The Second Spring: Reframing Menopause Through Chinese Medicine

Episode Summary:
In this episode, we’re exploring menopause through the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine and why this transition is actually considered a powerful new beginning rather than a decline. Often called the “Second Spring,” menopause marks a shift in energy, identity, and potential.

We talk about how this phase fits into the larger “gates of life,” what’s really happening in the body from a yin and yang perspective, and why so many women feel overwhelmed by the amount of information and options available today. This conversation is an invitation to reframe menopause as a time of increased energy, clarity, and wisdom, and, most importantly, to trust what’s unfolding on the other side of this transition.

In This Episode:

• Why menopause is known as the “Second Spring” in Chinese medicine.
• How this transition represents a shift from yin (cyclical) to yang (sustained) energy.
• What’s behind common symptoms like hot flashes, irritability, and night sweats.
• Why menopause can actually mean more available energy, not less.
• How to navigate the overwhelm of conflicting advice (HRT, supplements, fitness, etc.)
• The importance of finding a personalized, realistic approach to support.
• Letting go of the pressure to stay the same and opening to a new identity.
• How this stage prepares women to step into a more focused, direct, and wise version of themselves.

Menopause isn’t something to resist or fix. It is a threshold into a new phase of life. When we shift our perspective and begin to trust the process, we create space for this season to feel expansive, empowering, and even energizing.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tao of Humaning, where we explore the physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual aspects of being human together. I'm your host, Dr. Christine, and I'm so thrilled that you've decided to join me for today's conversation. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about menopause and how that is viewed through the lens of traditional Chinese medicine. A little caveat before we get into it, this is one of my favorite topics to discuss. And because of that, I could easily talk for days. So bear with me as I attempt to break this into a bird's eye view for us to orient ourselves in perhaps a new way at looking at menopause. Now, we've spent a couple of weeks, last two episodes. If you have listened, if you've been listening in, we've been talking about puberty, postpartum, perimenopause, and these bigger transitional times in Chinese medicine that we call the gates of life. And menopause is that time after a woman has gone up to the threshold and crossed over into that new space. And this is significant because in Chinese medicine, this time is actually seen as a new beginning. And I love that so much. I remember so distinctly, I was thinking of what I wanted to talk about in today's episode. And I started thinking about, you know, when I was growing up and what were my stories that I had made around menopause. And so as young women, we watch our moms, right, go through these things. I was thinking of my mom and watching her in the late 90s, early 2000s, probably going through into menopause. And gosh, what a horrible time she had. Such a hard time. Close to zero, if not zero, conversation happening around that topic when she was going through this. And, you know, probably I think it felt to her like there were no supports for her to go through that or to have it feel easier or even perhaps inspirational, which is really how Chinese medicine looks at this time in a woman's life, is so different. Um, I remember sitting in my master's program in my gynecology class, and I was listening to this just incredibly wise doctor from China share her wisdom, and she started talking about menopause, and she was sharing that in Chinese medicine it is called the second spring. And I remember sitting there and it was such a profound moment for me, like an aha moment in my training where I was like, oh, there were a lot of those moments of like, oh, this is really a different lens to look at life. The fact that they call menopause a second spring gives so much context. So if we put on our five-element hat, right, we know that spring is associated with the element of wood, which is associated with an increase in energy. It's not a decrease in energy, it is a time of new beginning, right? It's spring, it's when those little seedlings burst through the soil and begin to blossom, right? There's flowers everywhere. This is being recorded during springtime, so it's also a very tangible moment for me as I talk about it. Cause it's like, oh, the wildflowers are everywhere. Like everything is just starting to open and bloom fresh after having been in kind of this hibernation stage of winter, right? So this is the lens that I was sitting there learning about, and I remember it so distinctly just being like, wow, like what a gift of a reframe for women who, you know, at the time, that was probably 2025 that I was starting to learn these things. I mean 20, 2005, no, 2025. Um 2005. And I just remember thinking about my mom and her friends, and wow, just what a hard time they had going through this transformation. And now, you know, 20 years later, there's so much conversation happening about menopause out in the world. I get really excited about that also, because I think it's really important for women to understand physiologically what's happening in their bodies. And also with that, what are the supports that are available? Right. And we talk about that a little bit in the perimenopause too. It's it's really actually sometimes the conversation in clinic right now that I'm having with patients is helping to guide women actually from a sense of overwhelm because there's so much information that they feel a sense of, oh, because this was recommended, I should be doing this. So it becomes like a should, a shoulding on themselves and uh, you know, unmanageable to-do list kind of a thing of like, oh, I have to be, you know, lifting heavy things and I have to be counting my fiber, and I have to be taking HRT and I have to be, you know, exploring a GLP one, or I have to be doing herbs, or I have to be doing acupuncture, I have to be doing um all, you know, just the list goes on and on and on and on. And they're all great. That's the thing. It's like they could all be great. And it's really part of the conversations I'm having these days is helping women to sift through all of the information and then be able to look, okay, these are like a smorgasbord of options, right? And now we want to take it back into Chinese medicine lens, which is my home base, and see like what's the pattern that's showing up for this particular woman. And then what is her what's her context? Like, what is she, what are her goals, what are her, you know, things that are gonna be actually applicable and doable in her real life, right? Like if she's not gonna go lift heavyweights at the gym three days a week or four days a week, you know, does she is that a prior, you know, just finding what's gonna work for her. And I love being able to have that frame too, to help it feel less overwhelming and more manageable because then it's like it's it swung a bit from like there's no information to there's so much information, and then being able to kind of pivot back to center and be like, okay, what's the information that's gonna be most useful for me? Anyway, I digress. I am clearly a fan of using the resources, use what is gonna light you up, and you know, being okay exploring, I think is really important, especially in those transformational windows, right? And perimenopause being a big one. And then today looking at, you know, what what is the orientation and the like way of looking at menopause. So once a woman goes through that threshold, it really is it's interesting because I don't want to get too much into the theory of like yin and yang in the body, but I think actually a little bit might be helpful to understand here. So when I think about a woman in her childbearing years, I think about one of the things I think about is there's an abundance of yin. Yin tends to be the more dominant feminine um manifestation, okay? And it tends to be more quiescent, it tends to be more connective, and it tends to be more cyclical in that we have a monthly rhythm that we fall into that's like okay, menstrual cycle, follicular phase, ovulation, and then a luteal phase, and then menstrual cycle, right? And we go like cycling through each month, right? Versus what we think of as traditional male energy or more masculine energy, tends to have more of what we call young. And they're more like honestly, it's more like the sun and the moon. If we're looking to have kind of a big picture analogy, so I'd say analysis, but that's not what we're doing. If we're looking at a big picture analogy of men and women, okay, women more mirror the moon because we have these cycles, right? And we do it mirrors like the full moon, mimics a woman's energy when she's at ovulation. It's like full brightness, going to do all the things like really magnetic, versus when a woman's on her menstrual cycle is more like a new moon, and that's more quiet. The energy has gone like deep, it's more winter time kind of energy. It's very natural for women to ebb and flow in these longer cycles of 28 days. Okay, versus the masculine or the male yang energy is a 24-hour cycle. They still have the ebbs and flows, but they do the same ebb and flow in a 24-hour cycle, whereas women will go through, you know, longer stretches depending on when they're ovulating and all of that. Okay. So men are more like the sun. Energetically, in terms of like what they're gonna find easiest to tap into, um, the masculine yang is gonna be more comfortable with sustained energy that is consistent, like consistently radiant, right? Like the sun is just shining all of the time. That doesn't ebb and flow in the same way that the moon does, right? At least from our experience on Earth. Um, what happens if we're using this analogy? So when a woman goes through into menopause, she becomes more young. And there is less of that yin available, and that's not that you know, that's where we see like the hot flashes and the night sweats and the irritability and some of those like agitation kind of symptoms that women will experience during that time. It's because of that yin that's declining. So there is a decline in the sense of obviously the hormone depleting, right, or coming down. It's not a decline in the woman's vibrancy, right? Because the yang actually comes up more. So even I remember looking at studies, it was years ago, but looking at studies on um intermittent fasting, for example, and they were showing all of these benefits for you know people doing fasting, all of these cellular benefits and regenerate regenerative loveliness things. But the research was being done on either men or postmenopausal women. And for cycling women, that's a different story. A lot of times, more consistent nourishment throughout the day is um more beneficial to her needs overall. However, when a woman is in menopause, she has more sustained yang. So she's not, we look at it as um during the menstruating years, a woman is losing energy or losing jing every month when she has her menstrual cycle. When that stops, she's actually able to hold on to that energy in a way that she hasn't been able to since she was really young before she started cycling. And it's new, right? We talked about this as an emergence of this new identity, right? This new ultimately a new role in the community, right? Working towards being in that elder role, being in that wise woman role. And in traditional Chinese medicine, that is incredibly revered and treasured. And it is this time in a woman's life when there is more yang available to her than there was before. And she's actually able to hold her energy in a new way. And I think we see this in menopausal women, especially now that women are I'm really curious to see how this plays out because women are more educated now about perimenopause and menopause. And with that, they're becoming more supported. And my suspicion is that on the other side, there's gonna be more radiant, fierce, amazing, wise women. And I think a key part of that is gonna be in remembering that that is the the next evolution, right? The the goal isn't actually to maintain maidenhood, right? Or the younger, reproductive part of ourselves, right? The goal is actually to to become the most radiant, wise woman that we can become, right? And that it sometimes feels can feel a little bit skewed if you're on social media or having, you know, just in conversations right now, it can feel a little bit like, oh, like everyone's trying to be more youthful, and there's like a holding on to like, oh, I want to be, I want to keep how I was before for as long as possible and like stretch out this transformation, right? It's not it's not necessarily bad to want to do that. I think it's very human to want to do that, actually, because that's what we know, right? So of course, like, oh, but I like that part of me, so I want to like hang on to this side. I don't know what's over there. Maybe I don't like that part, right? We're gonna trust the process. And we're gonna trust that there is this just radiant, fierce, remarkably wise woman on the other side, right? When we walk through that threshold into menopause, it is supposed to feel different and partly because we have a different energetic. I'm trying to think of the right words here. Um clearly not using a script, um, but a different energetic of availability is what's coming to mind. It's a different frequency that we can hold. And it has because it has less of the fluctuating up and down, like over this broad span of a month, right? Women are able to hold more of that sun energy, more of that young. So there is, and you see this in some women, they are menopausal and they are direct, they're focused, they are energized, they are doing their thing, and they are just really passionate and alive. And that's what I want women to remember is like on the other side of this, it's like I don't I don't want everyone to be moving through perimenopause, like grasping at the past of like, oh, I want to hold on to that pre-perimenopause me. Right? She was great, she was great, and this version is great, and the next version is gonna be spectacular. So we could just hold that space of like, okay, we're gonna trust the process, and that's why I talk to women too. A lot of times they get really stuck in this, like, oh, like almost feeling bad if they choose HRT, and maybe that's because I see a lot more of like the holistic, like naturally minded women. And it's um, I remind them, you know, taking uh hormone replacement therapy as a support isn't gonna stop this process from happening. You're still gonna go through and get to menopause. You know what I mean? It doesn't it's not as black and white as sometimes our minds want our human brain wants it to be, like it's this or it's that. It's usually something in the middle. So if that's been on your mind at all, have no fear. Menopause, you know, it's just like birth in the sense that like when you're pregnant, there's going to be a birth at the end of it, right? Like nature has designed it that way. God willing, that's what will be the end, right? Same with getting through perimenopause into menopause. It's gonna be, it's gonna happen. And most likely the other side might be even better than we can imagine. And I love that word pronoia, right? Which is the opposite of paranoia. It's that pronoia, it's the assuming that the world, the universe is conspiring in our favor, right? It's it's practicing flexing that muscle of like, what if this is even better than I imagine? Like, I wonder what that would feel like. Yeah. Menopause can be like that. And that doesn't mean that it won't be hard or that you don't do any supports along the way, whatever that looks like for you, but keeping that idea of menopause as a really gift, like a just a gift of a time in a woman's life, like hopefully we all uh everyone listening here gets to experience that, right? And yeah, maybe spending a little bit of time wondering how amazing that side of ourselves could be that we haven't experienced yet, right? Like, what would a more young containing version of myself be like? What would she how would she walk in a room? How would she hold space? How would she have conversations? And yeah, I think maybe part of what I wanted to share today was was simply that idea of it could be a second spring. It could be something that's a new beginning and that has a lot of vibrancy and it has, you know, it maybe it will feel like sunshine. Okay, we're gonna talk about this more another time. But for today, let that sink in. I wonder what might be possible. I wonder what how cool my second spring could be. And if you are enjoying these conversations, give a follow, subscribe, leave me a comment, send me a message. I see them all, and they mean the world. I look forward to chatting with you next time.