We ask a strange thing of women's bodies.
We expect them to behave consistently.
We expect roughly the same energy, appetite, strength, mood, productivity and physical comfort from one week to the next. And when the body changes—during menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause or simply with age—we often approach the change as something that needs to be corrected.
But the female body has never been particularly linear.
It is rhythmic.
And perhaps feeling well in a woman's body begins with understanding that.
We are taught to override the fluctuations
For many women, the lesson begins early.
You get your period and continue with school, sports, work and everything else as though nothing has happened.
Later there may be pregnancies, fertility treatments, births, breastfeeding, sleepless years, hormonal shifts and eventually perimenopause and menopause.
Still, the expectation is remarkably consistent:
Keep going.
There is strength in being able to do that.
But there is also wisdom in noticing when the body is asking for something different.
Some days movement feels wonderful. Some days rest does.
Sometimes the body wants pressure and movement. Sometimes it responds better to warmth, slower touch and stillness.
Sometimes we feel strong.
Sometimes we feel tender.
Neither is a failure of the body.
The body on the table changes too
This is one of the things years of massage have taught me.
The person who arrives for an appointment is never exactly the same person who came in last month.
Sleep may have been different.
Work may have been difficult.
A menstrual cycle may be at a different point.
There may have been travel, illness, exercise, grief, celebration, too much sitting or simply an unusually demanding week.
And sometimes there isn't an obvious explanation at all.
The body just feels different.
That matters when I'm working with someone.
A massage doesn't have to follow the same sequence because it worked beautifully last time.
Training gives me many possibilities.
Observation tells me what belongs in the session today.
There are larger cycles too
Some changes happen over days.
Others happen over years.
Pregnancy dramatically changes the body in a relatively short period of time. Postpartum recovery unfolds on its own timetable. Perimenopause can bring changes that seem to appear without warning. Menopause changes the hormonal environment again.
And aging continues regardless of whether we welcome it.
These aren't interruptions to a woman's real life.
They are her life.
This is one reason I've become increasingly interested in bodywork for women beyond individual symptoms.
There is something valuable about having a place where the changing body is expected.
You don't have to explain why the body you brought in today isn't behaving like the one you had five years ago.
Of course it isn't.
You've lived five more years in it.
Traditional approaches understood cycles
My studies in traditional women's bodywork have also made me think differently about this.
Across cultures, women's bodies have often been tended differently around menstruation, pregnancy, birth, postpartum and other significant changes.
There might be particular foods.
Warmth.
Herbs.
Massage.
Bathing.
Periods of rest.
Support from other women.
These traditions vary enormously, and I don't believe we should collapse them into one universal story about women.
But there is an idea within many of them that feels increasingly relevant:
A changing body deserves to be noticed.
Modern life often asks us to minimize those changes.
Traditional practices frequently did the opposite.
They marked them.
Perimenopause and menopause belong in the conversation
I am particularly interested in what happens when women reach the years that receive considerably less ceremony.
Perimenopause and menopause can change sleep, temperature regulation, muscle and connective tissue, body composition, energy, recovery and the way a woman experiences her body.
And yet women are frequently encouraged to approach this period primarily as a collection of problems to solve.
There are absolutely symptoms that deserve medical attention and treatments that can be enormously helpful.
But there is another question worth asking alongside those:
How do I want to live in this body now?
Not the body from twenty years ago.
This one.
Massage cannot stop aging or reverse menopause.
It can offer something much more realistic.
Time to experience the body without judging it.
Hands-on attention to the places that feel tired, tight or unfamiliar.
Movement where movement feels good.
Stillness where stillness feels better.
And an opportunity to become acquainted with the body that exists today.
A massage doesn't have to ask the body to change
Much of modern wellness is built around change.
Become stronger.
Become leaner.
Become more flexible.
Sleep better.
Eat better.
Age better.
Perform better.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting any of those things.
But it is also possible to spend so much time improving the body that we rarely experience it without an agenda.
Massage can be one of those rare places.
There may be specific things we're working with—an aching shoulder, swollen legs, a tight back, abdominal tension.
But there can also be moments when nothing needs to be accomplished.
The body receives touch.
We notice what responds.
We follow what makes sense.
There is wisdom in responding rather than overriding
I don't think honoring the body's rhythms means withdrawing from life every time we feel tired.
Women are capable of extraordinary things.
But capability and responsiveness are not opposites.
We can be strong and still notice.
We can exercise and rest.
We can use modern medicine and traditional practices.
We can want to feel better without declaring war on the body we're living in.
Perhaps holistic wellness is partly this:
Learning to recognize that the body is not a machine expected to produce the same output every day.
It is living tissue.
It responds to hormones, movement, sleep, food, touch, stress, pleasure, age, environment and experience.
It changes.
It always has.
And there can be tremendous relief in no longer asking it not to.
Moonseed Massage & Bodywork | Inverness, Illinois
Massage and bodywork for women in Barrington, Palatine, Arlington Heights and the surrounding northwest suburbs.
