Women’s Health – Women are more the same then different all over the world
Episode #4: a podcast with Hilary Brown and Kirsteen Ruffell
How can yoga help you during pregnancy, after pregnancy and during menopause?
In this fourth episode of Conversations Beyond the Mat Hilary Brown talks with Kirsteen Ruffell who is specialized in Yoga and Women’s Health: her own Yoga practice began by chance in 1990 and she’s been enjoying it ever since. Apart from Pre and Post Natal Yoga & Baby Yoga with Birthlight, Kirsteen also has a background of training in Hatha & Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and she has been teaching since 1998. She finds it a great joy that yoga can bring such benefit during pregnancy, birth and beyond, not just to Mum and baby but to partners, siblings and all the family.
Podcast maker Hilary Brown is the founder & creative director of Yoga Moves Training Programs in The Netherlands.
Excerpt from full transcript:
Hilary:
Your life experience is fascinating to me, you shared with me some of the work you’ve done with Francis Friedman and with Birthlight and your history there. And of course you have other history around that before that and since then, but what I’d love to hear a little bit is how you experience working with like the prep, you know, teaching yoga for pregnancy, this whole issue of women’s health in yoga, and the fact you’ve gone you do this in Russia, you do this in in Europe, you do in Northern, Southern Europe and China. I don’t know where else you’ve been? Can you give us some taste of what the differences or similarities are that you discovered working with this kind of diversity?
Kirsteen:
In London, you’ve definitely got diversity anyway, that’s where I’m from and where I’ve grown up and done most of my sort of teaching and had most of my adult life. I’ve lived in Australia too, though. And I would say really, there are some universal things that cross cultures that are really appreciated in female form. So we can forget all the language barriers and sort of society’s hierarchies and there are certain practices that really speak to the female form and I think that’s what really is exciting to work with when I’m traveling and working through plans later as well. On some kind of very basic level you do connect to people and to the language you’re hearing maybe five, six days in a row with the same group of people and beginning to pick up a few words here and there that are related to what you’re doing.
And I think that female form has a particular experience through life and through life’s changes and there are certain practices that really are super beneficial and they make you feel really good in the moment that’s what we’re after, isn’t it? The only time is now and if we can connect to the breath and the body in a way that makes it all sing together. No one goes home unhappy after a feeling like that. And there are small things you know, sometimes it’s very subtle small changes that we can help someone understanding their body in terms of posture or the way they’re breathing and they can change everything really no real example
Hilary:
Like what do you mean?
Kirsteen:
Well, they can change your perspective of what’s happened to you in the past Wow. Like you know, if you change that then you very often change how you view the future and all that. So if you can change someone’s perspective and experience of how they’re moving in a way that means they’re pain free. Wow. That’s huge.
…
Hilary:
Talking about menopause, what does the extreme look like for some woman? What is extreme? Have you seen are that more the classic, you know, chronic or acute kind of symptoms? Obviously, the hot flashes and stuff, but what more can happen?
Kirsteen:
It can be super debilitating. And, you know, if you’re in the kind of work situation where there’s just a very uncomfortable way, it can erode your self confidence, your ability to sort of shine at your best and in moments where you really need to do that. I’ve had other women who’ve had really debilitating migraines, going through the menopause, all kinds of things, doing, you know, all sorts of stuff, that fuzzy brain thing not well think, clearly, terribly bad sleep. All the things that feed into a very much a sort of a downward spiral.
….
Hilary:
What does your personal practice look like? What are you wanting in your life practice? And where’s your edge?
Kirsteen:
I think I have quite a fluctuating practice through the month. So there are things that I do not want to do at certain times in the month. I haven’t finished my period. So I’m in peri-menopause. And what I’ve noticed is, I’ve become very much more sensitive to what I want to do on a particular day, depending where I am in, in the cycle, which I found really interesting.
Want to explore more?
Kirsteen will teach several Women’s Health courses at Yoga Moves this fall: Yoga for Pregnancy, Postnatal Yoga and Yoga for Menopause.
And more coming up in 2022?