant striving, thinking and doing versus really feeling and being with our bodies. So, that constant thinking, doing, striving, moves us into stress, overwhelm, the endless to-do lists, right. As women, I feel we’re conditioned to please others, we don’t hold strong boundaries; these are also obstacles. We don’t look after ourselves, fill our own cups, so to speak. And all of these things can lead to that overwhelm, stress and anxiety which can be exacerbated when we move into perimenopause and menopause. I feel a lot of us just get floored by the symptoms because we are already arriving to perimenopause and menopause with our glass half empty.
Katie [13:10]:
Gabriella, my head is nodding right along, [Gabriella laughs] everything that you ticked off. I just feel very seen. The quiet cues, what should we be looking for?
I feel like recording this show and talking to so many women has put some of the quiet cues on my radar. I recognize now that the things we struggle with in midlife, there are fixes out there, there are opportunities. But share some of the quiet cues with our listeners. What should women be paying attention to in order to tap into more of their body’s innate wisdom?
Gabriella [13:47]:
Yes, so... We need to get quiet now. [both laugh] I’m trying to get quiet right now and just listen, listen. Listen. Our body is constantly sending us messages: I need to rest, I need to be nourished with the right types of foods, I need movement, certain types of movement not just one type of movement but various types of movement, I need to get out into nature, I need to connect, not only with others but with myself, with my own internal body world. What are my emotions, my feelings, my sensations saying to me that I need? What is my need for pleasure and how can I access that pleasure?
And so, I think with constant striving and doing doesn’t allow us to really tap into these messages our body is sending us for rest, nourishment, movement, connection, and pleasure. We override those messages, and we arrive to midlife feeling like, you know, we need to be fixed. We arrive to midlife thinking, who am I? I’ve been doing all this constant striving and doing, who am I as a woman? Who am I as a sensual being? Who am I as a sexual being? We yearn to reclaim certain parts of ourselves that have been lost, along the journey of striving and doing.
Katie [15:32]:
I think you put your finger on it really when you said, who are we? Midlife often presents changes in relationships; if we are a mother, our children grow and move out of the house, and our day-to-day mothering shifts and that identity. Midlife will often have things like divorce or changes in relationships, people die. And all of a sudden, we are looking to have a new relationship. But to cultivate deeper intimacy with other people, we first need to feel confident in ourselves. How would you guide a client into feeling more confident, more sensual, more grounded in their own life? Because that’s the foundation for connecting that kind of energy to other people.
Gabriella [16:30]:
Absolutely, and I always say it all starts with you. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Perimenopause and menopause provide this powerful window of opportunity to become more intimate with yourself, to ask yourselves these questions. Who am I? How I want to express myself? How do I want to love? Who do I want to love? How do I want to be in the second act of life? It’s such an amazing opportunity and the doorway in is through this process of embodiment, which is what I teach, embodiment practice.
Embodiment stems from the neuroscience concept of interoception, which some consider is our sixth sense, the ability to feel what’s going on inside our bodies. So, the better we feel within our bodies, the better we feel about our bodies. My mantra is: Feeling is believing. And only you can do that for yourself. No one else can do that!
So, this brings us to the whole idea of bodily agency and autonomy, and so much about our journey through womanhood has been about this being taken away from us, especially now, right? And you know, being made to feel it's all in our heads and that doctors can offer us a quick fix for our symptoms that ultimately do not serve us. So, embodiment is the invitation to befriend your body, it’s the process of getting to know yourself more intimately, exploring that internal landscape of emotions, sensations, thoughts, your desires, your wants.
Katie [18:22]:
And what are some of the steps that we would take to do that? You said it’s an invitation, and I’m like, I want to accept this invitation. I think this sounds delightful! This is a party I want to be at. How do we say yes?
Gabriella [18:37]:
I find that a lot of women meet resistance because it’s a very vulnerable and tender journey and doesn’t always look so pretty. It takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of boldness, which you talk a lot about, to access your inner world. We do this first by finding and engaging in practices that regulate our nervous system so that we feel safe first. Safety is so important. There are practices, breathwork, grounding, a practice I call orientation, and some movement practices that help us find safety in our body. Once we find safety in our body, we can engage in other movement practices, breath practices, relaxation practices, sensory awareness practices that really allow us to access different points in our body that open up new pathways to pleasure, to vitality, to aliveness. This is the wisdom that the body offers us, we have so many access points in our body to access that wisdom that I talk about. We can do this in a variety of ways, as I just mentioned.
Katie [20:02]:
You said earlier something that resonated with me or grabbed my attention, Gabriella. You said pleasure is a birthright. Do you think getting to midlife makes this birthright easier to claim?
Gabriella [20:13]:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Katie [20:15]:
Tell me more, tell me more. [Gabriella laughs] I want to hear this.
Gabriella [20:18]:
I think we arrive at midlife, and again we ask, who am I? Who am I as a sensual being? Who am I as a sexual being? But we feel that prioritizing our pleasure is selfish or indulgent, but it’s not; it’s what makes you human. Making space to experience pleasure is so important and it allows you to expand your capacity to feel more of it and it creates this incredible, beautiful rippling effect to other areas of your life: your relationships, your work, your creativity. So, connecting with our bodies and connecting to our pleasure is fundamental to connecting with the life force all around us. All aspects that feed your life.
So, when we think about pleasure, I think it’s so important to just dial it back and I often ask my clients, what is it that lights you up? What is it that makes you feel alive and vibrant? So, not only focusing on the sexual aspects of pleasure but just the day-to-day things. It could be walks in nature, it could be dancing, it could be good food, it really doesn’t matter. It’s about bringing mindfulness to the things that bring you pleasure, noticing what that does in your body, and consciously cultivating more of it, making it a practice. Pleasure is a practice.
Katie [22:06]:
Being intentional about it, yes.
Gabriella [22:08]:
When you focus on the things that bring you joy, you make those your priority, and you enjoy them with full awareness. It’s a process, this helps orient us toward feeling good, that neuroscience concept I mentioned at the beginning, accessing that goodness that we feel in our body. As we move through menopause, we can tend to focus on what doesn’t feel good, the symptoms, right, the hot flashes, the fatigue, the overwhelm. And those are very real so I’m not saying we need to bypass them but beneath them we can orient ourselves to feeling good. We can take bite-sized actions, taking small moments in our day to feel that goodness to feel into that pleasure. It’s a gradual process of enrichment and tuning up that awareness so that we can expand our capacity to experience more of it.
Katie [23:10]:
I love this notion of bite-sized steps and bite-sized actions because it feels doable. I read something recently that you’re reminding me of. I read somebody saying that happiness is a series of decisions. And that really kind of jumped out at me because I recognize that sometimes we just want to be happy, “Oh, I want to be happy,” but what does it take to be happy? What does truly light you up, as you said, and sort of deciding to do those things, being intentional about putting into practice the steps that allow you to experience pleasure, that allow you to reconnect with your body, these are things that we have to do actively and with intention.
Gabriella [23:59]:
Exactly and it requires taking that journey inwards and getting to know yourself. If you want to connect with a partner, you have to know yourself. What lights you up? What turns you on? So, I often recommend starting with these bite-sized pleasure practices of simple day-to-day pleasure.
Katie [24:27]:
And what would some of these pleasure practices be?
Gabriella [24:31]:
So, I mentioned simple day-to-day things like walks in nature, beautiful foods, sitting down for–
Katie [24:39]:
Oh, I meant with your partner. Or do you recommend doing these steps with your partner?
Gabriella [24:44]:
So, then moving into self-pleasure practices so exploring your own body. As I mentioned, the body has so many access points, and there’s a powerful way to do this through touch. Science shows us that our nervous system is very responsive to the power of touch to lower cortisol levels to raise our “feel good” hormones, so we literally have to take pleasure into our own hands.
So, I encourage women to explore their bodies through self-touch, very gentle self-touch. Explore different erogenous zones, our bellies, our breasts, our neck, our arms, and our inner thighs. So, start exploring your body to bring awareness to what turns you on, to what feels good, getting to know yourself more intimately. Knowledge is power, so a lot of what I teach is sexual anatomy, so knowing more about our own sexual anatomy. Because I feel the more we know about our bodies, the better advocates we can be about our bodies, not only in the doctor’s office but also in the bedroom. It’s incredible how little we’ve been taught about our sexual health so learning about your vulva, your vagina, and knowing where your own clitoris is. You can look at a drawing and say, “Okay, that’s the clitoris,” but where is yours? And knowing where your pleasure points are. From that point, once you know where your own pleasure points are, then you can communicate that better to a partner. Our partners aren’t mind readers.
Katie [26:38]:
No. Wait a minute, [laughs] mine is definitely not a mind reader although he’s terrific. I don’t mean to throw him under the bus and joke about that. I had Dr. Juliana Hauser on this show at one point. I’m sure you know her work, she does a lot of stuff around marriage therapy and sexual counseling, and she said, sometimes it’s hard to communicate with your partner, and I get that. Sometimes it’s hard to articulate these things. How would you encourage a woman to share this with her romantic partner, her sexual partner, about what could be improved, or what they’re looking for if they’re not currently getting it?
Gabriella [27:22]:
So, if you’re engaging in self-pleasure practices, getting comfortable... I find some women have some shame around naming their own parts. “This is my clitoris. This is my vulva, it feels good when I touch my clitoris here, it feels good when I touch it that way, I love massaging the outer vulva this way.” Getting women to feel comfortable naming all of their intimate parts than actually engaging in some self-pleasure to know what turns them on, not only in the genitals but in all other parts of the body.
And then inviting their partner, actually showing their partner, taking your partner’s hand and saying, “I love it when you touch me here. I’ve been exploring my own body, and I’ve learned that this kind of touch lights me up, really turns me on. Let me show you how.” It really takes guiding our partner in a very gentle, maybe playful and fun way. Make it fun and playful, not like you’re coaching or teaching your husband. [both laugh] No man wants to feel like he’s being taught. But making it fun and playful and say, “Guess what, look what I’ve been learning and exploring about my body. I want to teach you. Let’s engage in this together. Let’s learn together.”
And also, being honest with your partner, especially for midlife women. Having that conversation, “My body is changing. What turned me on before no longer turns me on now.” And that’s nothing against our partners; our bodies are changing, and we now require more time, more gentleness, we require more patience. You know, it takes a woman, not only a midlife woman, any woman, anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes to get fully aroused.
Katie [29:31]:
Wow!
Gabriella [29:31]:
That’s how much time it takes for all of the genitals to feel fully engorged and be ready for deeper penetration if that’s where you want to go.
Katie [29:44]:
This is fascinating. I had no idea.
Gabriella [29:47]:
And many women don’t know that. In my coaching, I show women visuals of how stimulating the clitoris engorges the inner vaginal canal and other pleasure points inside the vagina, such as the mythical G-spot, which can be accessed if you spend enough time stimulating, creating arousal points by not only stimulating the genitals but other areas. You can start this also during your day, with simple day-to-day pleasures.
If we go back to what I mentioned, notice in your body what it’s like to take a walk in nature, to sit down and enjoy a beautiful meal. Those same feelings, you can start amplifying throughout your day and arrive in relationship to your partner already feeling resourced in pleasure because you started the practice of cultivating pleasure earlier in your day with simple pleasure practices.
And then you can start with thinking about... fantasy. Fantasy is another way of creating that arousal pattern, thinking, and reading erotica. So, creating practices and circumstances during your day where you create that arousal and you arrive in partnership already turned on, already lit up, that arousal is already starting. And then engaging with your partner, guiding your partner to those pleasure areas that feel good, and just spending time being patient, turning on some lovely music. What turns you on? Is it music, is it lighting a candle, wearing something sexy? So really, really taking some time to know what lights you up and turns you on and making that part of the practice.
Katie [31:57]:
Absolutely, all such great suggestions. You’re reminding me, I had a British... a self-described sexpert, Tracey Cox, she has written 17 books on sex, intimacy, body care and she said something when she came on this show and talked about this notion of looking for a flicker not a flame; understanding that sometimes Hollywood has trained us to think that we’re overcome with passion and that’s when we should be having sex. But you can start your flicker by taking all the steps that you just identified; listening to music, identifying things, reading something, watching a movie, something that’s going to make you feel like there’s a flicker there and allows you to act on it.
And the practice of constantly prioritizing intimacy, pleasure, sex, and self-pleasure that you discussed is something that you can incorporate into your life with the same kind of... We spend a lot of time taking care of the skin on our faces, you know. Women tend to... we’re moisturizing, we’re using body products, maybe we’re coloring our hair, doing all these things, maybe we’re working out. But we forget that this intimacy, the sense of pleasure, might require the same amount of intention. [laughs]
Gabriella, you have so many areas in which you practice: somatic movement, yoga, menopause mentoring. We are kind of nearing the end of our time, which means that you’re going to have to come back for a second visit to explore perhaps, somatic movement and this notion of being a menopause mentor.
But I do want to talk a little bit about something you had on your website, which is yoga for any age. That’s one of your service offerings. You described at the top of the show all the benefits of yoga, but I would love for women who are listening who might not yet have a yoga practice or might not have amped it up. I would love for you to cover some of the benefits of yoga for midlife women. I know that it has a positive impact on pelvic floor health; fragile bones become an issue as we age. How do we befriend our body using yoga practices? Or if you want to touch on somatic movement as well, I’d love to hear about that.
Gabriella [34:33]:
I’m happy to speak about yoga. I find it’s one of the best forms of movement for women as we age. With regular practice, and I know you’re a yoga practitioner as well; hopefully, you’ve experienced how it can help improve flexibility, balance, support muscle and bone strength, it helps reduce stress...
Katie [34:56]:
For me, it’s mostly, honestly, it’s like my midlife stress-busting hack. I am a nicer, kinder person, mother, wife, human when I do yoga regularly.
Gabriella [35:11]:
Yeah, it definitely boosts mood and cognitive function. I think the focus on inner awareness and attention to our body’s abilities enhances the way we feel about our bodies and improves self-esteem. It’s so much more than a physical practice, although it does engage your muscles and build strength, and does burn calories. But it’s a practice that cultivates awareness of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state. This, as you say, can improve your mood and the way you feel about your body, the way you feel in your body, it puts you in a better frame of mind to make healthier food choices, it teaches us the values of kindness, contentment, acceptance. These can shift our mindset and move us toward a focus on health, longevity, and well-being.
You mentioned pelvic floor health, and again, the constant striving, doing, [both laugh] sitting at our computers, creates tension and tightness in our pelvic floors, which can lead to further weakening of the pelvic floor. I don’t think women understand this. So, this can contribute to the worsening of symptoms that many of us experience, such as urge incontinence, genital pain, pain during sex, interstitial cystitis, and even digestive issues when we’re constantly bearing down on our pelvic floor muscles from the stress, and tightening, and straining.
So, our pelvic floor muscles need not only to be strengthened, they need to have a lot of mobility, and they need to be relaxed to allow energy to flow effectively to this area of our pelvic floors. Yoga allows us to bring awareness to the area of our pelvic floor with gentle movement with breath. I often start with breathwork to allow us to breathe into the pelvic floor, which is something you can do, and gentle movement such as hip circles. There are certain yoga poses that help strengthens the pelvic floor if it is that you have weaker muscles in the pelvic floor, but it also helps relax and smooth out any tension or tightness if that’s what you’re feeling in the area. So, the pelvic floor needs to be active and mobile, but it also needs to be relaxed to allow energy to flow effectively there. So, it’s a wonderful way to do this.
Katie [38:16]:
It’s a delicate balance. I love that. I can feel myself relaxing. Actually, as you’re saying all of these things, I’m focused on trying to drop my shoulders and sway my hips while I’m sitting in this chair recording this. Because you’re right, we hold so much tension as we move about our daily life, or not move about our daily life, that’s the problem. Anyone who is listening to this right now, if you’re walking somewhere, let’s do some gentle hip circles, get that good energy flowing, create that looseness in your body. I’m doing shoulder rolls right now, only Dave can see me, but I’m trying to cultivate that relaxation.
Gabriella [38:59]:
I’m actually working to post a little reel about how to do hip circles to get out of your mind and into your body and allow yourself to feel the deliciousness that’s in our lower bodies. We’re so disconnected from our lower bodies, and this can lead to tightening and pain, discomfort when we engage in intimacy with a partner, as well as some of the other more embarrassing symptoms like incontinence right. So it’s so, so important.
Katie [39:33]:
Absolutely. Gabriella, when you create that video, share it with me. I will put it into the show notes for this episode.
So, we are going to be moving into our speed round. I am making a date to have Gabriella come back to talk about somatic movement, to talk a little bit more about menopause mentoring because I love this conversation, and we could keep going. But as our time is nearing its close, I want to move into our speed round to end, which is just quick one- or two-word answers. So, Gabriella, launching Women’s Body Wisdom was _____.
Gabriella [40:08]:
Deeply fulfilling.
Katie [40:10]:
Nice. I love Bikram yoga. What is your favorite type of yoga?
Gabriella [40:16]:
As I mentioned, I just love lying over bolsters, [both laugh] so restorative yoga. That’s how I start my day, just lying over a bolster and just checking in with myself.
Katie [40:27]:
Restorative yoga. Sounds delightful. Okay, when I am not on my mat, this simple activity or tool helps me keep stress in check: _____.
Gabriella [40:41]:
Dancing. [laughs]
Katie [40:43]:
You are not the first person to say that, and we all need to be doing some more dancing. It’s funny, I think it was Tabitha Carvan who is the author of a book, This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Importance of Loving Something Like Your Life Depends On It. I think I butchered that title. But she said that in midlife, she has adopted dancing not in the dark, and that just cracked me up. So, dancing is something everyone should be adding.
I wish every woman would try this one embodiment practice _____:
Gabriella [41:18]:
Self-touch.
Katie [41:19]:
Self-touch, terrific. We talked about the importance of moving your hips in circles. What is another yoga pose that always delivers?
Gabriella [41:34]:
That’s a great one. There are so many. I find, again, the final yoga pose at the end of class is Savasana, the final relaxation pose, just lying on your mat in stillness. I love that.
Katie [41:50]:
Yes, I love Savasana too.
Gabriella [41:51]:
It’s the ultimate yoga pose. [Katie laughs]
Katie [41:54]:
Nice. A book, movie, or podcast helps women connect to pleasure: _____.
Gabriella [42:01]:
Well, I have to recommend my mentor and teacher, Michaela Boehm, who wrote this incredible book, which is my guidebook for embodiment, The Wild Woman’s Way. And she also has a podcast, The Michaela Boehm Podcast. So, if you read that book and listen to her podcast, you’ll see that a lot of my work reflects her teachings because she has been one of my most incredible teachers and mentors in this work that I offer other women.
Katie [42:33]:
Well, thank you for introducing her to us. I will put both of those into the show notes. Finally, your one-word answer to complete this sentence: As I age, I feel _____.
Gabriella [42:48]:
At home in my body. I hope it’s okay that I said more than one word. [both laugh] At home in my body, yes.
Katie [42:52]:
I love that. At home in your body. We started this show by saying you were going to help us befriend our bodies. I think it’s very appropriate that we’ve closed by sharing that your body is a home and not a stranger, and you’ve given us so much to think about that we can incorporate into our own lives, that we can explore on your website, that we can just sort of recognize that we need to bring intention around these areas and feel more connected to ourselves. So, thank you for all of this thought-provoking conversation. I loved it.
Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners find you, Gabriella and your work?
Gabriella [43:29]:
Oh, thank you. So, my website, GabriellaEspinosa.com. I have a course starting in the fall called Awakening Pathways to Pleasure where I share all these tried and tested embodiment practices to awaken pleasure. You can also find me on Instagram @GabriellaEspinosa.
Katie [43:50]:
Fabulous, those are all going into the show notes.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Our 100th show and our 2nd birthday are next week. that’s right! A Certain Age is turning 2! We are celebrating with a series of amazing giveaways, special offers, and a special birthday show. Follow all the fun over on Instagram. You can find us @ACertainAgePod or sign up for our free, weekly newsletter AGE BOLDLY. Sign up over on ACertainAgePod.com.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties.