Hot Flushes

Stop Your Hot Flushes Naturally

Hot flushes are just one of the many dreadful symptoms experienced during perimenopause which can arrive up to ten years before a woman’s actual menopause, that being the cessation of the monthly cycle for 12 months in a row. Symptoms are due to fluctuating hormones or in Chinese medicine an imbalance of physical and emotional energy.

Hot flushes are also known as hot flashes as they arrive suddenly and unexpectedly and leave you feeling in a hot sweaty mess with a crimson face and the overwhelming need to cool down. Flushes can be a mild uncomfortable experience once or twice a day or become crippling and severe arriving up to 20 plus times a day.

Either way they are unpleasant, causing misery for many women who are navigating their careers, children, partnerships, aging parents and their own mind body health conditions.

Flashes of Anger

Many women come to me for relief of hot flushes as acupuncture is very effective, instantly cooling down the furness like heat. However in my years of working with a clients’ hot flushes I have found there is always an emotional component at play.

Whether they arrive for a face reading or an acupuncture appointment, I will always explore the energy and emotion of anger with them. This may be experienced as outbursts of frustration, irritation, annoyance, overwhelm or stress. It can also leak out in spurts of passive aggression with much bitterness, resentment and animosity. Either way anger that is blocked and held onto make hot flushes much worse.

The Flow Of Emotional Energy

As I’ve seen in many appointments, perimenopause is the opportunity to really clear out those emotions that have been repressed, latent or stuck. These are the cause of many imbalances in mind body energy e.g perimenopausal symptoms.

Anger is a strong emotional energy, it’s linked to the organs of the Liver and Gallbladder, the Wood element and the Spring season in the five elements. It flows up and out, just like that of a hot flush, usually rising from the torso to the head and out as we perspire. Anger arises when we have been wronged. In the uk, anger is not well received or expressed, leading to passive aggression or constant indirectness of dealing with frustrations or grudges that create resistance. The opposition of anger is assertion. The wood element asks us to be direct, in our power, active, decisive, fair, flexible and be in control.

Are there any areas in your life that you do not feel you can be direct or in your power? Are you being treated unfairly and unable to assert yourself and feel in control? Are you being constantly wronged, at home or work ? Are there old resentments, bitterness or grudge that you are unable to let go of?

Stop Hot Flushes & Let Go Of Anger

Stopping hot flushes naturally requires some work on your part, think about this as a curious experiment that will clear the root cause of your perimenopausal symptoms naturally. An appointment for a face reading or acupuncture can focus your attention and help clear old anger and resentments with support.

Release The Rage : Top Tip

I often ask clients to write a letter to the person you are angry with or resentful of. Don’t worry you’re not going to send it to the person in question, but you are going to hand write it (better for expressing freely) and head the letter with Dear (name) and verbally vomit all over the page.

Do write without your editor on, ignore grammar, handwriting and spelling mistakes and use every word your heart wants to shout however rude or childish it sounds, this is your free space to express yourself. Allow the anger to come up and out on to a page.

Once you feel you have vented your frustrations and hurts on to one or more pages fully and completely, then either shred, tear or burn your letter, (safely of course.) The action of burning or ripping the letter to pieces is as potent as the action of writing. It’s a physical action that is destructive and releasing.

If you want to take this one step further, play your most energising song, one that really is activating, a hip hop or rock and roll anthem that whips you up into a dance frenzy. Jump up and down, shout out the words to the chorus, dance around, move your body, remember the energy of anger wants to move up and out. Let your power return and enjoy the release.