Think of how most women react when asked how old they are.
Why do they feel a contraction of the heart and skip the answer with a joke or, if they are not teenage girls eager to be taken seriously and considered more mature than they appear, simply prefer to circumvent 4, 5 or even 10 years of their actual age?
Why does the contraction of the heart on hearing this question become stronger as she nears the age of 30?
Age is a criteria of stigmatization in our intensely sexualized time-obsessed culture, fixated on image and the body. Society glorifies youth, and when it comes to women it is almost cruel, once she has reached maturity.
Under the pressure of the standards omnipresent in the media, advertising and internet, the woman herself often tends to value herself based on her age and appearance. And once she passes the age of 40 the fear of her devaluation begins to rise.
The Different Faces of Fear
But is there any time when the woman really belongs to herself? It’s a question that deserves to be answered. In childhood she is under the power of her parents and school. In her youth she is most often governed by the hormones, by sexuality, by the impetuous desire to experiment. She does not know herself; she is completely swept away by her own energy.
At the age of maturity she is absorbed by the concern for her children and career. Once children fly from the nest – or for those who have no children, things that seemed stable and fulfilling begin to change or even disappear, the woman is often dominated by the fear that there comes the menopausal age that will leave her weaker and weaker – lacking the charm of sensuality, lacking the vitality of youth, lacking the balance of health.
Some women put all their hope in plastic surgery. In a healthier diet. But no plastic surgery is a solution for fear of old age and death, plastic surgery is not a therapy for the usual effects of menopause.
The Good News: There Is an Alternative to Depression
But you know what the good news is? Menopause symptoms are so big, so intense and overwhelming that the woman can no longer postpone paying attention to them. She cannot shift her attention to something else. She has to take into account what is happening to her.
Most will take account, for real, and they will be scared. They notice and fall into depression. But there is an alternative. To learn what is happening to us and to connect with our bodies, with our own physical, psychical and especially spiritual resources.
Even though for many women menopause is a physiological and psychological catastrophe, we can de-condition ourselves, we can escape the tyranny of hormonal fluctuations.
It is our choice and our practice to strengthen our power of attraction, to retain our libido, our sensual freshness and to even have a wonderful and fulfilling erotic life during menopause.
To discover and explore the treasure
The Tantric Art of Living helps us to make this personal revolution. It reveals a sublime perspective from which we understand the cycles of our own lives as a reflection of cosmic rhythms, and ourselves as ageless goddesses.
It offers us profound methods not for survival, but for flourishing on the physical, emotional, creative and spiritual level in this new stage of our existence in which we have entered.
It provides exercises and helps to reveal the inner attitudes through which we can transform the major crisis of menopause into the best chance for growth and transformation from adolescence onwards. It reveals how we can access our resources of wisdom by connecting to the Sacred Archetype that is specific to each of us.
Beyond the clichés related to age, beyond physiological barriers that menopause creates for many women, beyond fear and low self-esteem – there vibrates the true power, the true energy and the true spiritual destiny of the woman.
We invite you to discover and explore the treasure that awaits you.