You are an everlasting Goddess who embodies energy, emotions, and all the feminine wisdom of the world. I’m joined by Dr. Christiane Northrup to talk about how to connect with your Inner Goddess, heal sexual trauma, and own your menopause like the Queen you are.
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About Dr. Christiane Northrup
Christiane Northrup, M.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of Womenʼs Bodies, Womenʼs Wisdom, The Wisdom of Menopause, and Goddesses Never Age, as well as the host of eight public television specials. A board-certified OB/GYN with more than thirty years of clinical experience, Dr. Northrup has featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, the Today Show, and Good Morning America, among many others.
Christiane is fresh off updating her book, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, to include the aftermath of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement. For the first time, women’s trauma has a global witness. This is the first step towards global healing.
Christiane believes that women should run their reproductive systems like a checkbook. Knowing exactly what’s going into them and whether that’s compatible, understanding what could happen from these exchanges, and having a solid foundation of knowledge regarding what’s happening at all times.
If there is sexual trauma in your past, know that you are so loved. Christiane explains what the steps are to start healing from that sexual trauma are. She takes us through a few bodywork exercises that can help you release those traumatic energy blocks.
It’s only recently that medical professionals, like myself and Christiane, have opened the conversation of holistic gynecology. Women’s bodies hold energy and emotions that lead to overall and long-term health problems unexplained by modern science. But reawakening to our feminine wisdom can help us heal and move forward.
Finally, Christiane shares her belief that menopause actually takes you into your Queen years where you are the most alive and in charge of your body. Women should be sex subjects, not sex objects, even into our later years. We all have an ageless and timeless inner Goddess that we should always connect with.
How can you connect with your Inner Goddess today? Are you ready to reawaken your global feminine wisdom? As always, you can ask me anything and let me hear your thoughts in the comments on the episode page. If you have questions, email team@drannacabeca.com.
In This Episode:
- How the #MeToo movement and Harvey Weinstein helped society be ready to talk about what women have been through
- How you can run your reproductive system like a checkbook
- What the steps to heal from sexual trauma are
- What it means for the body to hold energy and emotions
- How to reawaken our feminine wisdom
- How menopause is really moving into the Queen period of your life
- Why you should make yourself a sex subject not a sex object
- Why you need to get in touch with your ageless and timeless inner Goddess
Quotes:
“All wounds need to be witnessed in order to heal. We finally have a global witness about what’s been happening.” (13:16)
“This is what’s healing right now in our culture. That we’re bringing this up and for the very first time, we can talk about it and no one thinks you’re crazy.” (28:35)
“Goddesses never age. The eternal essence of who we are is ageless, timeless, and the more we get in touch with that, the more it shines through our eyes - that’s where we must start.” (46:15)
Resources Mentioned
Buy Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup, M.D.
Sign up for Dr. Christiane Northrup’s Newsletter
Learn more about Dr. Christiane Northrups books
Find Dr. Christiane Northrup Online
Find Dr. Christiane Northrup on Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | YouTube | Twitter
Join the KetoGreen Community on Facebook
Buy Keto-Green 16
Transcript:
Dr. Christiane:
Women past menopause are the wisdom keepers and also in the shamanic tradition, we retain our wise blood so we're not leaking that energy every single month. So there's a magic at every single stage. You don't lose anything. Our culture teaches you that you do, but you don't. For instance, the study is showing that it is women in their 60s, 70s, 80s having the best sex of their lives. It's not what you've been told.
Dr. Anna:
Hi, everyone. It's Dr. Anna Cabeca. I'm The Girlfriend Doctor. And it is my mission and my passion to help women live better lives before, during, and after menopause. So welcome to The Girlfriend Doctor podcast, an intimate place for intimate conversation. And I want you to know that I am here for you, and you can ask or tell me anything. No shame, no guilt, no apologies. We pull back the curtain on all things related to women's health, sexual health, libido, PMS, menopause. You name it, we talk about it.
Dr. Anna:
Our goal is to shine a light on your overall wellness, mind, body and spirit. And I want to share with you today just one of my mentors who I truly have admired throughout the years as a pioneer. In fact, in my book, The Hormone Fix, I acknowledge this guest in my acknowledgments as such an inspiration. I had written Dr. Christiane Northrup, whose book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom was given to me by a patient in 2000, inspired me and opened my eyes, and I hope my book like hers will open the eyes of more patients and physicians as they work together to heal holistically to their best abilities.
Dr. Anna:
Yes, my guest today is Dr. Christiane Northrup, again, a woman that I truly have admired. I have admired her work and the way she shows up into this world. You may be familiar with her best-selling book, Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom. Well, Dr. Christiane Northrup, she is the New York Times bestselling author of not only Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, but The Wisdom of Menopause and Goddesses Never Age as well as the host of eight public television specials.
Dr. Anna:
She is a board-certified gynecologist and obstetrician with more than 30 years of clinical experience. Dr. Northrup has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, The Today Show and Good Morning America among others, and is a trusted voice in women's health. So join me in welcoming Dr. Christiane Northrup. Welcome, Chris to The Girlfriend Doctor podcast. It is great to have you here. Really such an honor.
Dr. Christiane:
Really, there are very few of us who are in this boat, a holistic approach to OB-GYN so it's an honor to be here because it's a very small group of people.
Dr. Anna:
It is. It is a small group. I know. Especially as I started doing functional medicine and integrative and anti-aging medicine to be like, okay, how many OB-GYNs in the group and maybe one, two, three.
Dr. Christiane:
Yes, yes. And it should be what everyone is doing. I mean, really, it just should be. And when I read your work and my work and they completely complement each other, so it's a pleasure to be here with you. And I love that it's this couch time because I used to have my patients sit on the couch. They'd tell me their story. They'd start to cry. That was the whole basis for Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom in the first place. It's like I listen to women. They told me their story. I wasn't hearing it in the medical literature. I wasn't hearing it at the holistic medical meetings. I wasn't hearing it.
Dr. Christiane:
That's why I wrote Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom in the first place. And now this is like edition five. This is it, man. This is a final edition. I call it my post Me Too version sort of like wrap up my career bookend it with completely updated version.
Dr. Anna:
Well, I'm excited because as I told my audience before you came on is that you have influenced me so much. One of my patients and maybe in early 2000 or late 1999 gave me a copy of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, and I was like, "What? This is an OB-GYN? Because there's an intuitiveness to what we're doing. Well, this doesn't seem right. Or like even birth control pills like these triphasic birth control pills, I mean like, "What? Why would this be okay?"
Dr. Anna:
And you start thinking then like, "Oh my gosh. Here's this doctor, this mainstream doctor and she's questioning it and making so much sense. So tell us, tell us about Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and how that really moved you. I mean, the impetus, what you were seeing back then and now in this new version. The stage is all yours Dr. Northrup.
Dr. Christiane:
Okay, good. Okay. So here I am, I'm board-certified OB-GYN, but I had sat with Michio Kushi who started the macrobiotic movement. And I sat with him the year after I finished my residency down at Tufts New England Medical Center and he was treating all these people with diet, and at that time a macrobiotic diet, a whole food diet. And I watched the change in their bodies, in their faces. I watched people who came in with terminal cancer get better. It was so striking to me. They'd come in with these huge charts and mainstream medicine had completely given up on them and some of them, not all of course did very, very well.
Dr. Christiane:
So I began to study the role of nutrition in medicine. And at the time, I began to do some lectures with Dr. William Castelli who founded the Framingham Heart Project. He'd put up a slide of the arteries of a monkey and how the monkey had completely gotten rid of hardening of the arteries with diet and he said, "The only problem with this country is you got to be a monkey to get the right treatment."
Dr. Christiane:
And so I began to integrate whole foods with my practice and because a lot of people, the macrobiotic community came to see me, the macrobiotic people from all over the world and I understood what they were trying to do. They were trying to change what we now know as the microbiome, and they were trying to use organic foods. Michio started Erewhon Natural Food company and now it sort of had a resurgence. There's a beautiful one in that wonderful beach out in California. Anyway, there's some good ones. But back in the day.
Dr. Christiane:
So when I was practicing, the natural foods you got were from bins in health food stores. You take the top off and moths would fly out. Now, we didn't have whole foods. We didn't have any, any of that. So we just had a group of people. And I was called by my aunt who was a medical doctor. She sent me the book, The Nuts Among the Berries when I went off to medical school. I mean, my family, the aunt and uncle thought I was nuts. My dad was a holistic dentist. He completely got it.
Dr. Christiane:
And so I began to see what nutrition could do. But then I saw that no matter what people ate, there was a group that just didn't get better, no matter what. And they'd get better and better at their diet and they get stricter and stricter and nothing worked. And then the recovery movement was kind of new in the 1980s. Adult children of alcoholics, Melody Beattie's work, Codependent No More. Claudia Black's work about adult grandchildren of alcoholics.
Dr. Christiane:
So I began to do a history and found a huge number of people had an addict in the family, huge. And then I also began to realize that that pretty much applied to everybody. They say that every alcoholic adversely affects four people and if you add that up, there are more alcoholics than there are people to adversely affect. And that's just alcoholism. that doesn't count drug addiction, perfectionism, the people who are addicted to cleaning.
Dr. Christiane:
I was even on Phil Donahue as an expert on process addictions way, way, way, way back. Process addiction at the time were chat rooms on the computer. People were paying money for chat rooms to talk with each other and going bankrupt. So that's a process addiction. Shopping, hoarding. We know very, very often hoarding is associated with sexual abuse in childhood.
Dr. Christiane:
So I began to see all this stuff. And meanwhile, in the American Holistic Medical Association meetings, when we talk about the female organs, the uterus and the ovaries, the literature would say, "See Kundalini." And I'm thinking, I'm seeing an awful lot of abnormal pap smears between here and Kundalini. And the energy rising. So I had people sitting in my office telling me the truth and I came up with a hypothesis that the diseases of women's organs were symbolic of the wounding of the feminine, including in men, in our patriarchal society.
Dr. Christiane:
And I wrote a little article for a publication called Woman of Power way back then and it got published in Boston. And one morning, in the late '80s, I stood at my bedside table and using an affirmation from The Game of Life and How to Play It. I said, "Infinite spirit, give me a sign. Show me the next best use of my gifts and talents." And that was 11:00 in the morning.
Dr. Christiane:
At 2:00 that afternoon I got a call from a literary agent who I'd met at a workshop and he said, "I think it's time you wrote a book." And that was the beginning. And back then, I have to tell you, nobody understood the mind-body connection. I have those letters that you get from literary agents or publishers about... My favorite was from an agent at ICM, International Creative Management and she said, "Your idea that emotions affect the body, though fascinating has no marketing potential."
Dr. Anna:
Wow.
Dr. Christiane:
Yeah.
Dr. Anna:
That's a whole market of itself.
Dr. Christiane:
Yes. But believe me, not only wasn't there a market, there was a heck of a lot of criticism. I like to say that I had to break trail at night climbing on an unmarked peak. And now, like you said, it is a whole industry so we have another generation of women coming along. The ones whose mothers gave them my book for high school graduation who are now approaching menopause, that group came along and they're paving the way and putting up landscape lighting and it's really very satisfying to me to see that it takes a while to trickle down any new paradigm.
Dr. Christiane:
And you're one of those people, one of those doctors who was ready to see something that still frankly is not taught in our profession. If anything, I think our profession is now more taken over by drugs and surgery as the only answer than it ever was. But that's where we are.
Dr. Christiane:
So here I am with now a new edition. I call it the post Me Too edition because I was in Florida on vacation in the fall of 2017 when the Harvey Weinstein thing broke. I was transfixed. I couldn't read enough because it was like suddenly the culture was ready for what women had been saying and experiencing forever kind of like spotlight what that did for boys who'd been abused by priests and girls too.
Dr. Anna:
I have chills right now. I have such chills and just thinking about this. I can imagine you just even there, during this whole time the 2017 Me Too Movement and how that started and just that realization that this is opening up. People are opening up and what a vulnerable story to tell, but yet women are gaining the power and comfort and ownership and voice that has been suppressed for so long, right? Because there's so much shame and guilt and insecurity around it. It's like, "No, I'm victim here. Heck, I just have goose bumps.
Dr. Christiane:
All wounds, we know this, need to be witnessed in order to heal. So we now finally have a global witness about what's been happening and that gave me the impetus to update the whole thing. Okay, where are we now? What can I put in there? And I came out of the chute this time before. In 1994, the book comes out, right? I can't possibly buy every copy because my colleagues are going to see it, when I was on the cover of then East West Journal which became Natural Health.
Dr. Christiane:
I went down to the food co-op and bought every issue so that the doctors I worked with would not see it. And that worked pretty well. I'm in the labor and delivery. I'm getting calls from all over the world about my approach to nutrition and all of that, but I didn't want my colleagues to see it, I think because of so many lifetimes being burned at the stake. Anyway, this is real in the morphogenetic field around the earth that's why people are so afraid.
Dr. Christiane:
And this time, the book came out and I walk into Grand Rounds and luckily, no one said anything, but it truly was, it was the beginning of a new era. Eventually, I lost my teaching position at the University of Vermont College of Medicine when The Wisdom of Menopause came out. That's like they'd had it by then.
Dr. Christiane:
As Joseph Campbell says, "The function of orthodoxy is to create martyrdom for mystics." And I was talking about the spiritual connection in the body and all of that, and chakras. "Well, we can't be talking about that." I remember Grand Rounds when a guy came up from Boston, one of the big Boston experts and he gives the Grand Rounds with the big revelation, huge revelation that chronic pelvic pain is associated with sexual abuse.
Dr. Christiane:
Duh! I mean, my patients were seen by my colleagues as crazy, that they were the crazy ones. They only saw normal women. And in retrospect, of course, what we know is they saw women who simply hadn't said anything yet.
Dr. Anna:
Or afraid to speak about it, right? When I thought about this, rebranded this year, The Girlfriend Doctor, and I was like, "How do I feel about that?" And then I went to an OB-GYN conference with our esteemed colleagues and heads of division and stuff, and I said, "Well, there is less than 1% of the individuals here that I would probably speak on an intimate level with."
Dr. Anna:
That made me embrace this title as well because the comfort level being able to say, "You know what, this happened to me, right?" And you're not judged, you're allowed to release and release that pain. In OB-GYN, it is such an honor honestly to be in such intimate aspects of our patients' lives from your period starting to pregnancy.
Dr. Christiane:
No one has more intimacy. Like nobody, nobody. We are right in the middle of the deepest shame and pain that any woman could possibly have. I used to be an abortion provider way, way before they started shooting them. And I actually got out of that because I got to a point where I realized women needed to learn to run their reproductive system like their checkbook.
Dr. Christiane:
I mean, they really needed to take full ownership. And I understand rape and all, and I understand the power dynamics. You're in the middle of a political battle when you're in somebody's pelvis, no question.
Dr. Anna:
So you said run the reproductive system like their checkbook. Explain that.
Dr. Christiane:
What I meant there was pregnancy doesn't just happen. I mean, I had women with PhDs come in to my practice. I'm sure you did too. And they'd say, "I don't know how this happened." Wow. What I mean is to be very conscious about what are the deposits you're making and what are the withdrawals, and what are the relationships like. And are you sexually available because you're afraid of being alone or you're afraid of losing the man or whatever it is? Just more conscious, very conscious of who's coming in here. Who are you letting in?
Dr. Anna:
I 100% agree with that. I have four daughters and from ages 12 to 31 and my 31-year-old came to me recently and she goes... Because I'm talking onstage, I talk about sexual health and and women will come up to us afterwards and say, "I've never had this conversation with my mother. I've never had this conversation with my daughter. And having conversations even with friends like pain with sex and menopause." It really-
Dr. Christiane:
Yeah, like that. Yeah.
Dr. Anna:
And best friends for 30 years and never talked about it. Never discussed it with their husbands or partners and in that situation. Britney came to me. She goes, "Ma, I really want to have this discussion because my friends, they've had babies and they don't know that they have three holes down there. I mean, there are some issues that need to be explained." And then also, we look at autoimmunity and adjuvant, right?
Dr. Anna:
We're now looking at additional adjuvant that might be forced upon us in the form of a vaccine which we can definitely touch on this side. We know that can promote autoimmunity. Well, what does sperm do, right? DNA, RNA. Would that also possibly... I mean, I put it out here in theory. It definitely needs to be substantiated. But just biochemically, it makes sense and that could be part of the autoimmune attack on our body sometimes.
Dr. Anna:
It's just something to think about. And I was explaining to the girls, "Look, when a man ejaculates in you, certainly it's got to get to the... There's an egg. It's going through the tube. There is a seminal fluid. There are sperm that end up through into your pelvis and then watch, right? What happens to that? The macrophages come in. Your body makes an immune attack right there because it's a foreign body. It's doing what it's supposed to be doing." But it's also something to consider.
Dr. Christiane:
You know those studies where they have women smell the t-shirts of the different men? And the ones that smell the best, that is the best genetic match for them. Again, I've had patients who had terrible vaginitis until they changed partners. And then when they had the right partner, the body didn't do that at all. So that's so interesting to me. And we have some data on birth control pills will knock out that olfactory sense that women have. And so they're sort of on automatic pilot.
Dr. Christiane:
I say, "You want to cycle with the moon or Ortho Pharmaceutical? So women's wisdom is what are all these things that the body is doing that we need to know about. I had to invent a language of women's wisdom because all we had was a language of women's disease. And that's mostly what women's health is. It's not the way you do it, not the way I've done it, but it's disease screening. You don't have it yet, keep coming back. Whereas your approach is, "How do we optimize what's going on in your body?" The absence of disease is not health, it's just sort of neutral.
Dr. Anna:
And being able to look and say, "Well, these are the things you're at risk for," and understanding that. Even now knowing through my own personal journey too, the perimenopause, menopause transition is harder for those of us who have had adverse childhood experiences, ACEs and PTSD. I wasn't taught that. I mean I was not prepared for my PTSD journey at all, the hormone reproductive effects of it.
Dr. Christiane:
And I know your story, which is an astounding, astounding story. And what I say is it's a reset. Well, obviously, we get a chance to reset all those times during our menstrual cycle. And then if you don't, if you haven't taken advantage of this cyclic wisdom, you'll get it between the eyes during menopause. It's the big wake-up call.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah. I love that use the word wisdom and that sense of innate wisdom, intuitive like tapping into our intuitive sense. I just imagine what you came up against in that... We fight it now, right? But imagine what you came up against. As I traveled around the world in my own healing journey, I mean traditional medicine, traditional philosophers and healers say, the breasts hold relationships, the kidneys hold fear. It makes sense. The adrenals are right there. The liver holds hate, the pancreas guilt and the bladder, I think-
Dr. Christiane:
Being pissed off.
Dr. Anna:
Being pissed off. Or afraid to make the next step, fear of letting go or something like that can be... But different things on the reproductive organ. So I would love to know some more of our body's wisdom and then also, no matter what we've been through, what are our next right step. Especially, those of us who have had trauma, sexual abuse. I mean that sexual trauma, how do you encourage safety in talking about it for healing or what are the steps to heal from that sexual trauma? I just asked you a lot of stuff. I'm just [crosstalk 00:23:14].
Dr. Christiane:
That's okay. Now, one of the best ones is to find what's called your G-spot which is really I like to call it the sacred spot.
Dr. Anna:
Better.
Dr. Christiane:
And that is located... It's a kind of a nickel size or quarter size just underneath the pubic bone. So you can feel it, if you're kind of squatting down and put your fingers underneath the pubic bone. That goes to what's an [Anadi 00:23:39]. Anadi is an acupuncture Meridian right up to your pineal gland. And if you've been sexually abused, then your pain is very liable to be stuck right there.
Dr. Christiane:
But if you learn how to gently massage it and there's these crystal wands available or plastic wands so that you can just really gently massage that area or if you're in relationship and you have a trusted partner, they can do that. And eventually that area will kind of wake up. That's also the area that's involved when you stimulate it with female ejaculation, which is called Amrita, the sort of the gift of bliss.
Dr. Christiane:
So if you understand that all this stuff is stored in your body and that part of healing is to feel it and release it, you don't need to go back down into that awful time, but you don't. Tapping works great. You know the emotional freedom technique works beautifully for releasing trauma and there's a lot of studies on that one. So you just do that with the hands.
Dr. Anna:
Or fingers.
Dr. Christiane:
Yeah. Even though I've been sexually abused and I have enormous shame, I love and appreciate myself right now. And then you go here. Even though you know I have been sexually abused and I feel really guilty about it and I didn't know. Oh my god, and I love and appreciate. Then you tap here inside the eyebrows, outside of the eyebrow, underneath the eyebrow, underneath the nose, below the lip here. Then you do on the clavicle here and then the bra line here. And these are all acupuncture points. And they've found that just tapping on these, decreases cortisol.
Dr. Anna:
You feel better?
Dr. Christiane:
Yeah. There's an app to my friends, the Ortners have created The Tapping Solution app, and it's fantastic. They've got all these free tapping scripts now, tapping meditations. So just download The Tapping Solution on your phone. I think they have a free one on anxiety right now. Really, really helpful. Really helpful. For starters, I would do that. The other thing is to realize you're not alone.
Dr. Christiane:
It's almost like the majority of women have had this happen and I think one of the things that makes it so hard is that you're told, if you're a little kid, "Don't tell anyone or I will kill you." I mean, women have been told that. And the other thing is oftentimes a part of them enjoyed the attention or enjoyed the feeling. So then they feel terribly guilty about that and they don't really understand that this was abuse because they thought that they were being chosen.
Dr. Christiane:
There's an amazing book, a memoir called Wild Game. And it is the story of a woman with a... I would call it a borderline mother who was larger than life and did these incredible cookbooks and was glamorous. And the daughter always wanted to be chosen by her mother and the mother enrolled her into her secret affair with the husband of her husband's best friend.
Dr. Christiane:
I mean, this man who was the best friend of her husband, she starts to have an affair and enrolls the daughter who's 12 at the time in keeping the secret. So the daughter feels as though she's been chosen and she's got this secret thing with her mother and it feels so good, and only much later did she realize how damaging that was. It's a fantastically written memoir, Wild Game.
Dr. Christiane:
So for any woman who's had that experience or being chosen by your father like you're the one. It's a complicated thing. It's not very straightforward unless it's an out-and-out rape. We know, you and I know that generally the rapes that have taken place on college campuses are often from someone you knew. It's not just a stranger flashing you in the street.
Dr. Christiane:
Then the other sense is you brought it on. There's a display in a museum. It's called What I Was Wearing. And and you can see it online, What I Was Wearing. And it's kind of wonderfully healing because women have been blamed, well, you brought it on yourself by what you were wearing. And when you see the display of what girls were wearing, a jumper and knee socks, not exactly a teddy. This is what's healing right now in our culture that we're bringing this up and for the very first time, we can talk about it and no one thinks you're crazy.
Dr. Anna:
Yes.
Dr. Christiane:
It's huge. It's huge.
Dr. Anna:
It's huge, and yet it's still that we have so much work to do and I'm just really just sending out a blessing to everyone who's listening, just taking a deep breath in and deep breath out because it can be triggering. This conversation can be triggering and traumatic, and it just means we have work to do. I'm glad you're listening so that we can bring this to the surface and heal from it. Guys, you can always email me. No questions asked, right? There's healing that has to be done here and we'll do it, we'll do it.
Dr. Anna:
And this part of this conversation is sharing this information so that we do complete healing. We do complete healing. And so I love what you said the physiology, right? The body holds energy and emotions and that releasing in the G-spot, and this is really important things like whether you know your G-spot, you felt your G-spot or not, it doesn't matter. That energy is still stored there and you can feel it. So I always tell clients, go in through the front door, up to the second floor in the back and the front window.
Dr. Christiane:
Oh, that's very good. I like that. That's very good.
Dr. Anna:
And so you just [inaudible 00:29:56] and that's it. Yep. And that's how you can find it, identify it, and massage it and work to release it. So would you say massage or just continuous pressure like you would do a pressure point?
Dr. Christiane:
Either one. I would go with what feels right to you. Massage is very good. Make sure you use lubrication, but pressure could also work, because we know in massage, very often when a massage therapist presses on something, you release the whole area there. And it's very important. I like that you tell women put their hands in there. Find out what's in here. When I created this [inaudible 00:30:37] vaginal cream, the question was, "Did we need an applicator?" And I thought, "Come on. You've got to use your hands to know your body. Having an applicator just doesn't make any sense." And I know you don't have an applicator for any of your stuff either.
Dr. Anna:
No, exactly.
Dr. Christiane:
This is the applicator.
Dr. Anna:
Exactly. And it's so good. I mean it's good for your skin everywhere, right?
Dr. Christiane:
That's right. That's right.
Dr. Anna:
And then just being able to use it vaginally to be comfortable using it vaginally and be comfortable with your vagina, and I tell clients, clitoris to anus, the most valuable real estate on your body.
Dr. Christiane:
Oh, that's good. That's very good. That's good.
Dr. Anna:
Because it's so true because as we age, we've seen as gynecologists women in any age, really we see lichen sclerosus, we see prolapse, we see clitoral atrophy. And that can start young especially on birth control pills. We've definitely seen that, and incontinence. Don't forget rectal prolapse, hemorrhoids, fissures. All these changes happen if we're not treating and conditioning our pelvic floor with exercise, pelvic floor exercises. And I'm with you. I would say pelvic floor exercise instead of Kegels. I hate to use the word Kegels.
Dr. Christiane:
I know, right? I know. But we do want to honor Dr. Kegel because he at his time was really good.
Dr. Anna:
It was, right. To bring attention and really to bring it to everyone, and that's a Kegel exercises, pelvic floor exercises. We do it from now until the end. But this is important real estate to consider in so many women have shut off waist down.
Dr. Christiane:
Oh god, yes.
Dr. Anna:
Advice to awaken up our feminine wisdom, our sexual wisdom. And you talk about it so beautiful with the energy, the chakras. If you could explain that, I would so appreciate it.
Dr. Christiane:
Okay. Well, what I would say is a good way to awaken it is to just put on a song like fallen by Alicia Keys and do some big slow hip circles. Big slow. Make it as wide as you possibly can. Essential as you possibly can. Remembering that belly dancing was traditionally taught by grandmothers to their granddaughters to help them give birth. So you put on a piece of music that's very sensual and then you just do a big hip circle going all the way around. And I first did this at Sheila Kelley's S Factor Studio in New York where they were teaching women, and obviously will after this pandemic is done.
Dr. Christiane:
And I remember being in a room with the teacher and just moving my hips so slowly like that. And I said to her, "I think I've waited my entire life to do this." Because it's women only, just in a darkened room and just sinking into that second chakra center which is pleasure, but it's also money, sex, and power.
Dr. Christiane:
Now, you think about prostitution, right? Man's oldest profession. You hear people talk about shake your moneymaker. And human sexuality teacher, Kim Anami talks a lot about when you wake up this area of your body, it can increase your income dramatically. And that's interesting. So I would say, "You want to sink your energy down in there." And at first, there can be some gnarly memories even if you were to do a Kegels just now as we sit here.
Dr. Christiane:
So you're just going to squeeze the muscles that would stop the flow of urine and then bring that energy up. Like the Daoist exercise, you bring the energy up from the perineum, from the pelvis, you shoot it up the back of your spine all the way, top of the head and you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth that completes the circuit. So you squeeze the pelvis. You do some perineal contractions.
Dr. Christiane:
Imagine the energy going up the back of your spine, over the top of your head. By the way the Sphinx in ancient Egypt was a snake that came right to here, but the Saracens shot it off in the 1800s.
Dr. Christiane:
Okay. So this goes up this way, and then just down to your dantian it's called, underneath the belly button. So you can literally revitalize yourself just by squeezing the area and energy goes where it flows, where attention goes. So what you're doing is you're literally moving that sexual creative pleasurable energy up through your entire body to nourish all the organs of the body up through the brain and then down, you just store the energy below the belly button in that dantian. And there's a lot of Taoist literature on that. But that's a way that you can begin. The other thing is I don't know if you instruct people on jade egg practice or anything of that nature. I just got a thing called Fit. Have you used that at all?
Dr. Anna:
Yes, I love it. So I've got to do a feature on it. I think it's great because of that biofeedback response like being able to feel are you contracting? How well are you contracting? And then now I've got to do it over time to see if that's improving.
Dr. Christiane:
Okay, good, good. Because I just got one but I haven't had time to use it yet. But things like this are really very, very helpful. Kind of like the menstrual cycle trackers and the software that young women are using now. I mean, I remember when I got pregnant, I did basal body temperatures with an old mercury thermometer and did my graphs. And now of course that's all done with an app and it's so much easier to understand the energy of that connection between your creativity and the cycle of the moon for instance. That's another way to tune in to your pelvic wisdom.
Dr. Anna:
So are we more creative with the full moon or how does that-
Dr. Christiane:
Well, here's what I say about the full moon. Well, ovulation, we know is associated with an FSH-LH surge and a testosterone peak. So therefore at ovulation, women feel I call it maximally receptive to cross-pollination. You know and I know because we've seen the cervical mucus when a woman is ovulating. And suddenly the cervix is wide open and the cervical mucus has this Spinnbarkeit like a beautiful Ferning pattern.
Dr. Christiane:
So it's like a superhighway for sperm, but the body is also biosymbolic. So this is also a time for being maximally receptive to cross-pollination by others. You might have a spike in your libido and then what I like to tell women is during perimenopause, that's kind this way all over the place. You're moving from alternating current to direct current. But once menopause is finished, your FSH-LH levels stay up at the same level they were at ovulation for the rest of your life, which is why women past menopause are the wisdom keepers, and also in the shamanic tradition, we retain our wise blood. So we're not leaking that energy every single month. So there's a magic at every single stage. You don't lose anything. Our culture teaches you that you do, but you don't. For instance, the studies showing that it is women in their 60s, 70s, 80s having the best sex of their lives. It's not what you've been told.
Dr. Anna:
I love that and definitely encouraged that especially, once we overcome the vaginal dryness, those issues. That reigniting your feminine sexual energy, igniting your relationship and that is a powerful time period. How do you like reconceptualize... Menopause, again, not a good word. I mean it's just [crosstalk 00:38:51].
Dr. Christiane:
It's not, it's not. You're absolutely right. It's moving into becoming the queen of your life. It's really what it is. You and I both know that. I've been there. Again, most of my writing has been to refute the mainstream narrative about women's health. So the wisdom of menopause was, "I don't think that I'm going to do this thing that everyone's doing. Okay, so get fat. Be alone the rest of your life. Get a mom haircut, and that's the end of sexuality and sensuality."
Dr. Christiane:
And then I found, "Well, that's not true." And then I wrote Goddesses Never Age which was my exploration of being vibrant long after the culture has said that's not it. And so I found that indeed everything we've been told about women by the mainstream is wrong. It's just wrong. However, it is true. You and I both know this that if you enter perimenopause in a stressful relationship with adrenal burnout with working too long or being a shift worker, any of those things, you're going to be depleted.
Dr. Christiane:
So you need to understand this is the gateway to the second half of your life. So this is a time when you can reboot all the systems. There's a lot of life after the age of 52. 52 being the average age of the last period.
Dr. Anna:
I love it. And I just learned recently that in Japan, they say for this time after menopause, they call it konenki which means second spring. So I'm like, "Okay, our goal now is to breeze through menopause into our second spring."
Dr. Christiane:
That's right. That's right.
Dr. Anna:
I love that. That just makes me happy thinking about that, right?
Dr. Christiane:
Right, exactly.
Dr. Anna:
Yes, that's what we want because that's what should be vibrant. Worked hard, have raised maybe in the process of finishing. Like me, raising... I have a 12 year old, right? I'd be 54 with a 12-year-old. Just thinking about puberty again, it's just like, "All right. I'm going to make sure we were completely keto green for this little one so she's balanced." And just thinking about this transition into life.
Dr. Anna:
I want women and men to know that absolutely, sexual intercourse and intimacy, and that connection, anything we can do to increase oxytocin is even more important now. And rewarding, there's another shift, right? Once you're through the cloud of reproductive hormones, there's a whole nother spiritual awareness. And I see you embody a spiritually enlightened woman, and gifted and passionate, and so giving. I want every woman to embody their queen as you said, their queen.
Dr. Christiane:
Yes, absolutely. So I don't figure the crone thing comes to like 90. Because for most of human history, I mean you'd figure it out, in 1900, the average woman was dead when she saw her first grandchild born and she was about 42. So we've invented as humanity this whole new stage of life where you have wisdom under the hood. You have a few things going on so you can bring that into any relationship. And what I've said, you know the OB-GYN literature that says 50% of women suffer from FSD, female sexual dysfunction. Then you look at those stupid drugs that they've invented like Vyleesi and the other one.
Dr. Christiane:
Great. You have a glass of wine, you faint, great. Or you're nauseated. I mean, I just reviewed them for Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and it's shocking to me that the FDA would approve anything that stupid. I'm serious. It's shocking. When in fact, what you need to do is change the way a woman thinks about her sexuality and make yourself a sex subject, not a sex object.
Dr. Christiane:
And there's all kinds of things that you can do. The Bodanskys book, The Illustrated Guide to Extended Massive Orgasm is fantastic. It's a biofeedback book about how you turn on the female erotic system, which as you know is every bit as much erectile tissue as men have, it's just all inside. And we put a man on the moon 25 years before the female erotic anatomy and the clitoral system was discovered and depicted, because I remember when I was doing the last revision of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, I called up Scott Leighton who's my medical illustrator and he works for the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Christiane:
I said, "Scott, I need you to go to the Countway Library, find the plates for the female erotic anatomy and all that so we can put that in there." He goes, "It's not there." I mean, in medical textbook you and me, OB-GYN, board-certified physicians, did we learn about the female erotic anatomy and where it is, and what it is, and the perianal sponge and the periurethral sponge, and the crura of the clitoris? No. That's insane. It's insane.
Dr. Anna:
But we knew very well with male anatomy, right?
Dr. Christiane:
Oh my god, yeah.
Dr. Anna:
We absolutely studied on that. And also that brings even what we were told that Masters-Johnson model of sexual function, right? Of the libido, the sex drive, the sexual curve or orgasm and how different that is and then Bosons model which is like, I would say it looks like Candyland. Sometimes you get ice cream cones like, "Yay," and sometimes you're stuck in the mud. Sometimes you have to go back to the beginning. That's the reality. Also, in your amazing book, I mean, really you have Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, Wisdom of Menopause, Goddesses Never Age, and so many good work, so many good programs. You have a new women's program that you have that you're launching.
Dr. Christiane:
Yes. It's an online program. So it's sort of like the operating manual that every woman should know for your body.
Dr. Anna:
Awesome, awesome. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to share this and share this information with our audience. So I'm honoring your time and I don't want to let you go, Chris. I just want to hold on to you as long as I can, but just in the last moment closing. And especially those of us in the menopause, post-menopause, that goddess reclaiming our goddess, changing our attitude about getting older, how would you speak to us? What would you say to us?
Dr. Christiane:
Let me give you the term that I learned. I was working doing dream work with Doris E. Cohen and I had learned tango and I was just worried that I would be alone the rest of my life, all that stuff that women feel and she says to me, "My dear, goddesses never age." And I realized what she was talking about was the eternal essence of who we are that is ageless, timeless, and the more we get in touch with that, the more it shines through our eyes. And that's where you must start than any other stuff that we do like skincare and cosmetic surgery, whatever you want to do. That is all good.
Dr. Christiane:
But I will tell you, if you don't get in touch with this ageless, timeless, goddess part of yourself, then nothing else will really work for very long. So that's why you want to be in touch with that, and the perimenopause time. And also your work with this like keto green, that's part of how we wake that up.
Dr. Anna:
And I found that to be really critical in just embracing that, touching in. And also, it can be a discipline and a practice. I know you keep saying it to yourself, keep engaging. And we were honest. Our spirit is as bright as ever, right? It's wiser.
Dr. Christiane:
Absolutely, yes.
Dr. Anna:
So that energy, that goddess energy, that spiritual energy within us, I would say the Holy Spirit within us, I mean is a tremendous vibrant, flirty, just loving, open, giving, embodies this the best of being a woman. And thank you for all your work, thank you for paving my way as an OB-GYN into this field and that I encourage everyone listening check out the newest edition, fifth edition of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Dr. Christiane Northrup. Chris, thank you so much for being with me today.
Dr. Christiane:
Thank you, Anna. I really appreciate it and I really appreciate your work.
Dr. Anna:
Oh, thank you. One more thing, how do people get a hold of you and get your program?
Dr. Christiane:
Drnorthrup.com. Everything will be there. Also, I'm on Facebook regularly and Instagram.
Dr. Anna:
Okay.
Dr. Christiane:
And a little bit on Twitter.
Dr. Anna:
I'm going to go to find you on Instagram right now. It's my new play toy.
Dr. Christiane:
It's fun, isn't it? It's fun.
Dr. Anna:
It is. Well, thank you again.
Dr. Christiane:
All right. Thank you.
Dr. Anna:
Truly, in our discussion today with Dr. Christiane Northrup on The Girlfriend Doctor podcast, we covered some grounds and just some history. And hopefully you're feeling right now hopeful and ready to engage that spiritual energy within you, that goddess energy however you want to term it. I always say the butterfly emerging out of a cocoon and into a butterfly. This is a new time beyond menopause. And also how we honor our elderly and listening to them, and encouraging them, and hoping them.
Dr. Anna:
I really have reflected and I was thinking about this as we were talking with Dr. Christiane Northrup about our elderly, bringing them back into our homes. My parents have passed away, but help take care of my father when he needed to in his last couple years of life, and it's a challenge. But the wisdom that our elders can provide to us and to our children, that's a gift. That's a gift. And also how do we, whatever situation that we're in right now, how do we then want to care for our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren God willing, right?
Dr. Anna:
I'm 54 with a 12-year-old. So I'll be 54 this year with a 12-year-old. So what does that look like? But I want to have energy, vitality, spunk, lots of life and a lot of wisdom. I can help the learning curve of those that are coming after us what a difference that will make in our lives.
Dr. Anna:
And for you too, looking forward to this chapter of our life and that we can do it healthfully and powerfully in all ways. So there are tools that we've created, Dr. Northrup myself. We know that many standard of care medical options are not satisfactory and/or not enough. We want to get to the underlying root cause. And it's definitely something I've done through my own healing journey creating products and programs to help including Mighty Maca, Julva. She was referring to my Julva anti-aging cream for the vulva as well as my programs in the book, Keto-Green 16.
Dr. Anna:
I hope you all have been reading Keto-Green 16 and will add to your library, Dr. Northrup's book, Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom. And continue to learn, grow, and approach your life with passion in a vibrantly, sexy, holistic, healthy, happy way. So don't forget, I'm here for you and so happy to be your girlfriend doctor. So bye until next time.
