I’m teaching my first in person workshop since 2020 this weekend. I’m excited and nervouS.
I think it’s kind of sweet that after 20 years of teaching in person, I still get nervous. I am not afraid or worried. I know what I am capable of, but I get nervous because I don’t know exactly what lies ahead. To me, it’s a sign of my commitment to staying in the process and growing in relationship both to myself and others.
I never teach the same thing twice. I teach whoever is in front of me in the moment. It’s where things come alive. In relationship to each other. It is where we risk things and make gains.
We have relationships to our bodies and ourselves, to our physical spaces, to the earth, to one another, to culture. All human beings are relational. Yet, the more I study the neurobiology of women, the more I have come to understand the role hormones play in how the nervous system works, how sensory information is processed and the influence on how women relate and act in the world.
I am the mother of three cis gender sons. I gave them all baby dolls and trucks. My husband and I taught them to sew, cook, clean, kayak, play soccer and chop firewood. You’d be hard pressed to guess correctly which one of us taught them which thing unless you knew us well.
For example, I like to go hard in team sports and lifting heavy weights. Some of my sons like to go hard in team sports and lift weights and some of them think it’s awful and no fun at all. Some of them are big and burly and embroider for fun. Some of them are small and wiry and like to take physical risks. Just like with all humans – there is a huge spectrum of preferences and behaviors in our family.
And yet… I am now focusing my work and teaching on women. All genders and identities are welcome to join the workshops, explore and learn, but the teaching will focus on women.
A woman’s brain, thanks to higher levels of oxytocin and estrogen, is different than a brain that doesn’t have those same levels of estrogen or oxytocin. Those hormones create a reaction in the neurons of a woman’s body and send different signals through the nervous system. Women are more innervated in the social nervous system than other people.
What this means is that we have hormones that help us tune into things outside of us easily…like babies. The hormones not only make it so we notice facial expressions easily for example, but they also support connection and care for others. Even if we don’t have babies, or even want or like them, or have a uterus – women identified people tend to be more tuned into relationships. The tendency overall is to care about maintaining social relationships and structures in a more collective relational way.
If you look at images of a woman’s brain before age 43 or so, it is remapped every 35 days. As hormone levels rise and fall, the brain responds. This is not true of all brains in the same way. They do not all remap like this.
When women move toward peri-menopause and menopause, estrogen levels drop. So too does brain remapping, and the constant building and change quiets down. At this stage, most women find they ‘just don’t care’ what other people think in the way they once did. They don’t care but it is not always the ‘don’t care ’ rebellion of teenagers. It can be different.
Many women find they can focus in a new way, and gain clarity about what they want. Many of us think this is just owed to maturing or some other work we have ‘done’ with ourselves…chances are it is also owed to biological change.
This weekend when I teach, I am teaching on the theme of boundaries and connection. For me this theme comes up again and again with the women I work with. My sense is that the growth and support needed is in attending to ourselves, especially building the ability to track what is happening for us while in relationship to others.
The other day, I asked a student if we could try out a certain movement during a lesson. She agreed. I have asked for permission many times – we’ve worked together a few years.
After we were done, I asked her how she was? She said her neck hurt. I asked if she knew why? “Was it something I had done?“ She said it was because she agreed to what I suggested, but didn’t really want to do it. She said this on her own wothout any prompting or suggestion from me.
I was delighted that she had spoken up.
I often remind my students that they are in charge of guiding the process. My job is to follow their lead and help them toward the goal they set. Yet, I am ‘the teacher’ and for many of us, this is a challenge, to tell ‘their teacher’ that they don’t like or want something. I used to think this was because we were taught to be ‘good little girls’ by a male dominated society – and while that IS true, I am also coming to appreciate that there is more driving our behaviors.
I was thrilled the student knew what had happened and that she was willing to speak up. That is where the healing occurs. In relationship to one another, in real time, experimenting and learning. None of us can conjure that situation up on our own.
I could rehearse boundary setting and tracking myself in my journal or mediation all day long, BUT my nervous system and brain knows it is real when I actually do it IRL.
As women, learning how and practicing how to attend to ourselves, tracking what we are thinking and feeling when alone and while in relationship is the work. In my heart of hearts when I imagine a world full of women who can show up with this skill, I think the world will be changed for the better. Maybe you are already good at this. Maybe you are not. No matter where we are, it can always deepen and improve.
I know there are exceptions to what I have said. I know that not everyone will agree with me or identify with what I described. I understand that. It is hard to have this dialog about biology respectful of the incredible variety of experiences in the world. Yet, I think it is important to talk about it. This is a conversation, an iteration. A process. Thanks for being part of that process.
The neurobiologists I’ve studied with use the term ‘female brain” as a biological term. I am using “women” as an adjective – in a desire to be inclusive. It is a hard conversation to try to have in one small space. I am learning too.
Astra
