For close to 12 months, it felt like my internal thermometer was slowly going haywire. I'd go out for a run, get home, jump in a cold shower and still take literally hours to cool down.
Walk too briskly to the train station and I'd overheat for my entire train journey to work.
Wear anything around my neck and an inexplicable inner heat would rush up from my toes, expand in my chest and then... POW!, fill my head like an exploding star.
Memory fog
Next was the memory fog. Words and ideas would hover just beyond my consciousness - I knew what I wanted to say, I just couldn't... quite... get there. And in my daily morning practice I began to notice an ache in my joints that took a little more work to relieve.
Like so many things in life, the perimenopause creeps up on you. It taps on your shoulder before you've even acknowledged you're getting older. So I started looking into ways I could help myself. And that's when I first heard about menopause yoga, which gives women a space where they can be heard, practice techniques to help them manage their symptoms and reflect in a community of women experiencing their own menopause journey.
Online CPD training
And so, in mid October I joined the Menopause Yoga teacher training course run by Petra Coveney. Petra is a 500hr teacher trainer who through her own thorough research and experiences has developed this system from the ground up.
This 40-hour CPD course for qualified yoga teachers, shares everything you need to create safe spaces for women going through all stages of menopause. You'll learn breath techniques, adapted yoga postures and meditations to help your students manage their menopause.
Course content
My course was an intensive - four consecutive days from Thursday to Sunday, but you can also opt to do the course over a month. Covid-19 has forced the training online, and although 4 days on Zoom didn't initially appeal, Petra expertly held the space. We were 24 yoga teachers connecting from all over the United Kingdom and beyond (one teacher joined from Canada), and at times if felt as if we were in the same room.
The course is so rich with content, practical teaching practice and expert speakers that you leave feeling confident and ready to start running your own menopause yoga workshops. I highly recommend it!
Ifeyoga will launch Menopause Yoga classes in 2021.
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