Show Overview
I met my next guest in Portugal last May, at a conference on healing, and was immediately attracted to her natural beauty and radiance. No surprise there — just take a look at her picture! When someone has an inner smile, it manifests outwardly, and I love to see it.
Sophie Benge is an international journalist and consultant on beauty and wellness, with a focus on women. Now guys, don’t turn me off yet, because you are going to want to hear Sophie explain how you and the woman in your life can have more and better sex, and we do that by talking about…wait for it…menopause. That’s right, Sophie and I dive deeply into this often misunderstood stage of life that affects most women of a certain age, and so it affects us men too.
Sophie is the author of several books on the healing power of natural resources, the human energy system, and ancient systems of medicine. She is the curator of retreats and workshops called Aging Gracefully, including one coming up in late November 2019. But Sophie is not just about seaweed soaks and kundalini, she is also a sucker for the traditional salon blow dry and wrinkle-reducing cream. I know — when I was looking pretty shaggy after six weeks on the road, Sophie helped me get a a good haircut in London, where she lives and works.
Now I have a confession to make before we get started. As with so many subjects we cover on this podcast, I knew almost nothing about menopause. You’ll pick up on that as Sophie gives me a proper schooling on Hormone Replacement Therapy, the symptoms of menopause, and how it affects our sex lives. There was so much to learn that I broke the interview into two parts, and while they are both PG rated, the discussion gets decidedly saucier as we go on.
So please join me for Part One of my two part interview with Sophie Benge, international journalist, author and curator of Ageing Gracefully as we talk about menopause.
What you will learn:
- Sophie’s Passion Project: The Aging Gracefully Retreat for Women Over 40, November 28-December 1, 2019
- How a drop off in hormones has a huge impact on women’s bodies, but it does not have to be the beginning of the end
- Symptoms: hot flashes, night sweats, trouble sleeping leading to exhaustion, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, loss of memory, aching joints, loss of libido, lacking self-confidence, vaginal drying, a fear of sex, brittle bones
- Sophie’s migration into the esoteric and spiritual side
- The average age for menopause is 51
- Meno – pause literally means the pausing, or halt, of menstruation and the menstrual cycle
- 75% of women will have symptoms
- Should menopause be “treated?”
- FILTH – Failed in London, Try Hong Kong
- How Sophie’s moved to Bangkok and back to Hong Kong introduced her to Asian health practices
- Her books about Interiors, The Tropical Spa, and the natural pharmacy in Asia
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Presto and grazie!
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I Am a Racist
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
I often hear nowadays, people being accused.
“He’s a racist.”
“She’s a racist.”
“Trump’s a racist.”
“So and so’s a racist.”
What I have yet to hear is: “I am a racist.”
So let me be the first.
I am a racist.
Yes.
I see the ugly thing, creeping around my soul like a roach in the kitchen. I squash it, but sometime later, there it is again.
I know there is a nest somewhere, eggs hatching, a source deep within me, hidden away where it’s easy to deny. There is where I'll find the library of my false beliefs, the lies I tell myself over and over, so often they become grooves cut into my gray matter, like fissures in rock where the water runs down, cutting deeper and deeper, until fissures become swales, and swales become canyons.
When did the first racist raindrop fall? I don’t know. As a child, for sure. How many drops of poison does it take to pollute the vessel of pure water of which we are born? When, exactly, does a person become a racist, and who gets to decide?
I don’t know, but then, neither does anyone else.
I don’t believe in permanence. That’s one thing the Buddhists have taught me.
Everything changes.
We can become aware of that library of false beliefs, that nest of nasties that colors our perception of things, often for the worse. Awareness alone brings change. We can cut new grooves. My challenge as a human being is not to deny that I am a racist, for that would be as foolish as denying I have cancer when I really do. My challenge is, rather, to stop the cancer from metastasizing and poisoning the whole man.
I doubt I will ever fully eradicate my racism. Unfortunately, I suspect some vestige of it will always be with me. But what I can do, and what I do do, is expose myself to experiences that lessen my racism, those being travel, kind and honest conversation, and breaking bread with “the others” whenever I can. These experiences, like wind and rain, smooth rock and, over time, lay low even the highest mountains.
So when I hear the angry crowd shouting, "He’s a racist,” I want to ask:
“Who among you is not a racist? Stand up then and take a bow...for you are surely a god.”
I moved to Substack!
Hi there. If you've read this far, then you enjoy, or are at least intrigued by, my ideas. If you want to learn more, jump over to my new website on Substack, where I continue to write about travel, the second half of life, and other mad musings.
