The new-age way through a midlife crisis
I’m lying on a massage bed in a barn surrounded by 50 vibrating gongs. It feels like being under a plane as it takes off; my body is shaking with the vibrations. The healer alternately bongs huge circles of metal and wafts me with sage, while my body is festooned with chakra-charging crystals. ‘I’m tuning you up for courage,’ the healer whispers. ‘Can you hear the goddesses marching?’ I know it sounds crazy, but as the sounds intensify around really feel that I can.
This is about as far from my normal life as it’s possible to imagine. But my cynical brain is being won over. This woman seems to know all sorts of things about me; that my late stepfather is sending me a hug. That I need to be ‘picked clean’ in what she calls a ‘sky burial’; that as part of that process, I will form a close relationship with a bird of prey – who will help me shed the life I used to have and prepare me for my new future. To be honest, I’m so lost, I’m prepared to try anything.
Usually I’m a logical, hardworking woman. A mother of two. A wife. A professional. But my high-profile job on a national newspaper had just come to a brutal end in one of those terrible falling-off-the-roof moments. As I lie on the healer’s bed, I still feel lost in the dark, scary wood with no white pebbles to guide me out. I’m in the grip of a massive midlife crisis. I’ve just turned 50 and I feel done, on the scrapheap.
As the healer talks to me about spirit animals and birds that she says can help me, I feel disembodied; all at sea. I’d never been particularly interested in our fine feathered friends. But since that treatment, so much of what she told me has come to pass. I really have become braver, confronted my demons and developed an affinity with birds where I swim every day, and the kingfishers. The flash of azure that signifies their presence now lifts my spirits like nothing else.
The healer was just the start of my midlife odyssey into extreme situations. Another involved submerging myself in freezing water for three minutes – there were so many ice cubes bobbing around, it was like taking a bath in a huge gin and tonic. This day-long workshop in Berkshire with a Wim Hof-trained ice expert is not for the faint-hearted – literally. We had to fill in all sorts of health and safety forms and it’s not suitable for people with certain conditions (see wimhofmethod.com).
But the combination of powerful breathwork and then submersion in ice floods the brain with calming natural cannabinoids. I felt I’d gone to another dimension, or rediscovered my lizard brain, and was totally calm.
Everyone asks me if it was cold and uncomfortable. Actually, I didn’t feel cold at all. I was far beyond that. I felt profoundly peaceful and relaxed.
A silent retreat
Another serious departure from normality for me was an eight-day silent yoga retreat. I’m a chatterbox and the mere thought of being silent for so long filled me with trepidation. It wasn’t just not speaking for a week – even books or radio were off limits. But I surprised myself: I discovered that silence was indeed golden. That I like quiet Eleanor; without all the noise and fuss, she’s surprisingly mellow and thoughtful. She notices the colours of the leaves: golden on the beeches, tawny on the oaks. She sits and watches the wind blow the clouds into different shapes and loves how the full moon throws shadows on the river and the hills.
I learned to eat in silence: food tastes better with no distractions. It was restful being surrounded by friendly women who couldn’t speak. I learned who I liked; some smiled or caught my eye in shared humour or understanding. Sometimes we cried and comforted each other wordlessly with a squeezed hand, a smile, finally
a stolen hug.
So what did I learn? Mainly self-compassion. I realised that often, I’ll turn to my partner or children and ask (and mean it): “How do you feel, my love? What do you need, my love?” But until that week, I don’t think I’d ever lovingly asked myself that question.
We women in midlife can be hard on ourselves; I see that so often in the community I established at noon.org.uk to help those going through their own version of the midlife collision. Our research shows over half of women have been through at least five big life events – such as divorce, bereavement or redundancy – by the time they hit 50.
What we also see is that the more these women – I call them ‘Queenagers’ – have been through, the more likely they are to get their lives set up just the way they like them. But to get there, first we have to unload what no longer serves us.
Daylight dancing
One experience I found truly transformational took place at a tiny women’s festival deep in a Kent deer park. Early on a Sunday morning, I find myself moving and stomping in the middle of a huge field, surrounded, at a distance, by other women dancing to their own rhythm.
Clamped to my ears are a pair of headphones streaming tunes for my ecstatic dance session. If I remove them, all is quiet, except for birdsong and the odd whoop of delight. When I replace them, I’m back on the virtual dancefloor, in the snare of the DJ.
I’m always an enthusiastic dancer, but this is different. Grooving in broad daylight in a park surrounded by women I’m freed from any external – male – gaze. For the first time since I was a child, I’m moving and dancing only for myself; following whatever impulse
takes me in a gush of what feels like intense freedom. There’s no one watching me. I move because I want to, and allow my body to do whatever it feels. I don’t need to be sexy, or
my limbs to look attractive in the way that I now realise I’ve always done in a nightclub or at a party. Nope.
Instead, this morning, I march, arms swinging to the beat, up and down the field. I stamp my feet. I jump up and down on the spot for the sheer hell of it. I skip like I did as a kid. I put my head between my knees and whizz my arms round like helicopter blades. I stand still and feel the soft grass under my feet and the soil beneath it. I’m in my body. Dancing with myself. Free and happy. The music speeds up and slows down; and as it changes, I inhabit many moods and aspects of myself. Purposeful, whimsical, still, whirling dervish – anything I like.
In the two hours I spend dancing in this glorious green expanse with lime, beech and oak trees creating a protective ring around the edges, I’m entirely present, gloriously me. Free. It’s a revelation. This midlife journey has released me from old demons. After a lifetime of battle, I feel like I’ve put down my weapons and can finally feel joy inside my own skin.
Being a calmer version of me
My family and friends raised quite a few eyebrows as I set off on my round of gongs, healers, ice, silence and ecstatic dance. But even the naysayers have toadmit that I’m a happier, more carefree and calmer version of myself. I now meditate as soon as I wake up, and my husband and children regularly say they can see the difference it makes. I notice it in the space that I now have between things happening and my reaction.
It’s a micro-moment, but in that beat, I have time to choose how I will act. If you’re stuck in a rut, or facing a huge, unexpected life shift, I highly recommend taking time out and trying something new. It’s helped me so much.
Much More To Come: Lessons On The Mayhem And Magnificence Of Midlife (HarperCollins) by Eleanor Mills is out now. Eleanor is founder of noon.org.uk
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