A provocative point of view
Peri Menopause, strength training & the art of self-seduction.
How moving into the transition phase of middle-aged womanhood has taught me some surprising lessons about how we need to reassess the way we move, lift, and view the art of strength training.
I liken my experiences, very much to falling in love again, it’s at times scary, exhilarating, and painful and other times all-consuming to the point of obsession. As a woman with an aging body that now requires boundaries, insight, and compassion to stay on a sustainable path, I have very much had to re seduce myself with a new art of strength training.
What once was harsh, relentless and boundaryless in my 20s to achieve my strength aspirations has cultivated into a more graceful and at times sensual creative practice. It has become a way to reconnect to my body for what it can do rather than what can’t.
Let’s go back to falling into love.
When you are sitting in a room with a person you are deeply attracted to physically, emotionally, and spiritually time stops, the world is in slow motion, you become hyper aware of how you move speak and sound, when your bodies meet in embrace it is an effortless dance of pure human movement.
I have found my training practice to connect with this desired human feeling.
Moving with pleasure, grace and deep intuitive feeling, the desire to push to complete exhaustion has now faded because just like falling in love we want to forever connect with that feeling, live it forever.
Now leaving the floor when my body is warm, but not worn out, leaving the floor when I can still breath with freedom, I walk onto the floor to move with love and nothing more.
Because in the end, I have nothing left to prove, I’m here as a middle-aged woman walking a new path of transition, the new phase of self-love, self-acceptance, and discovery.
This is not a time to push or prove any more it’s a time to accept, and I can guarantee you, you will wake up each day wanting more.
By Marilyn Tuna